Finally: MAPLECROFT has a cover!

In case you missed my big Twitter/Facebook freakout over the weekend - BEHOLD. Maplecroft has a cover!





For bonus awesomeness, click over to this piece at Tor.com - where you can see some behind-the-scenes action, and read about how the marvelous artist/photographer/designer/model made it all happen!

I can scarcely articulate all the ways in which I adore this cover, but my favorite bit has got to be the color scheme: red! and blue! and purple! and gray! Those of you who've seen my house know precisely why this delights me so; throw in a pop of yellow/gold, and you've got my absolute favorite combo.

So that said, I was thinking to myself, "Self, I haven't really changed my website since 2009." Not except for the header banner and the link colors, anyway. It's been one part laziness, one part "if it ain't broke," and one part lack of inspiration. Well, now I have inspiration - and now I have a new look going on here at the digital homepage.

(If you're reading this via RSS or LiveJournal, click here to visit the main site and see for yourself.)

Anyway! If you're interested, I would just like to note that Maplecroft is officially available for preorder in all the usual places - so if you're interested, there's no time like the present to score a killer present for your future self.

Try your favorite local independent bookseller if possible, or hit up the usual suspects if needed.

Here! Let me help:
Preorder Maplecroft at an independent bookseller near you
Preorder Maplecroft at Amazon.com
Preorder Maplecroft on Kindle
Preorder Maplecroft via Barnes & Noble and on Nook


Click any of those links to read the official flap copy, and get an idea of what the story's about in better detail. Or, if you're the curious sort, keep scrolling - and read what I used in my proposal. (For a slightly different take on it, I mean.)

Ahem.

Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. It’s not as if she had much choice. Her parents were trying to eat her.

Now it is 1894.

In the wake of her trial, Lizzie has changed her name to “Lizbeth A. Borden,” and she’s bought a house on the other side of her oceanfront hometown—a sprawling Victorian mansion called Maplecroft. Her inherited fortune has been invested in a terrific library and laboratory, installed in Maplecroft’s basement; and from this center of operations she observes and researches the supernatural foe that so hideously transformed her parents.

Someone has to. And no one else even suspects what’s truly happening. No one knows that just offshore lurks an ancient god, starved for blood. Its agents are masked, and eager to kill. They are ready to invade.

But one woman stands guard on the shore between the ocean and Fall River. She has seen the dark forces of the Atlantic firsthand, and she has no illusions. Every night she hears the tide bring messages of madness, apocalypse, and monsters.

And she is ready to meet them all. With an axe.