Here it is!

When the Regal House design team showed the cover to me, I felt something settle. The envelope. The house. The solitary figure walking toward what she doesn’t yet understand. It captures the emotional truth of the book—that even when life falls apart, something meaningful may be waiting.

I don’t have the book in my hands yet, but this cover holds it.

How it came to be:

When it came time to design the cover, the designer gave me an extensive questionnaire about setting, mood, motifs, themes, and character. The process served as a fun exercise that forced me to articulate what I’d been circling for years.

It’s a contemporary story that begins in Michigan and unfolds on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina—a remote fishing village in the Outer Banks. The tone is wry and tender. Humor softens the edges of grief and anxiety without minimizing them. It’s introspective, character-driven fiction with a strong emotional arc, a bit of suspense, and a thread of romance, because yay!—who doesn’t like that?

Certain images recur: a stack of discarded love letters, an old cottage, cats lost and found, and a small island community full of eccentrics, ghosts, pirate lore, banjos, and broken hearts.

I’m so excited!

Preorders are now open, though the book won’t be published until October. Either way, I’m grateful beyond words to everyone who meets this book at the beginning.

My sincere thanks to the designer at Regal House for an exceptional job bringing this cover to life.

So, tell me, what do you think? Like it?

Linda K. Sienkiewicz writes fiction, poetry and essays.
Her second novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, is coming October 27, 2026 from Regal House Publishing: When an anxious overthinker finds discarded love letters, her fixation on a stranger pulls her straight into chaos, heartbreak, and the unraveling of her carefully constructed life.
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