Well, this is a moment for me. Pardon me while I absorb it.

Okay, done.

Twenty-eight years and two months ago, I stood there in the science fiction section of a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Forest Hills and beamed at The Hammer and The Horn–all five copies of it. The cover was painted by Rowena Morrill, a most talented and acclaimed artist for whom I have the greatest personal admiration. But it wasn’t quite right. The antagonist on the cover was too small, too apelike, too spectacularly dressed. The hero was smiling when he shouldn’t have been. And there was orange in the background. A ton of orange.

Quite frankly, it bugged me. Not just then, but for the last twenty-eight years.

And it wasn’t until now that Caio Cacau, a crazy-talented Brazilian artist you’re going to be seeing a lot of, has come forth and un-bugged me. The cover he lovingly rendered for this re-release of The Hammer and The Horn is full-on, take-no-prisoners dynamic. The hero doesn’t look like he’s having fun–and why should he? He’s fighting for his life. His adversaries are big and brutish-looking, as they should be. And, perhaps best of all…orange? Not so much. Continue reading

A couple of weeks ago, my pal Ilsa Bick asked me if I wanted to do the Big Blog Hop. What’s a blog hop? I asked. Turns out it’s an elaborate game of tag. Ilsa tags me, I talk about my latest book, then I tag someone else, who talks about theirs. If you’re nice enough to play along, you get to meet one author after the other until you’re dizzy and you throw up.

Or something like that.

Ilsa, by the way, is one of the spookiest writers working today. Her  latest book is The Sin-Eater’s Confession. Get it, read it, tell all your friends how good it is.

But in the meantime, check this out…

1) What is the title of your latest book?

Aztlan: The Maxtla Colhua Mysteries.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’ve always been interested in the Aztecs, and with the “end” of the Mesoamerican calendar looming, I wanted to do something alternate-history-ish with it. On the other hand, I wanted it to be different — and what’s more different from your normal alternate history than a noire murder mystery? Continue reading