Life Told in PATCHES OF RED by Liz Flaherty

 

About my cover … hmmm … no one who knows me would ever suggest that I have even a brushstroke of artistic talent or a lash of an artistic eye. This is why I’m grateful for cover designers. Nancy Fraser has designed many of mine, including the one for Patches of Red, and I never cease to be amazed that she knows what I want before I have it fully articulated. I’m convinced the necessary component of a cover is making the reader feel the story she’s about to read.

Harper Loch, the setting for the Colors series, is a tiny country lake with a population of less than a hundred. It’s a place where people go to start again, to rest, to recover. It’s a place that feels like this cover looks.

Blurb~

He’s handsome but can’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy.

After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.

Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet ...

To purchase PATCHES OF RED:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/09fZR7nt

D2D: https://books2read.com/u/mZ98YJ

Excerpt~

His picture was on top. Not a baby picture or anything like that, but one of a man in his thirties with chestnut hair not as red as hers and chocolate brown eyes. She’d never seen him before. Or had she? She had a slew of cousins on both her parents’ sides, but none of them were this … this familiar.

The thought set off a sharpness inside. More than an ache but less than a pain, it made her clench her fist at her side. Once. Twice. She sipped at the wine, staring at the picture. He was a handsome man, wearing shorts and a Northern Michigan University T-shirt. Judging by the background, he was doing the annual walk across the Mackinac Bridge. The date scribbled on the back was from three years earlier.

At that time, Dad would still have been … mostly himself, for want of a better word. He made the walk across the bridge most years, sometimes with Mom and sometimes alone or with friends. He’d never asked Ellie to go, but the kids had gone at least once. Had it been with Dad or with Gavin?

She didn’t remember.

Was the year of this picture when he’d assembled the contents of the folder? Had he done it because even though he knew he was going to die with secrets, he wanted her to know them? Somehow.

She set the picture aside. Carefully, as she had her mother’s diaries, but apart from them. Whoever Declan McKissick was, Ellie felt that threat even more now that she’d seen the picture.

The papers about him were all photocopies, some of them not very good. His name was Declan Nelson McKissick. He was thirty-six and had been born in Mackinac County to Barbara Ruth Gregson of St. Ignace.

And Jason Nelson Murphy of Muskegon.

It took her breath away. Which it shouldn’t have done, because her parents’ private lives had been just that—private. She’d felt … oh, sort of righteous about it, as a matter of fact, that they’d all been able to respect each other’s boundaries as well as they did. She’d learned from that life value how to let her own children go. They even laughed together about having secrets because Ma didn’t really want to know what they’d done when they sneaked out after curfew.

Her parents’ trust in her decisions had been absolute even when they didn’t like them, and she’d carried that on in her own family.

But she’d never thought much about their marriage—they were, after all, Mom and Dad. Just as she and Gavin were to their kids. Only their kids called her “Ma,” much to her chagrin. That was what she got for raising them on Little House on the Prairie reruns.

She was still sitting on the floor when Jess arrived. He always knocked before coming in, so she had no doubt he did that time, too, but she didn’t hear him. She didn’t know he was there until the door closed behind him. When she looked up, he was standing with a pan in his hands, a gaze of consternation aimed at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Are you okay?” He knelt, setting the soup pot on the floor beside him, and reached for her hands. “What can I do?”

She didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t as if she needed anyone to do anything at all. This wasn’t a crisis or life-threatening or even life-changing.

Except that it was.

She withdrew one of her hands from his and reached for the picture taken on the Mackinac Bridge. “This is Declan McKissick,” she said, “my brother.”

Bio~

Retired from the post office, Liz Flaherty spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and doing whatever else she wants to. She and Duane live in the old farmhouse in North Central Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really…40-some years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!

She’d love to hear from you at lizkflaherty@gmail.com or please come and see her at:

Website: http://lizflaherty.net

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lizkflaherty

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizFlaherty1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizkflaherty/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47998031-the-healing-summer

Thanks for joining us and sharing your cover with us, Liz!

 

 

~ You Can Lose Your Way in a BLACKOUT, Or Find Something Magical ~

I am very excited about this cover for a couple of reasons. One is that the background is my own photo, taken here in town at The Fox and Hound building, which holds The Fox and Hound Day Spa, condominiums, and various offices. It is a beautiful old building in downtown Bloomington, Illinois and the owner, Vicki Tilton, allowed me to wander around and take pictures for the cover of BLACKOUT, my first contemporary romance (without elements of suspense). I threw some of my pictures and some from stock photos at my cover designer, Steven Novak, and I'll show you what he came up with. First, a blurb to both entice you, ;) and give you a feel for what I was trying to capture in this cover.  

Blurb ~

Max. The consummate ladies man.

Max is good looking, but not an absolute knockout. With his charm though, he could have any woman he wants. Once he meets Faith, he doesn’t want anyone else.



Eli. He is a knockout.

But a dark past shadows him and holds him captive. Drinking dulls the pain, but meeting Faith makes him want to change all that.



Faith. She loves them both.


When a blackout brings her together with Eli, she’s happier than she’s ever been before. When another blackout tears them apart, Max is there to pick up the pieces. But can she forget the man who first made her whole?

So, we gots ourselves a little love triangle here! These are both great guys. Faith couldn't lose anyway she chose~but, at the same time, she does suffer a loss in choosing. Sigh. Anyway, that's what we going for. Love triangle, contemporary, both guys are construction workers at the beginning, Faith is a waitress. Let's take a look at what Steven came up with from the images I sent him.

Okay, I actually love this cover. The colors are beautiful. Like the font. It says contemporary. But this cover doesn't say love triangle. And while it does say construction, it doesn't give us HOT construction worker, just hardworking construction worker. And who needs that? ;)  Granted, these are images I sent him, but sometimes it's hard to know until you see it all together. Next--->

Okay. LOVIN' this one! The background picture is a set of stairs at Fox and Hound. It captures, for me, the mood of the book, the many layers and building of Eli and Faith's relationship, with all its twists and turns. It also gives that angsty feel, I think. I love how the guys are shadowy, like she's conjuring them up in her mind while trying to decide on which to choose. I like the way she is turning, looking over her shoulder, like she is knotted inside by this decision. She's looking back at her past relationship with Eli, while still moving forward with Max. You almost get the feel that she'd like to run away from this decision altogether. One problem though. As I'm sharing this cover with writer friends I keep getting the same response. The guys look too alike. Upon further examination I discover the reason why they look so much alike is they are both photos of the same model! Well, at least I am consistent in what I like in men. So, we can't have that, and I ask Steven to change it.

Okay, better. The guy on the left really captures Max. But the guy on the right isn't exactly Eli. And we've lost that neat translucent effect. 

Now we've got it! He's added the tagline and the collection name. I like the backlighting on the title and my name. The guy with the longer hair really captures the soulful look of Eli. With two hunks like this, how can she choose? You'll just have to read the book to find out! 

BLACKOUT will be available June 1st with a release date of June 15th! 

Thanks for joining me! Any thoughts on the evolution of the cover?