On The Outside: Elizabeth Scott

Elizabeth Scott is the author of numerous Young Adult books, including her newest book, Love You Hate You Miss You, which is coming out tomorrow! You can visit Elizabeth at her website here.

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I confess, I can't take any credit for the gorgeous cover of Love You Hate You Miss You--that all goes to Harper's amazing design team! I'm especially thrilled with the fact that the girl on the cover has red hair, just like Amy does in the book, and I love how if your turn the book to the side, the expression on the model's face does an amazing job of capturing how I feel Amy is. (If that makes any sense!)

One thing I can take credit for though, is the title. Love You Hate You Miss You is the only book I've ever written where I didn't have a title in mind when I started writing the book. I played around with a few things, but nothing ever stuck and so I finally just started calling it what I called the file: Letters to Julia.

When it came time for the book to enter the pre-production process, my editor at Harper let me know that something a little catchier than Letters to Julia was needed.

I confess, I panicked. At that time, it had been over three years since I'd written the book and a little over two since I'd even looked at it--so how was I going to figure out what to call it? Luckily, I was working on edits for the book, and as I went through it, I started thinking about things my editor had asked me to do, and things I'd noticed in the book.

Love You Hate You Miss You is a story about many things: friendship, love, family, but I think it's primarily a story about loss. About grief. And as I thought about that, I thought about all the things you feel when you lose someone. How much you love them. How much you--at times--hate them for leaving you. And, of course, how much you miss them.

And so I thought Love You Hate You Miss You -- that's the title.

I sent it off to my editor, who agreed, and that's how the book finally came to have a title!

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Thanks Elizabeth!