My subscribers already saw the cover for my upcoming Collective SF story, Hameln-13, and today at the Halloween party I had my official cover and synopsis reveal.

Just to give you some quick background info for those who don’t know, The Collective SF is a group of authors who write in a shared universe where slave-scribes toil tethered to a seemingly immortal entity known only as the God-Machine. Their duty is to record newly created histories and chronicle the past. Only something is horribly wrong. Instead of factual history, the God-Machine is mistaking fairy tales and lore for historical fact.

And this is where The Collective SF comes in. We take existing fairytales and legends and re-imagine them as historical fact. We give them science fiction settings and we inject the stories with a substantial dose of Embrosis.

My scribe, Wifelier Docht, is tasked with recording the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, but in his augmented reality the legend is known as Hameln-13, named after the outpost planet where the events took place.

And here is the cover:

Xavier Granville designed the cover and I tell you, it’s an awesome thing when you plan a story and someone shows you the packaging that makes out part of your book. I love the cover because it embodies the tone I imagined for the planet Hameln-13.

As for the synopsis:

After their spacecraft tumbles from orbit, a small group of scientists, engineers, and soldiers is left stranded on a planet in a remote galaxy not yet fully mapped. With resources quickly dwindling and unable to communicate with Earth, they are forced to venture further out into the unknown alien landscape in search of alternative resources.

They should never have done that. Hameln-13 hides a terrible evil for underneath its surface the Murr patiently wait to feed. And they are hungry. They have not eaten in over a century.

Let’s call this a teaser for now. I’m still writing the story and I don’t want to spoil anything should the tale decide to go a different route. Suffice to say, I’m aiming for a Lovecraftian finish. Oh, and the “Pied Piper” in my story is a freaky alien called Decan Lude. There is some significance to my choosing this name. I bet you can’t figure it out.

The release date is officially scheduled for January 2016.

Lastly, I have one more surprise for you. If you subscribe to The Collective SF newsletter here, you’ll get access to our Starter Library–for free. The library consists of six books, including The Seals of Abgal. Yes, that is correct. You’ll get The Seals of Abgal free when you subscribe to the Collective SF’s site.

It’s not a bad deal at all. Damn, I’m giving all my books away and have nothing left to sell. I guess I should write more and faster.

Cheers!

Woelf