Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Fobbit the Cover

I feel like an impresario standing center stage beaming out at the audience, one hand on the curtain as he's about to pull it back and reveal the blockbuster opera he's been nurturing and rehearsing for the past several weeks.  That's right, for the better part of a month, I've harbored a secret from you.  The terrific team at Grove/Atlantic has been working really hard to find just the right cover design for my novel Fobbit.  My hat's off to them for the jacket they've come up with; it can't be easy trying to illustrate a story that is one part dark horror show of the Iraq War and one part zany antics of public affairs soldiers.

Over the past month, we've considered covers with dog tags, maps of Iraq, and a toy soldier leaning back to toss a coffee cup instead of a grenade.  As much as I liked those test designs, each of them was wrong for one reason or another.

We have finally all come to agree on a stylized cover which is heavy on the text and depicts an off-kilter American flag, right down to the scatter of misplaced stars.  The visionary talent behind the cover design is Christopher Moisan, who was also the talent behind some of my favorite book covers of recent years, including this cover for Still Life by Melissa Milgrom.

And now, without further ado, I'm pulling back the curtain....

What do you think?