D’oh.  So a couple of weeks ago an insanely talented Spanish art photographer named Javier Cortina did a most spectacular photo shoot of Our Man Sans Culottes entitled The Legend of St. George (click this link to see NSFW pics). And lo, L.D. Blakeley and I did squeal about the beauty of said pics, until I said the fateful words, “That second pic, the closeup where he’s holding the sword — that would make an awesome book cover, don’t you think?”

“I do! You should contact Javier and see if you can license it!” she enthused.

“No, I can’t do that. Can I?”

Suffice it to say that an hour later I’d fired off an email to Javier asking him if he ever licensed his photographs. It turned out he did, and we’ve negotiated a deal for me to use the picture as a book cover. Herein lies a story; Javier, quite reasonably, asked me what the book was about, to which I replied, “Um…”

*thinks frantically about picture*

“…it’s about…”

*pounds head against wall until something shakes loose*

“…it’s about a fantasy world loosely based on 17th Century France where an impoverished nobleman joins the royal guard as an officer and promptly gets embroiled in palace intrigue after he discovers the handsome young man he was flirting with at a masked ball is the Crown Prince, who is being blackmailed by a foreign ambassador. I’m calling it The Chevalier.”

I swear to God, I have no idea where this stuff comes from.