One day, 2 POLAR OPPOSITE book birthdays

Today we celebrate 2 book birthdays. Yes, somehow I wound up publishing two stories on the same day (but different years). They’re also entirely different in tone.

From 2017, we have THE BUREAUCRAT, which is like something Kafka would have written if he had ever had the nasty misfortune of encountering a phone tree. It’s had two covers so far and I’m thinking it needs a third. Here’s the original cover (by me, when I was first learning how to photobash things) and the most recent cover (art by Christian Bunyan)

The Bureaucrat (Cover)
Cover to THE BUREAUCRAT - A creepy office worker stands grinning with blank eyes in front of a wall of spooky blank eyes.

Get your copy of THE BUREAUCRAT

Next, we have THE CAPRAMANCER NEXT DOOR, from 2020. This one’s become one of my favorites–I think it’s because it has a lot of things I like in it (adventure, magic, talking animals, male and female co-leads, an optimistic ending). Also, people keep sending me smiling photos of themselves with the cover, which makes me happy, and not just because I illustrated he cover myself. 🙂

I hope to revisit these characters someday in a Christmas adventure! Ah, so much to write, so little time!

Cover for THE CAPRAMANCER NEXT DOOR: A laughing woman wields a glowing shepherd's crook while a goat leaps through a portal overhead

Celebrate with your own copy of THE CAPRAMANCER NEXT DOOR.

 

Cover Makeover: THE BUREAUCRAT

As one of the first short stories I published, The Bureaucrat got the best cover I could make at the time (2017). And while I still like the vibe the original acid green cover brings to this Twilight Zone-esque tale of just deserts, I thought it was time for an update that brought the human(??) element to the fore. And thanks to artist Christian Bunyan, I’ve now got a new cover that ups the creep factor by ten!

Here’s the before:

The Bureaucrat (Cover)

And the creeptastic AFTER!

Cover to THE BUREAUCRAT - A creepy office worker stands grinning with blank eyes in front of a wall of spooky blank eyes.

The Bureaucrat: An Uncanny Satire is available now in ebook (digital retailers) and paperback (Amazon).

Click here to read an excerpt here at Pixelvania Publishing.