A new cover for Comes The Dark coming soon

Hello folks.  I figure it has been a while since I shared any information with you on the re-release of Comes The Dark as well the other two books in the trilogy by Permuted Press.  After all, they won’t be available until 2013, right?  So there is some time before that happens.  But of course, things are always happening behind the scenes.  Comes The Dark has already been re-edited for the new version and is in the publisher’s hands.  More to come on a release date-for paperback, ebook, and hopefully even an audible version (which will make some people I know very happy).

Well, I wanted to share a bit of recent news with you which made me as giddy as a school girl.  Well, maybe not THAT giddy, but I thought it was pretty cool.  I was just show the new artists rendition of the cover for the book and it was, in a word, AWESOME!  Nope, I can’t share any significant details with you at this time, mainly because it is still a work in progress, but suffice it to say that it will look completely different than the original cover…as will the covers for Into The Dark and Beyond The Dark.  Now let me state very clearly that I absolutely love what Philip R. Rogers did with the original covers.  He took my vision for the first cover and transformed it into something wonderful, and then did the same with the second and third books as well.  He is an incredible artist and I love not only my covers, but just about everything else he has ever done for the anthologies I’ve been in and the other writers he’s worked with.  His stuff has a distinctive air to it that is instantly recognizable to me.  He tells a tremendous story with his images that draw the eye.

The new covers have gone in a completely different direction.  I’ll just say that there will likely not be a zombie in sight on any of the three, but for anyone who has read my books, they’ll see some things from the stories that they’ll recognize right away with what is on display.

Just as a refresher, the new books will have a significant volume of new material-they’ve jumped from being three books at each roughly 60,000 words to each being anywhere from 80,000 to over 100,000 words each.  Since much of that is the Dark Stories that I have posted on my website, but with even more additions, I will likely be pulling those stories down prior to the release of the books next year.  I figure, if you haven’t read the rough versions of them already, you can check them out all polished up and shiny for the new books.

In other news, I continue to work on the fourth book in this saga, which, as I have stated before, isn’t the fourth book in the trilogy (and I know saying a phrase like that sounds like a bad joke) but the start of a new two-book saga.  A duology, if you will.  The trilogy will stand on its own and these two new books will as well, though they will be tied together by characters and a shared world.  The book has been outlined for a long time, but what I truly love about writing is how the story changes and morphs as I write it, so even I don’t know what to expect from page to page.  It is a heck of a journey, and I look forward to sharing with you on down the line.  I apologize that I don’t share more of what I write on a daily or weekly basis, but I’m a bit shy with that.  I do have a plan though, to start sharing some of my zombie short stories, or some tidbits of them, that have either been previously released, or yet to be, just to keep you folks entertained a bit when you come to my blog.  I know my reviews are just fascinating (har har!) but I hope some of my own work might be of interest as well.

Until next time…which I hope will be in the next few days…see ya!