The Murder Plague book cover: Is she terrified or terrifying?

My new novel’s publisher, Black Rose Writing, has finished designing the book cover. I’m revealing the cover this week, starting with this first detail from it. Watch here for more all week. As we go, please let me now what you think. And please share.

Thank you.

Publication date is Feb. 8, 2024.

Just you wait.

Here’s the back-cover blurb:

An engineered virus that attacks the brain leaks from a research lab and spreads quickly, causing infected people to go into psychotic rage. Before almost anyone knows what is happening, a well-armed America is terrorized by a pandemic of violence.

Kanetha Wilson—friend of the first victim—is first to recognize that something is not as it seems. She inspires a small cadre of scientists and others into a break-neck, lonely and lawless mission to identify and stop the murder plague. They must rebel against scientific and political establishments and public opinion hardened against taking pandemics seriously. More importantly, they must stay alive themselves,, when crazed murderers can appear anywhere, and when madness might be only a breath away.

Set in Orlando, Florida—where tourists from all over can quickly spread contagion—The Murder Plague is a dystopian thriller transpiring not long after the COVID crisis. Scott Michael Powers, author of the UFO-hunt thriller The Roswell Swatch, delivers a fast-paced tale full of suspense, riveting action, high stakes concerns for science and society, and heart.

Read The Murder Plague and see what the next genetic engineering accident might cause, and what it might take to stop it.

The story is a bit of a dystopian saga—and indeed has “A Dystopian Novel” as a subtitle on the cover. But it’s more about the ever-present rebel spirit that make resilience and hope possible in a world at grave risk.