The Artist

By now you've seen the gorgeous cover art for "What Endures" so I wanted to take a moment and introduce you to the artist who designed it.

Samantha Dellinger has been a graphic artist for 15 years, 13 of them spent at the York Daily Record. She is also a fine artist, who still enjoys creating works of art the "old fashioned way" - with pencil and paper or brush and canvas. I've recently taken some painting classes and I can tell you - this is not easy! I have the utmost respect for those who can take a brush and paint and create extraordinary images on canvas. . .or even on a pad of paper with a pencil because I can't draw at all!

In addition to her artistic talent, Sam is a wonderful person, with more than enough patience to work with me on this cover because let me tell you - she needed it! I basically gave her my vision of the cover like this -

"Well I'm looking for something on a beach or maybe a baseball field, maybe where they're connected, but sort of not"

Not a lot to go on but Sam was game and sent in mock-ups and then tweaked and tweaked and tweaked some more until I was happy with it. And when I was having technical difficulties on uploading the cover to this site because of a file conversion issue, I sent Sam an e-mail thinking it'd take at least a day for her to respond. It took 20 minutes even though it was the end of a long work day for her.

Truly, she's amazing and I'm very grateful to her for bringing my vision of this book to life.

If you are interested in learning more about Sam's works -

Her art blog can be found at www.yorkblog.com/artist
Her Twitter and Instagram account is - blackcat911
And she also has an Esty store -  www.etsy.com/shop/artisticbulldog

Don't forget to check back on Thursday for another teaser! And only 24 more days until the book is released! Spread the news!