Now you know I wasn’t kidding.

Here’s the cover for Aztlan: The Last Sun, which kicks off my brand-new series of 21st-century Aztec murder mysteries–probably the only series of 21st-century Aztec murder mysteries you’ll ever see. That is, until other authors see how it takes off and start to rip me — I mean, come up with Aztlan homages.

Nice cover, eh? So’s the price that goes along with that cover–only $2.99. Because here at Crazy 8 Press, we’re nothing if not sensitive to the havoc being wrought on people by the economy. (Also because a novella is shorter than a novel–but why split hairs?) Underneath this cover, you’ll find it’s still 2012–but in an alternate reality in which the Aztec Empire not only survived Cortes but went on to encompass what we know as the Americas. It’s in this world that Maxtla Colhua, Investigator for the Empire, has to solve a series of grisly murders as his calendar’s Last Sun drops toward the horizon. Can Maxtla find the killer before his city is ripped apart and the Last Sun becomes a death knell for the Empire?

Aztlan: The Last Sun. First the cover…and then the world!