Verging on something new

This year I’ve been making steps to get into book cover design.

I’ve been wanting to do much more design work because my day job (web design) no longer offers the sort of design work that I used to love. So I’ve been taking charge of my destiny and have slowly been making contacts in the book design world. I don’t yet know if this will be a sideline or a full-time job eventually: for now, I’m just exploring options.

I had the great fortune to meet the two people behind Burdizzo Books: Matty Bob Cash and Em Dehaney. I met Em at our local writer’s social, and through her I met Matty Bob, albeit only on Facebook. Both Em and Matt are passionate writers, and last year they joined forces to setup Burdizzo Books.

Neither Em nor Matt are professional designers and they wanted someone to help them with the covers of their charity anthologies. These collections of short horror stories bring together myriad authors, who have written stories for free to help the books raise funds for notable charities. I offered to help out, and earlier this year I completed the cover for The Reverend Burdizzo’s Hymn Book, a collection of dark and strange horror stories that raises funds for Napac.

Em and Matt loved the cover that I created, and in fact they were so pleased they asked me to help them on their future covers too. We came to an agreement and so from today, I will be helping to create all their forthcoming book covers.

And so in keeping with Matt and Em’s dark personas (The Reverend and The Black Nun respectively), I am now The Verger, insane assistant to these two lost souls who are bringing classic horror stories to a book store near you. I only hope I can live up to their demented expectations!