First of all, don’t forget that there’s a giveaway going on for a copy of Circle of Spies! Hop over to Colonial Quills and enter! http://bit.ly/CQCoS

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One of my grinning-est moments while cleaning out the closets and whatnot at our old house was when I stumbled across a file folder box. It was duct-taped, flimsy, and I had some vague recollection of shoving into it something I wanted to keep. So I opened it up. And I saw this.

 This, my dear friends, is the cover I drew for my first novel, at age 12. Back when The Lost Heiress was Golden Sunset, Silver Tear. And back when I was Roseanna M. Higson, LOL. You know how sometimes you see a baby picture of yourself or you kids and go “Awwwwww!” Yeah. That’s what I did here.


But I’ve always been the type to turn to drawing (or now, digital design) when I don’t have the writing groove going on. So this 12-year-old’s version of my cover isn’t the only I did. over the next couple years, as I rewrote and edited and learned more about drawing, I did these too.

Not all covers, of course, but I loved trying to draw Brook. Who was, at the time Brook Moon. Now she’s Brook Eden. But she still has blond curls and green eyes. Though that bead necklace featured in all the above drawings has become one with dangling pearls…

Still. Going through that box was a trip down memory lane. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk in my old bedroom–the one with the peach carpet and the lavender walls–and doing these drawings. I remember holding them up to my mirror to see if they were proportioned right (you can see flaws in the mirror image that you can’t detect normally). I remember working so hard on them and knowing they weren’t quite it.

Some of the teens on Go Teen Writers frequently share their art on the Facebook group, and I’m usually left in utter awe at their talent. Definitely better than my teen doodling! But I always love seeing them and knowing that, yep, that’s what I did too. Not so well, LOL, but still. It gives me a visual documentation of the path the book has taken. I love that. =)

And then, of course, I turned the page and saw this–the title page I created at age 12 too.

It’s the first of 388 handwritten (in pencil) pages. *Sniff, sniff.*

Now my first pages are computerized, and I didn’t bother designing a title page that would get deleted anyway. Now, my document starts like this.

Far more efficient. And I wouldn’t hand-write a book now unless I had absolutely no other choice. But it’s not quite as warm and cuddly, and I’m so, so glad I saved that very first draft of my very first book.


Ah, memories.


(And yeah, I kinda combined yesterday’s forgotten Remember When with today’s Thoughtful Thursday. Because I completely spaced it was Wednesday yesterday until mid-morning, LOL.)