Oculus is here

So this is my cover. It's full of creepy crawlies. And seeing that you've probably already viewed it by now on my sidebar or through the tab above, I wanted to offer a little explanation of what's going on here. The cover does fit the book. Even if you may be scratching your head and thinking...can Mike really write about spiders
this much? Yes, yes I can. So here's the scene that this cover actually reflects (although it is a symbolic cover and not an actual scene as taken from the book):

*****

(Kolin and Kathy in front of a computer terminal,

and Kolin tells Kathy to start a video they both can watch)

Kathy did as instructed.  A video started up, showing an individual approaching the front of the building.  He wore a long cloak, but his face was unmistakable.  Charon possessed skin as transparent as glass.  He had silver eyes and deep red hair that flowed down from his scalp and swept over his shoulders to fall in the darkness behind his hood.  As he walked forward, he parted his cloak, and Kolin saw the redness of Charon’s heart, beating under all that transparent skin, supplying blood to the demigod’s limbs so that he may live.

From inside the flap of his coat, millions of glass spiders emerged and washed across the black asphalt like a glittering flash flood.  Charon directed them like Poseidon must command the waves of the ocean.  They blazed with their own silver light and swarmed over cars, benches, and lampposts, scurrying toward the front of the building.  Guards at the doors pulled out pistols and shot off a few rounds but were quickly overwhelmed by the spiders.  These tiny arachnids with gears visible on the inside of their glass skin spun silver thread about the struggling humans, encasing them, and then proceeded to drill into their heads, lacing their brains with microfilament fiber optic wire.

The video had no sound so Kolin couldn’t hear the screaming.  But he could see the men and women shrieking.  He watched.  His skin got clammy under his armor; his mouth dried of spit.  Despite the fact that the wounds inflicted by the spiders were small, blood flowed over the floor as thick and sticky as syrup.

The spiders continued their march and entered the building, cocooning anyone they came across.  The millions of tiny creatures were unstoppable, like a deadly tide, and they crawled over everything, leaving threads of blinking light that flowed into Charon’s body.  People fell in the lobby and became enshrouded in webs.  They collapsed in doorways or in the chairs in which they sat.  Meanwhile, Charon just continued to cackle and smile with glee.

*****

So what's going on with the cover. Well, the color red is very important to the book. The team that Jordan plays on is called "The Big Red" and its colors are red and white.  Jordan plays ice hockey so the spiders are walking on what could be construed as glass or ice. Blood on the ice is an important theme in this book, hence the blood droplets underneath the spiders. So in a way, the cover is perfect for the story and they definitely look like a part of the same series. I wasn't sure if I quite liked it, but it's growing on me. What do you think?

The book did go on sale today. Go HERE for purchasing options.

A FAVOR ==> If you are looking for an idea for a post (I'm not asking for any special treatment), could you just mention the cover in a snippet either today or tomorrow?

I'm not blogging tomorrow so I'll see you Monday.

A little scene from Oculus

So, this Labor Day weekend, I sent off my completely finished sequel to Deron at Double Dragon, and he says he'll probably publish it about the same time my book was done last year (so spring of 2013). That's really cool. I have to say, this book took A LOT out of me. I've been fighting with it for over two years, had two extremely talented beta-readers go over it, had two editors go over it (and no Andrew, I'm sure there's a comma somewhere that's out of place, but I just don't care), and I went over it myself about a DOZEN times. You know, birthing a sequel is hard as sh*t. I don't know how some people seem to do it so easily.

Oculus is also bigger than Slipstream. It has more meat to it, and I introduce a wide variety of characters so that when I sink into the lowest levels of depravity (as I am prone to do), then I have lots of fictional people I can torture and make do deplorable things.

So for some reason, my "artistic" bug hit me this weekend. See, I used to fancy myself an artist, but I realized that I suck so I gave up on my dreams of doing it professionally years ago. But that doesn't stop me from dabbling with coloring pencil every now and then.

So I drew a scene from Oculus that stars Brianna (a mysterious Watcher character--yes that's a religious reference) and a more mature Jordan. The scene is provided for you as a reference to the picture that I drew:

They both picked up a radiation badge from the control room operator. Jordan knew him only as Harvey. Then she followed him into the room where she took a seat next to him in front of a bank of computer screens. Jordan waited for the go ahead and fired the synchrotron at a previously prepared ice sample and awaited the data.

“How do you prepare the samples?” she asked him.

“Dr. Wolfson had a bunch already completed,” he said. “But she did walk me through how to do it on my own. Basically, ice samples are decontaminated by three repeated washings in ultrapure water. The first step involves taking a sample from an ice core in cold storage and melting it at room temperature. Once that’s done, you gently agitate it for homogenization and then partition it into individual vials of polystyrene Coulter accuvettes, which have all been pre-cleaned using the ultrapure water I mentioned. Dr. Wolfson told me repeated checks showed the dust concentration difference between the first and the last aliquots is typically around the level of measurement-reproducibility. That is, the aliquots provided for the different analyses should be comparable.”

He paused, watching the screen, gaze flicking from one monitor to the next. “All right, there’s the fluoroscopic data we’ve been waiting for.” He gestured with his hand. “We are looking at the insoluble elemental composition of Antarctic dust, which appears to be composed of more aluminum, less silicon, and less potassium than the previous sample that I took from a different depth. The result suggests that either the characteristics of the dust source changed at some point in history, which could mean factors as simple as soil development, or that there was a change in the relative contributions of the overall varying sources.”

“Meaning that there was an environmental change.”

He nodded in agreement. “Exactly—it’s like a portrait of earth’s history captured in time—in a single drop of water.”

“How do you know all of this without looking it up or cross-referencing the fluoroscopic data with a chart?” Brianna asked.

He glanced at her. “Well, I memorized it before I met with Dr. Wolfson so that I’d have a better chance at getting the job. The data on known fluoroscopic rates is on the university website.”

“You memorized all of the numbers?”

He nodded. “I’m not lying. Honest.”

“All right, what’s this?” She pointed at a number on the screen.

“That,” Jordan said, looking at it, “is the numerical figure associated with the element neodymium. How did I miss that?” He scribbled down the details of the water sample on a notebook.

“Why is that significant?”

He swallowed, looking up at her. “I-It’s not! I-I mean it is, but it isn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying to me.” “Honest, I’m not. I-I mean the finding is significant because none of the previous samples that I’ve examined showed even the slightest traces of Nd in them, but it’s in such microscopic amounts that it’s difficult to say how it got in the ice.”

I did the picture using coloring pencil and finished it in Adobe Photoshop. Basically, imagine yourself looking out at them through a computer screen (the words are printed on in front of Jordan). I aged him some from my other pic I did of him because he's now a college student. Brianna is a junior so I wanted her to look a little older. They say: "Neodymium Detected, Ice Core Sample 111, Origin Dome A: Antarctica.

Features I put in the picture:
1) Antarctica, because that's becoming increasingly important to the story.
2) The name of the particle collider, "C.H.E.S.S." is on the wall.
3) Jordan's red "Cornell Hockey" hat is a powerful symbol in the book, and he wears it everywhere. He plays hockey on the University team. Plus, I thought Jordan looks good in red so I put him in a red checkerboard shirt. Also red (blood) is another powerful symbol. Green was more important in the first book.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. If you like my drawing, you can Pin it or whatever. There's no fear of copyright since I own it, and I say you can use it. Have a great Tuesday.