Author Archives: James - Page 37
new cover reveal for Themself
Firstly I would like to thank everyone that took time to give me feedback on the design of the new cover for Themself. In particular I'd like to name check Tom Mouat who first suggested a minimalist approach (as did a couple of others). This prompted me to spend some time looking at book covers in the bookshop at London Victoria train station. What I saw there was that nearly every non-fiction book (and a lot of the fiction) had a fairly minimalist cover. Bookshop visit I was sort of surprised by the number of books that have a block colour cover, large text for title & author, and nothing else. Although most of those also had a small illustration on the cover, usually about half the width and a third of the height. Those illustrations were simplified, not photo…
Dominic Green – Science Fiction Writer [Author Interview]
Dominic Green The author interviews are making a return to Themself! First in the new series is Dominic Green, a Hugo nominee and science fiction author. I reviewed his book Warlords of Llantatis earlier this week, it's one of my top books of 2016. I have a feeling that I'll shortly be reading a lot more of Dominic Green's work. Interview - Dominic Green 1. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I remember filling exercise books with ridiculous, poorly-spelt, derivative stories written in pencil. I was about 33 at the time. I don't remember ever making a decision that I wanted to write stuff. That would be like a fish making a decision that it wanted to breathe water. 2. Do you write for a living, or do you also do other work?…
Warlords of Llantatis by Dominic Green [Book Review]
Warlords of Llantatis by Dominic Green My rating: 5 of 5 stars The author emailed to ask me to review this, unusually I bought the book rather than accepting a freebie. There were two reason for this, one was that the reviews were really good, and the other was that it was only 99p for the kindle version. I'm pleased to report that it lived up to the promise in the reviews. Warlords of Llantatis At first sight this looks like a fantasy, but it's definitely science fiction. Set a couple of decades in the future most of the action takes place in a virtual game world. There are very brief interludes of real world that contrast the player life with that of their characters. The story is a combination of a detective mystery and also a heroic quest. Inside…
Help me pick a Title Font for my new book cover
I need your help to pick the title font for my new book cover. I'm in the process of re-designing the cover for the paperback version of Themself. My work in progress cover is a choice between either a photo (see below) or a minimalist plain cover. I'll survey on that in a little bit when I have more time to produce the full minimalist cover. Pick Themself's Title Font Right now I need some quantitative help with choosing options on the title font. I need something that speaks to people as 'creative writing' and works. So can you please do this one question surveymonkey to help me out, and share it around as well please? Thanks. Draft Cover for Themself in Paperback Here's what the new cover looks like so far. This isn't the final version, it needs some more…
Horror Movies – What Makes Them Properly Scary?
The Blair Witch Project (Photo credit: Wikipedia) On the way to school this morning Alexander was asking me what makes the Blair Witch Project a scary horror movie. He hasn't seen Blair Witch, but he has read the article on the sequel in the current Empire magazine. Ever since he has been obsessed about knowing how the Blair Witch Project went. Horror or Splatter? One of the things we talked about was whether or not you really need lots of blood and gore in a horror movie. There's certainly a visceral horror in seeing injured or dismembered people. But it is quite hard to get it right. We're good at understanding that it isn't real. If we don't think it is real then we cannot be truly terrified. Gore in a horror movie is like slapstick in a comedy. It…