Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!

• The hunt BEGINS on 3/19 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
• There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt—you have all weekend (until Sunday, 3/22 at 11:59 MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

I’m Roseanna M. White, author of a slew of historical romances, along with some contemporary mysteries from Guideposts. My real life is full (I spent the last 15 years homeschooling, and now they’re both done–how did that happen???–and my daughter is a junior in college) but also very … ordinary. So I offset that by writing about things like spies and nobility and war and mayhem whenever I can. And a recent addition for me comes in large part from the books my daughter and I started reading together when she was a teenager: fantasy romance, aka romantasy. I’m now celebrating the release of my second one, Aflame

In the frozen lands of Fjordlandi, the royal family rules with a fist of ice. Kyrja has always been the “extra” princess, too much like her commoner mother to ever please her father. But when tragedy thrusts her into responsibility and a falsely-accused commoner stirs her to look beyond her father’s rules, she learns that her kingdom is on the brink of revolution. Because control over the ice isn’t the only magic that has been Awakened. There are rebels living in the heart of the volcanos too, rebels determined to win freedom for the commoners treated as slaves. And they won’t stop until all of Fjordlandi is Aflame.

Unlike my historical romances, which all have photographic cover images with a woman on the cover, my fantasy covers demanded something different. I went back and forth with my patron group with tons of cover options, trying out various styles trending in the genre, but quickly learned that my readers still expect to see a person on there, not just text and icons. But photographic didn’t fit the trends, so we decided to go illustrated. And for that, I called on my friend Caroline, who’s a member of my patron group and a wonderful artist.

She’s doing the character art for the full-length novels in the series, and my daughter is creating the character art for the novellas. So let’s see how the cover for Aflame came together! First was Caroline’s part. She has a fun video that her design program allowed her to make. Get a load of how she created Kyrja!

Once I had Kyrja, I had to come up with a background. I wanted something that would pick up on the beautiful colors in her dress…and also bring some unexpected color to what could have been a frozen wasteland on the cover, just white and gray. But we do have volcanoes in this story, so…lava!

I tried a variety of backgrounds, playing with the idea of the aurora borealis in there, trying to find the one that would offset it well and also match the illustration well enough in style. Here are a few of the rejected ones. 

Eventually, the team and I decided what we liked from each variation and came up with one that got the approval of us all. The other elements on the cover are the “Awakening mark” design behind the character, that will be on every cover in the series in some form or another. Because in this world, ancient nano-technology has combined with a gift from God to grant certain people “magic”–control over an element. In Fjordlandi, their Awakened have control over water, including the ability to freeze it, and their Awakening mark is a ring of snowflakes. But the rebels have a mark too–one that’s a ring of flames. I decided to include both on the cover.

Here’s Your Critical Stop #7 Info:

If you’re interested, you can get a signed copy of Aflame from me right here (and shop for other fun bookish things too!) or order on WhiteCrown, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org now. If you order from me, you can get these beautiful printed edges!! Scroll down to see!

Clue to Write Down: to hit!

Link to Stop #8, the Next Stop on the Loop: Robin Lee Hatcher’s site! (She’ll be giving away something extra too!)

Special Giveaway!

But before you go, I’m offering a special prize!

One lucky winner with a US address will receive a signed copy of Aflame with printed edges! If you’re international, you’re entered to a win an ebook of Aflame.

(If the entry form is not showing above, you can enter here!)