Can you spot the difference?

A new(ish) cover for my D-Day novella RESIST

Say hello to the new cover for RESIST, the companion novella to my D-Day novel ALLIES!

Wait, I hear you saying, doesn’t that look exactly like the old cover for RESIST? Well, it’s very similar, but there are a few changes. Let’s play Check…and Double Check, the old spot the differences game from those Highlights magazines that were always sitting around the doctor’s office!

Can you spot the differences? The new cover has more planes and parachutes, and lots of boomy explosions. The Scholastic logo is gone, and there’s a wall of sandbags in the foreground. The book has a nifty new tagline too: “A world at war. A young spy. Her most dangerous mission yet.”

But the most glaring difference is…no dog! Where’s the dog!?

I asked, but I never got a good answer. I thought putting a dog on the cover of a middle grade book if you could was a no-brainer, but shows you what I know! My only guess is that Scholastic worried that the increased sense of danger—the aforementioned planes and parachutes and boomy explosions—would make people worry about the safety of the dog in the story, so they took him off.

Just to be clear, no dogs are hurt in this book. No dogs are hurt in any of my books, and never will be. My favorite writing teacher ever, the late, great Jon Manchip White, said many wise things to me and the others students in his classes at the University of Tennessee. But perhaps the most important writing rule he ever gave us was: Don’t kill the dog. “You can kill as many humans as you want in your stories, in as many horrible ways as you like,” he told us. “But you can never kill the dog.”

(Fun fact: I created Professor White’s Wikipedia page. I also did significant early work on the Wikipedia page of Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, but he never gave me any writing advice.)

Samira’s dog is named Cyrano—a reference to one of my favorite stories, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. (I had nothing to do with that Wikipedia page, but it’s a good one.) Cyrano accompanies Samira on a daring mission through the French countryside to rescue her mother, who’s been captured by the Nazis. But it also happens to be D-Day, and there are lots of planes and parachutes and boomy explosions to avoid.

Ebook and audiobook editions of RESIST already exist in the world, but this is the first time you’ll be able to buy an official hardcover print version. So I guess taking the dog off the cover does help in one way—if you see a copy of RESIST for sale with Cyrano on it, buyer beware: it’s one of the old, used, limited print-run paperback editions, and Scholastic and I have no control over the price!

The new hardcover edition of RESIST debuts on March 4, 2025. You can preorder a copy from your favorite local indie, or by clicking any of the links below:

Pre-orders from Green Bean Books will come signed!

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More Free Virtual Visits

I had a great January event with fans from fourteen US states and two Canadian provinces, and I hope to see even more of you online this winter and spring! In my free, live, hour-long virtual school events, I talk about my books, background, and writing process, and then answer questions from attendees. Whether you’re watching from home, a classroom, or an auditorium, there’s no fee to attend, and no limit on how many people can watch. Here’s my upcoming schedule. Click the links to register!

Thursday, February 13 at 11am ET, 10am CT, 9am MT, 8am PT

Tuesday, March 18 at 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 11am MT, 10am PT

Thursday, April 17 at 11am ET, 10am CT, 9am MT, 8am PT

Tuesday, May 20 at 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 11am MT, 10am PT

Can’t join me live? Want to replay an event for readers who missed it? Each virtual event is recorded, and is available for at least a month afterward to anyone with the link. (I usually just take the old one down as soon as a new recording is available.) You can even sign up and view a presentation after the fact! Regardless of how or when you watch, I hope you’ll tune in.

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And finally, if you’ve hung with me through Highlights, Fernando Valenzuela, and Cyrano de Bergerac, your reward is…

Kostenlose Bücher!

That’s German for “Free books!” (At least according to Google Translate.)

I love collecting the foreign editions of my books. I have sixteen different versions of REFUGEE alone! (Many of which you can see if you click that link and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.) The other book I have a lot of foreign editions of is BAN THIS BOOK. Some of the foreign editions look very different, and all of them are super cool. The German editions above are titled The Sea Before Us and Amy and the Secret Library, respectively.

I’m supposed to get a couple of free copies of every foreign edition that’s published, but it’s always a little hit and miss. Sometimes I get two, sometimes I get none. And sometimes, I get a whole box full.

I do not need a whole box full.

Which is good news for you, because I am giving away GERMAN LANGUAGE editions of both REFUGEE and BAN THIS BOOK! If you win, you will win only one book—either REFUGEE or BAN THIS BOOK—and there's no way to choose. Sorry. Also, I have a lot more German language editions of BAN THIS BOOK to give away than German language editions of REFUGEE, so if you win, you'll most likely get BAN THIS BOOK.

So that everyone has an equal chance to win, please enter only once. Due to the number of submissions I expect to get, only the giveaway winners will be notified of the results. The last day to enter is Sunday, February 9th, 2025.

Viel Glück!

(If you don't know what that means, you probably shouldn't be entering this contest.)

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That’s it for this month! If you liked it, please share this newsletter online, or with anyone you think would be interested:

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Danke schön.