Hey, all! How’s the gang? Great? ME TOO!

Okay, now that I’ve gotten the false enthusiasm out of the way—the work is piled about shoulder-high right now; papers to grade, my fourth novel to finish and edit, taking care of my children, who I last saw playing near that abandoned toxic waste site—I’ll stop sounding like a corporate manager trying to drum up employee enthusiasm on a Monday morning.

However, I do have something pretty cool to show you.

There’s a cover artist over at Samhain Publishing named Angela Waters. She designs covers. Really awesome covers. Sure, some of her covers feature scantily clad people (after all, Samhain does publish a bunch of romance). But her horror covers include no smoldering gazes or swooning housewives sandwiched between power lifters. Her horror covers…well, they look something like this:

I don’t know your opinion on the above artwork, but I can tell you mine. When I first received this cover—which by the way is for my third novel THE DARKEST LULLABY, due out in early 2013 from Samhain Horror—my first reaction was a rapid intake of breath. Then I said, “Whoa.”

Yep, pretty eloquent.

Then my lips formed a goofy half-grin that I held for a good seven minutes. Then I scurried to the bedroom (where my wife was watching Weeds) and showed my wife the cover. “Wow,” was her response. She obviously liked it, which was made even clearer when she stared at it for a full twelve seconds before turning back to Elizabeth Perkins and Kevin Nealon.

This cover, by the way, is the third one Angela has done for my novels. The first was for THE SORROWS:

The second was for HOUSE OF SKIN, which I’ll start talking about a lot next week (ebook launching on June 5th!!!!!):

So, thank you Angela Waters. You’re three-for-three! Thank you also to Don D’Auria for acquiring this novel. And thank you to my agent Louise Fury for selling it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to gaze at the old-fashioned stroller and the eerie woods surrounding it some more.