Here are some fun things to share for your Monday afternoon. As most of you know, we’re making a serious effort to introduce Dekker stories to thriller readers who aren’t familiar with him. A huge part of that strategy is releasing his previous thrillers as mass market paperbacks. Those are the small format books that you find at Walgreen’s, in the airport, and your local grocery stores. The idea with mass market books is to allow readers to sample a new author without the cost commitment of a hardback. If they like the story, then hopefully we’ll gain a new fan.

I first became a Dean Koontz fan thanks to a mass market book I bought on the cheap. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Here are the covers for the first three titles to be released: BoneMan’s Daughters (already out), Adam (coming in June), and Thr3e (coming in November). You can order BMD and Adam by clicking on the cover images. Thr3e isn’t available for pre-order yet. But, soon.

Speaking of Thr3e…this is the first time the cover has been seen in public. Leave a comment and Facebook share it if you like it.

This is one for all you Ted Dekker fans. We’re ramping up for the release of The Bride Collector, which means it’s time for interview requests to start rolling in. We learned a long time ago that he answers the same questions over and over, so before a new book goes out we try to put together a FAQ for media outlets. This time I thought I’d share it with you first. If you have a blog or book review site feel free to post this “interview” along with it. Some of the questions will be familiar to you, while others aren’t. Hope you enjoy it.

Q: In your novel, the Bride Collector leaves his victims arranged in very specific, ceremonial positions.  Where did the idea come from?  And how did you put yourself inside the mind of someone who is so evil, so psychotic and so certain that what he is doing to his victims is justified?

A: The antagonist Quinton Gauld arranges his victims as angels on the wall, beautifully made up wearing only a bridal veil, consistent with his understanding that he is sending them to God as his bride. Tapping into the mind of such a person is painfully easy for all humans—evil isn’t so strange to any of us, I only put it on the page where most would not dare.

They say that writing about evil is much easier than writing about goodness, and it’s this latter exercise, making good as fascinating as evil, that consumes me the most. Enter Paradise, an innocent woman in the book who is for me the most fascinating character by a long shot. I adore Paradise. Continue Reading

We’re experimenting with something this month with the release of Tea with Hezbollah, the travelogue Ted Dekker wrote with Middle East expert Carl Medearis.

On January 28th, David Beasley with the Center for Global Strategies, Ted, and Carl will be hosting alive webcast called “Why Do You Fear Me?” They’ll be tackling the big questions that most people have about the Middle East, as well as the misconceptions most of us have about it as Westerners (and, specifically, Westerners of a Christian tradition). I read this book in manuscript form last year. When I opened it I had one, admittedly one-dimensional, view of the region and the controversy that swirls about Israel, the Palestine state, and the West Bank. When I closed the book I had a completely different take on it.

This really is a book that every Westerner should read to get a better grip on the Middle East.

But, back to this webcast. You can access it for free when you buy the book through Bookschristian.com. They’re offering the book for roughly the same price as Amazon, but you can also get access to the webcast ($12.97 on its own). It’s a good deal, and I think well worth it if you plan on buying the book anyway. Check out the offer HERE. Hope you can join in. The book and webcast just might change everything you think you know or believe about the Middle East and loving your enemies.

As most of you may already know, the New Year brings with it several new Dekker titles and the first one out of the gates is Burn, a book that was co-authored with Erin Healy who also penned Kiss which came out last January. Take a look at the book’s trailer, which was done by uber-talented designer, and good friend, Mike Heath. If you haven’t already picked it up, be sure to add this book to your reading list. And be sure to watch for Erin’s debut solo novel, Never Let You Go, which comes out in May. Very talented writer who has a long career in front of her.

This is the approved cover copy for the advanced reader’s version of The Bride Collector, a Dekker thriller coming in April 2010 from Hachette/Center Street. Enjoy the sneak peek. -KSK

FBI special agent Brad Raines is facing his most complex case yet. A Denver serial killer has murdered a string of beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each scene, and he’s picking up his pace.  Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellbeing and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill people who are extraordinarily gifted.

It’s there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand.  Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person’s life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise’s help. Gradually he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls…or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace – and volume – of his gruesome killings, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector’s fourth target.  And she isn’t the last – by far.