The first changes are underway. Very soon I’ll be able to post the British cover for Darkness, and the American cover for The Light of Burning Shadows. I love them both!

In really cool news (and after much negotiating with lawyers…ok, no lawyers) the marketing phenoms better known as my parents will once again head north, this time from their winter tanning grounds in Florida, to tell everyone they find how wonderful their son is (tough luck for my brother, all he does is save children for a living). Publicity Tour 2.0 “This time it’s parental” gets under way in another week. They’ll be stopping in at bookstores all along the eastern seaboard as they trek back to Canada, armed with all sorts of free goodies courtesy of Pocket Books. I’ll be charting their progress here and giving a shout out to the friendly bookstore staff they meet.

My folks really are aces for doing this, especially when you factor in the monster RV they’re driving around in. Last year’s tour took them from Texas to Canada, this year they start out in Florida…maybe next year I can convince them to winter in California…

C.C. Finlay’s new historical fantasy series, Traitor to the Crown, goes on sale later this month (the first book, The Patriot Witch, has been available as a free download for a few weeks now). A Spell for the Revolution and The Demon Redcoat follow in May and June respectively. It’s a brilliant melding of magic and the Revolutionary War and not to be missed. I’ve been a fan of CC’s for years, all the way back to when he was the author known as Charlie. I love his approach of injecting fantasy into a well known historical setting. Both genres will benefit from this cross-pollination.

Still getting everything together for my revamped website including cover images. I’ll have some additional cool stuff to add in the form of widgets…once someone explains them to me in more detail. Good thing the marketing folks and my web designer know what they’re doing. I’m not sure, but I think a widget is a small furry creature in Star Wars…no, wait, that’s an Ewok.

A cheese store just opened up in my neighborhood, and I went in for the first time tonight. My reaction on entering…um, that’s a lot of cheese! They certainly picked an appropriate name. I ended up with a sharp Zamorano from Spain made from sheep’s milk, and a creamy vintage Irish cheddar. Now I need to find a cracker store and I’m set.

Later this month I’ll have all this information on my website proper, but for now I’ll try to keep everyone updated here. I’ve been receiving emails asking me about the next book so I thought I’d address it globally. I gather from your emails that a lot of readers have been burned over the years by series that were never completed, or took an inordinate amount of time with huge gaps (years) between books. I’m happy to report that Book II is on track, on schedule, and completed. I have in my hands the copy-edited ms for Burning Shadows which will shortly become first pages, followed by second pages, and so on. The pub date of July 28, 2009 (North America, not sure what it is for the UK, Oz, NZ, Russia, Japan, etc. yet,) is a go, which means the book will ship from the warehouse earlier that same month. Writing on Book III has begun, and as far as I know is scheduled to pub in the summer of 2010. Other projects/series are in the works, but at the moment that’s all I can say… 🙂