New client website goes live: www.Iain-Banks.net
It gives me immense pleasure to announce that, as of earlier this month, I have been appointed by Orbit Books as webguy to one of the UK's best-loved and best-selling authors - and one of my own favourite authors, as well - Iain [M] Banks.
For anyone not in the know: the '[M]' is because Iain has two distinct writing personas. As 'Iain Banks' he writes edgy, intensely character-driven, wry-humour saturated mainstream fiction, and as 'Iain M Banks' he writes some of the finest science fiction / space opera / literature-of-ideas stuff around.
The new site is Iain's official, publisher-driven web presence, incorporating both elements of Iain's writing canon. As well as running up the initial design (except the header, which has been provided by Alex Lencicki of Orbit's US office) and managing the Wordpress installation, I'll be keeping the site topped-up on an ongoing basis, with news about Iain's forthcoming appearances and future publications, as well as plenty of links out to reviews, interviews and Banks-related coverage elsewhere on the 'Net... the full website content management service.
Here's a screen-shot of the new homepage. Feedback is most definitely welcome, please do drop me a line via the contact page on the site if you have any suggestions for additional content and / or site features that you'd like to see.
Client website re-vamp: JaneJohnsonBooks.com
Jane Johnson is an author and editor who has previously published books under the pseudonyms Gabriel King and Jude Fisher, as well as a series of children's fantasy adventures under her own name.
With her new novel, Crossed Bones (US title: The Tenth Gift) she's making a bit of a departure, content-wise; moving away from epic fantasy into the historical mystery / romance sub-genre, with a tale of sixteeth century pirates, a Cornish seamstress captured and sold into slavery in the kasbahs of Morocco, and the modern-day woman who discovers the captive's secret journal and becomes drawn into her story.
Jane wanted to re-design her main website to reflect some of the atmosphere of the book (and the two she plans to write next) and so wanted something visually arresting that highlighted the rich scenery and imagery of Morocco. Knowing full-well that this was likely to be a tall order for someone with my admittedly limited graphic design skills, I turned to a fellow freelancer - Penn Smith of Idesign Creative in Leeds - to come up with the visual elements. I then slotted them into a solid, html & css-based site build, with a Blogger-based news page to allow Jane to run her own updates when required, and provide automatic RSS-feed generation.
Here's the end result:
Do click through and have a look at the rest of the site; the visual theme continues throughout, but the graphic elements vary with the major site sections. And there's a Flickr-based gallery of Jane's own photos of Morocco within the 'Inspiration' section, for extra visual richness.
Tips on securing your Wordpress blog installation
Via the highly-useful Weblog Tools Collection, here's an article by a chap called Matt Cutts entitled Three tips to protect your WordPress installation, which happens to provide specific instructions on dealing with three of the security issues that Alan raised at the MWPUG session last week.
Matt suggests:
- Protecting your admin suite by restricting access to I.P. addresses specified in the .htaccess file.
- Including an empty index.html file in your /plugins/ directory to prevent anyone from browsing the otherwise wide-open directory (although attempting to access the plugins directory here seems to generate a 404 error instead...)
- Removing the WP version information metadata from your header.php file to avoid giving easy clues to potential hackers.
Needless to say, I'll be acting on all three of those across my client sites (as applicable, it could be difficult perhaps to get accurate I.P. address information from all my clients) in my next WP-admin session.
New client website goes live: www.pendragonpress.net
I'm delighted to announce the launch of a new website for my latest client: www.pendragonpress.net.
Pendragon Press is a small independent UK press that specialises in a mixture of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, novellas and short fiction collections and anthologies. Pendragon is run by Welsh Wizard Chris Teague and has published titles by a number of the UK independent scene's best-known writers, winning a number of awards, including several British Fantasy Society awards, along the way.
The new website is built on the Wordpress platform, which will enable Chris to update his own news and content when required, and the design - clean and minimalist, putting the emphasis on the content and the cover imagery - looks like this:
Chris seems very happy with the new site, and I'm sure we'll be talking about additional promotional possibilities in the very near future...
Client website re-vamp: RichardKMorgan.com
The new version of British author Richard Morgan's official site is now live at www.richardkmorgan.com and it looks a lot like this:
For the visual elements of the new version I adapted the look and feel of the cover design for the paperback release of Richard's latest novel, Black Man (which I can heartily recommend) and the general colour scheme is pretty minimalist throughout, in keeping with the noir feel of Richard's fiction.
Content-wise, the new site includes an expanded bibliography and a new news & views section; a simple Blogger-based page that Richard can use to update his fans with all the latest developments.
All good stuff, and both Richard and his publishers at Gollancz are very pleased with the outcome, which I'm very happy about.
New client website goes live: TheWorksofTimPowers.com
I can but claim to have played a behind-the-scenes, supporting role in the re-launch of the definitive online guide to the complete works of American author Tim Powers at www.theworksoftimpowers.com. I set up the Wordpress installation and added the relevant plugins, 'tis true, but the vast amount of rich and varied content on the site is all the work of John Berlyne (of North Star Deli fame).
John has been working for the last few years on a stupendously comprehensive tome called Secret Histories, which will combine even more Powersanalia into a huge print volume that's due to be published by PS Publishing to coincide with the 2009 Eastercon in Bradford, at which the aforementioned Mr Powers will be the Guest of Honour. I've seen the proof pages of the book and trust me, it's just incredible. Filled to the brim with original Powers marginalia, doodles, manuscript alterations and more international cover images than you thought possible.
Here's the new version of the site and if, as I am, you're a dedicated Powers-fan already, or if you've ever read anything by Tim Powers at all, then you really need to treat yourself to some quality browsing-time:
Client website re-launch - re-vamped PS Publishing website goes live
I'm delighted to be able to announce that the brand new, e-commerce enabled version of the PS Publishing website went live today and is accessible now at store.pspublishing.co.uk.
The site build is based on the Actinic e-commerce system, which I have to admit is a tad quirky in places, but pretty easy to work with once you get your head around the management interface and design elements. But it does benefit from a superb user community that includes a number of extremely knowledgeable and helpful Actinic experts who will usually step in and point you in the right direction if you're having issues. Kudos to them.
The news link in the main menu takes you through to the aforementioned PS Publishing News Room, which is running on a completely separate sub-domain and the Wordpress blogging platform; a decision I took in order to enable notifications to be put out on the Newsroom in the event of server problems that affect the Webstore, and also to allow clearer tracking of traffic patterns on the two separate sub-domains.
Anyhow, if you're a fan of high-quality science fiction, fantasy, horror and crime then you should definitely check out the PS sale that's running until the end of November - a full 50% has been knocked off the cover price of all pre-2007 book titles, but only while stocks last. Grab a bargain while you can!
Redevelopment in progress
This is my new blog / portfolio site, currently being installed, adapted, tinkered with and then stuffed full of legacy content. You can watch it happening in real-time, if you really have nothing better to do. Be warned though, I may break for lunch. And it's actually a glorious day here in Manchester, so there's a fair to middling likelihood that I might stop to mow the lawn at some point, too...
Edit, 18.45 - Well, I got a few kinks in the template ironed out and most of the legacy content across, but that's it for today. Didn't get to mow the lawn, either... one more chore to save over to the weekend.
Edit, 11/09/07 - Major push underway on the new PS Publishing e-commerce website - now that I've got the full forthcoming schedule data through from PS - as well as an update to the current site. So the potfolio additions I was hoping to make will be along in a couple of weeks, all being well.
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... :)
New client website goes live: News.PSPublishing.co.uk
I'm very pleased indeed to announce the launch of the brand new PS Publishing News Room at news.pspublishing.co.uk.
Built on the Wordpress blog platform, the site is fully RSS-enabled, makes use of various usability-enhancing plugins, and will be updated by yours truly on an ongoing basis in my new role as the PS Publishing website, publicity & marketing guy. I've been running the current PS site for a few years now, but following conversations with Pete and Nicky Crowther at PS, we've identified a number of initiatives and ideas that we want to explore under the general banner of 'selling more books', and they've asked me to take the lead on putting them into action.
It's a role that I'm very excited about getting my teeth into, not least because I've always been such a huge fan of the whole PS Publishing product line since the first title on the list was launched in 1999.
The PS News Room is the first stage of the process, and will enable much faster and wider dissemination of all the latest PS news and information, especially in combination with the ever-growing PS mailing list. Further initiatives are being developed which will come into play in due course, and time allowing I'll be discussing a few of them here, once I've had a chance to implement them and assess their effectiveness. And once we've finished and launched the new PS Publishing Webstore of course...
In the meantime, here's the News Room. Do pay us a visit and check out the latest updates:
New client website goes live: philippalmer.net
Philip Palmer is a new British science fiction author whose debut novel, Debatable Space is being published by Orbit Books in the UK and the US in January 2008. I've read it, and it's an anarchic, mind-bending space opera about revenge. And love, and hate, and killer robots, and sex, and all sorts of other stuff. But mostly revenge. You can read an extract on the site, of course.
I've set up Philip's site - www.philippalmer.net - on a full Wordpress-based blog, because both Philip and the guys at Orbit really get the whole blogging concept. Philip is really interested in the immediacy of the blogging process and the opportunity that it will give him for instant feedback, especially once Debatable Space is out in January.
And it's not like he'll be short of a thing or two to write about in the meantime, either; he may be a debut novelist, but he's also a radio- and screen-writer of numerous years' experience. There are a few posts on the blog already (Philip prepped and posted a few as the design process went along) that talk about subjects as diverse as Spooks, Captain Jack Sparrow and his recent involvement in the production of a 15-minute radio play about the political situation in Gaza.
Here's a screen-shot of the site:
New client, new(-ish) website: www.RichardKMorgan.com
I've recently taken on the management of Richard (K) Morgan's website, which I'm very pleased indeed to be involved with, seeing as I'm a bit of a fan and all...
I was going to start by just transferring the old site onto a new server, but... well, I couldn't resist having a bit of a tinker (as you do), so we've actually ended up with an interim revamp. It's still fairly close to the look of the original site, but I've broken the pages out of the frameset to improve Google spider access, added a bit more info about Richard's books to the homepage and so forth.
There will be a fully re-designed site going live later in the year, with a design that reflects the re-design work that publisher Gollancz have unveiled for the full range of paperback editions of Richard's books, and plenty more bibliographical information etc. Watch this space. And in the meantime, here's a quick shot of the interim site:
Client website update: new-ish look for Brian Ruckley
Orbit Books have finalised the brand new jacket design for the UK and US paperback edition of Brian Ruckley's debut novel, Winterbirth, and they asked me to integrate some of the new artwork into Brian's site design:
I do like the new cover art: I think the imagery reflects the harsh, chilly landscape and bitter, confrontational atmosphere of Winterbirth quite nicely...
Client website updates: Les Edwards & Edward Miller
Spent most of last week with my head down, working hard on the July update for the two sites I run on behalf of Les Edwards and his artistic alter-ego, Edward Miller.
There are about 50 new images across the various galleries on the two sites. Generally, the first few images in each gallery are the new ones (although I'm working on ideas for the best way to make that a bit more user-friendly and obvious). Here are some of my favourites from the new batch:
'This is Now', which was used on a Subterranean Press chapbook of three Michael Marshall Smith short stories given to attendees of the 2007 World Horror Convention in Canada:
The quite lovely artwork for the Subterranean Press edition of Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora:
And here's the artwork for the Gollancz UK edition of Chris Wooding's forthcoming novel The Fade:
They're all 'Edward Miller' rather than 'Les Edwards' pieces, I know, but that's because there's just something in the use of colour, form and texture in the Miller work that really appeals to me.
I also sent Les a few questions for an interview piece, which I posted yesterday evening over on www.uksfbooknews.net. He has some interesting things to say about the use of fantasy art in book design, if you're interested in that aspect of publishing and marketing at all.
And I shouldn't leave without mentioning that Les is having a summer sale between now and the end of September. Buy any of the fine art prints available on either website (the vast majority of the images are available as prints, apart from the pencil sketch prelims and anything where the copyright of the work is no longer owned by Les) and you'll enjoy a 20% discount on the usual prices.
Client website re-vamp: AdamRoberts.com
Adam Roberts is one of the brightest stars in the UK science fiction firmament. His novels, novellas and short stories are always ideas-driven, usually highly challenging and often misunderstood, but you can rely on them being packed to the rafters with intelligent writing: literary allusion, metaphorical and metaphysical extrapolation, and some truly stunning visions of alternate worlds, alternate futures, alternate realities.
Adam has been a client of mine for going on six years now and his website has been through three different incarnations in that time. The third version of www.adamroberts.com went live yesterday:
This time out it's a Wordpress site, and I've been exploring the options that WP offers to use it as a site-wide content management system rather than just as a single blog page. Hence the bibliography section is self-contained within the WP setup, which means that if Adam wants to tinker, he can do so to his heart's content and drive his own news section as a full blog.
Adam also runs three other blogs (Europrogocontestovision, punkadiddle and Rambling Ad Rumpo) and I'm working on persuading him to bring those three within the main blog as well - there's some great content on them, and having it all in one place would really strengthen the main site. Between you and me I reckon that once he's seen just how far superior Wordpress is to clunky old blogspot he'll be looking to at least move those over to WP sub-domains of their own, but I think that bringing them within the main site on a by-Category basis would work even better...
New client website goes live: www.NorthStarDeli.com
I'm delighted to announce that my latest client commission site went live yesterday: www.northstardeli.com.
Bit of a departure from my usual line of work, you might think? But actually, there's a very definite genre connection lurking not so far beneath the surface, because the North Star Deli is owned and run by a family partnership that includes a certain Mr John Berlyne, proprietor of The Works of Tim Powers (which, I might add, is due for a renewal and transfer to a Wordpress platform in the very near future...) and UK reviews editor for venerable online genre 'zine SFRevu.com.
The deli itself is located in the South Manchester suburb of Chorlton; Jo and I drove on down there one Sunday a while ago and enjoyed some damn fine coffee and theoretical polenta cake (theoretically, John promised us polenta cake, but actually they sold out on the Saturday... a common occurrence, the polenta cake is very popular...) whilst we talked to John about books, writing, food, drink, and the current state of the world... as you do.
Fast-forward a couple of months to John and I having a very enthusiastic conversation over cartons of spicy far-eastern food in Manchester city centre one lunchtime, whilst discussing the enormous potential for developing the North Star Deli website into something far, far more interesting than just the usual online brochure-dump.
I spoke at great length about the concept of blogging as a means of developing an ongoing conversation: a very direct and immediate link between the Deli and its customers. John saw the potential immediately, and in turn introduced the concept to his partners, brother Adam and sister Deanna.
Thus, www.northstardeli.com is now reborn, on a Wordpress platform, with regularly-updated content and all the character, enthusiasm and foodie-knowledge you'd get from speaking to any of the deli team in-store. I think I'm right in saying that the North Star is Manchester's first blogging-deli, but I suspect it won't be the last, once word gets around...
It's the content that will be a winner though. It's early days yet, but I've already learned much - maybe too much (bacon-mints, anyone?) and speaking as an avowed foodie myself, I'm looking forward to future posts (particularly Deanna's recipes) with relish...
Check it out. Join the mailing list (e-bulletins should start going out in a couple of weeks, and you might learn something from those as well). Leave a comment or three. And if you live anywhere near Chorlton, get yourself down there and stock up on fine food and beverages from around the world, as well as plenty of fresh local produce. Sample the coffee. Enjoy the polenta cake (if you're quick...)
I just wish they'd open a branch in North Manchester (preferably Prestwich... in fact, just around the corner from me would be ideal...)
I reckon if they did that and then set up WiFi access in there as well, you'd never get me out of the place... :)
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 client website goes live: www.JayAmory.com
Another new client website went live yesterday: a simple (but hopefully effective) initial page for young adult fantasy writer Jay Amory, at www.jayamory.com.
In effect it's a holding page for now; Jay is hard at work on his next book and so doesn't have the time just at the moment for generating additional content for a full site. So this initial page presents a section of information on his first two books, links to Amazon.co.uk for anyone who would like more information on availability and ordering, an email address for fans that would like to get in touch, and an email list sign-up form for folks to register for further updates as they occur.
Do let me know what you think... bearing in mind that minimalism and simplicity were the client's watch-words, is there anything else that ought to be on the page that isn't there? Or does it do the job it sets out to do?