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Burton Mayers Bookswww.burtonmayersbooks.com

A Summer of Darkness

When we took on John Michaelson's memoirs about London Vampires in 2014, we didn't anticipate attracting anything darker, but our latest author, Matt Adcock, has brought a new type of darkness to our catalogue of titles.

The debut novel blends sci-fi and theological debate together

Complete Darkness, published by Burton Mayers Books, is due for release on Friday 25th October 2019, nicely in time for Halloween.  But rather than exploring ghouls and monsters and vampires, Adcock's cyber-punk adrenaline shot of sci-fi explores the concept of dark matter and hell (set in a dystopian London future). 

Skilfully blending conventions of the genre with comic fantasy and lashings of bloody violence, Adcock's debut sets up his DarkMatters Universe in style with a good degree of humour and intertextual nods. With a background as a film and game reviewer, blog editor, head of comms at Church Urban Fund - not to mention a network of artists and theologians who share his interest in dark sci-fi - we can expect a lot more from Matt in the future (if Armageddon hasn't already arrived).

Pre-order your copy now 

also available from all other leading bookshops, including Waterstones and Foyles 

Publications Update - Summer 2016

New titles are planned for release by the end of this year.

In 2015 we announced that the sequel to Spikez was in production, and then John Michaelson - aka The London Vampire - expressed a desire to share some of his secretive work with us. That left us feeling very excited about what 2016 might bring!

Promotion for Making Trakz is drawing to a close, with author Richard Mayers visiting the final schools and libraries across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire this summer.  The book has proven to be very popular with children and adults alike (see reviews) and the concept remains ahead of its time. 

Spikez: Red Dragon carries on where Spikez left off and sees the animal cyborg branch of MI6 travel halfway across the world to prevent a global apocalypse.  Can Windar's misfit team prevent an army of self-aware animal cyborgs being released across China? 

Back in London, John Michaelson has been busy tracking down the Ants and uncovering their involvement in human trafficking operations. Recently, he took up an invitation to write for a horror magazine (SQ Magazine), sharing his dark experiences and casting light on the modern vampire phenomenon affecting Europe.  We predicted a release of Nuptial Flight on Flying Ant Day but that didn't sit too well with him, so we will have to wait, but anticipate an October 2016 release - although according to his latest article, Michaelson hints that we might see some excepts in the run-up.

Michaelson has written two articles in recent months

Plans for a picture book were put on hold due to artist commitments so we are actively scouting for new talent to join our growing team of authors and illustrators. There are plans to widely expand the title into digital platforms so watch this space.  Lavender the Hedgehog will appear in her own adventure, hopefully some time next spring when she comes out of hibernation.

All the titles from Burton Mayers Books are available (paperback and Kindle) from major retailers worldwide, including Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith, and Barnes & Noble.  Please check out the reviews and follow us on Twitter to receive all the latest news, offers and deals linked to our titles.  For all media enquiries related to our authors, please contact them directly through Twitter.

@Spikez_Novel - Richard Mayers (Spikez, Making Trakz, Spikez:Red Dragon)

@TheLondonVamp - John Michaelson (October's Son: The London Vampire Diaries, Nuptial Flight)

October's Son - Cover Design

Having secured some great pictures with John Michaelson, we were faced with the challenge of trying to capture the theme and content of his book in just one image.

We shared the images with John and expressed our desire to use one of him wearing his mask on the front cover.  He was not keen on this idea and stressed that the mask was for public appearances only and that he does not want to be seen as a pantomime villain.  It made sense, since the book is very much about quashing the vampire myths.  We then considered something similar to what he tried originally from his website.

However, John did not have the original and disclosed that it was a found image he happened to come across during his research.  We traced the image down using the web to someone called Paul Cook, so credit due there for capturing such a creepy image.  We then realised that we didn't have many pictures of London without John in them, and with the October publication deadline looming, we began to panic.
We trawled through some of John's own images on the London Vampire Flikr account and suggested those below to him below:

This image had the right darkness and colours but had nothing distinguishable about London. John said it was taken between the Strand and Covent Garden, but didn't say much more other than that there is no longer any scaffolding there.

This image is taken from Highgate Cemetery, but John was keen to stress that he was not trying to create a spin-off of the Highgate Vampire phenomenon. We both agreed that it was a great image.

This image is a bit of a mystery.  The angles and light create interesting tones and it's quite creepy and significant in some way.  We're not sure where it was taken, but the problem was that if we cropped it to a book cover it would look too bright and lose the impact we wanted it to have.


   
John used this image on his Facebook and we thought it was quite morbid and perhaps significant.  The problem, however, was that we would have to significantly edit and manipulate to add the right level of gloom to match the novel.  

 

We know that this image is significanat and linked to Camden, which features in the latter part of the book.  Again, John wouldn't say much more than what we figured, but it lacked the level of fright needed to match the tone of his story. 

The image above is not far from the type used in generic thrillers and crime novels.  However, we felt we were straying away from the fact that the novel is in London, something we were really eager to convey to international audiences. 

The perspective is there but the the threat was not.  Apparently this was the type of alleyway Jack the Ripper would stalk in Victorian London. 

Overall, nothing quite did it for us.  We went back to the drawing board and were planning to reshoot pictures of the capital, when we decided to review the images taken of John near Trafalgar Square and, by chance, found the image that sent shivers down our spine.  It meant significantly cropping to remove John from the image, which meant a drop in definition, but somehow it just worked. 

Front

We hope you agree that malice and threat is clearly represented in the cover.  The red fountain, which is not perfectly reflected, is - in our opinion - such a powerful visual metaphor which exemplified John's fight against a murky underworld beneath the sparkling city of London.  Even John was complimentary, which for us was saying something. 

Back

And as for the back cover, we persuaded John to let us use one of him sat on St-Martin-in-the-Field.  Not only is the image subtle, but it summed up the experience of the photo-shoot, that he remained unseen, not even attracting attention from the majority of night-crawlers.  In fact, only when we finished editing the cover did we realise that we had managed to include a London bus, a black cab, an art gallery, a church and a significant monument - not to mention The London Vampire himself.  Not bad, we thought.  We hope that you agree.

October's Son: The London Vampire Diaries is available from 27th October 2014 from all good book stores and online.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Octobers-Son-London-Vampire-Diaries/dp/0957338732 

Welcome to Burton Mayers Books

Burton Mayers Books is an independent publishing house founded by Richard Mayers and John Burton in 2008.

Richard Mayers is a secondary school teacher and children's author and comes from a background working within the TV and Film industry.  He formed Burton Mayers Books with his colleague, John Burton, to publish and promote a range of groundbreaking titles for the Juvenile market.  Richard worked as a freelance creative for a number of years before becoming a teacher in 2006, but he continues to foster interests in interactive media and has attracted a varied client base over these years.

John Burton also currently works as a secondary school teacher but has a wide and varied background as a designer, illustrator and web developer.  John worked as an independent creative designer at studios across London for a number of years, including working for national newspapers (The Mirror), worldwide charities, projects (Bloodhound SSC) and small businesses looking for a design edge above their competitors.  Because of his contacts and track record of innovation, John continues to offer highly creative ideas to future publishing projects.

The first in-house title was a project that began in 2008 with a concept for a robotic, animal superhero.  Since that time, John and Richard developed the idea and published Spikez internationally in 2012.  During that time, opportunities to collaborate with authors and artists from across the UK continue to come in.

Many of the online design projects Richard and John contributed to since 2009 onwards have also come to fruition, with the first adult title, October's Son, set for release in 2014.  The project, a biographical horror by John Michaelson, attracted John and Richard because of its revelatory content, global appeal, potential to redefine genres and challenge the conventions of non-fiction.  The title is currently being edited for content.

In 2015 there will be an increase in the number and range of titles published by Burton Mayers Books, including an anthology of short stories, poems and photography about London.

List of Titles:

Spikez (Ingram) - 2012: Children's Novel 9-12+, number 1 in the series.
Spikez: Red Dragon - 2019: number 2 in the series.
Spikez: Viral - 2020: number 3 in the series.

Making Trakz - 2014/15:  Children's Novel 9-12+, a prequel to the popular Spikez series.

October's Son: Diary of the London Vampire - 2014 - An adult biographical horror by John
Michaelson.

Nuptial Flight: The London Vampire Conspiracy - 2015 - an extended memoir of John Michaelson's gruesome exploration of vampire culture in Europe.

The Hedgehog's Full Moon Party - 2018 - picture book collaboration between Richard Mayers and Abigail de Montfort.

Complete Darkness: A Darkmatters Novel - 2019 - Matt Adcock (debut novel)

Osmond the Toad - 2019 - Liz Noble - Children's picture book

London: An Anthology (2021) - a selection of short stories, poems and photography from some of London's up and coming creatives.

All works will be printed by Lightning Source (Ingram) and available through all leading bookstores.  Electronic versions will also be available on Kindle through Amazon.