This will be my first book ever published that doesn’t have a map in it. There was never really talk of one. For reasons that will be explained in the book, I didn’t want to start with a map that might give away interesting plot elements about the geography of the world. However, any other kind of map–of the city or library–would just kind of be boring. So I didn’t intend to put one in.

However, the lack of one is another highlight of something that my editor, Anica, kind of wanted with this book. She hesitated when I talked too much about titles that mentioned things like “The Sands of Rashid” because she didn’t envision the book being as much a straight-up fantasy as I did.

This wasn’t a disagreement, more just a difference in viewpoints. I’m a fantasy writer–that’s what I do. I write epic fantasy books. This one, however, does take place in the “real” world, and Anica wanted to market it in a way that would–hopefully–pull in a larger, crossover audience. That’s another reason we went with the pulpy title. From the cover, you can tell that something cool is going on–we’ve got flying books and a kid wearing some strange glasses. However, it doesn’t scream “epic fantasy.” I was originally hoping for a feel more like the Edge Chronicles or Spiderwick, but this pulpy feel seems very different to me, and I like things that stand out. We’ll have to see how it goes over.