Dark Valentine Magazine
June 11, 2010 4:01 PM   Subscribe

Dark Valentine Magazine
I'm the art director of a new online magazine, Dark Valentine, dedicated to dark fiction. Our premiere issue has launched today, and can be downloaded free here.

In the words of our publisher, "If summer is a little too bright and shiny for you, then we invite you to take a walk on the dark side with 120 harrowing pages of horror, fantasy, noir, and more." I had the chance to work with a lot of really talented artists, like Michael Lauritano, Pamela Jaworska, Larry Nadolsky, Jane Burson, Rina Ez, Elena Trigatzi, Molly Brewer, and more. The cover, which I illustrated, is Tanit, the Carthaginian moon goddess-- she's something of our patron saint over at the magazine. It was inspired by Stephanie Dray's short story "The Threshing Floor."

We also have stories from Christine Pope, Frank Duffy, Chad Rohrbacher, and Kat Laurange. There's flash fiction from Cormac Brown, Sandra Seamans, Carol Kilgore, and Blue Jackson, as well as paranormal noir from Agatha-nominated novelist Elizabeth Zelvin and Paul D. Brazill's innovative twist on an old monster.

I hope you all enjoy!
posted by suburbanbeatnik (4 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

The cover painting is gorgeous! (Full disclosure: the art director is my sister, so I am a little biased.)
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:27 PM on June 13, 2010


This makes me happy- I look forward to reading it!
posted by haplesschild at 6:35 PM on June 13, 2010


Downloaded and am reading. It's lovely!

If you're open to constructive criticism -- and feel free to ignore this -- the only art-direction choice I really wasn't on board with was the use of Various Interesting and Theme-Appropriate Fonts for the story names. I certainly understand the motivation, but it's a bit jarring for me, as a reader, and as an author, I feel my titles can stand on their own.

As a f'rinstance, would Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities" be a better story had its title been written in a font that uses dozens of tiny little men all hanging off each other? Probably not -- in fact, the title works best without any visual cues to shore it up. I think you might be selling your writers a bit short with the "you know it's spooky because it's titled in a spooky font" approach.

But I'm a grumpy old man and can safely be ignored.
posted by Shepherd at 10:50 AM on June 17, 2010


Thanks for all the feedback, guys. I hope you enjoyed issue #1. We're all hard at work on issue #2, which is going to be packed with fantastic stories from writers like Kaye George, Eric Stone, Nigel Bird, Chris Dabnor, David Perlmutter, and more!

In addition to artists returning from the first issue, we have Alena Lazareva, Sarah Vaughn, Leanne Hannah, Mark Satchwill, Shannon van Muijden, and many others.

The second issue will be live on September 1 for a free download. Check out the Dark Valentine website for stories, contests and reviews!
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 10:02 PM on July 9, 2010


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