Cover Art

Here's the cover art for the US hardcover edition of The Cold Kiss.



I love that the blood spot is actually a pair of lips when you look at it from a distance. I love the run-down motel sign, the snow... It all fits the book perfectly.

The people at Tor did an amazing job. I couldn't be happier.

The latest...

The Dutch rights to The Cold Kiss sold to Ilse Arkesteijn at Meulenhoff Boekerij in Amsterdam.

Once again, thanks to my agent, Allan Guthrie, and to Kevin Pocklington at Jenny Brown for putting in the hard work and making this deal happen.

Simon and Schuster UK

I'm thrilled to report that I just agreed to a three-book UK and Commonwealth deal with Simon and Schuster. They're going to publish The Cold Kiss in 2010, The Grove in 2011, and my third novel in 2012.

Thank you (again) to my extraordinary agent, Allan Guthrie, and to my new editor at S&S, Francesca Main, for making this happen.

Here's the link announcing the deal at Bookbrunch.

Update: THE GROVE

A few of you have expressed an interest in hearing more about my Kindle experiment with THE GROVE, specifically the numbers, so here they are for those of you who are interested.

It's been eight weeks since I put THE GROVE up for sale as a Kindle download, and as of right now I've sold over 2500 copies (roughly 300 copies a week). It’s also been the #1 selling Hard Boiled mystery on the Kindle for pretty much the entire time it's been up, and for the past several weeks it's been either the #1 or #2 top selling Hard Boiled Mystery on all of Amazon, including print books. This response has been surprisingly good considering I've had almost no promotion outside the Kindle forums.

I’m not sure what “typical numbers” are when it comes to Kindle books, but mine are way beyond my initial expectations. And while I think the low price and the high placement on the Kindle top seller lists has had a lot to do with my numbers, I’ve also received quite a few generous reviews from readers who I assume went on to recommend THE GROVE to friends.

Word of mouth is a great thing.

As most of you know, my goal in all of this was to build name recognition and promote my next novel, THE COLD KISS, before its published next summer. I won’t know if this experiment has been a success until the book is released, but either way it’s been a blast.

Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy (or plans to).

Der Kalte Kuss

I’m thrilled to announce that The Cold Kiss just sold to Marcus Gaertner at Rowohlt in Germany for publication in winter 2010/2011. Thank you to Allan Guthrie and Kevin Pocklington at Jenny Brown Associates for making this happen.

More Kindle News

First, and most exciting, is the addition of Allan Guthrie to the list of Kindle authors. Allan has made two of his award winning crime novels available on the kindle Two-way Split, and Kiss Her Goodbye. He also has a new novella up called Killing Mum, and while I haven't read it (yet), if it's anything like the rest of Allan's work, it's going to be great.

If you're a Kindle or ipod/iphone owner and you haven't read Allan Guthrie, this is your chance.

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THE GROVE is still doing well. It's been up for seven weeks and the response has been unbelievable. One new development is that the book is moving onto some of the non-kindle top seller lists. It's in the top 50 of all mystery novels, both print and kindle, and it's the #1 hard-boiled mystery on all of Amazon.

So that's cool.

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In other news, I've been busy typing away on the new novel, and I should have a first draft finished by Halloween and the manuscript ready to go out by the first of the year. I'm also a third of the way through another new book that I should have finished by June 2010. If all goes well, which it rarely does, I'll have both these books ready to go by the time THE COLD KISS is released next summer.

Wish me luck.

Online Book Review

Here's a link to the interview I did with Stacey Cochran for the Online Book Review.

Online Book Review

Stacey is a really nice guy who is incredibly generous when it comes to helping other writer's promote their work. So if you get a chance, check out his books for sale on Amazon:

Claws, and The Colorado Sequence>The Colorado Sequence