The Story Behind the Cover -- Whispers in the Valley

If you've been following my blog posts, you won't be surprised to learn that there's a story behind the cover for Whispers in the Valley. There's always a story, isn't there?

It started when my sister began researching possible locations for a photo shoot. She was the cover model for Echoes at Sunrise, and I'd originally planned for her to be on the cover of Whispers too, but as you'll see later in this post, that changed.

Among the pictures she went me was one that really caught my fancy -- a bridge. There's a creek in Carr Valley, so it made sense to have a bridge over it.

As you can see, the bridge was going to need a lot of Photoshopping and the background wasn't correct for the Texas Hill Country, but I liked the idea of the bridge and added the bridge to a couple critical scenes in the book.

The next step was for my other sister to play photographer and take pictures of "Victoria" near the bridge. I'd envisioned her standing on it, but "Victoria" suggested a different pose.

Again, I liked the concept but knew that this wasn't the right bridge and, sadly, my sister wasn't the right Victoria. 

Fortunately, when I sent the ideas to my cover designer, the very talented L.A. Sartor, she was able to turn the concept into a design that I loved.

After that, it was a matter of adding the title and my name. You might think that was simple, but it was more challenging than I'd expected. Once again, L.A. persisted, experimenting with various colors until she found ones that complimented the design but didn't overwhelm it.

I was more than pleased with this design. I was thrilled. 

Next came the back cover. I thought it was perfect, but when I received the proof copy, I saw it was good but not good enough. (That's why it's so important to order proof copies.)

Can you spot the two things that I thought needed to be changed?

The two changes were (1) making the top margin larger and (2) deleting a blank line between the teaser and the main text.

Once those changes were done, the cover was complete.

I'm absolutely delighted with the way it turned out and hope you like it as much as I do. 

The credit for this cover, which I consider to be fabulous, goes to L.A. Sartor, who took time away from her own writing to create it for me. I'm deeply grateful to have such a talented and generous friend.