ON A DARK TIDE - Cover Reveal!

I have been waiting impatiently to show this one off to you. I was really keeping my fingers crossed for a cover that reflected the gloomy atmosphere and mystery of ON A DARK TIDE, and because Jay Aheer is a genius, she nailed it. I knew she would! But it's still tense waiting to actually see the artwork that's going to represent your story. But now the tension is all gone, because this is an actual perfect cover.

See for yourself!

Lich Queen Cover Reveal!

So LICH QUEEN was in Evernight's newsletter this week, which means I can now officially share this gorgeous, perfect, perfectly gorgeous cover with you! I have been gazing adoringly at it since I saw the mock-up earlier in the week - now it's time for you guys to do the same.

*drum roll*

IN COLD BLOOD - cover reveal!

Okay, I did share the cover on Facebook and Twitter last night, but you've got to have an ~official~ cover reveal, right?

Ta-da!

How beautiful is this? I feel like every new cover is my favourite cover, but this is definitely my favourite cover. I love the colours and the wolf, and the blood spatter on the title. Perfection!

IN COLD BLOOD is out on Thursday 2nd February, and is the first in my Luporum mini-series. This is a spin-off from the Urban Wolf series, but you can read IN COLD BLOOD without having read any of those books. Here's the blurb to whet your appetite!

Phoebe Fairley wanted to be a librarian. Somehow, she’s become a vampire hunter. Women are dying across the country and the police are baffled. Phoebe’s just supposed to be gathering information on the deaths, but as the body count mounts, she can’t help but break the rules and get involved. She knows what the killer is – and catching and containing it is vital. If she can persuade the police to believe her, and keep her secretive bosses happy, she stands a chance of capturing a very real, very deadly vampire. Not bad for a werewolf who can’t shapeshift. 

Aisling is happy living as a feral wolf. She’s got no time for human affairs, until a mysterious creature attacks her and leaves her in human hands. Now, if she wants her life back, she’ll have to join Phoebe’s hunt. There are just a couple of snags. One, she hates humans. And two, she’s falling hard for Phoebe. With a monster to catch and her own past to protect, will Aisling trust her head or her heart?

Ethan's Makeover Is Complete!

Behold! Spanky new covers for GONE TO THE DOGS and ICE, ICE BABY!

I love them! It was so hard to settle on a cover for GONE TO THE DOGS, but I just love this artist's work so damn much, and they all had to have the "hand" theme going, so in the end I went with a cover I was instinctively drawn to and said "so be it."

This completes the Ethan Banning Files makeover. Next job on the Ethan To-Do list is to prepare DEMONIZED for self-publishing, which will include writing a brand new short story to include as a bonus. I'm still leaning towards dealing with AFTERLIFE first, but we'll see how the rest of the year pans out. In the mean time, the Ethan Banning shorts are available on Amazon and Smashwords if you haven't already checked them out (which you definitely should).

Ethan's Makeover Continues...

Recently I unveiled a new cover for DEMONIZED (coming back soon, definitely!), and Ragnarok treated me to a new cover for UNDERTOW, and all things being equal, I decided it was only fair to give the Ethan Banning short stories their own update.

I already have all the covers picked out, but I'm spacing out the purchases because, well, things cost stuff. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may already have seen the new covers for UNGRATEFUL DEAD and STAKEOUT, and I have updated the Ethan Banning page here on the blog too. However, I didn't ~officially~ unveil either one, so here they both are!

Aren't they awesome? The two I have picked out for ICE, ICE BABY and GONE TO THE DOGS follow the "hand" theme, and I can't wait to get them sorted out. The Ethan Banning shorts can be read in any order, but all come chronologically before DEMONIZED, so if you're after a quick Ethan fix and want a glimpse of his life when he was just a regular loser and not a demon-possessed loser, these are the stories for you!

DEMONIZED - The Shiny New Cover

First, the obvious thing. I found this cover before I saw the redesign for UNDERTOW, so I know there's no...cohesion between this, UNDERTOW, and the Ethan Banning shorts, but hopefully I'll be able to update the shorts in the future to match one or the other. And this cover is, I do believe, stunning, so I'm trying not to get hung up on aesthetics too much. And, you know, never judge a book, etc.

But if you do want to judge a book by it's cover, you could do worse than judge DEMONIZED by this one.

Ta-da! Once again, this is by the amazing Erica Petite, and I love it. I've got Strong Feelings about how Ethan should look, and I know that the Ethan in my head will never be the same as the Ethan in your head, or anyone else's, so when I went looking for new cover art, I resolved to focus on mood and how evocative the art was, rather than try to find the perfect cover model. This cover has the mood I want, 100%. I snapped it up without thinking twice.

As with AFTERLIFE, I don't have a release date set yet for DEMONIZED, but hopefully it'll be before the end of the year. AFTERLIFE will be the priority, because it's much longer and, well, it's really where Ethan's story starts, so that makes sense. News will come as I have it to share, I promise. In the meantime, enjoy the new covers! And if you can think of anything cool you'd like to see added to the updated books, let me know. I want to offer something extra for people who may already have read both books, if I can come up with something. Money is precious and I like to think if you part with yours for one of my books, I make it worthwhile.

So...missing scenes? Flash fiction or short stories? Q&As? Facts about Yasmin and Ethan's world? I'm open to all ideas!

AFTERLIFE - The Shiny New Cover!

Drum roll please...

Ta-da!

I cannot tell you how excited I was when I saw this cover originally, because this is just is Yasmin, and the colours and background are so perfect for Shoregrave and this particular tale. The stars were definitely right on this occasion. Many thanks to the amazingly talented and gracious Erica Petite for providing the perfect cover for AFTERLIFE's return.

And here's the blurb - reworded from the original and possibly still to be finalised:

Yasmin Stoker lives a double life. By day she's a ghost tour guide for Shoregrave's tourists. By night she's beholden to the undead king of the city, Nicomedes. Her duty is simple: keep the supernatural predators in check by feeding on their souls. It's an easy job until she witnesses a ghostly girl killing a teenage boy. 

When Nicomedes orders her to keep a mortal private eye off the trail, she has no choice but to obey - even though her insticts tell her not to, and soon she finds herself trapped in a deadly web of deceit. With her undead and human allies to help her, Yasmin must deal with rogue zombies, crazed ghosts, and a charming history teacher in her quest to solve the mystery. And along the way, she uncovers some heartbreaking truths about her own existence...

I don't have a release date in mind yet as there's a fair bit of work to be done on both AFTERLIFE and DEMONIZED, but I'm aiming to have them both available by the end of the year. Stay tuned for DEMONIZED's new cover later this week!

"Our creations must be shared to be art."

So if you've wandered over to my Facebook page or Twitter feed lately, you might have seen that UNDERTOW has been given a makeover. Just in case you missed it, here it is again in all it's glory!

This was a complete surprise to me, and I'm pretty blown away by the job Ragnarok's graphic designer, Shawn King, has done. It's also pretty timely, as just a few short days before, I decided to do something I've been dithering over most of this year. I'm going to self-publish DEMONIZED and AFTERLIFE.

For those who don't know the long, dull, irritating saga of Damnation Books/Caliburn Press, the short version is that I had some books with them, they were a categorically awful publisher, and now I have those books back and they still owe me royalties. Two of those books, NIGHT AND CHAOS and THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE, are now available through Evernight. The other two, AFTERLIFE and DEMONIZED, are not available anywhere.

But you need to read both these books to get the best of UNDERTOW and Ethan's story, I think. UNDERTOW stands alone, but Ethan's road to Beacon's Point begins in AFTERLIFE. The reason I've held back on doing anything with them for a while is that I didn't really know what to do with them. AFTERLIFE is an urban fantasy novel, the first in a planned series. DEMONIZED is a novella (around 20k). Whilst I probably could submit AFTERLIFE to either Ragnarok or Evernight and keep my fingers crossed that they'd want it, I don't feel like it's quite right for either publisher. And DEMONIZED is definitely, definitely not right for Evernight and too short for Ragnarok.

Self-publishing seems ideal, especially because I'm at a point where (thanks to Common Brimstone) I can invest a bit of money into decent cover art, something that's always held me back in the past. So soon, hopefully before the end of this year, both DEMONIZED and AFTERLIFE will be available again, and you can read Ethan's entire story, as well as my debut novel, and get the whole Shoregrave/Ethan experience.

Awesome!

I guess that still leaves the question of "will there be more Ethan books?" I do get asked this from time to time, and honestly, I don't know the answer. I would love there to be. I love Ethan and his fucked-up life. I love the setting of Shoregrave, and I could write a million stories there quite happily. So where are the problems?

1. Time. My writing time is limited and I have other series I would like to finish before I die or my arms fall off.

2. Audience. The Shoregrave/Ethan books have never sold well. BLOOD WITCH sold more in its first quarter than AFTERLIFE, DEMONIZED, and UNDERTOW have ever sold since 2009. A lot more. Is it worth me taking my limited writing time and dedicating it to something not many people want? That's a big question, more complex than it seems on the surface, and I really, really am not saying "I refuse to write these books because you bastards don't buy them." Maybe I'll go into that deeper in another blog.

3. Wretched Psychological Scars. I was writing the sequel to UNDERTOW in October 2012 when my dad died. At first I threw myself into carrying on writing to distract myself from that, but by May 2013, I was an utter, utter mess and I had to stop...well, everything, really. I pretty much had a mini mental breakdown, hid in the house for two weeks crying, and then decided to quit writing forever. Obviously I didn't, but every time I think about that book, I think about that part of my life, and I just feel anxious and sick. I will never finish that book as a result. I don't even want to revisit the plot and see what I can salvage of it.

So if I do go back to Ethan's series, I need to start over on that sequel. And that feels quite daunting, and I'm not ready to do it. Maybe one day I will be. I certainly hope so.

So, that's it, in a nutshell. Good news = new cover! AFTERLIFE and DEMONIZED coming back! Bad news = Ethan/Shoregrave future still uncertain. Overall, I'll say this is a win.

THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE has a cover!

I don't think I need to say anything, except AMAZING!!! I love it so much. Evanthe is looking sharp.

It also has a release date - tomorrow! THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE will be available for free on Wednesday 13th July from Evernight. Stay tuned!

DARK DAYS Cover Reveal!

I'll be honest, it hasn't been the best week. Last Thursday, Kyle and I had to make the heartbreaking decision to have our beloved Ferguson put to sleep. In the very early hours of the morning, he went into heart failure, and his liver was hugely enlarged. We decided to let him go peacefully while we still could. It was a horribly sad decision, not made any easier by knowing it was the right one. And, purely coincidentally, I've been ill ever since, so there's that. Anyway. Goodbye, my boy. You were a hell of cat. You had friends all over the world, and you were my fearless feline companion through many a domestic misadventure. There will never be another you, and I feel grateful to have been your favourite human.

As much as I would love the world to stop while I grieve, that's not how life works. So I have to keep on trucking, I guess. It's not all bad news. Amber Morgan had a new book out this week. That's good. Over the Christmas break I completed the edits on DARK DAYS and got a final release date (February 2nd). That's good. Yesterday I saw the mock-up of the cover. That was great. And today I got the final art files. That's awesome. Wanna see? Of course you do! Clickety-click.

COLD NIGHT MOON - Cover reveal!

Ta-da! I don't really feel like I need words. It's a beautiful cover, my ladies look great, and the colour scheme is perfect. And COLD NIGHT MOON is out this Monday, 16th November! So expect the usual flurry of activity then while I share links and basically ram this down your throats. Here's the blurb!

After a difficult year, Ayla Hammond wants to give her girlfriend Shannon a dream Christmas. A cosy, romantic cabin in the woods seems like the perfect way to put their troubles behind them and start the New Year right. And at first, everything is going according to Ayla's plan...Until night falls.

There's something in the woods. And it's after Shannon.