THE DARK WE KNOW cover reveal!
+ early blurbs, the cover process & surgeon sexual tension
THE DARK WE KNOW finally has a cover!! The main character Isadora is an artist & the drawings are a big part of the plot; I also wanted something surreal and stylistic and strange, and the art by Anders Rokkum (with design by Karina Granda) evokes ALL that. (I also kind of love that long black hair is such a classic Asian female ghost trope) The teal and black look so good and look even better with the full jacket (to be revealed <3 ), and there’s maybe an accidental easter egg in here for my next book👀
Here’s an official summary (and blurb):
From Gillian Flynn Books, a lyrical YA horror by debut author Wen-yi Lee that’s perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting, Stephen King’s IT, and The Haunting of Hill House.
"Wen-yi Lee has crafted a dark and compelling supernatural mystery buoyed by earnestly written, queer-centric characters. I am enthralled!" —Gillian Flynn
Art student Isadora Chang swore never to return to Slater. Growing up, Isa never felt at ease in the repressive former mining town, even before she realized she was bisexual—but after the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too, even though it meant leaving behind everything she knew, including her last surviving friend Mason.
When Isa’s abusive father kicks the bucket, she agrees to come back just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason, son of the local medium, turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by a supernatural entity, and he needs Isa to help stop the evil—before it takes anyone else.
When Isa begins to hear strange songs on the wind, and eerie artwork fills her sketchbook that she can’t recall drawing, she’s forced to stop running and confront her past. Because something is waiting in the shadows of Slater’s valleys, something that feeds on the pain and heartbreak of its children. Whatever it is, it knows Isa’s back… and it won’t let her escape twice.
Wen-yi Lee’s young adult debut is an intimate and gripping exploration of trauma, healing, and the lasting power of friendship, as a runaway teen must finally face the sinister forces that defined her childhood, and in doing so, demand her right to survive.
the cover process
Publishing, especially for the debut, is an interesting experience of turning something personal to you into a collaborative product for sale. It will inevitably change your relationship to writing and to books—not necessarily bad, just different. It requires a shift in perspective, a lot of learning, a lot of figuring out communication and contexts, and also figuring out where to draw lines. That goes at all stages, especially for books & authors from underrepresented backgrounds—from preserving the core of the story at the editorial process, to how the book is marketed, to the cover design. You cannot, in fact, put your Pinterest board and brain into a blender and produce a cover.
Like I said, I knew I wanted something that felt stylised and surreal, and I wanted typography that felt hand-drawn. Beyond that there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of me learning the sales/marketing perspective while also working towards something that I felt reflected the book more accurately.
It’s so so valuable to make friends with other authors and debut authors; we had so many conversations about the cover process and it felt much less lonely to work through any doubts. Ultimately, a cover that’s true to the book—to you—is something worth fighting for. At the end of the day, it’s your name on it, your words packaged inside it, your face marketed next to it, your bibliography in perpetuity. You’ll have to display it and talk about it a million times. There will always be lots of other factors in trad pub—sales perspective, cover trends, genre norms, contractual/timeline constraints, artist availability—but it’s worth at least making sure there’s a conversation.
A part of this process I didn’t expect to think so much about was my placeholder cover. When TDWK first went up on Goodreads in early 2023, I put up a placeholder I’d quickly edited together. I made a couple mistakes on the Goodreads version, but I hadn’t really expected it to be more than temporary.
Then because the actual cover took longer that anticipated to be finalised and go live, the placeholder ended up being the face of the book for over a year. It went on people’s year-end 2024 anticipated posts, rec tweets, at least one review, Goodreads’ 2024 most-anticipated YA titles list, and even a withcindy video (! i’ve loved cindy’s videos for years so this is my pinnacle frankly.)
The placeholder ended being much more useful than anticipated, although I accidentally made it a little too nice. Even with ‘cover not final’ on it, people still mistook my placeholder for the real thing. Lesson learned for the next one.
In the process of making the placeholder, though, I found my way to a greenish-blue cover that anchored the aesthetics of the book for me. It’s dark, earthy and natural but slightly surreal colour, which is TDWK to me. The original cover drafts were a more midnight blue, and I fought for a teal instead. I love the final colour incredibly; I think it really makes it pop, and the complementary shade that’s backing the ARCs is basically the same shade I was using as my placeholder. And I can confirm that, because I’ve gotten my ARCs!! It’s so so surreal to hold, and to feel.
You can request for an ARC on Edelweiss or Netgalley now! And you can find all the places to preorder it here :) I’ll be organising ARC giveaways soon—and keep any preorder receipts for some fun things to come!
currently consuming
Books
Midnights with You by Clare Osongco: Devastated me, pulled me into a soft haze of night running and running until the sunrise. i loved how prickly and complex this romance and these characters were allowed to be and how incredibly real it felt, how soft the want for wonder. YA contemporary at its finest, and soo treacherous by taylor swift coded.
Off With Their Heads by Zoe Hana Mikuta: Vicious & visceral, yes; batshit obsessive girls in a twisted world with twisted gods and the leaking madness of saints; a singularly fascinating voice and entry into YA you just have to let pull you along (or down). Caro and Icca are delightfully fucking deranged for each other & Kai and Hattie were incredible surprises, all a blend of some of my favourite feral character types. A Wonderland that dug right into my head. I need more weird shit like this in YA!!
These Deathless Shores by PH Low: Loving and aware of its source as the best retellings should be, eying its shadows and other meanings and spinning something sharp and poignant from it. TDS uses Neverland to explore the loss and violence of growing up and the narratives we're entered into, especially as gendered bodies. Beautifully written and character-driven with intersections of queerness and disability, plus some visceral action. I’m also a sucker for any narrative of girl navigating, controlling, and fearing her body and this had such a fascinating exploration of the Wendy role.
Asunder by Kerstin Hall: I would KILL to see this as an animated series; it's been a while since I read a fantasy structured more like an adventure than politics or a mystery and Kirsten never fails with imaginative worldbuilding. This travels through interesting place after interesting place ranging from vast and fantastical (giant luxury travel spiders, killer baboons in vast canyon maze) to dark and claustrophobic (Kirsten's other trademark of super concerning demons and smatterings of horror come well into play), picking up friends as they go try to undo a human binding before it kills the host.
Shows
I’m on the same hype train as everyone else with Shogun, but everyone needs to get on the hype with me for The Artful Dodger. I love shows that take me completely by surprise. I love smart, sciencey stuff. I love things that genre blend and Victorian-era medical drama crossed with petty conmen heists in a non-English setting (with indigenous Australian characters!) was so fun. I love hyper-competent lead characters and I love when there’s two hyper-competent lead characters who are the only matches for each other they’ve ever met, and I LOVE when they’re held back by something the other person has so they end up needing each other and bickering and falling in love despite class restrictions in their way :) Sexual tension via medical procedures was not something I had on my kicking my feet bingo card but here we are. I ate this up. I kicked my feet. I’m watching 1000 tiktok edits.
Music
Fixations of this week include Good Luck, Babe!, Too Sweet and Conan Gray’s new album. (Before The Tortured Poets Department drops next week and decimates all other fixations for a bit.) I’ve also been listening to Tyla—after seeing people talk about it on twitter, I realised my uni friend was one of the album engineers. on the Wikipedia page and everything! When I met him he was the best sound engineer in the entire uni arts scene; we produced a bunch of shows together, I saw him take his first few professional gigs in Soho, and now he’s doing this thing for real. In my acknowledgements for TDWK I talk about a group of people who really made me feel like I could commit to and structure my life around passions and art, and that friend is just one of several out there still doing it.