About a week ago, Wizards of the Coast sent me some promotional covers for Secret of the Spiritkeeper, my young adult Dungeons & Dragons novel due out this August. If you click on the image to the right, you’ll see a full-sized version. I’m pleased with the art and design, and the same artist also made some snazzy illustrations for the interior too.
On Friday, I found something even better in the mail: an advance reading copy of the book. Publishers often print short runs of a book from the first galleys sent to the printer and then send them out to reviewers and give them out at trade shows to get people excited about the book. They often make a few small changes to the book for the final version before it’s put on press. That’s what this is: an advance copy of Secret of the Spiritkeeper, as complete as it could be at the moment.
Wizards plans to give out advance reading copies of the book at BookExpo America, a trade show at which the publishers show off all their upcoming products to the bookstores. It’s June 5–7 in Chicago, only a short slide down the road from me. As such, I’ll be signing books in the Wizards booth at the show. If you’ll be there, be sure to stop by and say hi. If you ask nice, I might even manage to deface a copy of Spiritkeeper for your own collection of scrawled-upon books.
