The Secret Sea coverSo, I announced The Secret Sea a while back, but now you can see the beautiful cover (with that quote from R. L. Stine!) in all its glory! In case you’ve forgotten, the book is about, well, read the description my publisher provided:

Twelve-year-old Zak Killian is hearing a voice. Could it be a guardian angel? A ghost? No, that’s crazy. But sometimes the voice is so real. . . . It warns him of danger.

One day Zak is standing on the subway platform when the tunnel starts to fill with water. He sees it before anyone else. The voice warns him to run. His friends Moira and Khalid believe this is more than a premonition, and soon all three find themselves in an alternate universe that is both familiar and seriously strange. As Zak unravels the mystery behind the voice, he faces decisions that may mean the end of their world at home―if they can even get home!

In his most propulsive and heartfelt book yet, acclaimed author Barry Lyga explores the depths of friendship, the bonds of family, and the nature of the universe itself.

For now, I will say no more. Pretty much anything I could say about this book is a spoiler.

But I will say this:

This book is very special to me.

I know I’ve said that about other books, but, really, this book is very special to me, and I hope that you’ll read it and it’ll be very special to you, too.

See, I’ve published a lot of books, but this one is different. When I was a kid, I binged on fantasy and sci-fi and superhero comics. So, if you’d told 12-year-old Barry Lyga that someday he would publish slice-of-life fiction or teen thrillers, he’d look at you like you were crazy.

If you told him he’d publish The Secret Sea…he’d nod and grin and say, “Yeah, exactly.”

So, I’m going to ask for your help.

I’m a known quantity in the young adult world, but not so much in the middle-grade world, which is a whole different space. I would love for The Secret Sea to do really well, and I’m hoping that if you’re reading this, you’ll be willing to help.

How can you help? Well, the most obvious way is to preorder the book. It doesn’t come out until August, but you can preorder right now from Amazon or BN.com. 1

You can also mark it as “Want to Read” on Goodreads.com. Believe it or not, that helps!

And if you’re one of the lucky folks who managed to score an advance copy of the book, give it a read. If you like it, please review it on Goodreads!

Finally, keep paying attention. We have several months until August and I’m trying to cook up some fun stuff to celebrate the book.

  1. It doesn’t seem to be up for preorder anywhere else right now.