I recently had the absolute pleasure of designing the cover for award-winning writer and director Travis Betz’s debut novel Everyday Monsters. A book that takes the tropes of a traditional Young Adult story, its themes and elements, and blends them together to create a ridiculous, dark and hilarious book fitting for both YA and Adult Fiction readers alike.

As a book designer, every so often, a brief will land in your inbox where you are itching to get your ideas to page before you’ve even finished reading the brief, the synopsis, or even the manuscript. One that sparks creativity and a need to start drawing before you even know what’s happening. Everyday Monsters was one such brief for me.

Sixteen-year-old Nalah, AKA Chief Rocka, leader of the all-girl Las Mal Criadas crew and the heart of Lilliam Rivera's new YA novel Dealing in Dreams, is blinded by her vision of life in Mega Towers. The Towers, three giant and luxurious concrete apartment blocks, loom over the residents of Mega City. All of Nalah's actions on the streets — running curfew patrols, punishing stragglers, fighting other crews in public showdowns — are aimed at earning the favor of Déesse, the city's beloved leader, and a home in the Towers for Las Mal Criadas.

Brandy Colbert wrote the contemporary YA Finding Yvonne to fill a space.

“I wanted to explore the life of an unapologetically sexual black teenage girl, which we don’t often see— at least, not without their lives being ‘ruined’ shortly thereafter,” Colbert said. 

The novel features a teen violinist forced to make a difficult decision when she becomes unexpectedly pregnant. National Book Award finalist Elana K. Arnold called it “a pitch-perfect song of a book about all the ways a heart can break and mend.”