Welcome to a new cover reveal!

I'm extremely happy to help reveal the cover of the new novel of CJ Dotson, an author whose debut, The Cut, impressed me; and I have high hopes for These Familiar Walls, which will be published by St. Martin Press.

Let's take a look at the blurb:

In 1998, desperate loneliness pushes preteen Amber to ignore the misgivings of her family, particularly her younger sister, when she befriends the troubled new kid in the neighborhood—a boy with dead eyes, a fascination with fire, and no remorse. Their turbulent relationship is brief but creates lasting consequences.

Twenty-two years later, in 2020, he resurfaces to kill Amber’s parents, and is in turn betrayed by his accomplice and killed in Amber's childhood home.

After the deaths, Amber inherits the house and, in an effort to save money, moves in with her husband and two children, hoping to reclaim some sense of stability in the grief and chaos surrounding her. Instead, she finds that the familiar walls are haunted by more than just bitter memories and lockdown stress. She shifts in and out of dreamlike trances, her reflection won’t meet her gaze, and a menacing voice whispers to her from the gathering shadows. Although she tries to brush off the strange happenings as stress-fueled hallucinations, Amber is soon forced to admit that something much more real—and more dangerous—haunts her family. But Amber has deadly secrets of her own, and she must resolve these long-buried truths or lose the life she’s contrived for herself.

These Familiar Walls will be released the April 14th, 2026.

You have info for preordering on this link.

Time for the cover!

In this post:

CJ Dotson

C.J. Dotson is a Northeast Ohio native who now lives with her family upstate New York. She studied English with a creative writing focus at Cleveland State University and now daydreams about having the time and resources to go back to school to study history and mythology instead. She lives in a house that has more shadows than working lights, along with her husband, 9-year-old son, 5-year-old daughter, her grandmother-in-law, and with her teenage stepson over the school breaks. She loves reading sci fi, fantasy, and horror, but will read really anything that catches her eye (her favorite book is none of those genres — it’s The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien). In what spare time she has, C.J. likes to paint and draw (mostly with acrylics and charcoal respectively) and she’s teaching herself to decorate cakes. C.J. is primarily a writer of novels and short stories, and occasionally flash fiction. She loves to write dark genre fiction, and is an active member of the Horror Writers Association