Skidding Into the Void, Soviet Style

Purely through word-of-mouth — okay, word-of-Reddit, a lot of the time — The Immaculate Void and Skidding Into Oblivion have taken on an unexpected life of their own. Almost ever since they disappeared from the marketplace, after having been in print for not terribly long to begin with, I’ve been fielding reader inquiries about them. I am deeply grateful for this, and the continued interest. People read ’em, talk ’em up, and another new wave of interested people gets in touch.

At this point, all I can do is fix them up with copies of the original e-books. I still plan on reissuing new editions, but I’m one person, without a team, devoid of minions, and sometimes life happens. A lot of times, actually, of late.

E-books are fine for most people. There are, however, readers who only want physical editions. I get this. I’m platform agnostic in general, and there’s plenty I happily read on my iPad, but do have a preference for physical books, tactile covers, turnable pages.

The good news: An omnibus print edition combining both books will be going to press in September.

The bad news: You’ll have to be able to read the Cyrillic alphabet to get through it.

Because it’s coming from AST Publishing Group, the largest publisher in Russia.

This was contracted for nearly two years ago. After a lengthy limbo of no word on it, which seems a likely consequence of Putin’s Folly, we’ve been sent the digital cover flat and the planned publication month.

My first thought: The image had no connection to anything in the book(s). Then before long I realized, oh, right … despite some divergent details, it illustrates a scene near the end of one of the Skidding stories, “Scars In Progress.” It just looks so different from what I saw in my mind. It’s a weird moment when someone else’s illustration of your work makes you go blank.

My second thought: With a bit of tweaking, it could look like something from an early Iron Maiden album. I look at this, and I see Eddie’s vodka-swilling cousin. It even reflects the color scheme and mood of the Piece of Mind album.

Says the rep from my foreign rights agents: “Russian covers are always quite a different direction from American artwork. They certainly indicate a different cultural sensibility.”

Maybe. But metal is a universal language.