The Inexplicables

Ladies, gents, and the otherwise affiliated ... I give you ... the cover of The Inexplicables! Click to view larger, natch.

This time around the art comes courtesy of Cliff Nielsen, not Jon Foster (as with all the previous covers). I admit, I was a little worried about the shift - for the sake of consistency, if nothing else. But honestly I think it looks great.

Well played, Irene Gallo (of the Tor art department) and Mr. Nielsen! Fine work all around, and I can't wait to see this one hit the shelves this fall.

* * *
It's true, this is my first book without a female lead - though Princess Angeline and Mercy Lynch play fairly prominent roles; and it's true also that I have been promising people at least one zombie sasquatch. With this in mind, here's a bit of general blurbage on the book's contents:

Rector "Wreck'em" Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he'll be cast out out of the orphanage.

Wreck's problems don't stop there. He's been breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply--and he's also pretty sure he's being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know. Zeke Wilkes almost certainly died six months ago inside the walled city of Seattle. And it was Wreck who sent him in there.

Maybe it's only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can't take it anymore. He sneaks inside the city.

The walled-off wasteland is every bit as bad as he'd heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there are the monsters. Rector's confident that whatever attacked him was not at all human--and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold, and God help them all, it wasn't alone.

When the locals discuss the creatures, they do so in whispers. And they call them "The Inexplicables."