So Kim, what does T-4 stand for?

Did you know that this year, on Halloween, it will be the 50th anniversary of the Turn? I think I’m going to have a little party and celebrate. It’s been over a decade, over two and a half million words on this world alone, and though I tried to say good-bye, clearly that didn’t happen.

But in all the interviews over the years, no one has ever asked where the name T4-Angel originated from. It came from my writer’s critique group almost twenty years ago, when one of the other members began waxing eloquently about a bible verse he was incorporating into his thriller. (Yes, that means you, Craig!) “And the fourth angel poured his vial onto the sun, and it became as sack cloth.” T4-angel was born.

The image haunted me, and so at long last, I give you, The Turn

I think this will be one of my favorite covers, maybe because I took more of a hand in it than any other cover I’ve ever had to do before. The original before my tweaking was fantastically beautiful, but those who know the Hollows know she is beautiful only on the surface. She is harsh, unforgiving, dark, and can kill you even if you are careful. But I’m not going to give you bad unless I bracket it by an equal or excessive amount of good, hence Ivy, a true friend struggling with addiction, Jenks, loyal to a fault even as he deals with his wife’s death and his children moving on, and Rachel, who has a heart bigger than the bankrolls of those she faces and is often her own worst enemy.

So I love this cover, with equal amounts of beauty and ugly. It’s a fairytale, not where the prince carries the princess off to his castle, though you can kind of see that at the end if you squint really hard. It’s a fairytale where toes are cut off to fit in slippers, and children are abandoned in the woods to die of exposure. It’s death, and sacrifice, and heartache, and hope.

And I think you’ll enjoy it.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Want a chance to win an ARC of The Turn? Send Tim an email at <coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net> by Friday (11/30), midnight, EST, with “Tomato” and the number of pumpkins you think I’m going to get out of my pumpkin patch this year in the subject line. i.e. Tomato42

We won’t be reading them, but we will squirrel your answers away, and when I harvest, I’ll draw names from those readers who guess right. So use an email address we can reach you at come October.