Happy Friday and big congratulation to @goldenteach, who won the books!

Don’t worry – more giveaways to come, including an ARC of the Frame-Up VERY SOON!

Speaking of The Frame-Up:

I was so happy to be finally able to share the final cover of the book this week!

I think Ian Schoenorr did a spectacular job!

And while I love the painting in the center, it’s the frame that blows me away. When the books comes out, it will be in gold foil and I can’t wait to see it!

Best of all, the frame gives you a sneak peek of some of the paintings and some of the story, and is its own little puzzle box.

Greenwillow Books has done a spectacular job designing the book, the highlight of which, along with the cover, will be fifteen colour glossy pages of the masterpieces that are actual characters in the story.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share the paintings with you to whet your appetite, and to explain why I chose them, but today I thought I’d start with why I wrote the book.

If you haven’t gone to read my post revealing the cover, hop over here now!

There’s background about the book and links for pre-ordering! You can also find the pre-order links on my Welcome Page! Pre-Ordering is a wonderful way to support books and helps drive early sales!

I wrote a cover letter for The Frame-Up Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) and thought you might all like to read it, too:

Have you ever wanted to step inside a painting, see what it feels like to be on the other side of the frame? I’ve wanted to do that my whole life, ever since I watched a movie as a kid where the painting’s creepy eyes ‘followed’ the main character around the room. And when I read the first Harry Potter book I fell in love with the idea of the Hogwarts paintings having lives of their own, separate, and often apart, from the wizards they shared a home with.

            It’s late 2015. I’m sitting in my living room, staring at my great-grandmother’s painting of a cow. I wonder if it mooed a lot while it was being painted. And then I wonder what the purple lady in a nearby painting will think if the cow suddenly wanders into her painting. Will she shoo it away or invite it to stay for a visit? There’s a story there. A book even.

            I’m lucky, I grew up with art and artists and own nice paintings, but I live near a place with amazing paintings: The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, a place I’ve visited since I was young. The more I thought about setting my book at the gallery, the more excited I became. Many of the paintings have been there for decades. Surely by now they’ve created their own world. I started to make a list of the questions I’d like to ask them; do they get sick of one another and of people staring at them; is it hard to sit still for hours on end; do they wish they could talk to us? The more I wrote about their world, the more I wished I could step inside it myself.

            Now, when I visit art galleries, I talk to the paintings and imagine what it was like the day they were painted. Oh sure, they don’t usually talk back, but they might someday. And I keep a careful watch out of the corner of my eye, because you never know when one of them might slip up and I finally get a chance to make a new friend. Art has always been magical to me. I hope that when you finish this book, you’ll be inspired to visit an art gallery or to paint a masterpiece of your own. I promise that once you start to think about paintings as living things, they come alive for you. Happy reading and painting, Wendy

What I DIDN’T want in telling this story was for the characters in the paintings to be able to leave, a la Night at the Museum. When you read the book you’ll see the world beyond the frames is its own separate society, with its own rules, and its own problems.

When the two worlds collide, that’s when the fun starts!

Next week, we’ll start talking characters!!!!

Have a great week!