Where have I been, you might very well ask. In which case I’ll tell you. Norway. More accurately, a Norwegian fjord cruise on the Queen Mary 2. We had a fabulous time. Norway was spectacular: like Scotland on steroids. The place was spotless, with not a pothole to be seen. The weather? Also like Scotland. On steroids. When you could see them, the tops of the mountains were still covered in snow. When you couldn’t, because the whole thing was encased in a swirling mist, it was easy to believe that trolls (of the non-internet kind) were lurking in the dark places waiting for their chance to eat you.
Meanwhile, however, the bookwork piled up and I have been busy working my way through it. Hence the silence.
But now I have news. Two Times Murder has a cover!
Given that Greg Abimbola, my protagonist, is an ex-spy, my publisher wanted to lean into that with a more espionagey cover. They didn’t quite say it that way because “espionagey” isn’t a real word, but you get my drift. The bridge and skyline are real: the building I used to work in when I lived in Pittsburgh is on the extreme left, and the bridge is named for Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, the book that raised public awareness as to the damage DDT was doing to birds’ eggs. The man, though, is not real. At least he won’t be for much longer if he insists on walking down the middle of that road. The Rachel Carson Bridge is busy. My first reaction when I saw the cover was not, “cool!” it was, “he’s gonna die!”
I’m over it now. The cover is cool. I’m really looking forward to seeing it on the shelves on November 5.