tdow&g hardcover release

I am so excited to let you know that the hardcover for To Dream of White & Gold is now on sale internationally through Amazon! It will be available via other retailers, too (Book Depository, Booktopia, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, etc.) but it might take a few weeks longer to be active on their systems.

LOOK AT HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS (all images by me on Insta)

… and the back …

… and the elegant, dramatic inside.

I can’t tell you how much I love it; it is truly a thing of beauty. The cover illustration was done by the fabulous Kyoko Imazu, an artist living in Melbourne, Australia, who works in papercut, printing, bookmaking, puppetmaking, ceramics, and watercolours (along with other things … She is immensely talented). The design and typography are the work of the wonderful Sara Oliver, who is responsible for TDoW&G’s gorgeous eBook and paperback covers.

You can find more of Kyoko’s fabulous work here, and Sara Oliver’s design portfolio here.

Kyoko is concerned with folklore and the mythological, along with the minutiae of the everyday. Her work has a beautiful, whimsical intricacy which immediately immerses the viewer, no matter which medium she has used. For TDoW&G’s hardcover imagery, Kyoko’s papercuts have drawn on some of the mythic elements within the novel: the stars, which link to both illae (the novel’s magical power) and the world’s ur-myth: that of the star people, who landed in Eilan ‘on the backs of giant birds with silver wings’, which Kyoko has depicted so beautifully. Lyda’s thick, curly hair reaches into the night and towards the stars, linking her (knotting her?) to the world’s mythos, and to the night itself - Lyda is a dreamer, and the night is when she works. There are tiny leaves in the mass of curls, though, bringing her back to earth (and linking her to other aspects of the world’s mythology - in this case, the dryad fae) and, of course, there’s a tiny blackbird nestling somewhere in there, singing. (These are all my interpretations; Kyoko might have other meanings.) The spine of the novel features a rose, too; that one is all Sara’s, and is another link to both the in-novel mythos and to Lyda’s story.

Did I mention that I love this?

You can find the hardcover on Amazon here.