Cover Art for the BEAUTY HAS HER WAY Anthology

As promised on twitter, here is the cover art to BEAUTY HAS HER WAY (pre-order clicky link). The artist, fast becoming one of my favorite cover artists, is Alina Pete of Weregeek (a webcomic about gamer geeks you all should be reading).



This cover is a direct homage to the Luis Royo cover of Heavy Metal 140--one of my favorite Royo covers ever. Alina did a great job of capturing what I wanted in this cover.

With this cover art and the anthology author list, I couldn't be happier

My thoughts on "Dating a Writer"

The original of this is here: http://52hearts.tumblr.com/post/1126449830/20-great-things-about-dating-a-writer (at least I think it is)

I was amused by xhirox's take on it here: http://xshirox.livejournal.com/703822.html

This is my take on it.

Writers will romance you with words. If you mean talk about how awesome certain words like "thwart", "peril" and "triptych" are…then sure. I romance with words a lot.

Writers will write about you. Oh, heck yeah. And kill you like a punk. If I like you, I kill you off in something I write. In my horror collection, In a Gilded Light, I killed my best friend six times.

Writers will take you to interesting events. If you mean take you to a myriad of book readings and conventions where you know no one and often forget to introduce you because, sometimes I forget that you don't know everyone in the writing biz in the area…yep, I do that.

Writers will remind you that money doesn’t matter so much. Excuse me? Yog's law! The money always flows to the writer. Always. It may not be much but the money is important.

Writers will acknowledge you and dedicate things to you. Um. Maybe. If you're my spouse. Or you were absolutely instrumental in me writing whatever I wrote. Or if you gave birth to me and raised me…and that had some effect on what I wrote. Sure.

Writers will offer you an interesting perspective on things. I will tell you how the current situation is the perfect set up for a horror story. You know, the kind where everyone dies.

Writers are smart. Sometimes. Usually about whatever I'm currently researching at the time. Many pointless but true facts will be trotted out in non-sequitur fashion.

Writers are really passionate. Yeah. I am. Usually about writing. Or reading. Or gaming.

Writers can think through their feelings. I'm not really sure what this one means or how I feel about it.

Writers enjoy their solitude. And by "enjoy" I mean "need."

Writers are creative. No argument there. Just don't try to get me to be creative on demand in front of a bunch of strangers with no warning. The creative may border on (or dive into) strange in a hurry.

Writers wear their hearts on their sleeves. If you mean I often enter a social situation and spend a good amount of time people watching, making up stories about the conversations I can't hear, sure. If you mean odes of love in public? Not often. At least not a lot of the writers I know.

Writers will teach you cool new words. You got that one right and there will be a quiz later.

Writers may be able to adjust their schedules for you. *laugh*looks at that again*laugh*laughs some more* Only if it doesn't interfere in a deadline, convention, reading event, interview, editorial meeting or other important writing related work. Otherwise, yeah…no. You are second.

Writers can find 1000 ways to tell you why they like you. I suppose. Hopefully it is more than 1000 ways of repeating the same thing over and over.

Writers communicate in a bunch of different ways. Yep. Email, IM, Twitter, LJ, Facebook. But not the phone. I don't like the phone much. Oddly enough, I do pretty well with Skype.

Writers can work from anywhere. As long as I have everything I need—like a computer, research material, silence and uninterrupted time.

Writers are surrounded by interesting people. Most of whom are all in my head. A writer is often never alone. Whatever I'm doing, there's a character in the back of my head either critiquing or taking notes for an upcoming scene.

Writers are easy to buy gifts for. Gifts are nice. I like gifts.

Writers are sexy. Yeah. I am. Modest, too.