And here it is!
As promised, my subscribers are the first to see the cover for my upcoming book, A Gritty Little Tourist Town. Pub date: April 7, 2026. That’s just 159 days from today. You can preorder at Simon and Schuster (the book’s distributor), Bookshop.org (which will channel your order to your local bookstore - yay!) or Amazon (if you must). But wait! Preorders are most helpful to the author a little closer to the pub date. You can bet I’ll let you know when.
One of the top three reasons I publish with She Writes Press is the collaborative process for cover design.
The first step was the “cover design memo” in which the author answers a questionnaire asking things like genre, mood, visual images. My memo ran thirty-four pages. Buried in all that verbiage and photos was one image that captured the designer’s imagination.
I can guess what happened. It was deepest winter. She took one look at that beach, those chairs, those fishing boats in the distance, and transported herself into the scene, complete with a tropical drink with a little umbrella. SWP sent back this:
It’s just—no.
NO!!
I started getting heart palpitations—because I am an author and every author has an anxiety disorder, either from an early age or as an occupational hazard.
So here’s where it pays off to publish with SWP. I sent back a lot of feedback, acknowledged how I might have led the designer astray, described the animals that might be found in a coastal village (howler monkeys, geckos, iguanas, parrots) instead of the central valley mountains (capuchin monkeys, toucans) and their proper behavior (NEVER on the ground), and reposted a few of my answers to the questionnaire:
VISUAL IMAGE:
What is a central visual idea in your story? Identify an object or place that captures the themes and tone of your book. People sitting around a table in a bar in Costa Rica, surrounded by rich vegetation. Catherine’s bar in the tv series Death in Paradise captures the feel of the place and the book.
YOUR BOOK’S MESSAGE:
What do you want your reader to get from reading your book? How would you like them to feel when they finish the last page? Please summarize in a short paragraph.
Willa’s response: We’re all just passing through. So let’s laugh, love, and entertain one another by telling stories. That’s how we create community and belonging.Then I added the photo that captured all of that better:
And two weeks later, with a little tweaking, this was in my inbox:
My friends, this is the book. The colors, the critters: the baby howler monkey in a tree, Simon the resident parrot—they even got the gecko with its odd front and back leg arrangement correct, the bottles of beer (this bartender doesn’t do umbrellas). It’s a place where people gather to tell their stories, hilarious, poignant, and astounding in turns.
There’s an empty chair there waiting for you. Join us on April 7, 2026.
Love this!