Under Cover – THE RELUCTANT RIVAL: LEAH’S STORY

As a reader, I usually choose a book because I enjoy the author who wrote it. Or perhaps the cover catches my eye. Or maybe I’m intrigued by the short description of the story on the back cover copy. But I seldom look at who published a book. Do you?

Some of you know, I’ve been soooo honored to have been well-cared-for by two publishers during my ten-year writing career. But when Guideposts gave me the opportunity to write The Reluctant Rival: Leah’s Story, I jumped at the chance!

A New Experience

Every publishing house does things a little differently, but because Guideposts Books is a subscription-based house, their processes were considerably different. (I didn’t even realize they published book series!)

A few things I noticed right away:

1. Word limit: 60,000 – instead of my normal 120,000.
2. 3rd-person Point-of-View (POV) – instead of the 1st-person (using “I” and “me” for the heroine’s chapters, I used “she” and “her”).
3. 80% Heroine’s POV – my books are usually 50/50 heroine/hero POV chapters.

Guideposts Reasoning:

1. Because Guideposts Books mails out a book each month, 60K words is easily digested (even for a moderate reader) within a month.
2. 3rd-person POV is the more traditional style of writing and has been tried and tested for years. It’s what my first four novels were written in, and it was an easy change. (My assistant read this book–and she’s declared it her fav of all my novels!)
3. The series I’ve written for is titled, Ordinary Women of the Bible. Of course, the majority of the story should be told from the woman’s POV! 😆

Finding Friends

Since everything for this project is viewed through the lens of its sister books in the series, the executive editor, Susan Downs, invited me to join the private Facebook group where the other great authors of these books got together to chat and share ideas.

What a joy to see so many of my sweet friends there! Some were familiar biblical fiction authors, but others were dipping their authorial toes into biblical fiction for the first time–and LOVING IT!

A couple of these dear ladies sent me emails early in their projects to ask what resources I used, and it was so fun to share knowledge together.

The Title Process

When the time came to begin brainstorming a title, I offered a few suggestions on the Plot Worksheet provided by the editorial team. Here were a couple of my ideas:

• Rejected But Chosen—Leah’s Story
• Unchosen But Blessed—Leah’s Story

As you can see, I was still in love with the “Chosen” theme to pull it into my upcoming Joseph book themes (Chained & Champion) that I’d contracted with Waterbrook for releases in 2022 and 2023. But it’s TWO DIFFERENT PUBLISHERS, MESU! Sheesh!

So here were Guideposts’ very gracious suggestions–again, remembering that my title needs to fit with the cadence and “feel” of the other books in the series:

• The Reluctant Rival: Leah’s Story
• Her Sister’s Rival: Leah’s Story
• The Rival: Leah’s Story

Well, I absolutely LOVED The Reluctant Rival: Leah’s Story, so that’s what we did!

The Cover Process

The holidays were upon us, and I was starting to get antsy about the cover. I hadn’t heard (or seen) anything, and my book was supposed to release in early March. But since I’d never worked with a subscription series like this, I wasn’t sure how the whole thing worked. I called one of my author buddies, and she said I should be hearing about the cover THEY’D chosen sometime soon.

What?!?!?!

Yep, that’s right. When it’s a series like this, the author gets to SEE the cover before it’s released, but I had no real decision in any of its design. But my senior editor was so, so gracious in showing me the whole process, and I think the final product fits so beautifully with the series as a whole.

First Stages

As you can see, there were quite a few mock-ups for the editorial team to choose from. Susan included the fwd’d emails from the project manager with the email, so I got to sort of “listen in” to the team’s chatter at this stage:

“Brian really delivered on these thumbnails for The Reluctant Rival . . . here are ELEVEN options for you to choose from. He noted that he loves the idea of a night scene and fire light, and he hopes that seeing them in color will help convey the mood and help making a decision easier.”

My senior editor, Susan, answered back with:

“Let’s go with sketch #2. I love the way the setting sun reflects off those clouds.”

 

The next email I received was forwarded to me by Susan from the project manager again. By then, it was really beginning to take shape…

“Attached is Brian’s first pass at the full illustration for Leah’s Story. Since he did such an inclusive thumbnail stage, he sort of bypassed the pencil sketch and went straight to the painting. I included a jpeg with the title placement so you can get a better idea of what the final cover would look like.”

 

 

Final Product

About two weeks later (mid-January), I received this beautiful image in an email from my editor. I had asked her to send it to me since my sweet hubby always frames my covers to put on the wall.

I’m so grateful for the UH-mazing folks at Guideposts Books! They’ve been an absolute dream to work with, and I believe Leah’s story couldn’t have been placed in better hands.

CLICK HERE if you’d like to read more about The Reluctant Rival: Leah’s Story and/or more of the Ordinary Women of the Bible Series at Guideposts Books.

Questions?

• Do you have any questions for me about this book or its behind-the-scenes process? Feel free to ask it in the comments below!

Tweet-Able!

• To read more about #TheReluctantRivalLeahsStory or #GuidepostsBooks #OrdinaryWomenoftheBible Series, check out http://bit.ly/OWBReluctantRival.