and then there's a cover...

Sometimes it feels very quiet here at my desk. Hopeful manuscripts are off being read and considered by new publishers. My patience is tested as I wait, and check emails, and wait some more.
Projects that have already been accepted progress slowly through an editing process apart from me, occasionally popping back onto my desk for another check, a tweak here, a reworking there.
I have the occasional speaking event that I prepare for (this year being a deliberately quiet one in that regard), but there's not too much preparation required. 
So I just chug along with my notebooks and laptop forming new stories from the fragments of ideas I collect on the way home from school or the beginnings of research for something larger.  
It's quiet, but it's not stagnant.
It's productive, but not frenzied and there isn't much to show for the work that goes on.
Until I get an email, like I did this week, with the cover image of the new book due for release in a couple of months. Behind the scenes, without my input, the illustrator and design team have been bringing another one of my books to life. This time it's Keep On Keeping On, the seventh book in the Dig-In Discipleship series. 
Here it is. Due out in July. 
And I think it's looking good.