As you all no doubt remember, Peeps comes out this Thursday, August 25. This is my first novel to be released during the lifetime of this blog, so let the flogging begin!

This is officially Peeps week. And that means all Peeps, all the time. Peeps. Peeps. Peeps.

“But, Scott,” you say. “I already plan to buy several copies of Peeps. What more can I do?”

Excellent question. First, try to work the word “Peeps” into conversations. As in, “I could really go for a mouthful of chewy marshmallow Peeps at this time.” For this week only, each time you use the word “peeps,” you’ll be credited with one dollar (in nonredeemable peeps money, of course).

When that gets boring (as if) feel free to discuss these alternate Peeps covers with your friends . . .

Obviously, the two on the right were rough drafts only. They may look crappy at this stage, but I’m sure Razorbill’s excellent designer would have whipped them into much better shape. Still, I must say I’m glad that the mighty embossed cat eyeball won out.

Here’s what happened: Between those first two covers and the final at right, several agonizing weeks passed in cover limbo. Razorbill always gives Justine and me a fair amount of input, and I didn’t much like the psycho twelve-year-old of the middle cover, prefering the older look of the leftmost image. My publisher disagreed, though, as she was already worried about the book being “too old.”

Frankly, I wasn’t thrilled by the first two cover concepts at all. Somehow, spaced-out monochrome girls give me a weird junkie vibe. I’m not a huge fan of baby-poo yellow on title treatments, either. The only thing that we all agreed on was that the glowing eyes were cool. If only we had focused on that concept earlier, many lives might have been saved.

Cover limbo is like band-name limbo. It’s easy if you start out with something that everyone loves. But once the first few attempts fail, everybody involved–author, editors, designers–goes off in their own direction, until the whole process becomes an endless journey of random images.

During the limbo period, I was all about teeth. “Give me a real x-ray of a jawbone,” I proclaimed. “But with fangs!”

Strangely, no one could find any actual x-rays of vampires. Apparently, it’s like mirrors. They just don’t show up.

But fortunately someone (not me) realized that cats play a key role in Peeps, and came up with the final concept. When I saw the first rough I breathed a sigh of relief. Then when the final bound book appeared at BEA, the mighty eyeball embossing won me over completely.

What’s that? You can’t see the embossing online? Well, there’s only one cure for that.

Come this Thursday, go buy that, uh, book. You know, the one with that title . . .