Terminally Ill...with Kobo's Mark (Leslie) Lefebvre and Scarlett Rugers

Hope Sze’s third medical mystery adventure, Terminally Ill, will hit the stands on February first, 2014, with a kicking cover by Scarlett Rugers, commissioned by Kobo:

And a mini picture of the upcoming print book:

As I mentioned in the Kobo interview, I was very excited to win this cover, since the last thing I remembered winning was a very nice set of bath soaps. More details here: http://kobowritinglife.com/2013/08/20/meet-the-winner-of-kobos-win-an-ebook-cover-contest-melissa-yi/

And here’s the blurb:

Magic? Dr. Hope Sze steers clear of magic.

But when “Elvis the Escape King” chains and nails himself inside a coffin and lowers himself into Montreal’s St. Lawrence River, he can’t break free.

So Hope restarts his heart and saves his life. But now Elvis demands to know who sabotaged his stunt.

Hope hung up her amateur detective badge two months ago, in order to tend to cancer patients on palliative care. The only cases she solves right now are case studies on pain and over-stuffed emergency rooms.

Which gets just the tiniest bit boring.

Hope could escape Montreal any day now. She could transfer to Ottawa to join her beloved ex-boyfriend, Ryan. No more unspeakable Montreal drivers and stymied medical care. No more working with the charming yet infuriating Dr. Tucker.

Hope the Escape Artist can afford to act generous. As parting gift to Montreal, city of festivals (and murderers), she could help Elvis out. Just asking a few questions won’t hurt anyone.

Right?

And so Hope plunges into her most unconventional and, possibly, her most terminal adventure yet. Where the magical art of escape and the dastardly art of crime vie for centre stage, and the better man may lose. Forever.

—–

I got to meet Mark Lefebvre, Kobo‘s director of author relations, at the Advanced Master Class in Oregon in July. I hadn’t realized that he was also Mark Leslie, the editor of Tesseracts 16, who’d recently published my short story, “Burning Beauty,” which just meant I liked him even more.

I could fawn all over Mark, who’s one of those guys that you just meet and you’re like, yup, I like you. I could give a shout out to Kobo, with it’s beautiful and simple interface, writer-friendly approach, and Canadian roots, but that sounds totally self-serving now, right? So you can read J. Steven York’s much more informative Kobo post here, and I’ll just show you some pictures of me and Mark L, hanging out on the Oregon Coast.

First, we did the traditional standing side-by-side thing. You can see that a) he is much taller than me, b) Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith own a lot of books, and c) I am fake-smiling.

So then I suggested that we do more crazy pictures. Those are more fun. Mark immediately decided to pick me up, which is great. I love wacky people. Also, you can now see my surf shoes. Unfortunately, Kobo chose to run the picking up picture of me where I seem to have giant hips, but what can you do? (This one is a little better.)

We brought out a chair next. Props are always fun, and we reprised a classic pose. Clearly, he was saying something fascinating, like “Rutabagas, rutabagas.”

Then we realized we had much better props–books! And what if we looked fascinated, reading each other’s books? Fortunately, Chris York happened to have a copy of her latest Christy Fifield book. And who wouldn’t jump on Mark’s books, like Haunted Hamilton?

Which was cool, except I was like, Are we supposed to pretend to read while surreptitiously displaying the covers, or what? (I just think that Sean Young, the photographer, captured a pretty funny expression, so I included it.)