An Update on the cover for "Pumpkins"

I love--and hate--working on book covers. I get very excited, and very anxious. I spent too much time yesterday toying with all sorts of ideas. Here's where I began.

I liked it a lot, but I was told it felt too middle grade and not scary enough to be YA. I toyed around with different versions of this cover, as you'll see below.

But this just seemed to complicate things. So, I decided to simplify. Even though the book is called "Pumpkins," I decided to pare it down to just one. This is how it came out. 

For font aficionados, the title font is from the original Halloween movie, and the series title font was used on a lot of old Stephen King novels.  (Speaking of which, the font for the original cover is from the movie Scream.)

I really like this cover. It's simple and emotive, but after showing it to my kids--two of whom are in the YA market, they kiboshed it. They didn't feel it was scary enough or that it told enough of the story. They also felt it still skewed too young for my intended audience. Perhaps a scarier or different style pumpkin would help, but ultimately, I decided--woefully--to go in a completely different direction. However, I may still test a version of this at some point. I'll update you on that process as well. Right now I have an artist and a cover designer working on two separate versions of the same concept.