Recently, art has played an important role in several popular novels. In some cases, the pieces of art are real; in others, products of the author’s imagination.

In Jojo Moyes’s The Girl You Left Behind, a dual timeline historical fiction novel, a woman’s portrait becomes an object of desire for a World War I German soldier and later the centerpiece of a modern-day battle over its rightful ownership.

In Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi, a stranger purchases portraits in a small-town coffee shop, returning them to their subjects. In the process, the man becomes a part of the fabric of the small town and changes lives.

Mona’s Eyes, by Thomas Schlesser and Hildegarde Serle, an elderly man introduces his ill granddaughter to fifty-two of the world’s greatest masterpieces before she loses her sight forever.

You Found Me uses art in ways completely different from each of these other stories.
In my soon-to-be-released novel, art is the love language that first draws Scooter and Grace together. On their first date, Scooter gives Grace a portrait he’s painted of her and shares his dreams of a life of painting.

A dream that will both bind them together and break them apart.

In Iris’s room in a Greenwich assisted living facility, a reproduction of Camille Pisarro’s The Marketplace, Gisors hangs over the settee.

The painting serves many purposes.

It reminds Grace of a morning she spent in a market in St. Rémy de Provence, a morning when she discovered a painting that would change her life forever. It illustrates Iris’s attachment to valuable things, a need that will affect her relationship with her son. Lastly, it quietly reveals that Scooter has lived a life surrounded by art, something that shapes his future and the decisions he makes.

I remember reading James Michner’s Kent State: What Happened and Why as a teenager. In the book, Michner recounts the story of a behind student photographer, John Filo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young woman described as “the girl with the Delacroix face.”

​That phrase not only inspired me to learn more about Eugène Delacroix, but also fascinated me with the idea that the style a classical artist could so perfectly describe a contemporary emotion.

Perhaps that’s what art does best. A painting can preserve a memory, expose a truth, or express an emotion there seems to be no words for.

In You Found Me, Professor Whitman tells Grace, “Art often does that. It remembers for us.”

You Found Me  is an upmarket book-club novel about memory, loss, second chances, and the way art can shape our lives.​

​We’ve all heard the expression “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
 
When it came time to choose a cover for my debut book club fiction novel YOU FOUND ME, that phrase kept echoing in my mind. I researched the balance between visual appeal, thematic depth, engagement, and invitation to discussion. I read about the importance of thumbnails on Amazon listings.
 
I wandered bookshops like Books on Third in Naples, Florida and Hills & Hamlets in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. I checked out the display tables in my local Barnes & Noble. I wanted to understand that certain something that makes someone want to pick up a book and turn it over to read the blurb on the back cover.
 
Readers, I’ve learned, judge books by their covers all the time.
 
I first thought about images directly reminiscent of the events in the novel: a woman floating peacefully in water, a field of lavender in Provence, a high school swimmer on the starting blocks, or even a crumpled towel on the edge of a pool. Any of these images might have been good choices for their connections to the story.
 
Then I studied the covers of some of my favorite recent novels, the books I imagined YOU FOUND ME might one day sit alongside on bookstore shelves. Books like Broken Country, The Paper Palace, Tom Lake, and The Last Letter from Your Lover. These covers don’t illustrate the story as much as they create curiosity.
 
This is what I wanted for YOU FOUND ME.
 
Because painting is such an important part of the story, I started looking for a piece of art that might fit all criteria.

That’s when I found HELD LIGHT.
 
Held Light, an original painting by Georgia artist Gwen Sears Bullock, immediately reminded me of the kind of painting Grace Cochran would have chosen for the walls of her Manhattan gallery, The Cochran Gallery.
 
Grace believed the best paintings didn’t answer questions, they invited the viewer to linger, remember, and discover something every time they saw the painting. As a gallery owner, she sought mystery, beauty, and vulnerability.
 
Most of all, Grace believed every viewer brought their own story to the painting.
 
In the painting, the woman appears caught in a private moment, suspended somewhere between waiting, dreaming, and grieving. There’s something both vulnerable and self-contained about the woman, and because she isn’t looking directly at us, she seems caught up in a contemplative pose, a personal memory.
 
Is she remembering someone? Waiting for someone? Or is she merely allowing herself to disappear inside a memory she’s tried to outrun for so long?
 
Like Grace’s story in YOU FOUND ME, Bullock’s piece Held Light seems to ask us to think about how memory, longing, and hope shapes our lives.
 
Isn’t that what the right book cover should do?
 
Not tell us what’s inside, but make us want to find out.
 
My deepest thanks to Gwen Sears Bullock for graciously allowing me to share her beautiful work on the cover of YOU FOUND ME.
 
I shared the painting with Danna Mathias Steele, the graphic artist designing both the cover and interior layout for my debut novel. The cover she created from Bullock’s painting feels exactly right for Grace’s story.
 
I hope one day soon, you will be perusing the shelves of your favorite bookshop and come across YOU FOUND ME and feel the urge to turn it over and read the back cover!
 
And yes, I hope you’ll judge the book by its cover!

​Some memories never fade. Some lead you home.
Kenneth Lemm
Author - Screenwriter
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My life as an author took a rather circuitous route. One that began as an avid reader, alone in my room, on the steps of the Bookmobile, or on the bench before swim team practice.
In sixth grade, our English Arts teacher assigned us with the task of writing a novella. At the time, the class had been reading A SEPARATE PEACE, KON TIKI, and NATIVE SON. I was in heaven.
As far as I know, no copy of my novella survives, but I remember being profoundly proud of my story. DEAR and THE  was a story about a prisoner of war in Vietnam and the increasingly heavily redacted letters of home that kept his spirits alive until he was freed.
Heavy stuff for an eleven-year-old, right?
Without any role models, I had no idea what a life as an author might look like. So when I went to college, I turned to my second love, architecture. I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Landscape Architecture, and, in a tough job market, landed in Atlanta where I later cofounded Land Plus Associates, a nationally-recognized design firm specializing in high-end residential design.
The idea of telling stories nagged at me, though, demanding attention.
One year, my mother gave me a creative writing course at a local community arts center. There, we focused on short stories, and after having three stories published in literary magazines, I was reminded how important writing was to me.
I bought a copy of Final Draft software and taught myself the art of screenwriting.
I entered my first screenplay, DRUM, in a contest sponsored by The Writers Store and judged by Simon Kinberg (X-Men, Mr. and Mrs. Smith).
DRUM won second place!
I went on to earn over two dozen screenwriting awards, including WRITER OF THE YEAR, BEST SCREENPLAY, BEST DRAMA, and others. What followed were six produced award-winning feature films, and two more currently in pre-production.
Since buying that first copy of Final Draft, my writing focused on stories meant to be seen.
As a screenwriter, you learn to think visually, to reveal character through movement and dialogue, trusting only what an audience can see and hear, and trusting them to understand what is left unsaid.
I still love that kind of storytelling.
But I started wondering what it would be like to follow a character where a camera couldn’t go, where a microphone couldn’t record.
Inside.
There was an image I kept coming back to. A woman discovering a painting that illustrated a private moment from her own life. A moment the artist couldn’t possibly have witnessed.
Who painted it? How could it possibly exist?
And, more importantly, what if finding the answer forced her to reexamine everything she believed about her past?
These questions eventually became YOU FOUND ME.
In the novel, I met Grace Cochran, a successful Manhattan gallery owner who discovers a mysterious painting that seems to tell a story about her life and connect to the first love she believed belonged to another lifetime.
Writing the story changed the way I thought about storytelling.
As a screenwriter, I would have relied on Grace’s physical reaction to finding the painting, and trusted the director, actress, and cameraman to reveal the meaning of the discovery.
In the novel, I could be there.
I could hear her thoughts. I could remember the loss the way Grace did. I could understand why her past could unsettle the life she built for herself after the devastating loss.
I loved that connection.
On September 22, 2026, YOU FOUND ME will become my first published novel.
With this blog, I invite you to share this journey with me. Share in the experience of moving from screenwriting to fiction, the books and authors I admire, the places and relationships that inspire my stories, and news about what I’m working on next.
I hope this becomes a place to talk about the stories that stay with us long after we’ve turned the last page.
I hope YOU FOUND ME might become one of those stories for you.
Some memories never fade. Some lead you home.
Kenneth Lemm
Author - Screenwriter
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