Paradise Earth: Day Zero — Cover Reveal!

Hello aposta-stars! I’m amped to finally unleash the amaz­ing cover  to my debut novel Par­adise Earth: Day Zero. For this release I’m once again team­ing up with Curios­ity Quills Press. These are the lit­er­ary maraud­ers cur­rently releas­ing my weekly online ser­ial Hap­pi­ness: How to Find It. If you are a reader of Hap­pi­ness, be warned; Par­adise Earth is the dark yin to that sunny yang. Here’s a hint of what to expect:

When the ground quakes and blaz­ing balls of fire fall from the sky, a reli­gious sect inter­prets it as the ful­fill­ment of long-held prophe­cies fore­telling the end of the world. The mem­bers flee to their reli­gious sanc­tu­ary, believ­ing that this global cat­a­clysm is the por­tent of a new par­adise of eter­nal happiness.

Inside, one cold and starv­ing man strug­gles to hold onto his hope for the future. He’s sac­ri­ficed every­thing for his faith in the prophecy, includ­ing his fam­ily. As the tor­tu­ous night drags on, he strug­gles to hold onto his hope for the future and grap­ples with a life­time of beliefs, and expec­ta­tions. If he sur­vives to see the par­adise earth, will it be worth it?

Day Zero is the first vol­ume of a three part decon­struc­tion of faith at the end of the world and beyond. It is fit­ting that the cho­sen release date is Decem­ber 21, 2012, another pop­u­lar date for the end of the world. This may be the book you never get to read.

For the cover art I col­lab­o­rated with Chicago artist Matt Man­is­calco. Basi­cally this involved me send­ing him a bunch of Jehovah’s Wit­ness pro­pa­ganda and say­ing “some­thing like this”.  What can I say? He com­pletely knocked it out the park.  It won’t sur­prise me if the Watch­tower cap­tures him and sub­jects him to a Clock­work Orange brain­wash­ing so he can do paint­ings for their literature.

Each cover of the tril­ogy will play off of key scenes ripped from the Watchtower’s escha­tol­ogy. For Day Zero, we present our take on the Armaged­don scene. This is the end of the world as envi­sioned by Jehovah’s Wit­nesses for over a cen­tury.  In case you aren’t famil­iar, here are few examples: