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.