It’s hard to believe it’s time for this again! It’s feels like yesterday “The Love of a Princess” released, but no! It’s been almost a year, and BOOK THREE in my Royals of Acuniel series will soon be in your hands!
I’m completely in love with the cover my designer, Rosanna M. White, put together. Once again, she perfectly captured my vision for the design and made what I imagined in my head come to life in such a beautiful way! To learn more about my inspiration for the design and the process to create the final product, keep reading!
The Inspiration
Whenever I order a cover from Roseanna, she sends a multi-page questionnaire to fill out asking things like the book’s synopsis, trim size, paper color (who knew that mattered, right?), setting, genre, a description of the character(s) I would like featured, etc. For this book, I knew I wanted Roland to be featured on the cover, since he is the titular character after all, so I attached some of my favorite character inspiration pics–thanks to Hayden Christiansen for being my model for Roland LOL!
I described his physical appearance and his inward motivations, as well as what type of clothing he should be in. I wanted the cover to depict him after he has runaway, and not before, so he needed to be in simple, peasant clothing. I’ve also always imagined Roland riding a horse on the cover, so I included this picture of him that I love! I told her ideally, I would love to see Roland riding a black horse like the one in this photo (since that is how I describe his horse in the book), and that I would like a forest or countryside background (I was secretly hoping for the forest path background, but wanted to give her plenty of ideas to work with!).
Another important detail Roseanna asks for is what colors I would like featured, and if there’s anything I don’t want on the cover. With the desired forest background, naturally the cover should have a green, earthy tone, but I also attached this aesthetic/story collage.
The Design
I ordered the cover back in April, but Roseanna is a busy lady and books her design work far in advance, so she had me in her calendar for the week of 8/15. Fast forward to August, and I unexpectedly received an email from her a few days before she was set to begin work on the cover. I eagerly opened the email to find this rough draft:
Beautiful, right? I loved the direction she was going in already, including the model she found! No need to start over from scratch, but there were a few changes I wanted to make. Of course, I knew Roland himself was not finalized yet, as far as how he is photoshopped together, and tweaks would need to be made, but mainly, I was concerned with the really strong yellow/gold tone in the background. I really wanted green to be the prominent color, so this golden light just looked too overpowering and also seemed to wash Roland out.
I asked if this color could be toned down and Roseanna came back with this:
I thought I loved the first version, but man, I loved this one 100x more! Turns out the yellow/gold light was part of the background and not a layer Roseanna could tone down, so she flipped the background image to use the other side of it, which has an even prettier forest path and just the right amount of gold bokeh light filtering down. Because of the direction of the lighting, she also had to flip Roland and his horse, and I actually like that better too. I also loved that it enabled Roseanna to change the color of my name to match my previous books.
Roland still had some awkward things going on with his body LOL, so Roseanna and I went through multiple versions of the cover, emailing back and forth, trying to get him just right!
First, we had to fix that gap in his shoulder and got this:
Better, but now that shoulder seemed almost too broad compared to the other one, plus his other arm still looked a little wonky. Problem areas are circled here:
Roseanna got the arm situation resolved, but we still had one more issue–his hands just didn’t look right. When putting together a cover with someone in such a specific pose, it is difficult to find a model already in that pose you need. That was the case here, so Roland is pretty much completely put together piece by piece! Talk about some tedious work! Luckily, Roseanna was able to find him a different set of hands and they were perfect LOL!
So that brings us to THIS, the final front cover! Like I said, I LOVE how it turned out! Seriously could not be happier. And now, I’m eagerly anticipating seeing the spine and back cover (which can’t be done until after typesetting)!
Before you go, here’s one last fun fact! On cover reveal day, I said I would share the name of Roland’s horse later, so here it is: Hercules! When naming characters’ horses, I like to pick out a name intentionally, something with meaning that matches the character well, kind of like a little hidden Easter egg in the story. Arabella’s horse in The Peasant Queen is named Gemmula, which is Latin for “small gem”. My personal favorite one is Nicholas’ horse in The Love a Princess, which is named Castor after a twin in Greek mythology–fitting since Nicholas himself is a twin! For Roland’s horse, I first thought to name him the Latin word for warrior, wanderer, or something along those lines, but everything I looked up didn’t sound like a good name. So I once again turned to mythology and chose Hercules. What could be more fitting for a renowned, seemingly-invincible fighter than a horse named after a character known for the very same thing?
Thanks for reading! And don’t forget to add The Runaway Prince to your Goodreads TBR today!
