Cover reveal, one week early!

1. GILDED IN VENGEANCE’s cover (one week early)

2. First page preview

3. Other updates

4. things i’m enjoying right now ♥︎

Hello lovelies! Let’s cut to the chase: I am beyond excited to share the cover of GILDED IN VENGEANCE. There have been months of mockups and changes, and I am beyond thrilled with the final result. Are you ready to see it? Here we go…!

Oh my goodness, I am obsessed! Let me tell you all about it!

• Covers are a collaboration between the design team at HarperCollins (in this case, led by Chris Kwon, who was also hands on with Revelle’s cover) and the cover artist, Zoë van Dijk (who also created Revelle’s cover). Fortunately for me, this dream team has been super collaborative, asking for input from me, my agent, and my editor at each phase.

For GILDED’s cover, we wanted to emphasize a few things:

• First and foremost, the romance. Because the words “gilded” and “vengeance” touch upon the decadence and rage that are at the core of this story, we wanted the cover to emphasize the romance. And it does! I mean, look at Emmy and Jack! Look at those smirks!

• Second (and relatedly), we wanted them to be… hot. Covers are advertisements, y’all, and people like beautiful people! Also, with Emmy’s magic, it is story consistent for them to be as alluring as humanly possible. And Zoë, the cover artist, delivered.

• Third, we wanted the cover to visually hint at both danger and fantastical elements. Without Jack’s magical flames, this could be a straight up historical romance with no magic in the story. The black flames add a sense of foreboding, of the damage Emmy and Jack are inflicting on the ballroom beyond them, and the threats licking at them as well. Ugh, I love it!

• Fourth, I’m obsessed with the dancing couples in the background that may or may not be burning alive. And they may or may not deserve it.

• And fifth, I love the dress’s abstraction behind the gorgeous lettering. Zoë had done similar in her art samples, and we were so excited for her to bring this particular skillset to Emmy’s gown, giving a flair of something dangerous and alluring. And that lettering! The way it shifts in its golden shade as if it’s shining in the light.

  

Covers are SO important, because readers really do judge a book by them (mainly, whether or not to pay attention or keep browsing). I’m so happy (and frankly, a little bit relieved) to be in love with this one.

Also, last week, I received GILDED’s pass pages, which take the manuscript from a word document to the proposed layout/design of each page of the book. It’s one of those very cool moments for us authors, as we can start to picture our labor of love growing into a book baby we can one day hold.

Recently on instagram, I shared a preview of the first paragraph of the prologue—but because I love you, I’m sharing the first page in full (and not cropped to fit into that new instagram 4:3 grid). Note that it’s written in a bit of a distant third person, almost fairy tale like. The rest of the book is in a much closer perspective (with the exception of the epilogue, which returns to this distant third person.

Here we go!

• Revelle turned two years old on Valentine’s day. I love my first book baby, and I’m proud it’s still in stores two years later. But if I’m being honest, the gap between these books makes me a little insecure on how slowly I wrote this one. Too damn long.

• Revelle was also named to the 2025 TAYSHAS Reading List! The goal of the TAYSHAS reading list is to motivate young adults to become lifelong readers and to participate in the community of readers in Texas. Students in grades 9 – 12 are encouraged to read books for pleasure from the list. It is SUCH an honor for Revelle to be selected for Texas’s teen readers.

• GILDED is up for preorder on virtually all retail book sites, so pick your favorite! At the time of this newsletter, the cover isn’t up yet, but it will be uploaded next week.

• Speaking of next week, I’m planning on sharing my cover publicly on Wednesday. I’m holding off because I’m on a ski trip, and I don’t want to take a day from family/friends to be on my phone all day (and cover reveals are super fun, so I’d like to be on my phone all day to enjoy it). If you’d like to help, keep an eye out for the post next week, and give it some love!

• And as always, you an add GILDED IN VENGEANCE on Goodreads or Storygraph if you feel so inclined.

• What I’m reading: unfortunately, nothing at the moment, because I need to read these Gilded pass pages and see if there are any tweaks I’d like to make. But the next on my TBR is way out of genre for me, because it’s nonfiction: Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari. This one’s relevant to my work as a clinical psychologist, my productivity as a writer, and my constant grappling with the blessing and curse that is technology. I will report back!

• What I’m watching: I just binged Emily In Paris. It was pure sugar: yummy, easy to digest, and not nutritional in the slightest. If you need to absolutely zone out and not think, I highly recommend. Just be prepared to ignore all the things that don’t make sense (remember: it’s sugar! And if you’re a fan of my craft podcast and Substack, Turning to Story, it’s Location Butter!).

• What I’m listening to: Since the fam and I have been spending lots of time in the car, we’ve been listening to The Moth podcast. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s incredible, real-life stories told by the people who experienced them. They’re all skilled story tellers, so I enjoy them from a craft perspective as well as a consumer. I laugh. I cry. And my kiddos have lots of questions that require frequent pausing, but they really enjoy them, too.

• What I’m buying: I just designed and purchased my next Plum Paper planner. If you’re into keeping your schedule and to-do lists by hand (or if you’re like me and need to have several copies of your schedule), I can’t recommend them enough. They also have adorable custom notebooks (lined, dotted, and graph). I’ve been a loyal customer for years. There’s nothing better than pretty paper!

That’s it! Thanks for squealing over this cover with me. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!