Happy December, everybody. I hope the festive season is treating you well, though with bushfires here and blizzards and volcanoes elsewhere, and depressing political news all over, I think the only thing to do is to escape into a good book.
I had planned this to be a special, 'for-newsletter-subscribers-only' cover reveal, but I see Berkley has beaten me to it and posted it on several sites already. But I'll reveal it to you anyway — here it is, the cover of Marry in Scarlet — the story of George and the duke.
Sounds a bit "St. George and the dragon", doesn't it, and at the start the duke is a bit of a dragon — though radiating ice rather than fire. But trust me, George is no saint. ;)

Cover design is a tricky beast. How it's done is that I submit my ideas and some appealing images to my editor. She then discusses it with the marketing and cover art departments, and they come up with a draft cover.

They send the draft cover to me for feedback. I suggest some tweaks and generally that's it.

It's pretty, don't you think? It's not exactly how I imagined George, but it's pretty close. That's often the case with faces on a cover. Back in my early days I was one of the first authors to have "headless" people on my covers, and though a lot of people hated those covers, (See the paperback edition of An Honorable Thief) I was quite pleased, because no cover models ever looked right to me. And no doubt a dozen different readers would have a dozen different images of the same characters in their minds. So every cover is something of a compromise.

In any case, it's what's between the covers that's important — right?

Here's the draft cover. As you can see, it had much the same background, but with the building of St. George's church (of Hanover Square, London fame) slipped in with the flowers and the country setting. It didn't look right to me, so we took it out. There were a few smaller tweaks — see if you can spot them.

Please don't share this draft image — it's ONLY for newsletter subscribers.

Marry In Scarlet comes out at the end of May, 2020. You can preorder it — see below. I love preordering, as I usually forget when a book is coming out, but if I preorder it, I get a lovely surprise when it just pops up on my e-reader, or arrives in my postbox.
This is a universal link — it will take you to a list of stores carrying Marry In Scarlet, and then you click on your preferred link..

Marry In Secret is still doing well. Thank you to everyone who left a review — much appreciated.
The audio book, narrated by Alison Larkin, is also getting lots of lovely reviews. Click on the link to read them.

Book Depository (free postage to anywhere in the world)
Universal link to all the e-book stores.
Amazon USA
Amazon Australia
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK

In other news . . .

I'm not taking much of a holiday this year — I have a contract for a new series, and so I'm playing with ideas for that and writing quite a lot. As well, at home, I'm embarking on another big decluttering project. This time I have to get rid of books! I know! Painful, but I've more than run out of space and I don't have room in my house for any more bookshelves.
Wish me luck.

My Blog
I'm very pleased to see that my blog subscriptions have been growing. Thank you to all who've subscribed. I don't do much marketing on the blog — it's mostly bits of pieces on life, writing, historical things of interest, than kind of thing. Take a look. It's here:

If you’d like to have my blog emailed to you, just go [here and subscribe](https://www.annegracie.com/blog/) — scroll down and it’s under the painted girl in the right hand column. Emails will come whenever I've put up a new post — usually on a Wednesday or Thursday, but sometimes not for a couple of weeks.

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Until next time, stay safe.

In other news . . .

Anne

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