Angkura – Erin Ulerich

The Cover Story: First Ask to Final Design

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my YA Christian Fantasy novel that releases on November 7.

I’ve probably mentioned it, but it feels crazy that writing Angkura:Hesed has been a 12-year process. I have been working on this book since 2014 so the manuscript has had its share of rewriting and revamping. My children were 7, 8, and 10 when I began reading them the first versions as bedtime stories. Back then the title was Angkura: The Fight for Hope. They submitted cover design ideas.

Then, around 2018, Jacob asked if he could design the cover. He was in high school and my son’s best friend, so I said yes, not really knowing if this idea would stick. It took until 2024 until I really started thinking about the cover.

Phase One: December 2024

I sent this title reveal to my subscribers. Until this point, I hadn’t really thought about the cover. My attention was on the words inside the cover.

In the years it took me to finish my book and get ready to talk about the cover, Jacob graduated from high school, went to college, took classes in art and photography, and discovered a love for drawing and design. In September of 2025 we dusted off our 2018 convo and began seriously talking about cover elements, color pallet, and style.

There are two very important trees in Angkura: Hesed, so I knew I wanted a tree on the cover. Jacob and I walked around the Gulf Park campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in long Beach, MS, and visited the Friendship Oak, who has been around for over 500 years and has its own story to tell.

Phase Two: October 2025

I began sending concept ideas to Jacob. I would send him ideas and give him full permission to “art it up.”

I horrified him with my Canva creations.

Jacob says I gave him very little to go on. A tree. A pear. 3 jewels. A dove.

I say I gave him prompts and a lot of creative freedom.

Phase Three: November 2025

The first design Jacob came up with was fantastical and included the elements I asked for, but he was not really pleased with it.

I was overly optimistic about the editing process and teased a Spring 2026 release with part of this cover design. In reality I had no idea how long the editing process would take, hence the November 2026 release date.

I didn’t realize Jacob wasn’t happy with the cover design. He sent me a different cover design in December, and I knew it was THE ONE.

Final Phase: December 2025

Jacob incorporated my original concepts: the dove, the tree, and even the three gems. (We moved the pear to the inside of the book.)

The blue and gold are also purposeful. Each country of Angkura represents a different culture in our world. I’ve left hints throughout the story to help readers figure out which real-world country is represented in Angkura: Hesed.

Jacob also designed a map of Angkura and book swag that will be available soon. We are already talking about ideas for the next book cover.

Working with Jacob has been a blessing. I appreciate the time and energy he spent on the book design. He believed in my work enough to want to help out, even way back in 2018. Seeing him grow in talent and ability has been a joy.

Retracing this journey amazes me. Back in 2018, Jacob knew he liked to draw and I knew that one day I would need a cover for my book. That is LITERALLY all we knew. We didn’t know which college classes he would take, or that he would be really good at design, or what doors would be opened for indie authors all these years later.

But the Lord knew.

If this jaunt down memory lane does anything, I hope it will encourage those with a dream to keep moving forward and to trust the Lord to provide what you need when you need it. If He has given you an idea, then He knows what you will need to bring that idea to completion. If that feels too good to be true, email me. I have a 12-year process where this happened time and time again. Jacob and our cover story is just part of the journey.

Angkura:Hesed ebook is now available for pre-order .

Paperback and ebook will release on Amazon on November 7.

Follow me on Goodreads and enter my Goodreads Giveaway before October 31 to win a copy of the ebook.

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Erin Ulerich lives and writes in a rural Mississippi community beside the beautiful Natchez Trace Parkway. She is the author of In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life, a devotional that encourages readers to notice God’s presence in the ordinary moments. Her first YA fantasy novel, Angkura:Hesed will release on November 7.

Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com, on Instagram and Facebook.

Find more Angkura: Hesed updates on Instagram @angkuracollection

When Younger Me Started Talking

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

How’s your relationship with your younger self?

When my son was in sixth grade he had a pizza business. My parents owned a bakery, so they would help him make the pizza dough, put the pizzas together, and freeze them. He would sell them frozen from a deep freezer at our house.

A couple of years into his business, my son turned to me and said, “When I am working in the kitchen with Mama Lane and Pappy, I feel alive.” He paused and smiled. “I feel like I’m doing what I’m meant to do.”

In May we attended his Chef pinning ceremony and he asked Mama Lane to pin him. It was a beautiful full-circle moment. A moment where I realized that my son is still walking side by side with his younger self. He listened to that feeling of this is what I was made to do and pursued a degree in Culinary Arts. In that ceremony he could fist bump his younger self and say “Hey, we made it.” They will walk into the future together.

My relationship with my younger self is very different. I made choices in my teen years that I regret. I put my younger self into a perpetual time-out. She’d made too many mistakes and couldn’t be trusted.

I didn’t realize that’s what I had done until later. Life got busy and noisy with marriage, career and raising three kiddos. My younger self and her wounds were easy to ignore.

I began writing Angkura: Hesed as an adventure story for my children in 2014. In the beginning it was structured like a Magic Tree House book. Twelve chapters. The main characters were children. Non-stop action. In this early version, there were two older teens that represented me and my husband and three younger kids to represent our three children. But it wasn’t finished. The story wasn’t quite right.

The more I wrestled with the story, the more my character’s story rose to the top. And in the struggle I realized, it wasn’t my character, it was the voice of my younger self, the one I’d been ignoring all these years.

She wanted her voice back.

I did not welcome her with open arms. I was resentful about decisions she made years ago, and in the next few drafts of the story, her character was not very likeable. She was moody and angry. An early reader commented that she didn’t really like my main character.

That’s when I realized I didn’t either.

Then I read Running Away to Home by Reni Bumpas. Simply put, this book is about a young girl who made bad choices. Getting to know the main character and understanding her reasons for her terrible choices helped me feel compassion for the decisions made by my younger self. As I read this book, something happened.

Healing.

I began listening to my younger self, journaling her words. I began asking why we made the choices we did, and I listened to her answers for the first time.

After years of ignoring her, I embraced her. I forgave her. I forgave us. We began working together to shape Elizabeth’s character in Angkura: Hesed. Maybe that’s why it took me 12 years to write this book. I wasn’t just creating a world and a storyline, I was rebuilding myself.

Angkura:Hesed is our fist bump. It is our “Hey, we made it.” And I am looking forward to walking into the future with my younger self.

But there is also more to consider. My older self can look back along the span of my life and trace God’s redemption in spite of my foolishness and mistakes. I can see the beauty of the story He has been weaving this whole time. Older me can point out this beauty to younger me, because she hasn’t learned to see it yet.

Angkura:Hesed also honors the bigger story, the one God where God is weaving all of our stories together to accomplish His plans for redemption. This is where hope comes from. No matter the view from the moment where you and I are right now, we know that there is more. We know that God has good planned. This is how we walk through a broken world with hope.

We need both sides of ourselves.

Where are you today? Are you on speaking terms with your younger self? Our younger selves are messy, I know. But they have something to say, and we have something to teach them.

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Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com, on Instagram and Facebook.

What Does Love Look Like?

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

I used to be a hopeless romantic.

Between fairy tales with princesses searching for true love’s kiss, Sweet Valley High books in Junior High, and 80’s Rom-coms, I definitely had my ideas of what love should look like.

Sleeping Beauty is my favorite fairy tale because in this story the prince fights for the princess. He fought a fire-breathing dragon to rescue her.

He thought she was worth fighting for.

This shaped my definition of what love should look like: To be found worthy of fighting for.

What does love look like? is an important question because our answer drives the ways we think and act in every type of relationship. It determines our reactions when people treat us badly. It drives the way we treat others.

It is such an important question that I made it the theme of the first book in the Angkura series.

Before a YA reader picks up my book, they will already have an idea of what they think love should look like. They will probably have experienced betrayal of some kind, and I suspect they will have made some mistakes and need to know forgiveness and redemption are possible.

I can say this because we are all looking for worth, acceptance, love, and security in a broken world filled with broken people. The people in our lives don’t always fight for us, do they? Even those who love us sometimes step away when we need them most. Sometimes they look at the fire-breathing dragon and choose self-preservation instead. When that happens, we feel rejected and discarded. We hold onto destructive relationships in hopes that one day that person will see our worth.

The search for worth, acceptance, love, and security is not uncalled for. We were made to experience those things. We just look for them in the wrong places.

And that is where hesed comes in.

I was well into adulthood and parenthood when I discovered the word hesed. And I was stuck. Stuck in the gap between what God’s Word said and what I felt. God’s Word said He knew me, but I did not feel known. The Bible said I was chosen and cherished, but I was not feeling that at all. So in a moment of frustration, I told God exactly how I was feeling and asked Him to help me.

He used hesed to bridge the gap between His truth and my feelings.

Hesed is a beautiful Hebrew word. Simply put, it is God’s promise to show mercy and steadfast love to His people just because they belong to Him.

Hesed is love and action combined. Because God promises to love His people, He also promises to be loyal to them. It is faithfulness within relationship. God’s generous sense of compassion, grace, and mercy is at the heart of hesed.

Hesed is the prince picking up his sword and fighting the dragon to get to Sleeping Beauty. Hesed says I will fight for you because I love you. You are worth whatever the cost.

This grown-up little girl had been looking for that prince my entire life. I looked for him in friendships, in boyfriends, and in my marriage. I twisted myself into a human pretzel hoping to convince others that I was worth knowing and worth fighting for.

Hesed helped me see that I had it backwards. I was already chosen. I was already cherished. I already had a Prince that fought for me.

Hesed provides the things we are all searching for: worth, acceptance, love, and security because it points us to the place we were meant to find them. It points us to God. God’s love for His people is the perfect example of love.

This is what love looks like.

Discovering hesed bridged the gap between God’s truth and my feelings. It helped me see God’s tender, unfailing love for me and brought me into a closer relationship with Him. It changed the direction of my relationships. I didn’t put unrealistic expectations on those around me, because I was experiencing hesed with God.

Studying its meaning and pouring over the ways it is used in the Bible completely reshaped my definition of love. It grounded me, giving me the strength to push away the lies about my worth.

Since we are made in the image of God, we have the ability to show hesed to those around us. We can show mercy and forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve it. We can show compassion to those in need. Every healthy relationship we have mirrors an aspect of God’s hesed to us.

By the time a YA reader finishes my book, I hope they will know their worth and that this will guide them in their friendships and relationships. More importantly, I hope that they will have a deeper understanding of the depth and tenderness of God’s love toward them.

I am no longer a hopeless romantic, because hesed is filled with hope.

Why I Wrote A Christian Fantasy Novel

This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.

Back in the late 1970’s, when there were three television stations, and my sister and I were the alternating remote controls, I remember a few shows that came on once a year: The Wizard of Oz (the flying monkeys terrified me), the Sound of Music, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in Claymation, and a cartoon version of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. I also remember the 1970’s version of The Hobbit, but I honestly don’t remember if it came on more than once or if the weirdness of it just etched itself permanently in my brain.

This was before streaming, before DVDs, before VHS, and the only way to watch something on TV was to be on your couch at the exact time the TV Guide told you to be. It was a very bossy little magazine.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fascinated me. Four children finding adventure by going through an ordinary piece of furniture? Sign me up, please!

I was young, so I didn’t catch the depth of the story the first few times I watched the movie, but I knew I did not like the scene of Aslan on the stone table and I asked questions right along with Lucy and Susan “Why doesn’t he fight? Why is he letting evil win?” Moments later, I shed tears of joy with them as Aslan came back to life.

I wasn’t a believer, and my family didn’t go to church back then, but I did go to church occasionally with my grandmothers, so I recognized the parallel of the scene of Aslan on the Stone Table and his resurrection with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Year after year I watched the movie, and as I grew older different things stood out to me. Every time I watched the Stone Table scene, it was powerful. It brought me to tears in a way that the accounts about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection in Scripture didn’t. It captured my imagination.

And as I grew in my faith, the scene from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe helped me feel the range of emotions surrounding this historical event of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

It sounds a little crazy that a fantasy story could help me understand a historical event, but that is the power of story. Facts give us the framework of an event, but story captures our imagination and helps us feel the moment.

Story also lowers our defenses, so that truth can be seen. The account of King David and Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 is a perfect example of this. In the previous chapter, David, who already had numerous wives, slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife. When she discovered she was pregnant, David tried to cover it up, and when that failed he had her husband killed.

David knew he was in the wrong. And Nathan, as a prophet, could have walked in with a list of David’s offenses. Instead, he came in with a story. A story that completely slipped through David’s defenses and brought him to repentance before the Lord.

That’s the power of story.

How does this connect with my latest project?

I love writing that traces the beauty of redemption in our stories. I love writing devotions that help people see God’s presence in the everyday moments of our lives. This project contains all of that plus adventure in story format.

Angkura: Hesed is a YA Christian Fantasy that explores the importance and the ripple effect of our decisions to hold on or to let go. It follows the story of Elizabeth and her process of trying to decide to hold on to, or let go of a relationship. But it is not just about her, because her story intersects with the stories of those around her, who experience their own battles of choosing to hold on or let go.

It is also the story of Elizabeth getting to know God and learning to trust Him.

It is Christian fantasy, because I wanted to explore the wonder and creativity of God. I wanted to describe moments when Elizabeth hears His voice and feels His presence.

It is Christian fantasy because I don’t just want Elizabeth to know Him. As the author I want every reader to get a glimpse of God in the pages of this story. I hope that believers will read Angkura:Hesed and grow closer to God. I hope non-believers will read it and be drawn in by His kindness and tender love.

I could have written articles about how to get to know God. I could write persuasive blog posts about when to hold on in situations and when to let go. I could write about building resilience. Or the importance of Biblical hope in this broken world.

I could have. And one day maybe I will. But for this project, the Lord led me to build an entire world that points people to hope. He helped me develop characters readers can cheer for and weep over as they travel through their struggles of holding on and letting go. Characters that resonate with readers and characters that help them see things in their own lives they might need to hold on to or let go of.

That is the power of story.