It’s the Cover for Zeus Is Dead!

So at long last I may reveal the cover for my upcoming comedic contemporary fantasy, Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure…

Cover designed and illustrated by Greg Simanson
CLICK TO EMBIGGEN!

So there it is, the cover-to-be of my first ever (non-self-published) book! This went through a lot of iterations before it arrived in its current state, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Perhaps I’ll blog about earlier versions at some point, but for now, let’s just focus on this one.

To answer what may be your first question, the kitten with the glowing eyes and bat wings is a “razorwing,” one of the many monstrous creatures that appeared in the world shortly after Zeus was assassinated and the Olympian gods returned. Or, to quote from the book:

While many of the monsters that had appeared following the Return possessed more classic attributes, in the modern world, with its more abundant weapons and more organized humanity, mankind had other weaknesses at which a monster could strike. And so it came to be that the creatures eventually dubbed “razorwings” were among the most fearsome of all for one particular reason.

They were impossibly cute.

In fact, they were kittens—fuzzy, adorable kittens, each the color of fresh snow and no bigger than a cantaloupe. They were also feral; spat a paralyzing poison; and flew on colorful, batlike wings capable of slicing through a human arm. Yet once you attached all that to a kitten, it became the zoological equivalent of a death threat on pink stationery with hearts dotting the i’s. It was difficult to take them seriously, even in the swarms in which they generally traveled. Sharp claws? Check, but attached to a kitten. Piercing teeth? Yes, but, again, in the mouth of an adorable little kitten! One in ten able to chew through metal? Oh, you’d better believe it, but wookit da kitty!

Obviously this schmoopifying effect diminished after people actually encountered the playfully savage swarms of the things. Coos of adoration would swiftly turn to shrieks of dismay, which would then escalate into screams of terror when the abhorrent act of killing one adorable creature resulted in two more of them springing alive from its corpse. On the rare occasion this failed to happen, it was only because the creature’s death instead resulted in a fiery explosion and—in a characteristically laughable fashion—a shower of peppermint candy. (Some hypothesized that similar creatures in ancient times had inspired the modern piñata, but the idea fell out of favor due to lack of evidence and the fact that no one likes a piñata filled with death.) Those first few survivors who attempted to tell their tale of terror-by-kittens were ridiculed by their friends, dismissed by the mainstream news agencies, and finally laughed out of UFO conventions…

As for what the rest of the stuff in that pile is, well, some you can surely figure out for yourself, and some you’ll just have to wait for the book’s release on July 21st to find out. I mean, yes, you probably recognize the ice cream sundae, but why is there one on the cover? (“Why? What’s the significance? I DON’T KNOW!!!” -Pee-Wee Herman) And I’m not telling. Yet. Make a guess in the comments section!

I’ll leave you with three tidbits of interesting info:

1. Want to read Zeus Is Dead for free AND before it’s publicly available? Click here to find out how…
2. Are you a Goodreads user? Please add Zeus Is Dead to your “to-read” shelf. It’ll help me spread the word.
3. Don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list! Subscribers got to see this cover first, and in the next few weeks subscribers will receive exclusive content that won’t be available to non-subscribers. Plus you get a free copy of Mythed Connections, a trio of short stories that form a spiritual prequel to Zeus Is Dead! And what’s not to like about free? Get on the list today!)

Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
Coming July 21st to paperback and ebooks!

“A hilarious mythological tale of god-like proportions. Munz has crafted a tale of bizarro comic fantasy that sits comfortably among the ilk of Gaiman and Pratchett.”

—Andrew Buckley, author of Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish