A Cover's Worth a Thousand Pages

July 5, 2012 — July 4th is over. That means the next holiday to take over the seasonal aisles at stores is…Halloween (sorry, Labor Day). Spooky is about to come back in style again.

So I figured this was an ideal time to debut the cover of my upcoming book, The New York Grimpendium, especially since it streets in just a couple of months. Check it out:


Awesome, right? I’ve been sitting on this cover for a while (literally, as it’s my smartphone wallpaper), and that’s been really hard to do because of how excited I am by it. Both the artwork and jacket design were done by Brian Weaver, who also created the cover for the predecessor volume, The New England Grimpendium.

His work was responsible for a lot of my sales, and once again he’s created an image that makes me look more like an author than all he content inside…and which I assume will make the French re-think the original design choice of their historic gift to the U.S.

Of course, if I’ve done my job right, the book will have value in addition to its cool cover. The content is of the same type and organization as the New England version: My experiences visiting death-related sites, artifacts, and attractions all over the state of New York, including those connected to 1) Legends and personalities of the macabre; 2) Infamous crimes, killers, and tragedies; 3) Horror movie filming locations; 4) Notable cemeteries and other memento mori; and 5) Classic monsters, complete with directions and pictures for anybody else who wants to see some grim.

This time, however, it's a bigger book by about 50 pages. More sites. More pictures. The New York Grimpendium should be ready to ship by the end of August, just in time to celebrate the season of the witch. When the time comes, I’ll be doing photo essays on OTIS, appearances throughout New York and New England, interviews, guest articles, and whatever other publicity opportunities come my way. I'll let you know exact dates as they happen. Probably too often and too much. My apologies in advance.

Make a good set, no?