New Cover???

My cover artist and I have been working overtime on a cover for Book #7 of the Emily Kane Adventures. The working title is :

Girl Goes To Wudang

and the cover will sport a tagline roughly to this effect:

With Li Li in tow, Emily seeks something new at the home of Taoist martial arts,

... but surviving the trip may require more of her old skills.

But don't worry. I'm hard at work actually writing the book. This author stuff turns out to be a complex mechanism with a lot of moving parts. Also, sometimes, taking a moment to imagine the cover can help crystallize certain scenes for me.

I'll try to keep you posted on any developments along the way... and once my cover artist and I are satisfied, we may even give you a sneak peek at the finished product!

New Cover for Book #1, Girl Fights Back

Some of you may have already noticed, but for the rest of the world, it's official, Girl Fights Back has a new cover.

In case you're wondering, I was fond of the old cover, since it seemed to express at least one dimension of the passions I think Emily Kane experiences in Book #1. But other elements of the cover didn't seem to me to fit as well. She wears too much make-up, and seems too socially self-assured, and mainly displays anger and resentment.

By contrast, the new cover seems to me to express those passions and others better. In particular, beyond merely exhibiting anger, this image shows her insecurities and her resolve. That's how I tend to think of Emily, a girl who wishes for friends, and worries about her identity, traits she shares with just about every teenager who's ever lived. But she's different, too, full of confidence in one aspect of her life, but also worried about the implications of her vast abilities in the martial arts.

One last thing it shows is the depth of the darkness of her eyes, which the old cover lacked.

Nick Russell's Big Lake free this week (10/6 - 10/10) on Amazon

My friend, Nick Russell's hard-boiled police-thriller Big Lake is free this week on Amazon.

He's a NY Times Bestselling author, and this is the first book in a 5-book series, all wonderful, gripping stories. I highly recommend them all!


When an armored car hijacking leaves two men dead, Arizona Sheriff Jim Weber takes the crime personally, because one of the dead men is his brother-in-law. His hunt for the killers leads him into a world of sordid sex, deceit, and violence, with a suspect list that includes jilted women, a family of anti-government survivalists, and the beautiful wife of the richest man in town. 

With a plot that has more twists and turns than an Arizona mountain road, a cast of characters you won’t soon forget, and a shocking ending that shakes the town of Big Lake to its very foundation, this first book in the Big Lake series will keep you turning pages to the very end!  

One reviewer has referred to the Big Lake mystery series as “Mayberry Meets Twin Peaks." It’s a combination of humor and intrigue that launched author Nick Russell’s first Big Lake book into Amazon’s 100 Top Paid Kindle books for over 78 days!