Wolf At The Door was written as a personal dare. It was 2009 and I just had my second daughter. Throughout the year I had been planning an urban fantasy set in Singapore, because I was sick of white characters and North American/United Kingdom settings. I wanted an urban fantasy that spoke to me and that I could resonate with. Where are the moms with kids? Where are people who look like me?
So, the novel was published in 2011 by Lyrical Press, with an awesome cover with a Chinese/Asian girl staring intently at the reader, wolf beside her, Singapore’s skyscrapers as the backdrop. Then, fortunes changed- and Wolf At The Door soon found itself homeless, the reason being that it couldn’t sell (not sexy/erotic enough!) Kantarr Kanticle Press took it in and we had another cover change by Nathalia Suellen. It was still keeping in line with the urban fantasy theme: Jan Xu knelt on a roof, with a black wolf as a companion, a pagoda in the background.
Once more, another shift in fortunes – and I was grateful that Fox Spirit Books accepted the series. The cover for Wolf At The Door by Stephanie Johnson was visually arresting, with only a Chinese/Asian woman on the cover. Look closely. The patterns also echo the title of the book. The design was clean, simple.
Take a deep breath. There was yet another change. I had always wanted to see Wolf At The Door made available regionally (that is, in my own region). I made a tentative query to Gerakbudaya, the same publisher who bought the rights to publish The Sea Is Ours, the Southeast Asian steampunk anthology edited by Jaymee Goh and me. Fortunately, they liked Wolf At The Door! Phew! The new cover, by far, is the most breathtaking: a wolf profile with a silhouette of a woman with an urban landscape in the background, interspersed with greenery/forest land. Dhiyanah got it down pat. Wolf At The Door is essentially a story about werewolves who live in two worlds: the concrete jungle that is Singapore, and the wild as symbolized by the forest and trees.
So, there you go: the evolution of Wolf At The Door covers. Now I just want to see this novel of mine take flight.
A Wolf's Tale 
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