–Greg Manchess

It’s official: my novel, Above The Timberline, will be released on October 24, 2017! And you can now preorder the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The cover was revealed on tor.com yesterday, with sample images from the 122 spreads that make up the story. In their post, you can get a good idea of how some of the copy will lay on the page, even though we’re not quite finished with them yet. I’ll include a few paintings here that you may not have seen.

The story develops from a visual string of pictures, based on the concept of image-reveals that push the story along, similar in approach to a graphic novel, but lacking the panels and talk balloons that to my eye can often clutter the page. These reveals go backward and forward in sequence, allowing me to tell the story through multiple images that don’t necessarily need to follow a linear trail.

I can tell you that, as the reader, you’ll feel this flow. And like with any novel, you can track backwards to previous pages if something was missed. Or you can just look at the pictures! But I do hope you dive in.

If you care to, I suggest that once you get the book, resist flipping through it. Just begin reading. This way, each spread will allow for a ‘first view’ that I think is the extra strength built into the sequence. I spent most of my time planning that out.

I think this will appeal to most of you Muddy readers. An artist getting to write his own novel, strewn with his own work, is a rare thing. I feel fortunate and I hope the book will do well enough to create interest for other stories by other artists. Namely, you.

If you enjoy the book and want to see more, I hope you will share that on social media and talk about it. Contact Simon & Schuster or Saga Press or any publisher for that matter, and let them know how you feel about it. Yes, this makes me vulnerable to all that scrutiny. But that’s what this is all about.

I can tough that out, but your word-of-mouth will do more for the book than you might imagine.