A Door Never Dreamed Of – Cover Reveal!

 

A few weeks ago, I teased the backstory for my upcoming sci-fi novella, A Door Never Dreamed Of.

As for the cover art, it’s been done for more than a month.

In August I reached out to Tessera Guild goddess, Amanda Makepeace. It felt like an obvious choice. I mean…she’d already done amazing work on the covers for The Sleepers, Hollow Empire, Nether Kingdom, and Old Man of Tessera. I never had any doubt about who I was gonna ask.

For almost a year, I’d been itching to find a way to get Amanda’s painting, The Jupiter Event, onto one of my book covers. I just happened to be wandering her website when I stumbled across it. After seeing it, I  knew it would be a perfect fit. After all, Jupiter is half the setting of the book (sort of.)

The scary, spidery, black-as-death image she’d created was perfect for the Achilles space station, home of the exiled Outs.

 And so…

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A Door Never Dreamed Of

Update: this title is NOW AVAILABLE!

If you need cover work or if you just want cool art for your house, I suggest Lady Makepeace. You can’t go wrong.

J Edward Neill

New release: Dark Moon Daughter

Dark Andelusia Soaring

        Tonight I’m reminded of one of my favorite literary quotes:

“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”

“See what?”

“White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

I leave it to you to find the source of this gem.

No, I’m not dead. Not just yet.

I’ve been working on this one for so long, it hurts in a very real, physical sense. I was a young man in my twenties when I wrote Dark Moon Daughter‘s first chapter. I was fresh, full of hope, bright-eyed, sun-shiny, and so forth. And now I’m a bitter, black-hearted old man. Ok. That’s probably overkill. But it’s true; seeing both sides of the coin is enlightening. It’s hard to write about darkness, shadows, and bone-crushing defeat until you’ve experienced a bit firsthand…and stood up stronger afterward.

And so, without further ado, I present:

DMDCoverCS3

Click me. Buy me. Read me. Love me.

I loved and sometimes hated every moment of writing Dark Moon Daughter. Yes, seriously. An adventure, it was, and not always easy. I climbed mountains tall and snowy…and wandered caverns dark and deep. Writing and editing this one felt like a relationship with an onery, passionate woman, and now I’m happy to let her soar free as a falcon. As of today, the Kindle version is on sale for a mere $6.99.  In a few days, the softcover version will be out on Amazon (and for those who live near enough, via me directly). Also, for the first five people willing to post an Amazon review (any amount of stars) I will hand over a signed softcover edition. I’ll even pay shipping if needed. You know where to reach me.

Dark Andelusia Landing        A little background on Dark Moon Daughter:

 – At only about half as long as Down the Dark Path, she’s more in the realm of traditional fantasy novels. For those terrified of my first epic’s staggering word-count, fear not. DMD is shorter and focuses primarily on three characters instead of six

 – The front cover is a painting hanging on my living room wall. Eileen Herron, a supremely talented sculptor and painter, braved an unedited copy of the book to prepare for the painting. Eileen also drew up the sketches in this post, each a dead ringer for the image of Andelusia…and the Ur

 – I began writing Dark Moon Daughter in 2003. I was miserable after the Chicago Cubs blew a 3-1 series lead over the Florida Marlins, and thus decided the only way to recover was to write a supremely dark, gut-wrenching novel. Weird, eh?

–  While a spiritual sequel to Down the Dark Path, ‘Daughter does not require the reader to know DDP through and through. But without a doubt, the third and final book in the series, Nether Kingdom, will demand a reading of Dark Moon Daughter. It’s almost like a mini two-part series rather than a trilogy, but ‘trilogy’ sounds better, so that’s what I’m calling the three books combined

– Dark Moon Daughter is definitely the least dark entry in the series. I like to think of her as a gateway drug. Inject a little Andelusia, Grimwain, and Ur into your veins, and you’ll be unable to resist coming back for more

Ur Shadow Sketch

A simple Eileen Herron sketch and an accidental preview of the Ur, who will haunt the pages of Nether Kingdom aplenty…

Supporters of fantasy, lovers of the night, eaters of words, I hope you’ll snag Dark Moon Daughter soon and give her a spin. She’s quite a catch.

Love,

J Edward Neill

 

 

Welcome to Tessera – a Creative Guild

Hello. Welcome to Tessera – A Creative Guild. My name is J Edward Neill. You can call me J. It’s great to meet you. I’m glad you stopped by.

A few months ago, three fellow artists and I opened a door together. We’d been friends of a sort, long ago, but we’d been flung apart by life, circumstance, and the pursuit of our separate dreams. But…on one unremarkable day in the summer of 2013, something unexpected happened. The four of us were involved in a slow-speed, four-car collision at the intersection of ‘We want to spend our lives creating’ and ‘How in the hell do we do it?’ We’ve always been that type, they and I. We want to live, breath, and die in what we create. We want our art to define us. And so here we are.

In case you wondered, we are:

Amanda Makepeace: Painter, Photographer, Web-Warrior Princess, Blogger, Writer, and Lover of Wilderness. I wish I were half as web-savvy as Amanda. Were it not for her, I’d have drowned in the internet long before Tessera saw the light of day

Chad J Shonk: Movie-Maker, Author, Blogger, and Brave Escapee to the Wild, Wild West. I envy Chad his escape from the Southeast, but less so his status as a new father

John McGuire: Comic Book Crafter, Author, Serial Novelist, and general badass neighbor. John is one of few folk alive who can thank himself for inspiring me to write, though I’ll never tell him the why or how of it

J Edward Neill: That’s me.

I still remember my first encounters with John, Chad, and Amanda. We were different people in the dark ages of our youths, but somehow we were the same. Even then, long before we reconnected for Tessera, we existed in a guild of sort. We used to meet in the school library well before the bell rang to announce first period. We were the Breakfast Club, the Goonies, and the White Council all wrapped into one juicy, creative enchilada. If you’ve ever been a part of a group like this, you know exactly what I mean. It’s sacred. No matter what happens when we grow up, it never leaves us.

And so, in the dead of summer 2013, the four of us e-bumped into each other and decided, after very little angst, to crack a door open. It was a musty old portal. Its hinges squealed. Its planks were dry and warped, but as sturdy as stone. The sunlight slipped in through the crack we made, along with a few shadows. Many years had passed us by since last we convened like this. Our individual works were so vastly different than each other’s. Across the eons, we’d scripted movies, painted haunting works of art, created edgy comics, and written novels. We knew we wanted to present a unified front, but not how.

Enter Tessera. If you’re wondering what Tessera means, look it up. It’s Greek. Old Greek. The name fits, and so we stole it away into the night. After we pilfered ourselves the name, we went to work. In a very non-literal sense, the four of us hunkered in a room with a lamp, plucked our pens and paintbrushes from their hiding places behind our ears, and started to write…and draw…and paint…and write some more. We’re not kidding. We take our work seriously. That’s why we’re here.

So…what can you expect from Tessera? Content. Lots of it. We’re driven, we are. I like to think we’d all gladly move to a cabin on the side of some lonely mountain, and create from now until the end of time. Instead of that, we’ll be here every weekday, blogging our wee hearts out. We have downloadable content, including free art, excerpts from novels, short stories, and more. We have stuff for you to buy: books, art, comics…delve deep enough and you’ll find something for everyone. We’d like to connect with you, our readers. If there’s something you want to see on Tessera, we want you to tell us. We’re also receptive to guest bloggers and new guild members. Pour water on us. Let the sunshine in. We want to grow.

There you have it. Tessera…the four of us in a nutshell. In the coming days, you’ll read introductions from the other members of the guild. I hope you’ll get to know them. They’re good people, and damn fine artists in their chosen mediums. In the coming weeks, you’ll see us flood Tessera with ideas, images, stories, thoughts, hopes, fears, light, darkness, and everything in-between. We hope you’ll visit us every day. We’d relish that. We’re a guild, and every guild needs loyal patrons.

J Edward Neill – Author of the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy, Co-author of the Hollow Empire web series, writer of innumerable  short stories, and lover of everything beneath the clouds

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