Cover Reveal: CHASING WHISPERS by Eugen Bacon
Raw Dog Screaming Press (RDSP) is thrilled to release the cover for award-winning and highly nominated writer and author Eugen Bacon’s Afro-Irrealist Black speculative fiction collection Chasing Whispers, publishing September of this year. The stunning cover art was created by artist and book cover designer Lynne Hansen.
“It’s so important to me that my art convey the style and tone of the book. With Chasing Whispers, I wanted to create something that invoked both a deep sense of longing and a desire to reach up and beyond,” artist Hansen said. “The patterns on the heroine’s back and arms hint at flames and give her a surreal, almost phoenix-like appearance. Eugen’s book will whisk you away to worlds you never realized you needed to visit, and I hope my cover helps you cross that threshold.”
Pre-order Open Now
Release Date: September 8, 2022
Chasing Whispers is a unique Afro-Irrealist collection of Black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, longing, hybridity, unlimited futures, a collision of worlds and folklore. It contains thirteen stories, eleven of which are original, with a commanding introduction by D. Harlan Wilson. The collection is aligned with the themes of Eugen Bacon’s other fiction, and her recognition in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for, “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.”
Chasing Whispers casts a gaze at mostly women and children haunted by patriarchy, in stories packed with affection, dread, anguish and hope. The connecting theme is a black protagonist with a deep longing for someone, someplace, something… and a recurring phrase in each story: “a deep and terrible sadness.”
“I was already deeply, madly enchanted with Raw Dog Screaming Press, and moved by the reception and publication process of my collection, so it was a bonus to see the cover design,” Bacon said. “Artist Lynne Hansen read and understood my stories, to create something layered and open, sumptuous and surreal, imbued with light and darkness.”
The cover truly creates an engaging door to the surreal world that houses Bacon’s extraordinary, original, and needed prose.
About the Artist, Lynne Hansen –
Lynne Hansen’s art has appeared on the cover of the legendary Weird Tales Magazine, and she was selected by the Bram Stoker estate to create the cover for the 125th Anniversary Edition of Dracula. Her clients include Valancourt Books, Cemetery Dance Publications, Thunderstorm Books, and Raw Dog Screaming Press. She has illustrated works by New York Times bestselling authors including Jonathan Maberry, George Romero, and Christopher Golden. Her art has been commissioned and collected throughout the United States and overseas. For more information, visit LynneHansenArt.com.
COMMISSIONS: www.LynneHansenArt.com
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/lynnehansenart/
TWITTER: www.twitter.com/LynneHansenArt
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/LynneHansenArt/
Sign up for her list and get a free Creepy Calendar:
https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5efe25b6caabca0028bcc49d
About the Author, Eugen Bacon –
Eugen M. Bacon, MA, MSc, PhD, is African Australian, and a computer graduate mentally re-engineered into creative writing. She studied at Maritime Campus, less than two minutes’ walk from The Royal Observatory of the Greenwich Meridian. Her books Ivory’s Story, Danged Black Thing and Saving Shadows are finalists in the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships.
She has won, been longlisted, or commended in international awards, including the Foreword Indies Awards, Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, Otherwise, Rhysling, Australian Shadows, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Eugen’s creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide, including Award Winning Australian Writing, BSFA, Fantasy Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Bloomsbury and The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction.
New releases include Danged Black Thing (collection), Saving Shadows (illustrated collection), Mage of Fools (novel), An Earnest Blackness (collection coming August 2022).
Website: eugenbacon.com / Twitter: @EugenBacon
Raw Dog Screaming Press –
Find out more about all the award-winning RDSP imprints, books, and authors at the website and don’t forget to sign-up for the newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/yhfCX.
For publicity purposes, including review copies of Chasing Whispers, you can contact Erin Al-Mehairi at hookofabook@hotmail.com.
