An all-new cover!

I’m so excited to finally have finally published Cat Summer with its new updated cover! This one perfectly matches the beautiful cat-centric cover of Cat Winter, book 2 in the Cat Seasons Tetralogy.

Cat Summer is a tale of cats saving the world- twice! Here’s the blurb:

Lise has a special destiny: to help a clowder of sentient cats save the world from an evil older than history itself. It is a terrible battle, but Lise and her comrades prevail, putting an end to war, poverty, ignorance and want. The world is a better place.

Or is it?

A century later, it comes clear that something has been lost. The new civilization produces no artists, no musicians, no scientists, no philosophers. Inertia has taken hold. Lise, now at the end of her life, must join her cat-friends once more to restore the Spark of the Human Spirit, but the goal cannot be reached without sacrifice.

Cat Summer is the winner of the Muse Medallion for Science Fiction-Fantasy at the Cat Writers’ Association Communications Contest, 2021

The Cat Seasons series is my most extensive work to date, as well as the longest running project, beginning sometime in the late 1990’s. It was a vision more than an idea. A picture in my head of cats and how they live their mysterious, feline lives. The feral, with his tomcat boldness, yet he fears the slightest human touch. The house cat who has never got the chance to roam, but who believes she is the center of her cozy universe. The indoor-outdoor cat, living the best of both worlds, until a car comes too fast or a raccoon invades his territory.

That last one was what started me on this journey. Our then-cat Atilla, who you will meet in the book, could go in and out as he pleased through a cat door. He was not huge and  he was  extremely fluffy, but no one would mistake him for a pushover. Atilla was a tough boy who ruled the neighborhood and was king of our secluded back garden.

Once I caught him napping under a canopy of peony leaves. He must have felt safe because he didn’t move as I approached. As I watched him kick little kitty feet and give kitty sighs, I had to wonder what he was dreaming.

But in my writer’s imagination, I saw a whole scenario— cats, lots of them, taking the world by storm. It was a world that needed guidance-why couldn’t my cats provide that help?

Each of the four Cat Seasons stories involves a different set of characters facing a different challenge. In Cat Summer, they deal with an evil older than history; in Cat Winter, a space anomaly that takes them all the way back to the big bang; in Cat Autumn, the world is menaced by aliens from a concurrent universe; and in Cat Spring, retrocausality threatens to eliminate the feline species, now and forever.

There will be two more instalments to this tetralogy. Cat Autumn should be coming out sometime this year, with Cat Spring following in 2024.