Look what my edi­tor sent me this week — the final ver­sion of the cover for Web of Lies.

So shiny! So pretty! So awesome!

Okay, I’ll quit gush­ing now. The cover, done by the awe­some Tony Mauro, is basi­cally the same as what I’ve shown here on the blog before. A cou­ple of things were tweaked, like mov­ing my name up to the top. You gotta love that as an author.

I’m eager to see what the cover for Venom will look like. I should be get­ting some pre­lim­i­nary art for that before too much longer.

And I should men­tion that both Web of Lies and Venom are now up for pre-order at Ama­zon. So if you liked Spider’s Bite, I hope you’ll check out the other books too.

Now that I have the final ver­sion of the cover, I can get some book­marks made for Web of Lies. In fact, I sent my files in today, so I should get the book­marks in about two weeks or so. I’ll post here again when I have them and tell every­one how to get them.

In the mean­time, I’m going to enjoy my cover good­ness. Happy read­ing!

Besides how much money I make on my books, the other most com­mon ques­tion most folks ask me is this: Are you going to quit your day job?

The answer? Maybe someday.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love, love, love to quit my day job and write full time. In fact, my writ­ing is get­ting to the point now where it’s a full-time job in and of itself just writ­ing and keep­ing up with every­thing else — the blog, Face­book, guest blogs, adver­tis­ing, pro­mo­tions … I’m always busy doing some­thing, and there just never seems to be enough time to get every­thing done. (Seri­ously, I’d love to just take a week off and do noth­ing but eat, read, and sleep).

So what’s stop­ping me from quit­ting my day job? Well, the big­gie is insur­ance. I work full-time, which means my com­pany pro­vides me with insur­ance. I don’t know how much I would have to pay if I was self-insured, but it’s prob­a­bly a lot more than comes out of my pay­check every week right now.

Which leads me to the sec­ond thing stop­ping me from quit­ting my day job — a steady pay­check. It’s very, very nice to be able to count on the pay­check from my day job every two weeks. With my books, I’m lucky if I get a check three or four times a year. Sure, the checks are a lit­tle big­ger than what I get at work, but it would make me real ner­vous if my books were my only source of income — espe­cially since pub­lish­ers are noto­ri­ously slow about send­ing out pay­ments in the first place. And there’s always the risk that I won’t be able to sell more books — which would mean no more checks at all. It’s a scary thought.

And third, well, there’s me. I think I would go a lit­tle stir-crazy if I didn’t have some­thing to get me out of the house on a reg­u­lar basis. There’s only so much time you can spend with your char­ac­ters before you go a lit­tle nuts.

Of course, the real irony in all this is that I work at a news­pa­per — an indus­try that is dying a slow, painful death. If my news­pa­per is still around in five years (or at least still pub­lish­ing in the same kind of for­mat), I’ll be very sur­prised. Who knows? Depend­ing on what hap­pens at work, I may be try­ing to make it as a full-time author sooner than I think. Gulp!

But for right now, the book stuff is my own lit­tle side busi­ness. I’m not get­ting rich at it, but I love doing it — and that’s the most impor­tant thing.

Is over at Drey’s Library. I’m the fea­tured author for Feb­ru­ary, and this is the last post for the month. Check it out!

Fin­ished First Drop of Crim­son by Jeaniene Frost. This is the first book in a spin­off series from Frost’s pop­u­lar Night Huntress para­nor­mal romance books.

In this book, Denise Mac­Gre­gor knows that crea­tures like vam­pires and ghouls exist. She just didn’t know that one of her ances­tors made a deal with a shape-shifting demon. Now, Denise has to track down her lost ances­tor in order to keep the demon from killing the rest of her fam­ily. Since her best friend, half-vampire Cat Craw­field, is out of the coun­try, Denise turns to another vam­pire she knows — the oh-so-sexy Spade. Together, they set out to find Denise’s ances­tor, but don’t count on the siz­zling attrac­tion that devel­ops between them …

I’ve enjoyed Frost’s pre­vi­ous books about Cat, and First Drop of Crim­son is a fine addi­tion to the Night Huntress world/canon. Denise is a lik­able hero­ine, who strug­gles to be brave despite her guilt over her hus­band Randy’s death (some­thing that hap­pened in a pre­vi­ous NH book). I liked how Denise learns to over­come her guilt and aver­sion to vam­pires and real­izes the inner strength that she has. Spade has his own demons as well, and I enjoyed get­ting more of the back­story on him, Ian, and Bones (I’m really inter­ested to see who Ian gets paired up with). I also thought that Frost did some cool things with her world building/magic in this book.

Over­all, if you like vam­pires or are just look­ing for a fun, action-packed read, try Frost’s books. Thumbs up.

Up next: Talk Me Down by Vic­to­ria Dahl.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.

Fin­ished Fire by Kristin Cashore. This is a prequel/companion book to her young adult fan­tasy, Gracel­ing.

In Fire, Cashore focuses on a girl named Fire, who is so beau­ti­ful that she is con­sid­ered a mon­ster. Men and women are so affected by Fire’s beauty that she has to keep her long, cop­pery hair cov­ered and be sur­rounded by guards at all times. But Fire is just one of many mon­sters, or unusu­ally col­ored crea­tures, in the king­dom of the Dells. There are every­thing from brightly hued mice to cats to vicious raptors.

Trou­ble is brew­ing in the Dells as the young king tries to hold onto his throne. Soon, Fire finds her­self in the mid­dle of the con­flict when the king asks her to use her mind-reading pow­ers to inter­ro­gate pris­on­ers and help save the Dells from war and ruin. Fire agrees, but not with­out some serious reservations …

I loved Cashore’s pre­vi­ous book, Gracel­ing. It was one of my top reads in 2009, so I had high hopes for Fire. I have to say that I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by Fire. There’s about 150 pages of buildup before Fire goes to the capi­tol city to help the king, and the book really dragged for me there in the begin­ning. Also, I didn’t much care for Fire’s ini­tial love inter­est, Archer, who is jeal­ous and controlling.

The idea of beau­ti­ful mon­sters was inter­est­ing and a lit­tle icky at the same time, espe­cially since almost every man who sees Fire basi­cally wants to kiss/hug/rape her. Some women too.

But Cashore’s prose is as beau­ti­ful and ele­gant as ever, and the story really picked up when Fire jour­neyed to the capi­tol city. I enjoyed watch­ing Fire fall in love with a man who should be her mor­tal enemy, and there were lots of inter­est­ing secrets that were revealed in the last third of the book.

Over­all, I didn’t love Fire as much as I did Gracel­ing, but if you’re look­ing for epic young adult fan­tasy, you should def­i­nitely check out Cashore’s books. Thumbs up.

Up next: First Drop of Crim­son by Jeaniene Frost.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.