I am so excited to share the cover and tell you more about my next book, EVERY LAST WORD. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here to check out the exclusive cover reveal on HYPABLE.COM.
Once again, Whitney Manger — who also designed the covers of Time Between Us and Time After Time, in addition to so many incredible others — created a simple, gorgeous cover that perfectly captures the tone and spirit of this story.
Those three little scraps of paper have meaning.
Writers know that when when inspiration strikes, you’ll write on whatever’s handy. The poets in EVERY LAST WORD scribble their words on everything from graph paper and Post-it’s to fast food wrappers and brown paper lunch sacks. After they share their poem, those scraps of paper live on in a very special way.
What I love most about this cover is that it’s simple and elegant. There’s nothing to distract from
Those.
Three.
Words.
The number “3” plays a huge role in the story. So do individual words. Three words together are especially important to the main character, Sam McAllister.
And words are especially important to me, too. I might not have understood just how much they mean to me until I started writing this novel.
This story was inspired by a sixteen-year-old who’s close to my heart. She was diagnosed with OCD when she was 12, and I’ve always sympathized and identified with her challenges around friendships, insomnia, the way she simply can’t turn her brain off, and how she often doesn’t feel “normal.” I was honored when she said I could write this book for her.
But the more I wrote, the more I began to realize that I was also telling a story about my own personal experience with words and their healing power.
Writing — the simple act of putting words on paper and getting them out of my head — saved me when I was a teen. Even though I never let anyone else read my stories, poems, and journal entries, my notebooks were always my safe place. Words were my friends.
I simply love writing. I love finding that one word that perfectly fits what I’m trying to say. I love putting words together, flipping them around, playing with them. I love the cadence of a paragraph, when sentences work together so fluidly, they sound musical. I love it when words move me to tears and laughter and swoons and chills and… whatever they feel like doing.
I’ve loved every moment of writing this novel.
EVERY LAST WORD is a story about a girl with OCD who discovers a secret poetry club and a group of incredible people who change her life in unexpected ways. But it’s also a story about a girl falling in love with writing.
It’s a story about a girl learning to be brave with her words.
I never take for granted how fortunate I am to be able to share my stories with other people, even though that whole idea is still incredibly scary to me. Thank you for listening to my words, readers. You make me want to be braver, book by book.
And special thanks to Whitney Manger, for designing a cover that so beautifully honors the power of the written word.
Oh, and as with all my other books, music plays a huge part in this one. Here’s a song that celebrates being brave with your words. It’s one of my favorites on my EVERY LAST WORD playlist:
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Beautiful post! And an even more beautiful book, inside and out. (Both made me teary.)