Jacob Blade Vigilante series gets a face lift in 2020

Fans of the half-breed vigilante Jacob Blade are in for a treat in 2020. Thanks to the creative ingenuity of renown publicist Nick Wale and the fantastic art of Kevin Diamond, the entire series is being reissued this year with a new and exciting cover that’s sure to appeal to fans of the ‘shoot ‘em up’ western genre.

      Jacob Blade was a simple farm boy living with his mother and father in Indian Territory until he came home from a trip to local markets one day and found his parents slaughtered by a group of itinerant outlaws. With his dying breath, Jacob’s father asked him to avenge their deaths, a task that he took on with relish. In the course of his quest, he discovered that there was a lot of evil infecting the western frontier, evil that he determined to help eliminate, one dead outlaw at a time.

      This is just one of several series that I currently write, and is second only to the Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves in the joy it gives me to write.

      The new covers give a sense of continuity to the series, and, in my humble opinion, illustrates the protagonist most effectively. I sincerely hope that readers will find them as attractive—and seductive—as I do, and welcome any comments. In the meantime, I’m currently working on another Jacob Blade adventure, with Jacob coming to the rescue of a small community of settlers in Nebraska who are being tormented by a greed rancher who wants to take their land. Keep an eye out for Sins of the Father, coming soon to Amazon.

Toby Giles series gets eye-catching new theme cover

Unless you’re independently publishing and overseeing every aspect of your book’s launch, you probably don’t give a lot of thought to the cover. I do both, independent, and through small publishing imprints, and until recently paid little attention to the covers the publishers chose to affix to what I’ve submitted to them.

I did not book, Toby Giles: Tarnished Badge, the story of a runaway slave who is appointed sheriff of the all-white town of Jericho, Ohio, at the suggestion of publicist Nick Wales, which was published with the cover below:

The original cover for Tarnished Badge

Not a bad cover actually, and I had no complaints. But I so enjoyed the story, and based on sales, so did a large number of readers, I decided to do a sequel, Toby Giles: The Walls of Jericho. Here’s the cover chosen, and, in my opinion, it is perfect for the subject matter of the book.

This cover really catches the eye.

The publisher thought so as well, because shortly after the release of this one, book one was reissued with a new cover:

Sure, it’s the same as Tarnished Badge, but eye-catching and appropriate.

Now, the two covers are identical except for the book title, but they’re clearly related to even the most casual shopper, and adorned with covers that are guaranteed to catch the eye.—don’t you think?

Kudos to DS Publications and Nick Wale for bringing a whole lot of cheer to one author’s life this holiday season.