by Roseanna White | Aug 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
I figured we were due for a cover design post. =) And since I’ve working on one of those this week, now seemed a fine time.
This time around, I’m working on a cover for the second book by one of WhiteFire’s authors, Cara Luecht. This book is set to come out early 2015; we’re in the editing process now, and since we like to have covers well in advance, we got to work on that side of things too. Cara knew what she was looking for in this cover, which always makes my job easier. She wanted a heroine in profile, at the top of the page, with her head only partially visible. She wanted her holding something. She wanted the title in the center of the page, and a scene that ties in with the book below.
So. I started by looking for good images of her heroine, Brianna. Brianna lives in Sweden in 1885; she has blond hair, which would have been worn up, and she would obviously be decked out in the fashions of the day. The story follows some of the first Baptists in Sweden from their home, where they were persecuted, to America. Based on the author’s family history, Gathered Waters isn’t just about religious freedom, though–it’s about a woman’s journey to finding who she is, what she’s called to do, in a world that would keep her in a narrow definition. Brianna has to find the strength and faith within her own heart to undergo this journey.
When looking for a good picture of a historical heroine–as in, one with her hair up–I’ve discovered that it’s often handy to look up photos of brides. That’s where I began. I searched for “blond bride profile,” and I found our Brianna.
I loved the hairstyle, I liked the way she was standing, and she was holding flowers, which would work well for me…sort of. Rather than carrying a bouquet, I wanted her to be holding a single tulip. But this lovely young lady got me started.
The next step was to flip her around and delete everything I didn’t need.
Obviously, deleting her dress leaves her with a floating arm, but that’s okay. I knew I was going to put some historical garb on her. I found some great, free images of 1880 clothing in profile. This is the one we decided on.
Putting the two together was a pretty simple matter of cut and paste…except for that arm.
Pretty funny, right? I know it gave me a giggle to have the arm sprouting from her stomach–but I knew the waist down would be faded out, so I could copy and paste the sleeve into the right place. First though, I had to deal with the color. While I really like the original color of the dress, the title wouldn’t show up well against it, so I wanted it to be white.
I’ve tried a lot of different ways of altering color, but for this one, since I was going white but wanted to preserve the shadows, the way to do it was to go up to Image / Adjustment / Levels.
Now that I had the dress the color I wanted, I worked on the sleeve. I basically just copied that portion of the image, pasted it, rotated it, and deleted the parts I didn’t want. Because the sleeve is large and stiff at the wrist, it covered the arm beautifully, with no need to convince it. And because the image would be faded out, you can’t see where the elbow folds would have been.
In the image above, I’ve also already added another touch I wanted–the color in the collar and buttons. To get that, I just pasted the original dress image overtop and deleted everything but collar and buttons, which were gold to begin with. I like the contrast this achieved.
I also already adjusted her hand a bit–because she was holding a large bouquet, her fingers were spread. To make her hold a single tulip, her fingers needed to be curled tight. So I just deleted the extra length of finger, careful to “trim” it around the knuckles.
So next comes the tulip. I found a picture of white tulips for free.
I copied a flower. I copied a leaf. I used the Warp feature to bend it a bit. Put it in her hand. And voila.
So there’s the top of the book. Now for the bottom. I was thrilled to find this gorgeous picture of a Swedish stream in winter. The water, the snow, the daybreak all play critical roles in the story, and the lighting here was just breathtaking. I am, as I’ve no doubt said before, a sucker for good lighting.
Isn’t it lovely?? Now, if I were to just plop it down, it would look like this.
Of course, I faded the bottom layer too:
We’re getting there! But I didn’t want a white background behind Brianna. So I instead made it a soft yellow and then added some lighting effects.
Muuuuuch better, right? I like how the colors play off each other now, and it’s starting to feel more harmonious. But I don’t just want a smooth texture like that. Upon giving it some thought, I decided a frost or snowflake texture would be cool. At first I think blue would be nice. So I decide on this.
I try putting it over my cover, fading the opacity to 40%.
Which, um, no. Isn’t what I’m going for. I don’t like how the cyan blue works with the golds. BUT–I’ve learned that you can adjust layers in many different ways. Rather than keep this one “normal,” I choose “divide” in the tab on my toolbar, and suddenly I have exactly what I’m looking for.
Isn’t that texture nice?! I love it. So now for the words. I opt for the simple elegance of SnellRoundhand Script for my font. I decide to make the two beginning letters larger than the rest and line them up. Tossing in a simple divider and Cara’s name, I get this.
I really like this…mostly. But I’d rather, if the G and W are going to cross, that they actually join. I love the harmony of it when letters join up on a cover. So I rasterize those layers so that I can alter the font and create a loop. Like so.
Isn’t that cool? =) So then I just put it onto the cover, and there we have it! The final!
by Roseanna White | Aug 5, 2014 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
I was so, so touched last week by the huge number of you guys who contacted me about helping out with A Soft Breath of Wind. I ended up with more beta readers than I could have dreamed, and exactly the number of influencers I was hoping for. Thank you, so, so much!
And so I thought I’d put out another call–this one isn’t so much work. 😉 Next week, from Thursday August 14 through Sunday August 17,
A Stray Drop of Blood will be on sale on Kindle for
A Stray Drop of Blood will be on sale on Kindle for
A Stray Drop of Blood will be on sale on Kindle for $0.99.99.99. This marks the second occasion when it’s been on sale in all its long life, and I need some help spreading the word.
Now, as fate would have it, the sale begins on my birthday. I didn’t plan it that way–I turned in a list of titles we’d be running sales on, and the ad coordinator assigned the dates. But that’s what we call a happy accident. =) And I can think of no better gift for turning 32 than
A Stray Drop of Blood having a weekend of superb sales!
If you’d be willing to help me spread the word next week, I would be eternally grateful. I’ll be posting Tweets you can copy right in or retweet from my feed, and also Facebook posts. I’ll have graphics and memes and photos you can post (like the one above). I’ll create a variety so that those who want to participate can post a couple times during the sale without it being the same thing over and over again.
If you want to help, you can do two things: check back here next Wednesday for tweetables and graphics, and/or ask for an email reminder. I know I have a hard time remembering when to post this sort of thing unless I get a reminder! So if you would like to be added to my list of folks to email the graphics and posts to, just shoot me a note at roseanna at roseannawhite dot com –if that address doesn’t work for some reason, try roseannamwhite at gmail dot com.
Thanks so much for all your support, everyone!!
by Roseanna White | Aug 4, 2014 | Word of the Week
Hi is one of those greetings that feels new to me, and which I usually avoid entirely in my historicals…though I’ve seen it in a few others. And so, I look it up.
It isn’t quite as new as I’d thought–as a greeting like it’s used today, hi is from 1862 (though let it be noted it’s American English from then, not British). The first recorded reference is from the speech of a Kansas Indian.
It traces its roots further back, though. As a shout to gain attention (so not just a substitute for hello or good day), it’s from the 15th century, as a variation of hey.
On another note, today is the last day to enter the giveaway on the Harvest House blog to win Circle of Spies! Hop over to read my guest post about the Culper Ring and enter to win! Click Here
Cylist photo credit: -Jeffrey- via photopin
by Roseanna White | Jul 31, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
One of the lessons I heard taught in one of the first writing classes I took at my very first conference touched on bad guys–and how a writer’s job is to look inside them and find a redeeming quality to make them three-dimensional.
Good advice. Except sometimes, in a book, I get pretty sick of bad guys with redeeming qualities that come off as excuses. He was abused, he thinks this will get him love, he’s motivated by the death of his true love, yada yada yada. I guess in my head there are two different kinds of bad guys–the antagonist, who’s just working against the hero but may not be bad, and the villain. The villain has evil in his heart. The villain desires destruction. The villain has systematically squashed all the good in himself.
Personally, I like a story with both.
As I’m digging (slowly) into my second Edwardian book, I realized that I have quite the team of baddies in this one. I’ve got my ultimate villain, who’s still playing it cool and quiet, who no one will realize yet was the mastermind behind the whole series (mwa ha ha ha). I’ve got my secondary baddie who everyone will think is the ultimate one, who continues through the whole series. I’ve got my seriously-hurt-my-heroine, for-this-book-only dude, who’s violent and a liar and yet thinks he’s acting out of love (see, redeeming quality! LOL).
Then I’ve got my heroine’s father. It would be easy to make him a cookie-cutter abusive dad. He beats her. Not blinded-by-rage-and-nearly-kills-her kind of beating, but the methodical, make-sure-it-doesn’t-show kind. The won’t-you-ever-learn-this-lesson? kind. Wrong, yes. But does he hate her? Is he just cruel? Is there more to him?
I’m rather sick of excuses for sin and evil in our world. Sure, people get carried away. Sure, people are affected by earlier traumas. Sure, we all have reasons for our mistakes–but they should never be a crutch. They should remain reasons, not excuses. We can’t excuse sin. So I don’t ever want to pardon what my characters do. I don’t want to justify it. I don’t want to make it right.
But I do want to dig deep enough into their fictional psyches to make them make sense. And sometimes that’s hard.
Digging into Douglas (the abusive father) the other night, I realized that he isn’t trying to make his daughter weak, to get his own way. He’s trying to make her strong. His abuse began when her mother fell out of his favor, and the thing he came to despise about his wife was that she was weak. Not strong enough to deserve his name. Not strong enough to deserve their heritage. And Gusty is his only child, heir to his estate and title (this is Scotland of 1912, remember). The last thing he wants is to pass everything to a weakling who will lose it. So when he sees Gusty acting like her mother, he punishes her. He sees it as hardening steel in a fire.
She sees it as hatred, cruelty, a tyrant trying to break her. So of course, she reacts by trying to avoid the punishment. Trying to please him–or more, stay out of his way. She draws in instead of acting out. And so appears ever weaker to his eyes. When the book opens, though, she’s reached her breaking point–she’s about to explode, and she’s finally about to take a stand. She expects his all-out rage.
Instead, she’s going to earn his respect for the first time.
Now I would never, ever, ever excuse such violence. It’s not right, and it’s never going to come across as right in the book. But it’s also going to turn out to be pretty important that her father doesn’t hate her. (Don’t know that I would say he knows how to love her, but…) It’s going to be important to realize that these people misunderstood each other for a decade. It’s going to be important to see that, when it comes down to it, her father chooses the path that will protect her–more, that will enable her to protect herself.
And hopefully, it’s going to make us all stop and wonder what’s really driving that person in reality whom we just don’t get. The one who never seems to react like we think they should. The one who gets angry too quickly, who holds grudges too long, who can never see the “reasonable” (aka our) side of an argument.
It’s going to make us pause, I hope, and ask ourselves if we are that confusing person to someone else. If what we think we’re doing to help someone is actually driving them away.
In my life, I take after my dad. I lapse into silence when I’m not sure what to think, or when I fear saying something that I’ll regret. In an argument, I’m not the shouter–I’m the brooder. To my mind, that’s the wise way to be. Better to think about it and come back later with a well-thought-out response than to say something that could hurt someone I love, right? Right?
My husband is a shouter. A throw-something-er. I always say “He’s Italian. Need I say more?” He’s demonstrative, and that goes for anger as well as love. And I’m still learning that in those rare times we fight, my silence doesn’t help him. My silence makes it worse. He doesn’t really care what I say, he just wants me to say it. To engage. To his mind, when I bite my tongue I’m shutting down. Turning off. Keeping him out–and all he wants is to know what I’m thinking. Whether he agrees or not doesn’t really matter to him. What matters is that we’re communicating.
See, the thing is, there’s rarely a right way to be in life. We’re all different–and that’s good. We don’t have to all react the same way. Yes, we need to keep our reactions holy, but there are even different kinds of holy. There’s the measured and calm responses of Ezra, there are the violent and quick reactions of Nehemiah. Both were right in the eyes of God. But man, I imagine they may have had a few clashes when facing each other!
This is just one more lesson I’ve learned through story. That when I’m dealing with the “characters” who populate my life, I’d better be willing to dig deeper. To understand why they do the things they do. To accept them for that. And to never assume that I’m the protagonist in their story–it could very well be that, in that moment, I’m antagonizing instead…no matter how much “better” I think my way is.
Queen of Hearts photo credit: Express Monorail via photopin cc
by Roseanna White | Jul 30, 2014 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Confession: I knew the Edwardian era followed the Victorian, and that it was because King Edward VII followed Queen Victoria on the throne of England. But it took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize that King Edward = Prince Albert, known as “Bertie” in the reign of his mother. I’d researched Victorian England. I knew about the prince. But I didn’t realize he’d changed his name upon taking the throne, LOL.
That was a pretty easy lesson to learn about the Edwardian days, though. But even that had some details I didn’t realize!
In my research for Scotland, I found this awesome book: Edwardian Scotland by C. W. Hill. It’s proving to be invaluable! And one of the first fun facts I learned was that, not only did Queen Victoria specifically request that her son not change his name, but Scotland as a whole objected to the one he chose and refused to acknowledge the “VII”! They claimed that the first three King Edwards of England were not monarchs of Scotland, and in June of 1901 they began collecting signatures for a petition against the name–which eventually filled five volumes.
Who knew you could object to such a thing?? Not that King Edward gave a whit what anyone else thought of his choice, LOL. He’s called “the merry monarch,” and much of the British empire was a bit torn about him. On the one hand, he eschewed the morals his mother had drilled into them–he was a gambler, a womanizer, and showed blatant disregard for many of the principles they held dear. But on the other hand, he was affable, amiable, and made no major blunders as a ruler. So all in all, he was well-loved…but not a role model.
Of course, one of the best-known traits of the era named after him is the extravagance that the nobility enjoyed. Edwardian Scotland helped put that in perspective for me. When the gentlemen went grouse hunting, they regularly bagged thousands of pheasants. Thousands, in one weekend! And the king’s meals went like this:
Breakfast – haddock, poached eggs, bacon, sausages and kidneys, chicken.
Morning snack – lobster salad and cold game or chicken
Luncheon – eight or ten courses (more if there were guests); the king’s favorite foods were game, so one would often see duck, chicken, York ham, chops or steaks…or for a humbler option, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
Tea – scones, crumpets, muffins, tarts, cakes, gateaux
Dinner – twelve to fourteen courses (!!!), with more game. This was they broke out things like the “turducken” of their day, like a pheasant stuffed with a snipe stuffed with truffles and garnished with sauce. What did they call that, I wonder? Pheasniples?
And apparently the Kardashians are far from the first celebrities to lend their image to products. 😉 Okay, so we knew that. But I had no idea that the nobility in the Edwardian era–and even the king himself!–were featured in ads. He famously posed for this one for Horniman’s Pure Tea.
Of course, as the title of the book suggests, Edward didn’t confine his time to England–he vacationed every winter in the Highlands, where he kept company with Andrew Carnegie and British nobles in Scotland. He was unfortunately deceased by the time my book starts, so no mentioning the king in the neighborhood for me (pout, pout), but I’m interested in seeing what the royal family was up to by the time my story begins, once I get further in Edwardian Scotland. In the meantime, I’m soaking up all the awesome minutia!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, 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, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.