For many months now, I've had a place-holding cover for The Proper Bearing floating around my website.  It had the most basic element I knew I wanted: a vine-covered wall, reminiscent of stately old school buildings.  But it wasn't enough.  I knew it needed something more: something which hinted that The Proper Bearing is more than just a standard coming-of-age tale.  So I went prop hunting. 

There's a particular item of significance which helps drive the plot forward after its inciting incidents, and I had a very clear picture of it in my mind... so I went antiquing.  I'm lucky enough to live within walking distance of an amazing antique store.  The Laconia Antique Center was converted from an old Newberry's department store, right down to the still-functioning soda counter.  I could lose hours in there - and have! - but going with a specific item in mind made things a little easier.  Soon enough, I found what I was looking for, along with the vintage postcards I used for my new marketing material.  

​Some careful lighting and a little dance with Photoshop later, I may now happily introduce you to the final front cover of The Proper Bearing, and along with it, the magical artifact known as The Dawning Urn...

Story time!  Are you sitting comfortably?  Good.  Then we'll begin.

Once upon a time, there was a young(ish) girl who had loved books since kindergarten. An only child, she made some of her earliest and oldest friends between their pages: precocious girls like Pippi Longstocking and Anne Shirley were her favorites, but she soon grew just as fond of super-sleuths Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, and went on adventures with the brave mice of Redwall and discovered the creeping, delightful horrors of Edgar Allen Poe and Christopher Pike.  Around that time, she was also beginning to discover the prospects of responsibility, as her teenage years loomed on the horizon, and her parents, wanting to coax her into it in the best way possible, suggested she get a job at a bookstore.

The bookstore was tiny, tucked away on the shores of a nearby lake, and catered mostly to tourists looking for summer beach reads, but our heroine loved it nonetheless.  She learned how to open up shop, run a register, and create workshops for the kids who came in to amuse themselves on lazy summer afternoons.  (One particularly memorable afternoon was spent teaching them how to draw Mushu from Mulan... which might tell you how long ago this was, if you're very clever and know how to use IMDB.) She discovered the joys of coffee, classic literature, and mystery novels, but more importantly ... she discovered the concept of book signings.  
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She was only able to work at one of them, but one was enough.  The author, though no one she had previously heard of, was a mystery author, just like the books she was starting to love so much, and was willing to talk to her at length about her craft.  Not only that, but she signed a book for her:  

The advent of the internet (yes, this IS an old story, isn't it?) meant that she began to meet other people who wrote their stories in secret, same as she did, and one of them, a little older and a little braver, convinced her to share her own stories with the rest of the world.  The wide anonymity of the internet made this all seem so much safer, and she began to gain a little following, which made her think that maybe her writing wasn't so terrible after all.  College and the so-called "real world" took their turns at her confidence, but eventually, she began to share stories which were entirely her own, and discovered self-publishing, and all the freedom and challenges that came with it.  
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There's no neat dovetail to the end of her story - of course, she's sitting here typing it to you.  ;)  I will say that things have managed to come full circle: later this month, I will have my second-ever book signing at the store that started it all.   I invite those of you who are able to come and join me ... it's not quite a Happily Ever After, but as far as I'm concerned, it's damn near close enough.