Can something as simple as the sleeve of a jacket shape a character?

For my latest release, Choosing Bravery (Lonesome Hearts series), I had the book cover made LONG before I finished writing the story.

While browsing the Killion Group‘s immense inventory of stock images, I fell in love with one photo. I felt no hesitation. First off, I love every cover that features the awesome Mr. Harvey Stables! But in this particular photo, both people on the cover were PERFECT.

How she holds him – like he’s the center of her world. How he’s closing his eyes and leaning into her touch –  like she’s the only thing keeping him upright. That’s exactly how I envisioned my hero and heroine, Élodie Rousseau and Lachlan Bravery.

But it was her jacket sleeve that provided a wonderful detail that would NEVER have found its way into my story otherwise.

---

EXCERPT #1

“We both know no one is safe.” Despite Élodie’s words, her stance remained relaxed. Her rifle rested in the cradle of her arm, on a bed of rose-colored velvet.

Lachlan had watched a trapper, sporting a temper and a beard worthy of a billy goat, go down on both knees and present the tailored jacket to her like she was the Queen of England. In repayment, the cantankerous old timer had declared, for Yellow Feather helping him.

Yellow Feather. On his final crusade south along the Cascades, he’d heard increasing talk of the guide’s accomplishments. She’d risen in his mind to the stature of a mythical Amazon warrior. He’d never dreamed she’d add saving his life to her accolades or that she’d be so pretty—and unnervingly impulsive as well.

---

EVEN A “PERFECT PICTURE” CAN USE A FEW TWEAKS

If you ever wonder how much a photo has been altered, here were my edit requests…

• Change her jacket’s moss-green color to pink
• Change his jacket’s bright red color to brown
• Add scars to his face
• Change her darker hair to a slightly blonder version. I wanted my heroine (who had very blonde hair when she earned her name Yellow Feather at age six) to still be blonde but not really blonde. Hope that makes sense!

And these changes are why I don’t make my own book covers! I’m obsessive about details. But if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have written the following either…

---

EXCERPT #2

A vision leaned over Lachlan. A woman enveloped in a halo highlighting the infinite shades of her dark blonde hair. Hair once so fair it led to her name Yellow Feather. His heart lurched. The legend paled next to the woman.

---

CHOOSING BRAVERY – BOOK BLURB

When legends collide, will the sparks ignite their love or drive them apart? 

Oregon Territory – 1868. After her parents vanished in the wilderness, Élodie Rousseau found a home with an Osage warrior and a logging camp schoolmistress who joined forces to return Élodie’s beloved spirit horse. With them as her teachers, she became the legendary Cascade Mountain guide, Yellow Feather. She knows everything about surviving and thriving in the wild, but something is missing.

Legendary Far North fugitive tracker, Lachlan Bravery, is tortured by his failure to find the one person who mattered most—the mentor who taught him everything he once held sacred. Driven to repay a dead man, his hunt for a notorious band of outlaws brings him to Élodie’s mountain where they must join forces on a final quest deep inside a cave with the power to destroy not only their unexpected love but their lives.

Brave the wild. Bury the past. Choose your destiny.

WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

• Find out more on Amazon US | CA | UK | Aus

Wishing you happy reading ❤