Word of the Week – August

Word of the Week – August

by | Aug 8, 2022 | Word of the Week

I learned way back in my school days that two of our summer months are named for Roman emperors–July (for Julius Caesar) and August (for Augustus Caesar). I imagine you knew that too. Similarly, you probably know that august as an adjective means “solemnly grand, inspiring reverence,” as it has since the 1660s.

It’s no surprise that our word comes directly from the Latin augustus, which means “venerable, majestic, magnificent, noble.” But did you know that Augustus Caesar wasn’t the man’s name … it was his title? I knew that this particular Caesar hadn’t been born with the name Augustus (his name was actually Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus), but back when I first learned about him in high school, I think I assumed he just changed his name when he became emperor…you know, like they do sometimes.

Nope. In actuality, “Augustus” is a title like “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty.” When Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus was styled Augustus Caesar, he was literally being called “Venerable Emperor.”

Funny side note … when we were learning about these emperors in my tenth grade history class, cue Roseanna going, “OH!! I get it!” My history teacher looked over at me, clearly interested in my great epiphany. I, of course, enlightened him with: “In Disney’s Cinderella! She names the mouse Octavius, but for short, called him Gus. For Augustus. Because Octavius is Augustus!”

Yyyyyeeeppp. These are the sort of epiphanies I will treasure always. 😉

Behind the Design of Bring Her Home

Behind the Design of Bring Her Home

by | Aug 4, 2022 | Cover Designs

Behind the Design of Bring Her Home

Okay, so it’s been approximately forever since I took the time to create a behind-the-scenes post about one of the book covers I’ve done…even though I still get requests for them…and even though the response has always been pretty amazing. Why? Because they take time, and that’s something I haven’t had much of in recent years, LOL.

But I’m taking the time now. Yep, that’s right. I’m doing another Behind the Design post, taking you step-by-step through the cover design process of Bring Her Home by Hannah Currie, which will be releasing this October from WhiteCrown Publishing. I thought it would a fun way to highlight not only this AMAZING book, and the fun cover, but also to share a bit more about WhiteCrown, now that the website is up and we’re getting some products in the shop.

Have you perked up? Do you love royal fiction? Stories of princesses and princes and knights, kings and queens and courtiers? I know I do–and it’s not just because of the beautiful gowns and sparkly things (although I admit it–I love the beautiful gowns and sparkly things!). It’s also because stories of royalty always remind me that we are the beloved daughters of the King of kings. We are always on display in the eyes of the world, our every move watched. We are never not responsible for the kingdom. And while sometimes that’s overwhelming, it also calls us to remember in every moment Whose we are, and so who we are. It ought to remind us always to be as noble and righteous and just and selfless as a heavenly princess ought to be.

So first–go check out the pretty new WhiteCrown website!!! Some of the features are still in progress, but you’ll at least get a glimpse of what will be there this fall as our titles begin releasing. There are going to be free short fiction, full-length books you can purchase, tours through our settings, reviews of royal books and movies and television, and a shop that will carry not only OUR titles, but other royal fiction and also royal items–everything from tiaras to blankets to jewelry boxes to tie-in items for our books!

Okay! So for our launching title, we definitely needed a cover that was pretty iconic “princess story!” right? Flowy gown, castle, the works. We needed royalty to be front and center. So with that in mind, I turned to author Hannah Currie’s cover questionnaire to see what she had in mind and then got down to business. =)

Bring Her Home is the first book in a series, which had originally been titled Raedonleith Parables. We decided first and foremost to go with a series name that conveyed the royal theme too, so changed that to Crown of Promise (our favorites of Hannah’s brainstorming!).

We wanted to make sure we had a different look from her first series, but that they still looked great together. Here are the three books in her first series.

The Daughters of Peverell novels are all contemporary princess stories, with a fictional setting, the kingdom of Peverell. I had SO MUCH FUN designing those “pretty dress” covers with her three heroines, taking a styling cue from the ever-popular Selection stories.

This new series is set in a fictional kingdom as well, but is historical–no particular date, just a general “medieval” feel, much like some of Jody Hedlund’s princess tales. So if you’re fans of Jody’s, you are going to LOVE Hannah’s books too! They’re fabulous!

But I digress. 😉

Back to design. One of the first things I actually did was figure out what I wanted to do for the series banner. As you can see in the image for her first series, we used a ribbon marker for that; I decided to something similar for this series, but to use a horizontal ribbon instead of a vertical one.

So that was a start…but not exactly a cover, LOL. Then it was time to move on to the fun stuff!

Hannah had a pretty good idea of what she wanted for this series: the heroine from behind, a red dress for this first cover, white butterflies somewhere on the cover, the castle in the background. I decided to start with the heroine…and the dress.

In scrolling through red medieval gowns, I decided I really loved the flow of this one.

But there are some obvious problems here, right? First and foremost, the dress is translucent and her legs are fully visible. Not exactly appropriate for a medieval maiden. 😉 But no worries! I was able to use the flow of that dress, but combine it with the opacity of the skirt from this one.

The result isn’t exactly perfect, but by flipping them to face the same direction and lining them up correctly, we begin to see a rough figure taking shape. In this, I’ve just taken off the head (just call me the executioner) and put the more solid skirt underneath the flowy one.

I was liking the shape and structure, but clearly this isn’t quite right–given how translucent that flowy dress is, the original image allowed us to see through to the lighter ground beneath…that doesn’t exactly work here, and the shades aren’t the same either. To solve both problems at once, I actually just applied a color layer to the them both. Abra cadabra!

Better. =) Now it was time to reattach her head. 😉 I found an image of a long braid that I liked…a Rapunzel style image, actually. The hair here was blond, which wasn’t right–our heroine is a redhead–and it was WAY too long, but it was a start!

I copied the head/hair onto the dress image and tinted it as much as I could just through the Hue/Saturation options. That got me pretty close.

Close…but sloppy and indistinct. After playing a bit more with Curves and Levels (Photoshop tools that allow you to adjust brightness and shadow), I then actually went in by hand and, with a 1 pixel brush, added in wisps and more colors, to get us to this.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that this version is just on a gray background. Brilliant, right? 😉 Obviously not what I meant to stay with. In fact, I’d originally chosen a very fairy-tale style castle, with bright green grass and a blue sky, thinking it would contrast well with the red. In this version, you’re seeing it with the original banner, white with the old series title.

Bright, huh? And cheerful. I continued the fanciful idea with a flowy script font and then a white butterfly bokeh.

Yeah, um…cue the author suddenly not sure she wanted a flowing dress or a castle or anything else, LOL. In other words, I had nailed the WRONG FEEL. Whoops! After a weekend of poor Hannah throwing a million other ideas at me and me being like, “But the dress is not negotiable!” I finally realized that it wasn’t the dress or model that was the problem. It was that bright and sunny background.

Okay. Easy to fix. I quite simply deleted that background and choose a moodier one, with a sunset and a storm on the horizon, and a more utilitarian medieval castle.

Suddenly Hannah liked the dress again. 😉

That mood is MUUUUUUUCH more suited to the story, so we all breathed a big sigh of relief. Then it was just a matter of finishing it!

Hannah had also requested an easier to read font, and though I love that script (in fact, I used it for my “Blessed Is She Who Believed” line of products!), I could certainly see her point. So we went instead with an ornate serif font.

This one is called Berold, and it has a ton of great alternates and ligatures to really customize the look.

Only one small item remained–those white butterflies! I knew I wanted to put them in her hair (Hannah’s suggestion!), and I decided to make one interact with the title too. So here we go! The final cover, with a butterfly on the B and two in her hair.

And now, I bet you actually want to know what this book is about, right?? Here’s the back cover copy!

Since the morning he woke to find his precious daughter gone with only the remains of their latest argument left behind, King Lior has been praying she’d come home. For four years now, he’s prayed and searched, sending his best knights to find Evangeline, only to hear nothing. Until the day their missive arrives with three words: we’ve found her. He sends one right back with orders to bring her home.

But that order isn’t easily achieved. Evangeline, now a lowly servant, has no plans to return. Though the knights claim her father still loves her, she knows the truth: he’d cast her aside as quickly as everyone else if he knew how far she’d truly fallen. She can’t go home. Not with her scars. Or her failures. Or her son.

Only, the knights won’t leave without her. And just as she starts to wonder if maybe they might be right, the choice is taken from her altogether.

Sir Darrek thought the hardest part of his quest would be finding Evangeline. He had no idea how difficult it would be to get her home.

Pre-Order from WhiteCrown

I hope you enjoyed this little tour through the cover design process of Bring Her Home by Hannah Currie! And I also hope that you’re as excited as I am both for the book and for WhiteCrown! Do hop over to our lovely new website, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter! It’s going to be full of SO MUCH FUN STUFF here in the next month or two, as we get it rolled out!!

Word of the Week – Cult and Culture

Word of the Week – Cult and Culture

by | Aug 1, 2022 | Word of the Week

A week or two ago, that familiar chime of “Word of the Week!” sang out through the house. I looked up–ever eager for a new word to add to the list–and said, “Oo! What?”

My husband replied with, “Cult and culture. They’re clearly related, but I’d never stopped to wonder how.”

Neither had I! But it’s definitely one of those things that you immediately go, “Of course they are!” Right? And indeed they are…but I hadn’t paused to think about how until I looked it up.

Both cult and culture come from the past participle of the Latin colere, which means “to tend; to guard; to till; to cultivate” and which developed into the Latin cultus, which means “care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence.”

Wait…what? Are you (like me) wondering why tilling the ground is related to worship and reverence? Hmm. The etymologists don’t actually offer any explanation of that, but anthropology may. If we look back to the early societies, they were all agricultural and it’s easy to see where that act of bringing life out of the ground became linked to worshiping the bringer of that life, whether one’s society was mono- or polytheistic. It may also have to do with the time, care, and ritual that go into both tilling the soil and serving one’s God.

It certainly explains why our word for farming the land is agriculture, right? I’d never paused to notice that before either!

Culture made its way into English first, in the farming sense, in the 1400s. The figurative sense of “cultivation of the mind through education” was noted occasionally, as early as 1500 but didn’t really become a common usage until the 1800s. It was then further extended to mean “the collective achievements of a group of people” around 1867.

Cult joined the language in the 1600s, meaning “a form or system of worship.” It’s worth noting that there were no negative connotations on the word until the mid 1800s, when it began to be used more frequently, and generally in reference to primitive peoples and their worship.  By 1829, it meant “devoted attention to a particular person or thing,” which is where our modern sense comes from.

Both, however, still retain that tie to the root, and to words like cultivate and agriculture. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Word of the Week – Cappuccino

Word of the Week – Cappuccino

by | Jul 18, 2022 | Word of the Week

Cappuccino. The mere word conjures up images of beautiful coffee, and the mere thought gets my tastebuds dancing. I am a coffee lover, so all kinds of coffee earn this reaction. Latte, mocha…mmm. Yep.

I’ve always loved cappuccinos too, since I was a kid, even before I drank coffee daily. Now, granted, the kind I acquired the taste of were sugar-laden, creamy things, heavy on the vanilla. That may not be the kind made famous in Italy, per se…but the roots are still there!

Cappuccino is in fact espresso served with steamed-milk foam. So very dark coffee lightened a bit with milk. Where, though, did it get its name? That’s the fascinating part! Cappuccino actually comes directly from a religious order! There’s an order of Fransiscan friars called Capuchins who have always worn a brown hooded habit; a brown not quite as dark as undiluted espresso, but just the color you get when you add a bit of frothed milk foam. 😉 Yep, that’s right. The creators of the coffee drink looked at it, were reminded of the Friars, and named the beverage after them!

Now I want to inspire a coffee drink to be named after me…wonder if I can make one purple. 😉

Word of the Week – Trivia

Word of the Week – Trivia

by | Jul 11, 2022 | Word of the Week

Do you know where the word trivia comes from? If not, it’s definitely a fun bit of trivia that you’ll want to know! (LOL–couldn’t resist!)

The official meaning of trivia is “bits of information of little consequence.” It became a common word in 1932 but has been around at least since 1902, when a book was published by that name, featuring essays on little-known facts and commonplace moments.

Where, though, did author Logan Pearsall Smith come up with that title? Directly from Latin! Trivia is literally just tri + via. Three … roads. Um … why, you may ask? Well, because at crossroads in the Roman empire–especially where more than 2 roads met up–there would spring up inns and roadhouses and other public, common areas. It was a place where anyone could be and where information was shared. Because in Latin trivialis (the adjective form) meant “public,” it also came to mean “common, commonplace.”

Trivia became a game made popular among college students in the US in the 1960s, and Trivial Pursuit, the board game, became wildly popular after its release in 1982.

Cart
Checkout - $0.00
  • 0
  • 1