Spring and By Summer Fall

Covers for new projects have been popping up all over, not unlike the way the tulips and lilies are beginning to come up here -- which is foolish, given our snowy springs. They never learn, so will poke through the snow drifts year after year.

"Vast Wings Across Felonious Skies" will be in The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk (Running Press, July-ish). I adore this cover -- it goes with the other books Sean Wallace has done for Mammoth. Gleaming borders and a sassy lady, and yeah. "Vast Wings" involves a female Japanese-American pilot in an alternate WW2. She encounters a strange portal while flying and the rest would be telling. Internment camps, pin-ups, alien life forms. I loved writing this one, and was thankful to have Janine Spendlove and Dean Smith Richard read through it and tell me what I got right and wrong about my lady pilot and her planes.

Spring will also bring Giallo Fantastique from Word Horde (May -- preorders NOW!). Could this cover be any more creepy? Oh, probably -- but how fantastic. I am not sure if it's a reboot of an actual giallo poster, but it evokes the mood of them all so well! If you don't know giallo, you should google that up, and see all the YELLOW. (Why is it always yellow? Yellow wallpaper, kings in yellow, hmm.)

I think my story, "The Threshold of Waking Light" is a little more on the fantastique side than the giallo side, but you can be the judge of that. I invented a Chicago where everything is black and white and shades of gray (probably more than fifty). Colors exist in a specific realm in this world, and shine girls know how to access that realm. But why and how and what is UP with the dwarf?

The other book that has cover art is She Walks in Shadows (Innsmouth Free Press, Fall 2015). This is the book that arose from many #teamsquid discussions on Facebook and the idea that ladies aren't actually into or writing Lovecraft-themed fiction. I was beyond pleased to be asked to take part in this. My story, "Lockbox," was an experiment for me. It's the first time I've played with a specific technique, which I am not going to mention here in a clear effort to drive you mad.

Two other books that I am waiting to see covers for are Cassilda's Song and Leaves of a Necronomicon, both edited by Joe Pulver. I wonder if Cassilda will also be YELLOW. My story in there was inspired by "The Yellow Wallpaper," of course of course.

A Mythos Grimmly should also be along this year, but I am not entirely sure when. It contains many familiar names, blending fairy tales with Lovecraft lore. I got to play with Rapunzel and towers and secret messages wrought across ages and planets and yes. I am eager to see what people make of "A Wisdom that is Woe, A Woe That is Madness"!