John Everson
Like most ventures, Dark Arts Books started out as an off-the-cuff idea. In March 2006, Bill Breedlove said to me, “Hey - you design books, why don’t you put together a quick promo chapbook for the World Horror Convention — ‘a boys from Chicago’ kind of thing?”
‘Why not?’ I said…after all, I’d just left a four-year gig doing book design for Twilight Tales, and I didn’t have a deadline to produce a bookcover for Delirium Books for another few weeks…so I was temporarily without a home for my design jones.
Of course, that “quick chapbook” quickly turned into the 152-page, 12-story, four-author collection Candy in the Dumpster, featuring stories from me, Bill, Martin Mundt and Jay Bonansinga, complete with color cover and ISBN number. Bill served as editor and I handled design and distribution. Enter Dark Arts Books. From a chapbook idea evolved a full-fledged small press!
Bill Breedlove
For the 2007 World Horror Con, we followed up Candy with Waiting for October, another 12-story, four-author collection, this time featuring Jeff Strand, Adam Pepper, Sarah Pinborough and Jeffrey Thomas. Again, Bill wrangled the words and I slotted them into 152 pages of book.
Our third title, Sins of the Sirens, was released in January 2008, this time with me at the editor’s helm, since this was a project I’d wanted to do for some time.
Sirens features Loren Rhoads, Maria Alexander, Mehitobel Wilson and Christa Faust. As I worked on that title, Bill pulled together our next anthology to debut at World Horror 2008 at the end of March. Like A Chinese Tattoo hit the streets at WHC 2008 in Salt Lake City and featured Cullen Bunn, Rick R. Reed, David Thomas Lord and JA Konrath. In 2008 we also welcomed Martel Sardina to the fold to help out with Marketing and Promotions.
Martel Sardina
In March 2009, three years after the first “splash” page announced the press on the Internet, we just launched a full-scale site redesign, in anticipation of our fifth title coming this summer. Mighty Unclean will feature fiction from Gary A. Braunbeck, Mort Castle, Gemma Files and Cody Goodfellow, and will be released at the Bram Stoker Award Weekend in June.
Dark Arts Books continues to grow. That “quick chapbook” thrown together in 2006 garnered Bill and Marty a couple of Honorable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2007 and launched a successful small press. Not bad for an off-the-cuff idea that generated a “dumpster.”
— John Everson