Shining In the Dark

Lilja from Stephen King news website, Lilja’s Library has announced his anthology Shining in the Dark, which celebrates the 20th anniversary of Lilja’s Library.  The anthology, compiled by Lilja, will contain 12 stories by 13 authors.  Six of the stories have not been published anywhere before and some were even written especially with this book in mind; it also includes one from Stephen King himself – The Blue Air Compressor, which has never appeared in any of his collections or been in print anywhere since 1981.  For more information about the authors and stories you can visit the anthology’s official website: www.ShiningInTheDarkAnthology.com.  The book will be published by Cemetery Dance and should be out next year.

Lilja and I worked closely together to come up with the idea for the cover art.  He wanted an image that reflected ‘Lilja’s Library’ but would not only just appeal to fans of the site.  One image that kept coming to him was that of a man or creature sat looking at a computer screen with something scary about him.  I thought this was a great starting point, and furthermore that the creature should be the website’s mascot Marv (originally created by Glenn Chadbourne).  I liked the setting of a creepy ‘library’ room and further tied it in with the website by having the banner appear on the computer screen.  Early on, Lilja suggested maybe using imagery from the Stephen King story for the cover; while we veered away from that idea I did manage to include a nod to it by making it look like Marv was reading the story on the screen.

Below are some rough sketches I did for the composition as well as some work-in-progress shots of the final image.