Fiction Friday | Art & Checked Impressions

Any other art fans out there? Do you enjoy reading books with artworks in it?

Back in 2010 my husband and I were blessed with the opportunity to visit North America which saw this redheaded Aussie insist on a trip to every redhead’s spiritual home: Prince Edward Island, aka the home of Anne of Green Gables. Of course, this trip couldn’t just be about Anne, so we did what many Aussies do and decided to really get our sightsee on. This saw us drive from Boston to PEI to Montreal, Muskoka, Toronto and Niagara Falls before finally flying from Buffalo to Chicago.

Once in Chicago we had several days to explore, which meant seeing everything from the Art Institute, to seeing Chicago’s Stained Glass Museum on Navy Pier, taking a cruise along the river to check out the stunning architecture, visiting the top of the John Hancock building, eating deep dish pizza and visiting a church in a black neighborhood, and visiting a Chicago Blackhawks ice hockey game. I LOVED my time there with my husband exploring this famed city. In fact, I loved this city so much I used it as the setting for the very first book I wrote, Love on Ice.

When the wonderful Iola Goulton told me after an editing review that my 155000 words might be a tad long, I then decided to take drastic measures and chopped off the final third of the book, and changed the setting of Love on Ice from Chicago to Detroit. (Although Love on Ice is really more an internationally-focused novel, with scenes set everywhere from Sydney, Australia to Beijing; Sweden; Calgary and Vancouver, so it’s not really set in one location. You can grab a copy of this Winter Olympics story to check it out for yourself!)

Taking out a third of the original story still left a good portion set in Chicago, which I then used as the setting for a new story called Checked Impressions. I focused this story primarily on the Art Institute of Chicago, which is one of the most fabulous art museums I’ve visited, and made my heroine (Allie) someone who works there as part of the PR department. Because this is book 3 in a Christian hockey series I enjoyed playing with stereotypes, and gave shy and art-focused Allie another great (yet secret) love: ice hockey.

Honestly, if you get the chance, visit the Art Institute, especially if you enjoy Impressionist art. Its collection of Monet, Manet, Pissarro and Gaugin is so impressive (ha- see what I did there?), and I was so glad to have the chance to focus on one of my favourite pieces of art, the magnificent A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. This huge painting takes up most of one wall, and was painted using tiny dots that seem to shimmer as the colors contrast, drawing the eye and making the observer want to know more about why this painting was created.

It certainly draws the attention of hockey player Jai Mullins, who finds his appreciation for art increasing as he grows in his appreciation for a certain art museum guide. It was fun to show how stereotypes and preconceptions can lead to misjudging people, and to explore how social media can paint a very different impression of a person, so much so that we often need to have our first impressions ‘checked.’ It was also good to explore the concept of romantic notions such as ‘you complete me’ or how we’ll only be okay once we find ‘the one.’ Delving into these notions and giving a God-focused alternative was another fun aspect of writing this novel.

I hope readers and fellow art-lovers will enjoy the art mentioned in Checked Impressions.Want to find out more? Visit my website at https://www.carolynmillerauthor.com/the-original-six-romance-series and see some of the photos from my travels that inspired this book and series, as well as fun Pinterest images, and Spotify playlists.

Here’s a bit about Checked Impressions:

Sparks fly when a hometown hockey hero meets a classy art-loving museum guide hiding a secret…
Jai Mullins is used to being the fastest man on ice. Trouble is, his ability to find a genuine woman is tracking at glacial melt levels. He’s trusting God she’s out there, but he’s wary of getting trapped by a superfan, when all he wants is someone with whom he can be real.
Allie Davis has two great loves: impressionist art and hockey. More specifically, a certain hockey player. But between her shyness and her family, she’s convinced she’ll never meet him, let alone connect with him in a non-embarrassing way.
Until she does. And they connect. And romance sparks.
But she is hiding a big secret, and he’s about to find that first impressions sometimes need a reality check. Will they learn to trust and find a way forward, or will half-truths lead to further hurt on opposite sides of the country and lonely lives?
This Windy City romance has plenty of heart, humor, and swoon-worthy kisses in the third book of the Original Six, a sweet, slightly sporty Christian contemporary romance series.

Preorder your copy (out next week) at Amazon, Amazon.com.au, Kobo, Koorong.

Now back to you: can you think of books you’ve read that incorporated a love of art or art museums? Is there an artwork you’d like to see featured in a book? Let’s talk!