My editor told me yesterday Roaring Brook is working on another cover for Birthmarked.  Initial responses to the ARC cover suggest the image is too historical looking, or the book might do better with a more iconic cover.  Then again, some people love what we have already. I'm interested to see what they come up with, and I'm grateful they're being so careful.
   My big question: will the map get in?
   Caragh

 I'm pleased with the design Roaring Brook has come up with for my cover.
Can you tell it's a futuristic, dystopian story about a strong, smart girl?
It's a wrap-around, too.

  We've changed the title of my novel to BIRTHMARKED, mainly because THE ORION TATTOO was terrible to work with for cover art.  I'm excited about the cover concept they're working on now, and it should be ready in the coming weeks.  
  I'll put the latest title up with a description of the book again.  Why not?
  

1. Your television is unplugged because you needed its extension cord for your laptop, three weeks ago. 

2. You don’t notice your house is messy until you run out of food. 

3. The tip of your middle finger is sore from using the scroll pad on your computer.

4. You don’t have time to blog because you’d rather write.

5. You forget you’re eating dinner with your family because your mind is in the other reality witnessing an execution.

6. You go to your relatives’ weddings and funerals because your writing has taught you, despite #5 (see above), that those things are even more important than writing.

7. One of your dearest friends is another writer you’ve never met face to face, and she sends you cat pictures to make you laugh.

8. You start writing after your shower in the morning, stop for lunch, write, stop for dinner (see #5 above), and write again until bedtime.

9. Your agent wears blue jeans.

10. When people tell you your book would make a great movie, you think having a good book is a better idea.

 

I'm Caragh O'Brien, and my first young adult novel, THE ORION TATTOO (Formerly THE BABY CODE), is due out in March 2010 from Roaring Brook Press.  Here's a brief description.

            After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside.  It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

            Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society.  As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she encounters the brutal injustice of the Enclave, and she herself is imprisoned.

            Gaia carries an encoded ribbon from her parents, and its secrets hold vital information about the advanced children.  The Protectorat, who safeguards the population within the wall, needs Gaia’s code and its genetic counterpart to offset the hemophilia that plagues the Enclave. 

            Sgt. Grey, a young, handsome guard of the Enclave, is used by the Protectorat to manipulate Gaia and gain her cooperation with decoding the ribbon.  As Sgt. Grey faces his own complicated past and Gaia recognizes the moral ramifications of her actions, they take desperate steps to escape.

            Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, THE ORION TATTOO explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.