Another one from Russia with love...

Russian cover of TELL TALE - 'THE INFORMER'

This time it's Big Bird and a little ballet dancer but oh how I love it, despite it being rather sinister-looking! It's the cover of Tell Tale and my Russian contact (aka my Dad's wife - see my piece in the Sunday Times Style magazine this week for more on that story!) informs me that it translates as, well, The Informer. Quite fitting. I seriously would love all my Russian covers as big framed pictures in my house. Of course, put these images on my books in the UK and my readers would stand in the bookshops scratching their heads wondering what on earth I'd written about. If you take a flick down the side of my blog you can see how the different countries have their very unique ideas for covers, with the German edition of Tell Tale (The Forbidden Room) looking quite different to the previous two.

And soon I'll be adding Dutch and Norwegian covers with the ink still wet on contracts for more titles sold in these countries.

I'm now a paid-up official member of the Crime Writers' Association (why didn't I join before, I'm asking myself?) and I'm very excited about going along to my first get-together and meeting other members. I hear that they like the bar. I'm not sure they mean the legal one.

Meantime, I'm nearly done ploughing through an office stuffed full of paperwork and accounts - it suffers for my art, you see (well that's my excuse) and I will be starting work on my new novel next week. I've been tinkering and planning and plotting for several weeks now and I'm ready to begin in earnest. I'm not keen on the little gaps between books but alas they are necessary to sort the mess that grows while I'm immersed in writing. I think new curtains and a lick of paint might well be in order too. I may even post a pic of the 'writer's workspace' if it turns out well. I'm always intrigued to see other writer's places of creation.

Sam x