Cover Reveal (and 3 fun facts!)

Posted on September 6, 2016 | 8 comments

Confession: Book covers do me in. I cannot pass a book aisle without stopping to examine the covers. Compositions, fonts, trends, colors used, themes from the story itself symbolized on the cover… it’s a magical place, the book aisle is. Don’t you think? I tried to resist the pull even today while on a super fast trip to the store, but even on a tight timeline couldn’t make myself skip that aisle. I’m hopeless.

Which is one of the many reasons why I’ve hardly been able to keep myself from posting this particular image until now…

There are SO many things I’m bursting to tell you about this collection. But I don’t want to spoil the surprises kept for you within the tales spun by these amazing ladies. So instead, I’ll just give you 3 fun facts. :)

1) The Bottle. You’d think it would be pretty straightforward to find a picture of a bottle to put on a cover of a “Message in a Bottle” collection, wouldn’t you? But because of the historical timeline of our collection, and the fact that our bottle is bronze in order to fit the long history of our stories which span several centuries, the bottle you see here was custom-designed, even down to the engraving around its neck. One-of-a-kind, just like the bottle in our collection. The five of us got to work closely together on designing it!

2) The Settings. The places within this anthology are so varied and captivating. I’ll give you a quick peek at one of the places you’ll get to visit in my novella, A Song in the Night, along with the Scottish hero and heroine, Meg and Duncan, on their journey to London. This place is called Lud’s Church (a.k.a Ludchurch). Not a church, actually, but a little-known place in England that’s rumored to have harbored Robinhood at one point in time, as well as (at a different time) a group of people who met there in the chasm in secret to worship God together during a time of religious persecution. Take a look at this quick tour of this place, tucked beneath a canopy of trees. Can’t you just smell the spiced earth, the draping foliage, the rich history?

(Sidenote: I was startled from the peaceful scenery at the very end of the video the first time I saw it. The cameraman just pops in with an enthusiastic “great!”. So prepare yourself. ;) )

3) The characters. This “fun fact” doesn’t pertain as much to the cover, but to the people within. For a sneak peek at the hero and heroine inspiration for A  Song in the Night, you’ll see on my Pinterest board that I couldn’t quite make up my mind. Duncan, the hero, took his visual inspiration from a cross between Poldark and Horatio Hornblower. Windblown brooding war heroes, you know. And for Meg, she was a cross between the two pictures you see here, both sort of capturing the look of a heroine who has, as my friend Kara put it when she saw one of the pictures, “a kind of strong beauty”. Determined and a little like the wind itself– untamed, but in search of so much. Or, in Meg’s case, in search of a very elusive someone.

(Click here to see the character inspirations on Pinterest if the board doesn’t appear below for you.)

Well, I’ll stop there for now, but if any this piques your interest, the great news is that the book is up for pre-order already! All the links below are active in case you want to tuck this into your future-reading pile. :)

Buy Now

Buy This Book Online

Find A Local Bookstore

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The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection

Now Available

• Enter the Pinterest world for A Song in the Night
• Goodreads

About This Book

Join the journey as one word etched in Latin on an ancient bronze bottle travels through the centuries to reach five young women who are struggling to maintain their faith in God and love. An Irish princess, a Scottish story weaver, a Post-Colonial nurse, a cotton mill worker, and a maid who nearly drowned each receive a message from the bottle just when they need their hope restored. But will the bottle also bring them each to a man whose love will endure?

A Song in the Night is the second novella in this collection, and will take readers on a journey from the wilds of Scotland to the bustle of 18th century London and the magic of the Handel’s famed floating symphony.

I hope you’ll also stop by and share in the fun today with my amazing co-authors:

Maureen Lang (whose book The Oak Leaves, one of my all-time favorites, is on sale at the moment for 99 cents! What a steal!)

Jocelyn Green

Joanne Bischof 

and Heather Gilbert

Before you go– I’d love to hear, what catches your eye on covers when you’re browsing the book aisles? We bookish folks must stick together, and I’d love to hear your own tales!