The headshot process

The email that sparked all the terror was brisk, businesslike and perfectly unassuming: Sheri Gormley, Virtual Tales' awesome (and adorable!) publicity coordinator asked for my bio and headshot for the company's website and the back cover of the book. Bio, okay. HEADSHOT? As in a picture? Of me? Why not just an extra shot of one of the werewolves--they're much more photogenic!

But you don't argue with the people who are putting your book together. You instead turn to your brilliant artist significant other, the one with the nice camera, and begin to wail about the situation. And that's how I came to spend the morning of the 4th of July in our yard, frightening my neighbors with my six pounds of makeup and three changes of ensemble.

Sweetie-Pie took 110 pictures. Most of them looked like this:

But some looked like this:

And a few just reminded me how quickly I was going gray:

But thankfully, there were quite a few pictures that I really, really liked. I decided that a couple were better for online images, like my avatar on Twitter and this new Google Profile image. But some seemed positively book worthy!

It wasn't easy to pick which picture I liked best, but after extensive polling--in fact, 62 people jumped into the fray, and took a survey on my main webpage--one image was a clear winner. I drew up my bio and sent off the picture, and THIS shot will wind up gracing my book's cover:

I'm not one hundred percent certain that this picture isn't WAAAY too sexy for a boring old fantasy writer, but you can't argue with what the people demand!