The Temple of the Exploding Head

Book V, the exciting conclusion to the Temple of the Exploding Head saga is due to be published in November, and, even though Book IV still hasn’t been released, things are starting to happen!

The manuscript is off at Loconeal for editing. It’s the largest of the three books, topping out at about 120,000 words, it also contains the largest single fight scene I’ve ever written with over 11,000 combatants!!

Carol Phillips has begun work roughing out concepts for the cover. We usually hash out a number of scenes from the book and pick which one is best, but, in this case, a scene inside the Temple of the Exploding Head is a must. We just need to get the sense of scale right. The Temple is a mile long and half a mile wide with the ceiling about a thousand feet up. It’s so large inside the Temple, it often clouds up and rains (I got that idea when visiting the Astrodome as a boy. I was told the climate had to be carefully controlled otherwise it would rain inside the Astrodome).

As it is the Horned God’s temple, all sorts of horrible things are going on inside, and we’ll have to temper it down a little for the cover. Certainly we’ll have the Horned God himself in the background, along with several Priestesses and a number of sacrificial Monama victims. There will also be a number of captive gods in the scene ready to be handed over to the Horned God’s servants, the Kestrals. I’m debating as to whether or not Sam will be on the cover.

Will Kay be able to put a stop to all this foulness?? We shall see…

I’m also ready to begin pumping out promotional material, banners, table cards, and so on. I should have most of this stuff ready by the Book IV launch Party at Fandomfest in late July.

It all should make for a busy summer.

copyright 2011, Ren Garcia, Carol Phillips and Fantasio