New client website goes live: JoeAbercrombie.com
Another initial page of content went live as of yesterday; it's been a good couple of weeks on the work-front. This one is for a brand new client, and someone I'm particularly thrilled to be building a website for, given that I really, really enjoyed his first book or two.
Currently www.joeabercrombie.com is a holding page containing some information about the first two books in his The First Law series: The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged, as well as a mailing list sign-up form and an email contact address. Joe and I will be working on a much more comprehensive site later in the year; the target is June / July (ish), work-load (Joe's) permitting.
Again, it's a simple design, using the parchment background to reflect the cover-theme of The Blade Itself. The only thing I might do differently, thinking about it, is improve the header, try to put it into a gothic-serif font to try to match the book's lettering. That would look better, but give Google less relevancy-matching to get its teeth into, but then the primary domain should grab Google's attention quite nicely. I'll think I'll see how it goes for now.
New client website goes live: www.JaneJohnsonBooks.com
I'm delighted to announce that I was able to launch a new site just before the weekend, for an author who's been a client of mine for a few years now.
Jane Johnson, longstanding editor at HarperCollins' Voyager Books imprint, is also a well-established author in her own right these days. She co-wrote the Gabriel King books with M. John Harrison, and then wrote a nordic fantasy trilogy under the pen-name Jude Fisher, as well as the official tie-in guides to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.
More recently, she's written a series of children's fantasy books under her own name (the publisher's promo website - a very good one, too - is at www.janejohnson.eu). Her new novel, Crossed Bones is due to be published by Viking in February next year and so in advance of the launch of the book, Jane has aked me to put together a mini-site at www.janejohnsonbooks.com, which looks a little like this:
The new novel is a saga of high drama and romance, about the lives of two young women: one of whom was captured by Moroccan pirates in the 16th century, the other a modern girl who turns detective when she's given a piece of embroidery that was created by the first girl during her captivity. It should definitely will appeal to anyone who loves historical adventure tales.
Jane asked me to create a site that reflected the themes of captivity and mystery and had a feel for the Moroccan sands, where Jane herself now lives for half the year. Do please let me know what you think of the end result.
New-look UK SF Book News Network goes live
I've spent the last few days' worth of spare time working on a new template for UK SF Book News, and I've installed it just this morning.
I've gone for a much more spacious, clean-looking design than the previous blue, blue and more blue, which I trink was a bit oppressive after a while. So currently the new scheme is predominantly red/grey, but I'm hoping to have a blue and a.n.other variant - with a CSS-based switching mechanism - to follow in due course, for those who prefer something other than red.
Do please let me know what you think, it would be great to get some feedback.