Rowan and Lin

A friend of mine asked me why I chose to depict the character of Rowan on the cover of "The Year I Slept," rather than the character of Lin, who truly owns the book. Well, that wasn't always the idea. In fact, in my original imagining, I planned to depict Lin, and I even had the idea of somehow doing them both. But finally, it occurred to me that it would be best to depict Rowan by herself after all.  

Why? I think because, while the book mostly tells Lin's story, Rowan symbolizes the hope and anticipation for the future that I'm ultimately trying to convey through the book. Lin however symbolizes a lost past, while Rowan stands for a hopeful future. And that's what I thought was most important. 

I guess the cover could have been a lot of things, and conveyed a lot of things. But I am completely happy with the direction I went with, because Rowan, again, symbolizes the future, and love, and optimism, while depicting Lin, while it is her book, would have been a little less optimistic I think.  

So that's why I did it, basically.