The New Trade Paperback Versions of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries Are Out!

I'm happy to say that the new trade paperback versions of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries are now live on all the Amazons. For those who are interested, you'll find them at the following linked locations:

DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT: amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk.

A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH: amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk.

TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER: amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk.

Thank you to all of you who have come with me on the journey through all these great new covers. Enjoy!

Cover Reveal for TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER

We've finally come to the last of the new covers for the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries' new release in trade paperback format. Once again, many thanks to Jess Danna Photography for the wonderful custom job. She was tireless in giving me exactly what I needed for all the covers and I'm thrilled with the results.

This cover is the one that is closest to the original, but that's because this is the scene that starts off the whole book. When Five Star asked for our input on what we wanted on the cover, it was our answer then, and it's still our answer. Our cover is just a little closer to the actual prose. *big grin*

The case in TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER kicks off when Prohibition-era skeletal remains are found inside the wall of a Massachusetts speakeasy, lost to time for roughly seventy years. Jess built this image out of pieces instead of starting with a base photograph as she had for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT and A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. She used a skull from the pictures that I took in 2011 for this blog when I was doing a series of blog posts on using skeletons to determine sex and age (you'll see this same skull gracing the cover of LAMENT THE COMMON BONES). The sledgehammer used by Matt and Rowe to take down the wall came from a photo shoot Jess did for one of her Bachelor of Photography projects at a blacksmith's workshop. And the bricks themselves came from a number of pictures taken at a condemned building in town.

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The only other aspect I wanted to make sure was captured was the flavour of Prohibition. So Jess added an aged barrel, just like the ones found in the back room of the speakeasy.

Put it all together and this is the final result:

And the full cover for the trade paperback print version:

This cover was the most work intensive of all of them as it was built from components and had to be combined seamlessly. But I'm very please by how it came out.

And now the good news! The trade paperback versions of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries will be available on April 24th through Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk. That's next week! So if you want copies of these new versions (D, I'm looking at you!), I'll be back next week with active buy links. See you then!

Cover Reveal for A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH

This week I'm happy to present the next new cover in the new trade paperback editions of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH. Once again, this cover comes care of Jess Danna Photography.

Of all the original covers we had, this was the one I was least happy with, partly because it was the least organic. There are so many themes in this book that combining them all in the cover lead to an image that looked artificially constructed, at least to my eye (news flash - I'm a scientist and a writer, not an art director, so I may have this all wrong). So in designing the cover, I wanted to simplify things. We have both the themes of firefighting as well as witchcraft, so I chose to go with the theme of fire because in many ways, fire fulfills the role of one of the books antagonists.

There are three major fires in the book - an antique store, a church, and a residential home. Of the three, I felt the second fire at the church had the greatest visual potential. The church we used while writing the book was based on Holy Trinity (German) Catholic Church in Boston (though our fictional church was located in Salem) which closed in 2008. In it's heyday, this was what Holy Trinity looked like:

There was no way I'd be able make a quick trip down to Boston to get an actual shot of the church, but Jess had the perfect answer - a smaller church of similar architecture not far from her apartment. So we waited until it finally stopped snowing (January in Canada, what can I say?) and trekked downtown so Jess could shoot the church. She took a bunch of shots, but this ended up being the perfect one:

This was a great place to start, but there was still a lot that needed to change. The fire takes place at night, in October, just a few days before Halloween (so, no snow...), and the church needed to be a raging inferno complete with flames, smoke, and a glowing skyline.  Jess managed all that through Photoshop.

From a late afternoon, sunny winter scene, she gave us this:

And the full cover for the trade paperback print version:

I love the mood of this cover and I feel it really embodies how this case got away from Matt and Leigh for while. This fire is the low point of the book for everyone involved, so it's right that it's the focal point of the cover.

One more Abbott and Lowell cover to go next week as we reveal the new face of TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER!

Cover Reveal for DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT

Over the next few weeks, I have some exciting cover reveals for our Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries. When Five Star closed down its mystery line, they returned the hard cover publication rights to us. And while we didn't want to continue to publish this series in hard cover, trade paperback seemed like the perfect print format. We commissioned all new covers for the series as created by Jess Danna Photography and we'll be bringing them to you one at a time. And as I find the process of making these covers interesting, we'll also look at how the individual designs came about.

DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT depends very heavily on its sense of place.The salt marshes of Essex county are practically a character in the book. It's also an area that's near and dear to my heart and my daughters' who accompanied me to the marsh in Massachusetts on a research trip. So when Jess and I sat down to brainstorm the new cover, there was really only one possibility for us - our own photos of the actual marsh.

From a technical standpoint, Jess was given some challenges, but easily managed them. All our shots were taken in bright and cheerful daylight, but that wasn't the mood we wanted. We wanted something that captured the darkness and danger of the marsh.

She started with these two pictures:

She combined the images, removed any sign of life in the form of houses or outbuildings, changed day into night, added the correct star constellations for when the book is set in that location (September 2012), and then spent time working the colour tones to make them just right.

Honestly, I really love this cover. It's Matt and Leigh's marsh, right down to the last detail. Looking at it, I remember standing there, the sea wind blowing around us, hearing bird song and the rush of water through the marsh grasses. It's like a trip down memory lane, back to one of my favourite places.

Now, without further ado, here is the finished cover:

And here the full cover for the trade paperback print edition which will be available later in April:

More to come on availability in the coming weeks as we are actively finalizing this version of the series.

Next cover reveal - A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH!