by Roseanna White | Aug 12, 2015 | Uncategorized
One of my very first cover design posts was for the first book in Cara Luecht’s Portraits of Grace series, Soul Painter. Since the sequel will come out in December and we just finalized the design, I thought it would be fun to look at a behind the scene of this cover too. =)
Since this is a sequel, we knew we’d keep many of the design elements the same–the band of solid color at the bottom with a different, narrow band just above it. The large flourish. The typeface. On this cover, Cara wanted to feature Jenny, one of the two main women in the book. Jenny is facing the prison of her past–the other main female lead faces a literal one. When I found this image, we decided we were totally within our artist rights to be symbolic and have Jenny behind bars, because…well, look at it!
We both just loved that photo. So I downloaded it and got to work. My first step was to zoom it so that it filled my frame.
Now, the cover of Soul Painter had fog, and I wanted something similarly weather-related here. It takes place in the winter, so I went with a snow overlay. Just found one that was white flakes on a black background and then set the layer’s blending to “screen” to make the black transparent. (Actually, I used 2 different ones to get the right effect…)
I really like the frosty look of this! But there were still some problems with the girl. For starters, she had so much makeup on! And Jenny definitely wouldn’t have. Cara asked if I could remove it, so I created a new layer and quite literally painted off the paint. 😉 Which took it from this…
to this…
Much better. I actually love how you can see the shape of her lips better with the bright color taken off. Such a softer, devastated look she now wore…perfect.
But I was still bothered by something. See, this model is a brunette, and Jenny is a blond. But with the hair in the shadows like that, and pulled back so severely, I couldn’t just lighten the hair she has. Or I failed to do so well, anyway, LOL.
So instead, I found a woman with awesome, blowing-in-the-breeze blond curls.
I carefully selected her hair, flipped it around to face the other way, and layered it onto my Jenny. I actually copied it in twice and darkened it once, then faded out the dark layer, to get the shadowed effect at the back of her head.
I didn’t run this idea by Cara until I’d seen if it would work or not, so at this point I sent it to her to see if she liked the possibility of adding hair. She declared it awesome, so we went with it. 😉
From here, it was a simple matter of putting on the title and series title. And here we have it! The final cover for Soul’s Prisoner!
About the book:
Chicago, Winter, 1891
Rachel is in danger. She’s seen too much.
She creeps along the cement walls through the dank underbelly
of the asylum. She’d never planned to leave her quiet farm life, never thought
she’d find a place in the city, never imagined she’d be in the kind of danger that
would have her cowering in Dunning’s cold, labyrinthine basement.
Jenny has finally found her place. After a
childhood of abuse, she has friends, a real job, and her only wish is to
give her adopted son the kind of life she never had.
A life of stability, without the risk and uncertainty of a
father.
But when Jeremy, Rachel’s brother, stumbles into their
warehouse, asking for help to find his missing sister, Jenny’s carefully
constructed life begins to crumble.
by Roseanna White | Aug 10, 2015 | Word of the Week
Arrr!
I occasionally have a pirate in my house–this is to be expected when one has a 7-year-old boy. I never quite know when a rather adorable little figure is going to appear with his sword in hand and demand all my booty. But last time he did, his sister–being so very much my daughter–asked, laughing, “Where does that come from, anyway? Did they put treasure in a boot or something?”
As it happens…no. 😉 Booty is from the Old French butin, which is turn from the Germanic bute, which means “exchange.” So booty is quite literally something gotten in exchange for something else (in the pirate’s case, they got it in exchange for a fight, I suppose…) But in Old English we also had the word bot that meant “an improvement,” which had, by the time butin came into our vernacular, become boot. So we combined the two into booty, making it something profitable.
The noun that means “a woman’s posterior” is from the 1920.
by Roseanna White | Aug 6, 2015 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I’m not called to build a wall.
Just a section of it.
I’m not called to change a nation.
Just a family.
I’m not called to right all wrongs.
Just my wrongs.
I’m not called to understand it all.
Just to seek understanding through Him.
I’m not called to single-handedly fund the church.
Just to give my part.
I’m not called to be the best friend of everyone.
Just of those God has given me.
I’m not called to win awards.
Just to glorify Him with my efforts.
I’m not called to have the best of the best.
Just to be a good steward of what I’m given.
I’m not called to be everything to everyone.
Just to be me…to be His.
I’m not called to do your part.
Just to do mine.
But if we all do ours…
Then the wall gets built.
The nation changes.
The world improves.
Understanding grows.
Things get done.
Love spreads.
Good deeds are the order of the day.
God is glorified through what our hands touch.
And the world will look and say, “There is a people whose God is the Lord.”
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
by Roseanna White | Aug 5, 2015 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
In the final book of my Ladies of the Manor series, which I just finished writing, I have a character from Russia. Now, I’ve longed loved Russian literature, which has given me a bit of an understanding of that famed Russian soul, but it’s been a while since I’ve read any. So I picked up an awesome book on Russian culture and the ideas and morals behind it to help me write Kira Belova in a believable way.
Throughout the book, she peppers in some of her Russian-peasant stories and traditions, which I think are oh-so-intriguing. And tells one of their most prevalent folk tales, about the mystical city of Kitzeh.
Kitzeh, so tradition goes, was the most righteous city in the world, filled with true believers–those of the Russian Orthodox faith who practiced it as Christ and the disciples themselves instituted, with none of the compromises and corruptions that had crept into other faiths over the years. Kitzeh was so righteous that it was like Heaven on earth.
But when the Mongols invaded the Nizhegorod province where Kitzeh resided by a lake, the waters swallowed up this holy city to keep it from being overrun by the faithless invaders–but it was no tragedy for the occupants. No, they were all saved when this happened. And the story goes that the city is still alive and well under the surface of the waters…but only those of the truest faith can see it.
Every year on the summer solstice, people would go on pilgrimage to this lake in the Nizhegorod province, tacking icons to trees and gathering together in a sort of outdoor church, praying and singing…and listening for the tolling of the church bells under the water. Hoping, praying it will resurface.
Did Kira ever hear those bells? Well, you’ll just have to read the book to figure out that one. 😉
by Roseanna White | Aug 3, 2015 | Word of the Week
No, not in honor of Donald Trump. 😉 The question arose this past week with my hubby and son, as to where “fired” and “sacked” come from. So naturally, I ran out to my computer to answer it.
Fire, as in to terminate employment, is an Americanism from about 1885 that’s right up my alley, since it’s a total play on words. Before then, “discharge” had been the word used in this context. But “discharge” is also what a weapon does when it…fires. Which, yes, was another word for that early on. So people thought, “Ha! Since discharge has two meanings, and one of those meanings is ‘to fire,’ let’s apply ‘fire’ to its other meaning too!” So they did. I love it. =) (Not that I love getting fired…well, not that I’ve ever been fired per se, but…you know.)
Another word that means the same thing is sack. This one dates from about 1825. It was originally a noun–“to give someone the sack.” This appealed to the visual idea of handing them their sack full of tools when they were done a job. It then just became used as a verb as things are wont to do in English. =)
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.