The Mumpsimus

My publisher, Black Lawrence Press, has announced that for every book they sell through their website from now through the end of the year, they will donate $1 to the American Civil Liberties Union. I will match this for my own book, Blood: Stories , meaning that every copy sold through the BLP website will also send $2 to the ACLU. I'm an ACLU member, and pleased with this choice of an organization to support because so many of BLP's authors are among the groups targeted by harassment, civil rights violations, and hate crimes — all of which are on the rise and likely to continue rising.

original image by Joseph Maclise In the Weird Fiction Review conversation I had with Eric Schaller , Eric asked me to talk a bit about designing the cover of Blood: Stories , and in my recent WROTE Podcast conversation , I mentioned an alternate version of the cover that starred Ronald Reagan (this was, in fact, the cover that my publisher originally thought we should use, until she couldn't get the image we ended up using out of her mind). I thought it might be fun to share some of the mock-ups I did that we didn't use — the covers that might have been...

We're almost there — my debut book, Blood: Stories , was scheduled for January release, but is going to be a couple weeks late, because things happen, it's a small press, etc. It looks like it's going to be a really beautiful object and well worth the wait. I expect copies will be making their way out in the world around the second week of February. [Update 29 February: Wrong about that. Physical copies have made their way to me, which means they're on their way to the distributor, and once the distributor has done all their distributory things to them, they'll be out in the world. Any day now...] The book's info has been submitted to the distributor ( Small Press Distribution ), and should appear in their databases early next week, which will allow bookstores and libraries to place orders. It should also be hitting all the online vendors soon. (It's been on Goodreads for a while.) That means the pre-order sale from Black Lawrence Press will end [an...