Charon's Crossing

Okay, so we have a cover and title for the fifth book in the Grostesqueries collection:

There was this old, old story idea I toyed with whenever I remembered, and for a while I didn't think it was going to pan out as a plotbunny that'd work as something more substantial than short fiction. I kept setting it aside for possible future use, and there it sat for what felt like forever in my old storage chest of ideas in the back of my mind. 

Years after, I signed up for a Tumblr account and learned how to follow hashtags (which proved to be a much easier and efficient feature compared to what Twitter had to offer back in the day), and one of them was an accidental discovery that I ended up loving to pieces. The idea of gothic elements in a setting as mundane as a retail store never crossed my mind since I've always mined the usual haunted house / old manor / crumbling castle (or chateau), etc. settings, which lent themselves well to my preference for historical fantasy plots. 

And the hashtag itself finally got me coming up with ways on how to make full use of that old plotbunny that wouldn't go away (not that I wanted it to because I freaking love the basic premise). 

So the idea of retail gothic gave me something new to explore, especially since I really would like to expand my contemporary stories as much as I can. The long novella approach to this new collection is the ideal way of developing my skill in writing more modern stuff, and I'll be talking more about this when the time's right. For now, I'm happy with the cover art, and I ended up changing the title to make it more representative of the story.  

And this book will be published after Ada and the Singing Skull next year.