Friday, March 21, 2025

Cover Secrets Revealed

I’m going to continue the exciting, behind-the-scenes thread I started last month by letting everyone in on some secrets behind the covers for the current series.  Notice the pretty flowers on Evelyn’s Granddaughter and Sarah’s Friend.  Secret #1: Those flowers are fake.  This is probably not the most shocking secret.  I wasn’t trying to get away with anything.  I only wanted to use flowers I could manhandle into fifty different photo arrangements without them looking bedraggled halfway through.

Secret #2: The flowers on the cover of book 3 are not fake.  There was a bunch of unusually strong-smelling flowers in my house.  People (sometimes my kids but mostly me) kept commenting on how powerful the scent was as they passed those flowers.  I thought what anyone would think in that situation.  “Those are pretty.  I should use them for a book cover before I chuck them in the trash because I can’t stand the scent anymore.”

Notice that book 1 has a burgundy background and book 2 is blue.  Secret #3: That’s really the same background.  I used a scrap of fabric for the background of the first cover – narrowly avoiding the velvet starfish – and liked the way the texture turned out.  I used the same scrap of fabric to take a picture for book 2, then digitally altered it to be blue.  Actually, I turned it purple and turquoise before I decided blue was better than both of those. 

The third cover will be yellow, cheerful yellow to be specific.  I didn’t think I could turn the dark fabric such a light color without causing other problems.  Secret #4: The yellow background is really part of a Link costume.  It was the only yellow I could find.  It seems no one here wears yellow outside of Halloween.  Secret #5: That yellow background is really tan is really yellow.  I don’t know if it was bad lighting or a bad camera or simply my lack of photography skills, but the yellow shirt turned tan in all my pictures.  I ended up having to digitally turn it yellow even though I used yellow fabric.

Secret #6: I turned something else yellow, too.  It won’t be difficult to guess once I post the new cover.  But first I need to figure out which version of stinky flowers, something yellow and a costume is most awesome.  That has been difficult.  Check back soon to see the decision.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Sneak Peek

One of my characters didn’t recycle something.  It was annoying until I realized she didn’t realize it.  This kind of thing happens embarrassingly often when I’m typing out the first draft of a new book.  My handwriting is… So in my defense, I write everywhere.  I carry around my notebook whenever I expect to have some downtime.  I’ve written in the dark.  I’ve written outside on a windy day.  I’ve written left-handed (I’m not left-handed.) while trying to do something apparently far more necessary with my right.  Sometimes this causes my handwriting to suffer.

And I scribble when I’m just sitting in a comfy chair concentrating on my work.

When I’m typing up the draft, I occasionally need to pause to figure out why what I just typed didn’t make any sense.  In this book, I typed, “There was a fear and a bucket of supplies.”

Wait.  What?

And I probably didn’t mean that “Noah was an excellent distortion” either. 

I typed, “It got me a bunch of other stuff.”

That could make sense by itself.  I still had to pause because the context revealed that it should have been, “It got me thinking about a bunch of other stuff.”  Sometimes what I write is wrong even when my handwriting is readable because I skip words when my brain is moving faster than my hand.  Sometimes I have to pause before I type because it doesn’t make sense in the notebook.

That was the case for a sentence that read, “And they almost always indided some joking and random tangate.”  I had to stare at that for a moment before I saw that I’d been trying to write about something that included random tangents.  At another point in the story, I found a super deep question about reflecting on the “unpertive” of a holiday.  That’s what it looked like anyway.  I’m still reflecting on what I meant to write. 

I also wrote that someone “wanted a break this break.”  I think my brain wasn’t working faster than my hand there, it just wasn’t working.  One of my favorite puzzles so far has been where I wrote, “He was probably only there because of those other people so it made sense”

I find plenty of crossed out words in my drafts, but this was the first time I didn’t write something else in its place.  It just ended there and moved on to the next sentence.  I forgot to correct myself.  I hope what I came up with is as good as what I forgot to write three months ago.

Yes, all of these examples are actual fragments of my next book which has not yet been released.  It doesn’t even have a release date.  This is a thrilling sneak peek behind the scenes of my unfinished work.  Oops, not sure how I mistook vague and uninteresting for thrilling.  Maybe I was writing upside-down.

Thursday, January 9, 2025

My Resolutions

It’s the time of year for resolutions, and that has me reflecting on some of my most successful ones.  I spent many years trying to write a book before a resolution changed everything.  The problem was that I kept starting a new book.  I knew writing was fun and kept forgetting that it’s also hard.  One year, I resolved not to write a book but to finish one.  When I actually accomplished that, proved to myself I could do the hard work, it made the rest of my writing even more fun.  There is so much more joy in a project when you know it’ll eventually be something to share.  The struggles and frustrations turn into good when I have a complete work to show for it.

While I generally keep my private life private, I will say that I’ve been married for twenty-five years.  My husband and I resolved to raise wonderful children together.  I admit that one’s rather vague.  I think it’s going well though.  My kids (some of whom aren’t technically kids anymore) entertain me every day.  They throw out one-liners as though I might be living in a sit-com and provide excellent material for my books.  If I ever find myself writing a character’s reaction to a massive hole in someone’s backyard, it’ll be one of those things “used fictitiously.” 

God’s ways are mysterious.  I may never know why he was determined to give me a head full of gray hair earlier than most.  About five years ago, I resolved to stop fighting him on it.  I’d say that resolution has been pretty successful as well.  I now get offered the senior discount on a regular basis.  This is a great source of amusement to everyone who knows I’m still more than a decade from qualifying. 

I guess that’s why I’m not making any resolutions this year, unless resolving to do more of the same counts.  More books, more laughs, more leaving God in control.  I think that’s a recipe for a good year.  And if I ever need more joy, I’ll grab a shovel and join my kids in the backyard.  They seem to think it’s buried out there somewhere.