Character Inspirations for The Mark of the King

I spent last Friday at Bethany House Publishers' offices in Minneapolis, and I'm getting so excited to see what they come up with for The Mark of the King's book cover! I will likely do the cover reveal through my newsletter (see sign up in the footer of this page) two weeks before it appears on all the retail sites. The book releases in January, but the cover will be finalized this summer. Yippee! 

Now, since I don't have the cover quite yet, I thought I would at least show you some images that I've been using as inspiration for some of my main characters. Julianne is our intrepid midwife sent from Paris to New Orleans in a colonizing scheme. The three other men pictured all play really, really important roles in her life. I don't want to say what yet, because I fear I may spoil the story for you. 

Two of these character images in the collage above come from the same movie. Do you know what it is? :) One of my favorites.

Now that I have you, allow me to settle a little housekeeping issue. I feel I owe you an explanation for my hiatus on the blog during the last several months. I have two good reasons for being quiet. First, I was writing a novel: The Mark of the King. It's turned in now, so I have some time to breathe, and blog. Second, for months, I've been dealing with hackers on my Web site. They infected my site in such a way that visitors may also get infected by dropping by my Web site. So I certainly didn't want to invite you over until that was taken care of. Randomly, after one malicious hacker was taken out of the picture, the next issue was that all links on my site would redirect you to a British asparagus farm. I kid you not. So, again, not exactly motivation to blog. 

Thankfully, my husband is a Web developer, so he re-created my Web site from scratch. There are some new things we added since the whole Virus-Asparagus Fiasco. Now on the "Books" page, there is a scrolling shelf of my book covers, and you can click on any one of them to get to that book's page. (The dropdown menus are still there, too.) In the "On Writing" page, instead of just recommending my favorite books for writers, I now have a little Amazon shop with my top picks so you can shop right from there if you are feeling anxious to get those books. On the "Free Stuff" page I added a collage of reader pictures! Send me your picture with one of my books and I'll add you to the rotation! We also added "Add to Goodreads" buttons in addition to the buy links on every fiction and nonfiction book page which I hope you will feel free to use. :) Last, we added another book that is now available for pre-order: Refresh: Spiritual Nourishment for Parents of Children with Special Needs.

One more thing. For those of you who subscribe to the blog, I noticed it sent you a digest of the last ten blog posts last time. I apologize. I don't know why that happened--maybe feedburner thought they must have missed something because of my extended absence. Hopefully that won't happen again. 

OK, I feel much better having gotten that off my chest. Onward!