Cover for Dark Awakening

Dark Awakening never had its own cover because it was part of an anthology called Shards of Crimson, which had four Crimson City stories. Now that Team Crimson City is working to publish our stories in electronic format, Kimi and Nic finally get a cover. As I blogged earlier, finding stock photos with multicultural characters was very difficult. Nic doesn't look very much like the Nic I saw when I wrote the story, but I think the cover turned out awesome anyway.

I'd written the cover copy for this story back in 2006 because I wanted a description of my story for my website even if the back cover copy on the actual anthology was more specific to Crimson City as a whole.

Kimi Noguchi is working as an intern for an advertising agency in Crimson City and she's discovered that she's a kijo or witch. She thinks having talent is cool, but her magic attracts the attention of a power-hungry Bak-Faru demon and she's forced to call on another demon, Nicodemus, for help.

Nic made a promise to stay away from Kimi for her own good, but now that she's summoned him, all bets are off. She's his vishtau mate, a bond held in reverence by all demons, and he's not about to let this opportunity pass him by. Nic plans to protect, woo and win his woman.

This was the first time I'd ever written anything short. I tend to go over the word count numbers in my contracts by a pretty good amount. What can I say? Bonus story for readers, right? Sometimes it just takes a while for a story to unfold, and despite my attempts to prod them along, I can't get my characters to move faster than they do.

The first ever cover for Dark Awakening...drum roll, please:

Stay tuned for more on when Team Crimson City will have the series available in ebook.