After spending weeks agonizing over placement, word choices, symbols and colors, the cover design for Móin & Marrow is here! Several of my covers carry a nature motif and I was a little resistant at first to replicating that. But Bréaca’s story is inseparable from nature: between the birds whose eggs she covets to the “bouncy grounds” where she dreams, her whole world revolves around the world outside her home. She even explicitly says, “The doors to my heart open when I step outside.”

And the birds…

Stitch, Croak, Drip… these are birds she looks for and talks to. When she collects eggs from the cliffs, she names them. She knows their patterns. I decide to go with black birds and trees because, even though the outdoors are where she feels most alive, she battles containment from page one. Everyone has something to say about her escapades; everyone wants to limit her.

The colors and simplicity also remind me, for some reason, of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is still one of my favorite stories. The simplicity allows the title room. And the title… This story was originally called The Way of Water, but then, a random sentence in the book, one that was not supposed to be load-bearing, used the word marrow. It stopped me and I took a detour. Several hours later, after an in-depth word study, chills raced down my back.

Marrow can mean the deepest part of yourself. Marrow works to keep you alive. It is what makes you–you. There is a second word marrow that, by coincidence, includes the same spelling as the first, that means equal to. It’s an understanding that your standing is the same as that of your spouse.

Except, not so for this character.

Ultimately, I am excited about this cover and about the chance to share and talk about it!