I've just received my first copies of the paperback version of The Reptile Wars, so it should be on Amazon's shelves in a week or so. I have to say even some non-fantasy readers think it looks not bad. Not bad is Scottish for pretty good, which is English for... well, being Scottish, I don't think I can translate it into American English. But the cover is on this page and, at the moment, the link to the ebook is here. There's a lot in it (a life-changing fire, a shaking up of time, mistaken identity, suggestion of an impossible relationship, a long journey, a confrontation with murderers and a mutant, an evil being that wants to live forever, and a final battle with an emergent reptile) and there's a lot more to come - at least two sequels. At the moment, I seem to be writing them both at once, with an entirely different story tugging at my writing elbow.
The paperbacks were nice to come home to. By that I mean, we were a short time - too short - in Andalusia, starting in Malaga then taking the train to Seville. Such a wonderful place. If you haven't been, go! Tapas great, temperature fantastic (maybe too hot in summer), wine was even better, people warm and helpful, trains easy to figure out, and learning enough Spanish to order was not difficult. The only problem was, I forgot to bring home Manchego.
But it is also the general area in which parts of the book is set in, so I take every opportunity to go there. What is so fascinating about southern Spain (and inspired the book), of course, is the Moorish / Arabic influence, the meeting of the Middle East and Africa and Europe, where Christianity and Islam together produced something as amazing as the Mezquita in Cordoba.
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