Have you noticed that my debut novel, Burning Embers, has a new cover? The design is to match The Echoes of Love, and I’m delighted with it because it pulls together so many elements of the book.

First, the model. She’s just as I picture Coral, the heroine of the book. Young. Beautiful. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed. An edge of vulnerability and nativity and yet a look in her eyes that says, ‘I can hold my own.’ I especially like the hairband she wears, because it encapsulates the time in which the book is set, 1970, and the flower pulls in her love of nature.

The silhouette of the couple pays homage to the original cover, and I love the romance of it. Burning Embers is such a passionate book, and Rafe and Coral are so entwined: the models’ stance really conveys their need to be close and all the emotion between them.

I love the signature colour, that vivid purple. So many colours are vivid in Africa, but that one has always stood out to me. Sure enough, when I read back through the book I found the shade in myriad descriptions. Of flora and fauna, like a dramatic alley of jacarandas, and wisteria, and the morning, afternoon and evening tree. Of the sky at sunset. Of shadows. But also of the fire that inspired the title, Burning Embers:‘Rekindled, the fire leapt up with purple fervor.’

Finally, the backdrop: entirely true to the setting for the book, wild Africa. The mountains have such a dramatic presence, calling to mind, for me, the scene in which Coral and Rafe take a hot-air balloon ride and see ‘the spectacular panorama of plains, snow-capped mountains, escarpment, lakes, and ridges that went on for miles, all thousands of feet below’. And I love the acacia trees, which are embedded in my memory from my visits to Kenya. They stand as sentries, timeless and calm, like old friends, and whenever I see one I call to mind this century-old poem by HayyimNahmanBialik in which the tree is a girl’s confidante:

The Old Acacia Tree

Neither daylight nor the darkness
See how silently I wander.
Not on mountain, nor in valley,
Does an old acacia ponder.

At his feet I’ll fall and with tears I’ll cry;
To an old man do not tie me.

What do you think of the new cover? I would love to hear your thoughts.