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.

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.

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.