Today’s guest is Greer Macallister, a poet, short story writer, playwright, and novelist whose work has appeared in publications like The North American Review, The Missouri Review, and The Messenger. Her plays have been performed at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing.

Her debut novel, The Magician’s Lie, was selected as a monthly or weekly pick by — deep breath here — Indie Next, Library Reads, She Reads, Midwest Connections, Publishers Weekly, and People magazine. The Washington Post raved, “Macallister, like the Amazing Arden, mesmerizes her audience. No sleight of hand is necessary. An ambitious heroine and a captivating tale are all the magic she needs.” The Magician’s Lie will be available in paperback on October 6, 2015.

You can connect with Greer on Facebook and Twitter.

Judging a Book By Both Its Covers

Rightly or not, we all judge a book by its cover. But for some books it isn’t that simple, since the same book can have more than one cover.

I can’t take any credit for the covers of The Magician’s Lie – on tour to support the hardcover launch earlier this year, I often joked that my involvement with the drop-dead gorgeous image on the right was limited to saying “yes” when they showed it to me.

I loved everything about it. The dark red of the dress, the evocative image of the dove (appropriate both for the stage magic that forms the heart of the story and the idea of innocence), its overall impact and simplicity. I felt lucky, and away we went.

But when you’re lucky enough to have a book launch in hardcover and then move to paperback, the initial cover isn’t the end of the story. When I was told that the cover might be changing for the paperback, I was downright nervous. I didn’t see any way that another cover could capture everything else I wanted a potential reader to know about the book. And then they showed me the image on the left… [Read more…]