A couple of mock-ups here of old manuscripts, both created to be photographed for book covers. On the left is the old story handed down through several generations of Judy Whitaker’s family without being properly deciphered until young Judy took on the challenge. Yes, that scrawl is intended to be legible even though it looks as if it might have been done by a spider escaping from a bottle of ink. I created this to use for the cover of my novel Solomon’s Magpie where you can read the story of that old story.

On the right is my attempt at a facsimile of a biblical manuscript. You can see this one on the cover of Stories in the Scriptures. Together, the two of them link my apparently divergent interests: biblical studies and writing novels. It’s storytelling – what people do, and always have done. There’s a big difference, of course, between then and now. Ancient people had to prepare their papyrus sheets using reeds; I use a sheet of copier paper and cold tea.