So we’re back from Summer, right? Back to work, back to the normal routine, yes?

Then feast your eyes on this:

And this …

These are the first two cover treatments for my debut novel Magicians Impossible coming from St. Martins Press and Thomas Dunne Books.

When they arrived I immediately gravitated to the first cover – “Smoke-head” as he’s affectionately known. But #2 is quite beautiful if I do say so myself. The decision making process was a tough one, so I put it out to some closer friends and confidants, some industry pros and the like. And in the end we settled on …

Which was a little bit closer to the spirit of the book – Harry Potter meets James Bond.

But it was still not … quite … there …

Until …

There it is.

Damn. It’s like this book is actually happening or something isn’t it?

Well, it is, which is why Magicians Impossible is being published on JULY 4, 2017, from Thomas Dunne Books;

Jason Bishop’s world is shattered when his estranged father commits suicide, but the greater shock comes when he learns his father was a secret agent in the employ of the Invisible Hand; a brotherhood of spies wielding magic in a covert war. Now the Golden Dawn; the ones responsible for Daniel Bishop’s death and the death of Jason’s mother years before have him in their sights, and his survival depends on mastering his own dormant magic abilities.

Yet  enduring the Invisible Hand’s rigorous training may not be enough to turn the tide. Jason’s first mission ends in disaster and he’s captured by the enemy. Taken to its leader – the enigmatic Red Queen – he’s ready for anything; except the bold claim that the Invisible Hand are the real threat; committed to using mastery of magic to subjugate the world with only the Golden Dawn in opposition. They claim Jason has been fighting for the bad guys all along, and he’s the only one who can tip the balance of a war that has raged since creation.

But in a world cloaked in mystery and magic, whom can Jason trust? The Golden Dawn, who claim to hold the secrets behind Jason’s mysterious lineage? The Invisible Hand, who’ve been more of a family than his own family ever was? One thing’s for certain; the magic Jason Bishop has been struggling to master is telling him not to trust anyone.

Now, I’m going to cop to something here: I was a MAJOR pain in the ass to the publisher, to my editor, to the design team, to my agent. I kept asking for tweaks and changes. This is largely owing to something I discovered about myself years ago; that while I have perfectly realized visions for how I want something to look I’m terrible at articulating what that is. Someone once mentioned Stanley Kubrick was the same way; those legendary hundreds of single takes of Shelly Duvall screaming being case in point.

That said, I apologize for nothing. It’s my book – my first book – and if I don’t fight for my vision who on earth will, right? Right!

You can pre-order Magicians Impossible on Amazon. You can also pre-order from your local independent bookseller and I strongly recommend you do so if you can. Indie bookstores are the lifeblood of the community. Any bookstore, really, is that and they’re sadly a dying breed. But if you can pre-order please do so. The more pre-orders there are tells the publisher people are interested in this book. That affects, well, everything, from advertising to promotion to publicity.

Anyway, there’ll be a lot more Magicians Impossible stuff on this website soon, including what’s shaping up to be a major design overhaul of the entire place. I hope to be updating a lot more too as the book approaches publication. Then there’ s going to be signings, book tours, and a few other surprises along the way.