Cover Reveal At Last!
This past fall, I decided to self-publish my novella, The Happy Secret of It All, and realized that that meant I'd need to commission a cover for it.
BlueSky was booming, a lot of illustrators had just come over and were promoting themselves - I was spoiled for choice. But when I saw Joana Fraga's work, I was enchanted and knew that I had to ask her to do it, and I'm so glad that I did.
Happy Secret is a sapphic Cinderella retelling set in the 1920s - or rather, a fantasy society very much like our 1920s. The Cinderella figure is Patience, a meek young woman who sews herself an evening dress and sneaks into the royal ball; the prince's name is Will, short for Wilhelmina, and she’s a clever preux chevalier with more than a bit of Lord Peter Wimsey in her.
Without further ado, here is the beautiful result of our collaboration:
Because this is so romantic, it was very important to me to have a cover that conveyed LOVE STORY. At the same time, the story doesn't fit the expectations of the capital-r Romance genre, so I wanted a cover that was not a capital-r Romance cover. This fits the bill perfectly.
(I’ll also tell you my intended release date. Because it’s a love story - this is corny - Happy Secret will be available on Valentine’s Day.)
Here’s a short sample of the protagonists’ first meeting:
The benches were all arranged around the outer edge of the garden, each with one of a particular sort of flower planted around it: creamy yellow lilies next to one, lavender irises on either side of another, dahlias, peonies, and so on. They were all lovely and tasteful, but her attention was drawn to a big pink lilac in full bloom that surrounded and hung over one bench facing the palace, the flowers nearly the same shade as her gown. It was a tree, too, rather than a bush, one trained to grow in an elegant, curving shape. Patience’s mother had loved lilacs. There was something very fitting about that, especially since she what she was wearing was made over from an evening dress of her mother’s as well.
Fortunately, she set the plate beside her on the bench even before sitting down – because as soon as she had taken the weight off her aching feet and was facing the palace ballroom, she could see another bench that had been previously hidden by the tree, and there was a person sitting on it, shrouded in shadows, and that shot a jolt of surprised terror straight to her chest that made her jump.
They were, as far as she could tell, fairly tall and thin, with elbows that stuck out a little awkwardly to the sides. Their suit was excellently tailored, though she couldn’t make out any details in the inky fabric, given the gloom – so they were probably a guest and not some sort of assassin or thief. Strawberry blond hair was combed back carefully from a side part, and pale eyes were watching her from over a longish nose in what was altogether a handsome face.
“Sorry,” said the person in a mellow alto tone, and she realized that they were a woman. “Didn’t mean to give you a scare.”
“It’s … it’s fine.” Her heart was still hammering, but it was slowing down as she breathed.
The other woman cocked her head as she took Patience in, even going so far as to fix a monocle in her right eye. That was downright unsettling. What did she think about what she saw? To distract herself, Patience took a bite of a strawberry tartlet, only for the crust to crumble in her glove and her palm to be filled with custard. Typical, truly typical.
A scraping sound drew her attention away from her predicament, and Patience looked up to see the woman rising to her feet with the help of a cane, which she leaned on heavily as she made her way across the gravel with uneven steps. She dropped onto Patience’s bench with a sigh, and then reached into an interior breast pocket on her (silky, Patience could see now that they were so close together) tailcoat and withdrew a folded handkerchief. “Allow me.”
“Oh, you don’t need to – ” But she had already unfolded the handkerchief and laid it out on Patience’s lap, the sharp creases in the linen standing out in a cross. It was so smooth and white that it looked like it had come straight out of a box from a shop; Patience imagined that she must order them by the hundred and simply threw them out at the end of the day after they’d been used – clearly, she was filthy rich. “Thank you.”
“Not at all,” she said, with the most elegantly careless wave that Patience had ever seen, and leaned back against the arm of the bench, one of her own arms spread along the back. Then she continued fixing Patience with that extremely penetrating look, while Patience tried to pretend not to notice and to finish the tart as neatly as possible. At least it was small, but that still left her with a very custardy glove. In the end, she had to wipe it with the handkerchief – but just a corner of it. There was something embroidered there, she realized, but unfortunately only after she’d covered it with food. Bother.
This is a bit long, so I’ll save the 1920s fashion plate exploration for another newsletter later this month. It’s a great one.
Thank you for reading! I hope you like the cover as much as I do, and I hope the excerpt piqued your interest. If you know someone who might be into this story, I’d love it if you could forward this email to them and note that they could subscribe for more updates.