Cover Reveal ~ Shadowed Loyalty

Cover Reveal ~ Shadowed Loyalty

by | Nov 4, 2021 | Book News, Books, Cover Designs

Back in August I shared the announcement about Shadowed Loyalty, my 1920s Chicago story, that will be coming from Chrism Press in May of 2022. Well, not long after that, I had the joy of working on the cover for it!

It isn’t often that I get to design my own book covers, and while Chrism Press is a branch of WhiteFire Publishing (the company my husband and I own), the designs are all done by the amazing Rhonda Ortiz, so I was fully prepared to come, hat in hands and eyes wide, to beg her to let me do this one, LOL. But she beat me to the punch by saying, “You’re going to do yours, right? You do ‘Roseanna covers’ better than I could.” To which, of course, I said, “YES, PLEASE!!!”

Honestly, I’d already been searching for images. I thought I’d do a “pretty dress” cover with that iconic 1920s style…an authentic era gown, even. So I went to my usual sources for genuine era gowns with public domain photos…and I found nothing. Nada. So by the point that the task was officially handed to me, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Until Rhonda said, “We totally need something with the same vibe as Stephanie Landsem’s In a Far Off Land.”

To which again I said, “YES!!!!”

I absolutely adore this cover of Stephanie’s (and the book is amazing too!), and while it’s set a decade after mine, in Hollywood rather than Chicago, the vibe is allll kinds of right.

So off I went, searching for 1920s styled models. And hilariously, I found the exact one they used on In a Far Off Land. At first I thought I’d better avoid her for that very reason–I don’t want it to look too much like hers, after all. But then I thought, “Well, let’s see what I can do to make it unique.” So I chose a different position…I darkened her hair…I changed her lip color…I added a hat. And of course, I put a historical Chicago background behind her.

When I announced the book, I had quite a few comments that mentioned how much they liked the feel of the image we used in the blog–dark and mysterious, with a gangster flair (this is about the Mafia, after all). So I wanted to make sure I captured that air of mystery, of the underworld. And when I showed it to a few people, I got some great reactions.

Are you ready to see? I hope so! Here it is, and be sure to scroll down to the text afterward to get more info or pre-order a signed copy!

 

Ready…

Set…

Voila!

So as you can see, I went with some deep shades, toned in blue. I focused on the headshot, but we still get a glimpse of her fabulous beaded dress and her era-signature cloche hat. I use an Art Deco accent and font, but not a full frame, the better to leave room for her lovely face.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

When I showed it to the Chrism editors for approval, one of the first questions was, “Are you going to be selling those earrings in your shop? They’re fabulous!”

I do totally agree. I also love the matching bobby pins…and I found a necklace from the same jeweler that matches the description of one that plays a key role in the story too! So I’m excited to offer all three items in my store. (As of this posting, I have the items ordered from the jeweler, though they’re not in hand yet. I will fulfill any orders that come in as soon as I get them from the acclaimed Sweet Romance Jewelry shop!)

See the Earrings
See the Bobby Pins
See the Necklace

And of course, if you’d like to pre-order, you can do that EXCLUSIVELY from my store right now! It will begin appearing elsewhere in the new year, but why wait to reserve your signed copy? 😉 Pre-order pricing will only last until release!

As a reminder, though, placing the order now will charge your card now but the item will not ship until May, when I have them in hand.

Pre-Order Now

Pre-Order Now

About the Book

Sabina Mancari never questioned her life as the daughter of Chicago’s leading mob boss until bullets tear apart her world and the man she thought she loved turned out to be an undercover Prohibition agent. Now she sees how ugly the underworld can be. Ambushes, bribes, murder, prostitution—maybe Lorenzo, her straitlaced fiancé, had it right when he said it is better to stay far removed. And maybe, if she can understand him and his baffling faith, he will give her another chance.

But Lorenzo isn’t sure he’s ready for that. All his life he has loved Sabina, only to realize she had never felt the same about him. While he’s relieved to see her pursuing God, the Prohibition agent is pursuing her father just as intently, and it falls to Enzo—and his legal skills—to keep trouble at bay. He wants to believe that Sabina can change…assuming they can stay alive until their wedding day.

Shadowed Loyalty, set amid the glitz and scandal of the Roaring Twenties, examines what love really means and how we draw lines between family and our own convictions, especially when following the one could mean losing the other.

Word of the Week – Doggie Bag

Word of the Week – Doggie Bag

by | Nov 1, 2021 | Word of the Week

This one comes a special request from a regular reader (Hi, Bev!), who was wondering about the phrase “doggie bag.”

It’s pretty straightforward, really, but interesting nonetheless!

The phrase is first recorded in the 1960s, for a take-home container of leftovers from a restaurant. Why is it called that, though? Because it was assumed you’d be taking the food home for your doggie! 😉

(For the record, my family usually takes those leftovers home for ourselves…but my mother-in-law is a TOTAL “for the dog” person! We always laugh because she wants to take everything home to her pup, and we sometimes have to fight her for the right to eat it ourselves, LOL.)

Are you a fan of leftovers, or do they go to the doggie in your world?

Not a Virtue

Not a Virtue

by | Oct 28, 2021 | Thoughtful Thursdays

This begins in a rather silly place, but bear with me. When we went on vacation to the beach in September and I was slathering on the sunscreen and noting the amount of tan I was getting each day through walking and spending the morning at the water, I realized something. I’d grown up in a family with a pool and who took tanning seriously. It was something we did, goals we set. My mom and sister still sit out in the sun just to get a tan, as do my nieces. There’s nothing wrong with that (morally, I’m not talking about risks of skin cancer)…but it’s not something I do anymore. Which is fine.

But occasionally I feel like I have to apologize to them for it, or make excuses for why I don’t. I don’t have time… or My skin type is prone to skin cancer, I need to be careful.

But…WHY? Why do I feel that way? Maybe in part it’s because people will say “Oh, you look so nice with a little color in your cheeks!” or maybe it’s because sometimes people follow it up with, “You know, if you just spend 30 minutes outside a day, you could keep that tan all summer.” But I think mostly it’s because sometime in my childhood, I identified it as good. Which meant it was something to strive toward. Something to seek. Something…virtuous.

Of course, when I state it so baldly, it’s obviously not. Looking a certain way has nothing to do with virtue. Neither does having a beautifully decorated home or regularly washing your car or exercising daily or adhering to a particular diet. These things are perhaps vanity, perhaps pride, perhaps discipline, perhaps health-seeking. But they are not moral questions in and of themselves. They are not by nature virtuous or unvirtuous (though our pursuit of them could be). And because they’re silly examples, they’re the perfect entry point to asking myself a deeper question:

What else have I mistaken as a virtue that isn’t? What do I pursue, thinking it a Good, when it as best a “good,” but most likely just a thing? Where do I have my eyes fixed on the earthly where they should be fixed on the heavenly?

The whole tanning thing started the question, but some other “things” I’ve found are:

Reading. I love it, and I can get a lot of good out of it. But it does not make me better than non-readers, morally speaking. My son learns just as much from YouTube videos as I do from books. Being a book-lover is part of my identity…but it is not a virtue.

Being outdoorsy. We live in a beautiful area with lots of mountains and forests, and I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, as did my husband. But enjoying the outdoors is not a virtue. I am not sinning when I sit inside instead, even on beautiful days. I always appreciate the beauty of God’s world…but I can’t always be out in it. My work is almost entirely indoors.

Holding particular political views. In this divided climate, I hear so many people equating belonging to a particular political party or holding to a certain political view as “right” and “good” and even “Godly.” But the truth is that Jesus never once encouraged people to engage in politics or take political sides. He invites us to keep our eyes on the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of men.

I’m sure there are many other places that I need to separate “enjoyable” or “worthwhile” from truly VIRTUOUS, and it’s something I’ve begun keeping an eye out for. Because plenty of things really are worthwhile and can enrich our lives and our faith…but if we apply that “virtuous” label to them, then we think they’re good for everyone, because virtues ARE. But these things are NOT on that level. They can be good, yes…but they are not required for all. They can be good without being virtuous.

Is there anything in your life that you’ve mistaken for a virtue when really it’s a simple lower-case-g good?

Word of the Week – Ghost

Word of the Week – Ghost

by | Oct 25, 2021 | Holidays, Word of the Week

It’s October! So I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the words you’re going to be encountering in this season. Whether you celebrate Halloween or just the harvest (or nothing at all), I think you’ll agree that the etymologies this month are interesting!

Ghost…Our modern English word comes from Old English gast, which meant “breath; good or bad spirit, angel, demon; person, man, human being.” Though the origins are a bit murky, it’s thought that gast, along with similar words in other Germanic languages, is from the ancient root gheis, which is used to form all sorts of words that convey excitement, fear, or amazement.

Early English translations of the Bible chose to use the word Ghost to render spiritus, the Latin word used to describe not only the soul but the Holy Spirit. So Holy Ghost is one of the few surviving phrases that use ghost in that particular way. Otherwise, the notion of “the disembodied spirit of a deceased person” is the more original sense of the word and has been its primary meaning since the 14th century. It’s certainly interesting to note in that Old English gast, though, that it could be used to describe so many things that go beyond the corporeal.

It’s also interesting to note that in most Indo-European languages, the same words are used to describe both the human spirit and supernatural elements. So whether or not you believe in ghosts that haunt a place, the word is actually linked firmly to the human soul or spirit…and I daresay you DO believe in that! Which I will be considering more fully the next time someone asks if I believe in ghosts. 😉 How about you? Where do you come down on the question?

Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt ~ Stop #17

Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt ~ Stop #17

by | Oct 20, 2021 | Scavenger Hunt

Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop #17

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 10/21 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, 10/24 at midnight 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 Rafflecopter form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

Hello! I’m Roseanna M. White, author of several dozen historical romances (most of which are set in Edwardian England), a few biblical fiction love stories, and in my (ha!) spare time, a cover designer. I also run (along with my amazing husband) the WhiteFire Publishing Group. And my most recent venture is the Bookish Things Shop, right here on my website! (Where I have not only stuff relating to my books, but also things for EVERY book lover!) So…you know, pretty busy around here! You can find me everywhere @RoseannaMWhite (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest).

My most recent release is a historical romance set in 1906 on the gorgeous Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall…full of the search for pirate treasure, mistaken identities, and lots of adventure to go along with the romance.

Lady Elizabeth “Libby” Sinclair, with her love of microscopes and nature, isn’t favored in society. She flees to the beautiful Isles of Scilly for the summer and stumbles into the dangerous secrets left behind by her holiday cottage’s former occupant, also named Elizabeth, who mysteriously vanished.

Oliver Tremayne–gentleman and clergyman–is determined to discover what happened to his sister, and he’s happy to accept the help of the girl now living in what should have been Beth’s summer cottage . . . especially when he realizes it’s the curious young lady he met briefly two years ago, who shares his love of botany and biology. But the hunt for his sister involves far more than nature walks, and he can’t quite believe all the secrets Beth had been keeping from him.

As Libby and Oliver work together, they find ancient legends, pirate wrecks, betrayal, and the most mysterious phenomenon of all: love.

Isn’t that book cover (just below here) just GORGEOUS?! I was so excited when I saw it—my one request had been that my heroine, Libby, be in a purple dress (key to the story), and I was so excited when I saw it! Then my excitement grew even more on release day, when I received the most unexpected of comments on my social media posts about the book…

MEETING THE FAMILY OF
AND MODEL FOR A BOOK COVER!

 

Release week is always fun and exciting, but I was so surprised when I saw a couple comments from the grandmothers of the cover model on The Nature of a Lady! They were tagging each other, full of glee at seeing their sweet granddaughter on the cover. I reached out to one of them to say what a wonderful job she’d done at capturing Libby’s sweet spirit, and she was quick to tell me how sweet the model, Ashton, is in real life too.

Over the course of the day, I learned that Ashton, a professional model, and her husband live in the same city as my publisher, and how they are the hands and feet of Jesus in their neighborhood, which was in the heart of the riots last year. I learned how they seek God first and foremost. And I learned that this proud grandmother had been a reader of my books already, so to have her granddaughter on the cover of one was a treat for them as well. I was so excited that we were soon conspiring together to send her granddaughter a special surprise package to thank her for doing such an amazing job being Libby.

I’ve had many covers before, and a few times I even learned who the models were…but this unexpected connection was the sweetest release day surprise!

Here’s the Stop #17 Basics:

If you’re interested, you can order The Nature of a Lady on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ChristianBook, signed from my shop, or at your local bookstore!

Clue to Write Down: book

Link to Stop #18, the Next Stop on the Loop: Tamara Leigh’s site!

My Giveaway!

I’m excited to be able to offer one lucky winner $20 in credit to the Bookish Things shop here on my website! That will allow you to get a book or any number of other products. Do feel free to browse the shop and make a wishlist so that if you win, you’re ready (extra entries for that)! LOL.

Just enter using the Rafflecopter form below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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