LOVE IN THE TIME OF SERIAL KILLERS pre-order campaign!
I just need you to know that, yes, I’m aware. The title of my book is obnoxiously long to type out. Even LITTOSK feels like a lot sometimes, but whaddya gonna do? I write sins not tragedies.
Fair warning, this newsletter is also going to be quite long, because I have SO MUCH I want to tell you about the pre-order campaign for Love in the Time of Serial Killers. Because LOOK at these beauties:
The TL;DR is that if you pre-order and fill out this form with your name, address and a copy of your receipt, I will send you a fun postcard, art print, and sticker sheet inspired by the book! And if you pre-order directly from my local indie, you will receive all that swag PLUS I would love to sign/personalize your book any way you want! (a Paramore quote? the page number for one of my favorite parts? a marriage proposal? idk, I’m down!)
The pre-order swag art was all done by the INCREDIBLE Zoe Rose LoMenzo!
Meet Zoe:
Zoe says she was always drawing when she was a kid, and that her dad would take her to the comic book store every week and her dad’s cousin would teach her how to draw Spiderman. Most of her art started just by drawing what she was obsessed with — superheroes, video games, then into anime characters in middle school.
Finding deviantart in middle school really blew her mind wide open, because suddenly she saw what a huge community of artists existed on the internet. After high school, she started selling some of her art for the first time, drawing portraits of people as a side hustle. Although she studied a lot of different stuff in college — including film editing, since she says she’s always loved film — she found her way back to art and started combining the traditional techniques she’d learned with the digital art style that was really exciting to her.
Out of college, Zoe started doing gig posters, t-shirt designs and logos for local bands in LA. Now, she focuses a lot on movie posters — in her day job, she’s a junior graphic designer at a finish company, working on posers for Disney, Netflix, and Marvel, among others. She’s especially interested in creating alternate posters, like this one she did of Catwoman for the new Robert Pattinson/Zoe Kravitz movie.
Or like the poster she designed for Hayley Williams’ first solo album, which is how I found Zoe in the first place!
I have been obsessed with Zoe’s art ever since my main girl Hayley Williams shared the above piece in her Instagram stories. For this newsletter, I had the chance to chat with Zoe, and she was so lovely and fun to talk to that the completed interview ran over 5,000 words. (WOULD that 5,000 words ever came this easily!!!)
I edited the interview down for clarity and length, but otherwise it’s transcribed below, in all its glory of us talking about Paramore, the pre-order art, and what makes the cover of The Love Hypothesis so amazing.
AT: So, I guess since we're talking a little about Hayley, how did you get into Paramore?
ZL: The embarrassing answer — it was a YouTube video of like an anime music video and then they stuck "Misery Business" on it and I thought it was the coolest song I'd ever heard. Then they played it again at my eighth grade luau and it was just the best thing ever. My friends and I danced to it all night and it's just one of my favorite memories. In 2009 when Brand New Eyes came out, my best friend and I downloaded the album together at the same time and experienced the album at the same time, and it just made us inseparable. Paramore is our bond. If you've seen the "Daydreaming" music video, it's kind of like we're those girls in that video.
Oh, I love that.
That band means so much to me in so many different ways. It's grown up with me in so many stages of my life. That album always has something to say for me each time it comes out.
I totally agree. And I think, as a band, Paramore is really fascinating because I feel like they've stayed true to who they are, and yet every album is different and gives you something new and they keep growing.
Absolutely. Because initially when they have a new album out, you're kind of like, oh no, what is this? This isn't them! But then you listen to it and you're like, oh, no, this IS them, it's just them now. You kind of just need that at that time. They always give you what you need at the time. That's what my best friend and I always say, and it's just like so nice and therapeutic.
Yeah, it really is. When "Told You So" came out . . . remember they put it on Apple Music first? It was like a premiere or something, so you could only listen to it through Apple Music. I had Apple Music on my phone but my sister didn't, and we were at a Starbucks and I was like, oh shit, it's time it's time it's time. So we each put an earbud in and we were listening to the song . . . and I remember, it's like you're saying, having this knee jerk reaction at first of just like. What is this? What am I listening to? But then immediately being totally in love with it, thinking it was a great song.
Yeah, that knee-jerk thing happened to me when I heard "Now" the first time. I was like, what's going on, this isn't what I'm used to. I actually didn't like it, I almost didn't pick up the album. Because it was like this doesn't sound like them, I'm not used to this. And then I listened to it one more time and then I ran to the store and got the album.
I agree with you! "Now" was such a record scratch, because compared to Brand New Eyes it was so different from what you might have expected.
Right. Brand New Eyes is in my top albums of all time, so I was almost a little offended by that song and I didn't know why.
I remember somebody coming over who also listened to Paramore and him being like, I don't like it. It's not Paramore, it's not them, it doesn't sound like them. And I was very defensive about it and very like, no it's great, you have to give it a chance. But I remember in my heart feeling a little like, oooh, is he right? Is he right, though? Yeah, no, he wasn't right. It turns out that song is awesome.
Yeah, I love that entire album now. Especially the deep cuts are so good, the ones that got cut from the album are actually some of my favorite songs.
Yeah, I agree. "Tell Me It's Okay" is one of my favorites, "Native Tongue" is so good, "Escape Route" . . . those are the three, right? They're all bangers. I do see why they didn't get on the album, just because I do see how they take the album in a different direction?
Yeah, exactly.
But I do love them.
Cool. Good taste.
I love the art that you did for Petals for Armor because you blended so many different images from her videos and the album — it was really cool the way you put all that stuff together.
I was so inspired by those music videos because that album came out right before the quarantine hit, and the pandemic, and I had nothing to hold onto except that album. So it meant so much to me that she gave us this, like, when I needed it. It's like what I keep going back to, there's always music when I need it. And I think in "Cinnamon," she's talking about being home with her dog, alone in her house and everything. There's themes you can relate to all the time.
The imagery in those music videos of the rebirth and everything — it was just so cool, and I wanted to try to meld it all together into something as a thank you, I guess.
Her aesthetics are always on point as well. Just, every album, it's always on point.
Absolutely.
I love your art so much. What was your process for working on the preorder art in particular?
I was so excited about that postcard, more than anything. I was excited for all of it obviously, but I had a really strong vision for that. And what I start with is, I gather the reference materials that are needed, and then I go into mocking it up, and then getting into the line art phase after that. And then the longest part is the coloring, because there's so much tweaking that goes into that. I was really happy with the color scheme for how the postcard turned out, because that was something new I tried, the midnight color scheme. So I was excited about that.
Yeah, I really loved it. I mean, to me, the book itself -- it's a romance, but it's a little dark or melancholy in a way. Like there's a bit of an edge to it, and I thought your art really showed that.
Cool. Yeah, thanks. What was good about doing the postcard first was that it had the most information about the book in it, so then it informed the details about the other two pieces, and it really helped me out with that. So I knew when there was repeating details, like the stack of books and just like, character details. I did the postcard first so I knew how to draw the two main characters, and then repeating them in the main illustration, and then repeating the stack of books. I wanted to put Easter eggs throughout them, too, so like I put the stack of books in the room as well as the sticker sheet. Stuff like that.
I really love that little detail! I know it's hard because every experience is unique and every artist is unique, but in general, if other writers wanted to get pre-order art done or commission similar things, is there any particular advice you would have? For how they could find an artist, work with an artist?
The biggest thing I always want to say is just detail, detail, detail. When you approach an artist with an inquiry about wanting to work with them, give them a full summary of your project. It's so important. You did such a good job when you came to me. You were really concise about what you need. Having a dialogue is totally fine, too. But when it comes to pricing and description of what needs to be done, the artist needs to know everything that goes into detail with that. If they can have a vision board or a summary of what they want done, I think that's the most helpful. And then another big tip is DM's — message requests get stuck so many times. I feel terrible because I just cleared out mine but some requests will go to a third page and then I can't see them. So if an artist has their email on their Instagram, I would go through their email or their website.
That makes sense. You probably get a lot of DM's and some of them are total spam, so it's hard to find the real ones.
Exactly, because I'll have a real person asking for a commission but it'll be under three people saying, do you want an iPhone 13? I'm getting like five of those a day.
I don't mean to brag, but I get messages that I've already won it.
Oh, wow.
I don't want to make you feel bad. But yeah, the messages I get are like I've already won an iPhone 13.
Congratulations.
It's really exciting. I'm sure if I actually followed through it's totally legit, not a scam at all.
That's so funny.
So, what are some of your favorite books?
I used to read a ton when I was younger. And then when I got older, I don't know what happened. Just to be transparent, I still like reading, but I just dropped off reading books. I ended up reading more comic books, I think just to get more art references and stuff. But I loved the Harry Potter series, I was obsessed with it growing up. So it was like Harry Potter or really old classic novels. It's kind of random, my taste. But I love Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Those are two I really loved.
Have you ever tried reading graphic novels?
Yeah, I love graphic novels. I've read a lot. I would really recommend Paper Girls and Snotgirl. Those are two I really like.
I've heard of Paper Girls before. I've actually had that on my list to read.
Highly recommend it. It seems like it's just, you know, four girls delivering the paper, but there are so many layers to it that are such great commentary on the world.
It honestly sounds right up my alley. Like even four girls delivering the paper, I'm already super into it, to be honest.
Oh yeah, and it's set in the '80s. It's Stranger Things but four girls and . . . it's great. I just love all the content in that book and Cliff Chang is the one who does the art, and I love his art style.
That's awesome. Have you heard of the Heartstopper series? That's a really big one that a lot of people are super into. It's a gay romance, set in high school. I've only read the first book but I have so many friends and so many people online who are obsessed with the whole series. And they're actually turning it into a Netflix series pretty soon.
Oh, that's awesome. I wrote it down so I can check it out.
That's one I think you might really like. As part of talking about books — I was just curious if you had any book covers in particular that you really liked or that really stand out to you, like if you were at a bookstore what tends to stand out to you?
I love this question. I was actually wondering if there was a book cover you could give me that I could judge for you, by any chance, because I love analyzing art.
Let me pull up something. One second.
I just texted it to you. Have you heard of this book?
I think I've seen you talk about it before, because I recognize the name.
It’s The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, and it’s really big on BookTok, which I'm not on. But I hear everyone talks about it on BookTok.
My first thoughts are that I love the font and the colors. The layout is perfect. Everything is super balanced, and the hot pink — they used the rule of thirds, which I'm super happy about. So there's five instances of hot pink, and they lead you back up to the title and back down to the characters. And then they have the slant going with their eyeline, which leads you back to the title which is really important. Yeah, this is a great cover.
It's a great cover. I believe it was done by a fan artist from the Reylo community. [The cover artist is Lilith!]
I thought she looked like Rey! And he looks like Kylo!
Yes! Right?! Right? Yeah! So I don't know if Ali knew the artist personally through that community or what, but I think that because this book started out as Reylo fan fiction she got a Reylo fan artist to do the cover.
That's amazing. It looks just like them.
It really does. And I love — a detail if you read the book that I really like, is that she's got her eyes closed but he has his eyes open. There's just something about that, where if you read the book it really resonates. I thought that was really cool.
I love that, too. It adds so much character to the cover and it makes you want to read it. Because it's a detail of the scene — it's not generic.
Yeah, there's this element of surprise. It seems like she surprised him.
Exactly. So you want to know what's the details of their relationship, what's going on that he's surprised. This is a great cover. To answer your question more, what attracts me to covers more than anything is a good graphic. A clean font, like I like sans serif fonts I've noticed. Big pops of bold color. A graphic that leads you through the type I think is really important.
I’m really happy with my cover!
I love your cover. There's stuff that was included that I wouldn't have thought to do myself. Like the shadow behind her in pink is really smart.
And that wraps up my interview with Zoe!!! I just want to thank her again from the bottom of my heart for working with me on the pre-order swag. It was an actual, literal dream come true. You can find her on Instagram or Twitter (@zoeroseart) or through her website (www.zoeroseart.com).
Currently reading . . . I just started The Family Plot by Megan Collins and it’s giving me the creepy crawlies in the best possible way. I also just finished The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun, which I feel like everyone on social media has been shouting at me (ME PERSONALLY) to read for a while, and I’m glad I did! It was so vulnerable and big-hearted and, yes, charming. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself!)
watching . . . I am on the PRECIPICE of watching the Seinfeld series finale, and have my Snickers bar all ready to eat with a knife and fork for when I do. (Seriously. The candy bar’s been sitting on my desk for a week, just waiting for my husband to catch up to me on episodes.) IN THE MEANTIME I have started The Dropout and I can already tell it will consume me, much like the Bad Blood book consumed me when I read it years ago. I was ready to quit my job and go review document production for the SEC or whatever they needed me to do. PUT ME IN, COACH.
listening to . . . my deep, dark secret that I am confessing to you is that . . . I haven’t actually consumed any true crime content in a while. I know, I know. Shocking, given some of the themes in my book. When I’m in the headspace for true crime, I will go deep down rabbit holes of cases, podcasts, documentaries, books, whatever. But when I’m not in that headspace, I just DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. Working on some of this stuff around my book has made me feel ready to dip my toe back in, though, and so I started by listening to an episode of True Crime Obsessed about the disappearance of Maura Murray. (If you haven’t heard of that eerie missing persons case, here’s an article I wrote about it for Crimefeed several years ago that I now HILARIOUSLY see they have refiled under another author’s name, which fine, that happens to freelancers, but I assure you that I wrote it lol.) Anyway, I’m enjoying the podcast! The hosts have great energy and it’s as much about the Oxygen series ABOUT the case as the case itself, which I love because I have the most fun getting real meta about true crime.