Do you have a cover pet peeve?
Monday, March 28, 2016
The Cover!
March 25, 2016, A HERO to HOLD went up on Boroughs' website. And I saw the cover for the first time. Beautiful. Amazing. The model is gorgeous. One of my big fears was getting a cover with the model wearing contemporary makeup. That's my pet peeve with historical covers. That, and contemporary haircuts on the men. I was doing cartwheels (in my head). My model is not only lovely, she looks natural.
It took about twenty minutes to realize the cottage and garden were Rose Cottage, where lovers David and Charlotte meet. The cottage is surrounded by gardens, just like the house on the cover. The cover perfectly depicts the heroine and the novel. :D Chris K. knocked this cover out of the park!
Do you have a cover pet peeve?
Do you have a cover pet peeve?
Story Edits
February 22, 2016 I received my story edits for A Hero to Hold from my editor, Chris Keeslar. His story suggestions made sense and were relatively easy to do. Several suggestions were simply moving some backstory info up closer to the front of the novel. Accomplished.
One scene near the end of the book has a woman saying some rather nasty things about the hero. Chris K. thought the character was over-the-top nasty. He wondered if I could make the character more sympathetic? The character is the widow of the hero's friend.
I worked on that scene all day. Revised, tried different approaches, but nothing felt right. I finally gave up for the evening. The next morning, the moment I opened my eyes, I knew how to solve my problem with the scene.
I deleted the scene. And wrote a completely new one, changing the widow's outlook. I changed the hero's response to her, too. And, wow! The scene became heart-wrenching! I'm so glad Chris didn't like the original scene. The new one is ten times better than the original.
In addition to the story edits, I also went through the MS page-by-page, tightening and generally making improvements. This incorporated things I'd learned since the last time I'd read the manuscript.
When I finished, March 10, I was very pleased with the end result. Back to Chris K. it went. Each stage it gets better and better.
One scene near the end of the book has a woman saying some rather nasty things about the hero. Chris K. thought the character was over-the-top nasty. He wondered if I could make the character more sympathetic? The character is the widow of the hero's friend.
I worked on that scene all day. Revised, tried different approaches, but nothing felt right. I finally gave up for the evening. The next morning, the moment I opened my eyes, I knew how to solve my problem with the scene.
I deleted the scene. And wrote a completely new one, changing the widow's outlook. I changed the hero's response to her, too. And, wow! The scene became heart-wrenching! I'm so glad Chris didn't like the original scene. The new one is ten times better than the original.
In addition to the story edits, I also went through the MS page-by-page, tightening and generally making improvements. This incorporated things I'd learned since the last time I'd read the manuscript.
When I finished, March 10, I was very pleased with the end result. Back to Chris K. it went. Each stage it gets better and better.
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