For the first time on my own website, here’s the cover of my newest book. Ward Zero can be pre-ordered on kindle now (click the cover for details) and will be published on October 1st. The paperback will follow on Amazon by the end of October, and will be in extended distribution by December.
This book has been my main project all year, and although most of the writing and editing work went (more or less) to plan, there were a couple of little hiccups (hiccoughs?) along the way…
Problem One – how to deal with the bad guy.
There’s a very bad guy in Ward Zero. One of the kind you seriously don’t want to meet, and it was hard to decide what to do with him at the end. Should I kill him off in some way? Maybe a fatal accident – or even a non-fatal one? Or make him commit suicide? Put him in prison for a hundred years? Reform him completely? I rejected the last one, but that still left me with several possible end-of-book scenarios. Decisions, decisions…
Problem Two was the title. Despite the hospital setting in part of the book, Ward Zero is more about hard cash than things medical. My first title idea was Counting Out His Money. Hm, said my editor, and I was hm-ing too – it was a long title, and also a quote (always complicated) from a rather old-fashioned nursery rhyme. So we had a big title-brainstorming session and eventually came up with Ward Zero …the dead ward, thus combining our two favourites.
Problem Three – the body on the cover. I found the image on The Cover Collection’s website and immediately fell in love with that body. BUT – the background wasn’t right for my book, and the body was the wrong sex. Changing the background was all in a day’s work to my lovely cover designer, but the body needed more brainstorming and lots of (hilarious) trial pics. Larger bust measurement… ye-es… smaller bust measurement… hm… head to the side… heck no… elongated neck… maybe… The end result is what the designer called ‘version supermodel’ – I like it! Here’s the complete cover:
And here’s the blurb, as reading it on the cover pic might be hard on a small device:
Horror swept through her. Had she been buried alive?
On Sarah’s first visit to see her foster mother, Mim, in Brockburn General Hospital, she is sucked into a world that isn’t what it should be.
Someone is lying, someone is stealing. And someone is killing – but who? With a grieving child to take care of, as well as Mim, Sarah has to put family first. She doesn’t see where danger lies – until it’s too late.
If you think you’re safe in a hospital, think again…
linda huber 
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