The Dark Issue 7 now on Sale
I’m jealous of the fabulous covers that grace The Dark magazine.
Selecting cover art for a magazine is no simple task. I know, I did it for over a decade — sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. A great cover has to be a great piece of art, both eye catching and unique, but that’s not enough. It also has to clearly communicate the tone and content within. It won’t help you, for example, to have vibrant sword and sorcery heroes on your cover month after month, if you never actually publish sword & sorcery (as Realms of Fantasy was notorious for.)
The Dark has great covers. And they faithfully convey the macabre tone of the stories within… and, occasionally, the magazine’s playful side as well, as Lane Brown’s cover for the February issue, featuring a young girl feeding a bat, does marvelously (at right, click to embiggen.)
The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. The seventh issue features four all-original short stories:
“Bearskin” by Angela Slatter
“In the Dreams Full of Sleep, Beakless Birds Can Fly” by Patricia Russo
“Welcome to Argentia” by Sandra McDonald
“A Spoke in Fortune’s Wheel” by Brooke Wonders
You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets. If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 7 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered The Dark with Issue 6. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.
This issue certainly has a beautiful cover.
I remember sending you an email when issue 7 of Black Gate first came out, complimenting the cover, which was gorgeous.
I had to magnify the cover. I thought, “Is she letting a bat chew on her?” A closeup reveals that she’s feeding, presumably, some sort of fruit to the bad. But the color of the fruit makes you look twice. Was that the artist’s intention I wonder?
> I remember sending you an email when issue 7 of Black Gate first came out, complimenting the cover, which was gorgeous.
Thanks Allen! I took a chance on an unknown artist for BG 7, Terri Lindsey, and it worked out very well, I thought.
BG 7 is also one of our “black gate,” covers, in that it actually has a black gate on the cover. The others are BG 1, 5, and 11. Just a little fun I had with different visual interpretations of our name.
James,
Hard to say. Probably not — it’s pretty clear at any decent resolution what she’s doing — but anything’s possible.
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