I’m so excited to finally be able to share the US cover for my novel, Our Endless Numbered Days. It was designed by Jakob Vala, an in-house designer at my US publishers, Tin House, and the illustration was done by Julianna Swaney, an illustrator working in Portland, Oregon, where Tin House is also based. 

Unless you’ve read the book, the serendipity of this illustration won’t mean a lot, but for me it is very weird; good-weird, not bad-weird. Because, you see, the illustration wasn’t commissioned for the cover – my editor Masie Cochran and the designers at Tin House came across it, ready-made, and looking for a home. And what makes it so good-weird is that Our Endless Numbered Days is about Peggy Hillcoat who is the age of the girl on the cover; for the most part she lives outdoors amongst the tree and the grass; she wears clothes similar to these, and there is even a scene where she collects kindling. There is one more even weirder thing than all of these, but I’m not allowed to give the game away, you’ll just have to read the book, and see for yourself what I’m on about. 

The title is made up of tiny flies and Jakob has echoed this with the chapter numbers inside the book. The production will be very classy, with deckled edges and French flaps. No, I didn’t have any idea what those things meant either at first, apart from suggesting something rather rude, so here’s a picture of another Tin House book to give an idea. French flaps are when the covers fold inwards, and deckled edges are when the long edge of the inside pages are slightly rough to give more of a handmade feel, rather than machine cut. 

Proofs of the book are just being printed and will then be sent to other authors and reviewers for reading and comments, so everything is starting to happen. It comes out in the US on 17th March 2015. If you’re on Goodreads and interested in reading it, you can add it to your ‘to read’ list here. 

So, what do you think?