Welcome to a new cover reveal!

Today we have the pleasure of helping reveal the cover of Key Lime Sky, the second traditionally published novel of Al Hess, which will be published by Angry Robot Books.

Let's take a look at the blurb:

Denver Bryant’s passion for pie has sent him across Wyoming searching for the best slices, but his food blog is a failure and its trickling income isn’t enough to pay his rent next month.

Driving home from a roadside diner, Denver witnesses a UFO explode directly over his tiny town of Muddy Gap. When he questions his neighbors, he seems to be the only one to care that the residents’ strange behavior and a shower of hail-that-isn’t-hail could be evidence of something extraterrestrial. Frustrated that his reputation as town eccentric is impeding his quest for answers, he details the events on his failing blog, and his online popularity skyrockets, driving him to search for answers.

The only person in town who takes him seriously is handsome bartender, Ezra. They investigate over pie and the possibility of romance, but when people start vanishing and reality folds in on itself, it’s suddenly a race against time to find the extraterrestrial source and destroy it before it consumes not only Muddy Gap but everything beyond. Denver’s always been more outsider than hero, but he’s determined to ensure that a world with Ezra – and with pie – still exists tomorrow.

As you can expect from any other Al Hess' novel, representation of different collectives is an important part of the book, as it includes an autistic, non-binary, part-Cherokee main character with anxiety and sensory sensitivities and a plus size pansexual Latino love interest.

If your curiosity has been picked at this point, you can preorder the book using this link, which includes several stores; it publishes the 13th August 2024.

The cover illustration has been made by the own Al Hess, with Karen Smith as the Cover Designer.

In this post:

Al Hess

Al Hess is author of World Running Down and the self-published Hep Cats of Boise series. Semi-finalist in the SPSFC with Mazarin Blues.

When not hunched before a computer screen, Al can be found at his art desk. He does portraits in both pencil and oil paint, and loves drawing fellow authors' characters nearly as much as his own. He writes cozy and uplifting stories with queer, trans, and neurodiverse representation.

Al is represented by agent Ren Balcombe at Janklow & Nesbit