David Russell’s cover for Enchanters. My copy has an earlier but just as beautiful cover.
I first met David Bryan Russell when he hired me to edit his first novel. Enchanters is a delightful, well thought-out and written tale of a woman coming into her own as she finds a hidden world of magic jeopardized by chaotic forces. David deftly blends magic, aspects of nature being damaged and Glys’s journey through both worlds. The details are rich and visual.
What was different about David, compared to most of my clients with first novels, was that his manuscript was very polished. The plot had very few areas to query, and the pace worked well. Overall his book was one of the more complete and well-written manuscripts I have ever edited. That’s saying something for a person’s first novel and I can guarantee my first took many rewrites to get to where David’s book was. David will be continuing this tale, as well as others. What was also refreshing about Enchanter is that it takes place in Norway. He got away from the common marketing mindset, that American readers always want to see stories taking place in American towns and cities. It’ time all readers broadened their horizons and David has a passion for Norwegian mythology.
David and I became friends, though we’ve never met and probably chat once a year online. He’s American-born but chose to move to Australia so I have no idea if we’ll ever meet. It turns out that David wasn’t just a fledgling writer; he’s a well-established storyboard and cover artist. His book cover is exactly how he envisioned it, because he did it. There are other writers of speculative fiction who started as artists first or vice versa. After all, the creative vein runs through us, but we can mine it in different ways and it’s not uncommon for artists to work in more than one field. If you take a look at the sumptuous, diverse and rich imagery on David’s Dynamic Images site, you’ll see that you recognize many of the films for which he’s done concepts or storyboards.
I believe that David’s work on storyboards honed his ability to see scenes and breakdowns that translated well into written storytelling. He’s extremely active in his arts and it doesn’t stop with storyboards and books. With other talented individuals, David Russell has formed www.vistabti.com, a site that creates book trailers and covers. This is more on the professional end of things, such as what publishers might look at for marketing titles. The world of book publishing is changing and more ebooks are being sold than ever before. People are so hooked into the digital domain that we view reviews, writing samples and myriads of images on the internet. Book trailers are becoming much more common and of course book covers, whether digital or in print, will never die.
Take a look at David’s art. But, if you only look at the images, you’ll miss out on how he creates as lush a world in his book as he does in illustrations.
Colleen Anderson 