Anybody joining me in licking this guy's neck and throat?

Generous writer that I am, I'm sharing my (and Rhianon's) guys with you. The book is "Dark Edge of Honor" and it'll be out in August from Carina Press:

Ah, just what was missing from the day.

Two days to go

Two days left at this job, three days until Turkey, eleven days until new job.

Stuff happened yesterday - I got the cover for "Lion of Kent", which is pretty damn impressive (despite the minor niggle that the armour on the picture is more than hundred years 'too young', but it's a minor niggle and mostly due to the fact that I simply cannot switch off the historian in me). I keep looking at it and the more I look at it, the more I like it.

That's the funny thing with covers. Sometimes they hit you in the face with a "WOW" ("Clean Slate" was one of those), sometimes they look great but aren't what you had in mind, but the more you work to get into the head of the cover artist (who tends to not read the story), the closer the two visions move together and eventually overlap. All this is totally independent of whether it's a good cover.

As a rule, I don't publish with publishers who have bad covers. It's my name on there, and I have a pretty strong need for good/appropriate visuals. Cheap Poserware and badly rendered anatomical monstrosities slapped together in 30 minutes aren't worthy to be put on months of bleeding hard work; bad/cheap covers feel like a slap to the face and I'm simply not having it. And with e-readers getting better screens and the all-singing, all-dancing (and pretty frivolous)iPad and all the clones that will follow, e-books will have to be pretty.

So, "Lion of Kent" looks like a movie poster. I really like it, even though it looks nothing like I imagined. But that's OK, because I'm not visually inclined that way. I'm not a visual designer, even though I'm a visual writer, so I'm leaving that aspect to the pros, and they do a great job. Hope to show it to you guys soon.

Then scenes from "Lion of Kent 2" hit me square in the face this morning. Some of that is really painful to "watch", in a way, because we're dealing with death and loss again, and, let's say, I have to open my own scars to get to the blood to write with. In some weird way, every dead major character is my mother. "Lion2" will be historical rather than romance. It's great that Carina supports us that way and allows us to write a series where part 1 and 3 are historical romances and part 2 is a purebred historical. It makes writing this so much easier.

I'm looking forward to getting the edits for "First Blood", too, so we can get that on the way before things get really hairy.

Writing yesterday didn't happen, but I made some progress reading. Tonight I'll do some more work in the old flat, and then that chapter's closed, too. I put a bookshelf up, too, and am now in the process of putting my remaining books on the shelves, which should keep me busy today and tomorrow. Saturday morning we're off to Turkey and I'll be incommunicado for a week (I really can't afford the roaming charges this time round and there's no internet cafe where we're going).

I expect to get a lot of writing/editing/planning done while in Turkey... that's the expressed reason for the trip. Sitting at the pool, reading, sleeping, eating, writing. Just resting up from the stress of the last 6 weeks and getting lots of rest and catch-up before the new job. I think it'll be exactly what I need.