New client website goes live: www.sarahpinborough.com
Sarah Pinborough is a British writer who's been causing quite a stir since her arrival on the genre scene with her 2004 debut The Hidden. She's written and has had published another three novels since then (The Reckoning, Breeding Ground, The Taken) - the latest of which has made the shortlist for this year's British Fantasy Award for best novel - and has another novel (Tower Hill) due from Leisure next year, with a novella (The Language of Dying) also in the pipeline, from PS Publishing.
Sarah's books to-date are proper, old-school horror stories, with strong supernatural influences and some genuinely perturbing moments to savour. I'm planning on reading a couple of them on holiday this year, with the aid of a dose of bright Mediterranean sunshine and several ice-cold beers to help dispel the shadows...
Sarah's definitely not shy, either; she's launched herself into the genre convention scene (ably aided and abetted by good chums like Tim Lebbon and Mark Morris) and has been a regular on panels (and in the bar) everywhere from WHC2007 to Alt.Fiction, with forthcoming trips lined up to Fantasycon, next year's World Fantasy and World Horror, plus a writer-in-residence stint at the Pen to Press writers' retreat in New Orleans next May. She's also joined the all-woman horror-writers' collective, MUSE; more on which we'll no doubt be hearing in the near future.
So when Sarah got in touch and asked me to help out with a website re-vamp I jumped at the chance to work with yet another pro-active author who isn't afraid to get out there and get themselves noticed. Aesthetically-speaking, she didn't want the new site to look too hard-core horror-esque, on the grounds that she's currently branching out into crime, thrillers and screen-writing as well. Her brief called for more graphic design skills than I have in my locker, so I called in a freelance designer of my acquaintance by the name of Penn Smith who came up with a suitably atmopsheric main header design and colour-scheme, and I then added the page layout and built the site around her work.
The end result is a new-look site that Sarah seems to be particularly pleased with, which is always great to hear, and ought to be pretty much completely cross-browser compatible, accessible and extensible as time goes on. It's online now at www.sarahpinborough.com.
Client website update: full Joe Abercrombie site goes live
Well folks, here it is: the full version of www.joeabercrombie.com, including an extract from Last Argument of Kings, the third and final part of Joe's rather superb The First Law trilogy, which hasn't been published anywhere else to-date.
It's been an absolute pleasure working with Joe on the site-build. As a film editor by trade he's got a very keen eye for both visual arrangement and fine detail, so his feedback and suggestions have been great all the way along. And as I've always confessed to not counting graphic design as one of my greatest strengths (but dammit, I'll build you a website that works) I've really appreciated the input.
And I reckon the end result is not too shabby at all, if I do say so myself... :)