Looking back at my book covers: Fast Lane

Over the next 3+ weeks I'll be looking back at my book covers in the order of their publication dates, including the foreign edition covers. First up is Fast Lane.

J.T. Lindroos, graphic artist and publisher of the legendary Point Blank Press, came up with this brilliant cover--an apocalyptic scene of a man rushing towards a city bursting into flames. Not only does this capture the essence of this psycho noir novel, but it's also very close to one of the scenes from the book.

A quick story about the writing of Fast Lane. I wrote the first draft in 1992, and in '96 I was working with an agent who wanted me to start the book earlier in the story to show Johnny Lane in a more positive light so the reader could be more sympathetic to him by the time he has his psychotic break. I'd heard the same from other early readers, so I wrote around 45 additional pages. At the time I was using an early version of Microsoft Windows, and just as I was finishing these 45 pages my computer crashed and I lost these pages (I hadn't made a backup, or printed them out yet). I wouldn't be able to swear in court that I retyped those 45 pages from memories exactly as I originally wrote them, but I'm pretty sure I did, and there's no way I'd ever be able to do that again.