Category: Recommended

I listen to music when I’m writing my novels. Here’s my playlist for when I was writing Beauty’s Rose.

The modern songs are inspirational to the plot, or seemed to fit the characters, their emotions, or situation quite well.

The older music is featured in the novel itself. The heroine Beauty plays the John Field Nocturnes, and the hero William sings “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” and “The Last Rose of Summer.”

You can listen to them through this Spotify playlist:

You can purchase Beauty’s Rose, a Regency Beauty and the Beast retelling, on Amazon.

It took around eight hours, with me moving between pleasantly empty restaurants, the park where I got too much sun, and the library every few hours. At the library I caught the end of a lovely soprano recital, and read Shannon Hale and company’s The Princess in Black, which is completely adorable.

The final Scripture Princesses book will have around 100 illustrations.

Generally, thumbnails are the most thought and labor intensive part of my process. But since I’d finished all the writing, and had mocked up the lay out of my book, my thumbnails were mostly choosing which scenes needed pictures the most, and roughing out quickly what happens in each scene.

My initial thumbnails are barely legible, rather like my handwriting. But I know what I mean by them. Right now, most are flat people-talking-to-people, so next I’ll work on composition to try to get depth and interest in each illustration.

Who do you think this rough sketch is of? Impossible to tell, eh?

It will be Adam and Eve and their family after the Garden.