Announcement: The Mysterious Book!

I got permission from the publisher, League Entertainment, to announce this yesterday. Greedily, I sat on the news for a while, savoring it all my lonesome.

(Actually, I told myself I had to get my work done for the day before I could send it out, then beat my head against the wall for several hours, and decided I had to spend some time with my family after that before they killed me, then decided I was too tired for to be anything but grumpy and disagreeable and read in the bathtub for a few hours instead, which is my version of a recovery tank a la The Empire Strikes Back. How sad is that? I’ve been harassing these guys for months to let me spill the beans.)

But here I am this morning, back in the saddle, as it were, ready to either a) make my announcement or b) babble.*

The book is called Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse (due out October 26, 2010). It’s a pick-your-own-path kind of book, only every choice upon which you embark ends in your death, often in comically gruesome ways. Being a zombie book, death doesn’t always equal the end of the story; you just switch sides. But eventually, you get what everybody gets at the end of the road: death.

Muahahaha!

Perfect for me, eh?

As I write this, my beneficent overlords haven’t put the book up on their site yet (hint), and I can’t release images, so I’ll just have to post an update when it’s up. The book has just made it into rough galleys and is going out to some utterly awesome people for blurbs, but I don’t want to jinx anything (or be inaccurate due to last minute changes which my kind publishers may be too swamped to inform me of), so I’ll just cross my fingers and hope.

I love this book. I wish someone had written this book when I was a kid. I would have been all over it. I used to love reading (and trying to figure out all the alternate endings) to Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid (although I hardly remember them now; the only thing I remember was the one about the pyramids and getting turned into a mummy), but I never cared for the happy endings.

The guys at League (Ken Chapman and Johnny Atomic) have been great to work with (as in, they set me loose on this awesome idea, and then when I turned stuff in, picked apart the stupid and vague parts and made me fix them, which is a mark of greatness in my book), and Ana Bruno did awesome art. I chortled over the whole galley; right now, I feel like my writing is just the excuse for the concept and the art. I like working with people who are more talented than I am–I feel like I’m getting away with something, so just try to stop me.

I am lucky to be working on this project, you know?

*Or c) both, apparently.