Translating the People in My Head

No, I’m not planning to write in another language.  I’m simply delighted that once again the artists at Love Inspired were able to take the characters in my head and translate them into a viable cover for my August book, The Courting Campaign.  This book starts a new series for me, where the staff from four estates in Derbyshire play matchmaker for their masters. 

When I start writing a book, I generally have an idea in my head as to how the main characters look.  But my head can get a little cluttered with the many characters hanging around, so I often go looking for a picture of a real-life person who’s a good approximation.  (Example of the cluttered brain?  A dear lady came up to me in church the other day and said, with a big grin, “Don’t ya know, don’t ya know, don’t ya know.”  I stared at her rather stupidly for a moment, until I remembered I had a character named Stanley Arlington with a distressing habit of using that phrase in my book Perfection.  Guess what she’d been reading.) 

So I was rather pleased with what the grand artists for Love Inspired came up with for the cover for The Courting Campaign.  And I love the back cover copy:

 

Emma Pyrmont has no designs on handsome Sir Nicholas Rotherford--at least not for herself.  As his daughter’s nanny, she sees how lonely little Alice has been.  With the cook’s help, Emma shows the workaholic scientist just what Alice needs.  But making Nicholas a better father makes Emma wish her painful past didn’t mar her own marriage chances.

Ever since scandal destroyed his career, Nicholas has devoted himself to his new invention.  Now his daughter’s sweet, quick-witted nanny is proving an unexpected distraction.  All evidence suggests that happiness is within reach--if only a man of logic can trust in the deductions of his own heart.

The young lady in my head for The Courting Campaign’s heroine, Emma Pyrmont, is an actress who has starred in two movies loosely based on Victorian society.   And she took The Vow never to be one of those Mean Girls.  My hero Sir Nicholas Rotherford, on the other hand, may be a widower with a young daughter in the book, but he is closer to Mr. Spock than Dr. Spock in real life, and he is also associated with another group of Heroes. 

Anyone want to guess who they were based on?