Reviews and contests…

I have two glowing reviews to present to you, one five star review for Peter the Wolf by horror and fantasy writer Willie Meikle, and a four star review for The Life and Death of a Sex Doll by Matthew Fryer. I really appreciate both of these reviews, and I thank both Willie and Matthew for taking a look at my titles.

And now, at long last, we come to the contests. First off, Werewolves.com got back to me with the winner of their drawing for a copy of Peter the Wolf. So congratulations, Ryan Hong, your book is already speeding through the print rollers for you.

So now we need to open some contests for this month. Goodreads approved both of my contests so you can enter to win a copy of The Life and Death of a Sex Doll or Peter the Wolf, IF you're a resident of the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

For those of you outside those territories, I'm running a contest for you from this post. And the rules are simple. To be eligible for one entry into the contest, in the comments section, tell me your totem. This is the animal most closely linked to your personality, so it's not which pet you wish you had. There's an easy joke about sheep, but I'll avoid being ba-a-ad.

For a double entry into the contest, I want you to explain why you aligned yourself with your totem. What makes you feel connected to this animal? What qualities do you see in it that you also see in yourself? This is an attempt at fostering a creative exercise, and it may crash and burn. But I gave y'all an easy entry, and this is like the bonus question for extra credit. And, if you get creative enough, I may even feel generous and toss in a third entry into the hat for you.

The Goodreads contests already have people entered for both books, so if this blog contest crashes out, it's not a total loss. But I'd hope after reading the glowing review for Peter's book that some of you will want the book and make an effort to explain why you want to be a wereweasel. (I'll give four entries to the person who explains why their totem is a golden hamster. Okay, no, not really. But I will laugh out loud for real if anyone does it.)

Oh, and cover news. I've secured the rights to an AWESOME piece of artwork to make a 6X9 print edition of A Collection of Vampire Shorts. This is a great goth image that complements the gorgeous cover art from Blood Relations, done by Karen Koehler. But this new cover was done by Bulgarian artist Teodora Taneva, who is also the artist for my upcoming Wendy Stoffel novel A Perfectly Empty Vessel.

And, Karen Koehler has turned in a final cover for Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies. So here it is, making it's big debut:

I love the look of this "Sandy," so I hope readers will also be charmed by her too.

And that's the news for today.