Fearless photojournalist Matt Wicker earned a Pulitzer Prize for his daring picture of a firefighter engulfed by a wall of flame. Bad dreams rarely frighten Matt, until he finds himself ruled by Sleep, a demon within that releases a deeply buried blood thirst...Oh, it's "a horror story" - why, I never would have guessed. Never heard of this book or author till the other day, when I stumbled upon the Paperjacks edition in all its tacky, gaudy, overwrought cover art "glory" (thanks to British illustrator Ian Miller) The hardcover is fine, its allusion to Fuseli's The Nightmare complete - but I wonder what Ms. Biederstadt herself thought of that paperback cover. Nightmarish awake or asleep indeed.
I discovered this myself a month or two ago during a horror paperback search at a used bookstore. I bought it among several others, including Live Girls and Wetbones, but I haven't gotten to it yet. That paperback cover IS something else, it just jumps right out at you! I mean, it worked for me, as I bought the damn thing...
ReplyDeleteThose demons means the cover art is unmistakably that of British illustrator Ian Miller, who mainly worked on fantasy gaming material and the like, though he did do some Lovecraft covers and later did a graphic novel with James Herbert set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of Herbert's RATS trilogy.
ReplyDeleteI like it, but I can understand if his stuff isn't for all tastes.
Thanks,Kevin! I just looked up Miller's work and saw some of his Lovecraft covers - I've seen a lot of his art and had no idea who it was. Seems most of his work was more popular in the UK rather than the US, which would explain why I'm not familiar with him. The cover art for SLEEP would have worked better for a comic or graphic novel, though... or maybe the word "sleep" is too clumsily shoved on top.
ReplyDeletethe Zebra horror paperback covers are Gustave Dore or Hyeronimus Bosch in comparation with that kind of s... stuff... I tend to dislike covers with demons, lots of colour red and fire...
ReplyDeleteby the way and offtopic do you know the cover they used for the spanish edition of Audrey Rose by Frank de Felitta...
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/4921549/img/4921549.jpg
brrr... juju, mal rollo, bad karma... is a classic on too much horror fiction children in heat but it gives me a bad sensation maybe because is the photograph of a real child and not an illustration
I HATED the cover for the paperback. HATED it, it was so cheap and gaudy and embarrassing. I wept when I first saw it, but it was a done-deal by then. I did like the hardcover illustration...I art-directed it. Very cool to find my work mentioned here. Verrrry cool site, you!
ReplyDelete-Lynn Biederstadt
Thanks for stopping by, Ms. Biederstadt - I don't know of very many authors who get to art-design their own covers. Easy to imagine how that pb cover was upsetting!
ReplyDelete