A little piece of awesome

So when I finally got the cheque/check/however the hell you want to spell it for my STORMDANCER signing fee, most author folks I knew encouraged me to go out and buy myself something nice with some of the spondoolicks. This is reasonable logic given that:

1) These payments arrive with the same pace as everything else in the publishing industry, which as previously discussed, is fucking glacial quite slow. So when they do arrive, you should probably do something to mark the occasion.

2) You generally work like a Guchi wallet sweatshop child quite hard to finish your novel, find an agent, find a publisher, do your edits, dance the dance of social media, and all the other stuff authors have to do between hurling televisions out of hotel room windows and doing rails of Bolivian off booth babe boobies at San Diego Comic Con (I have my doubts anything remotely resembling this actually happens to famous author types, but I have to maintain some level of rockstar chic) so giving yourself a little reward after all that hard work might somehow make the months of lost sleep and peptic ulcers worthwhile.

3) What's the point of having money if you never enjoy it? You can't take it with you. Ask a fucking pharaoh.

So, long story short, I decided to commission a piece of artwork from an awesome illustrator who's work I've admired for a long time. For those of you who aren't hopeless gorram nerds, Genzoman does a lot of work on trading card games and RPGs, and if you actually clicked on his gallery link above, you'd know he's as awesome as discovering a crumpled $20 note in an old pair of jeans whilst cruising through the Jurassic rain forest in a time-travel hovercar with several scantily clad hotties of your preferred gender/orientation with the stereo cranked loud enough to cause an extinction level event.

So, without further ado, here's Genzo's illustration for STORMDANCER. Note, this isn't a cover, and won't actually be used anywhere in the book. It's just a little gift from Jay to Jay to remind me "Hey, you're really doing it, kid."

Oh, and before I go practice my mad telly throwing skillz: All you UK folks, STORMDANCER is available for pre-order at the Book Depository!

Click to embiggen.