Great news coming out of this weekend. I had a meeting with the one and only Steve Crisp. That’s right, THE Steve Crisp, he of Richard Laymon and Stephen King cover fame. I’ve been a fan of Crisp’s work since I was a child and I first got my tiny hands on a Richard Laymon novel. Since then, I’ve admired the work for years (see an example to the right) and I’ve always been enthralled with his talent. Some weeks ago, I approached Steve expecting to be rebuffed. I mean, surely if he’s covering art for the greats like Stephen King, he’ll be too busy right?
Wrong. Steve emailed me back immediately, we bantered and negotiated, discussed and conversed and that’s when I discovered that only does he have time to concept my cover but he also would do it straight away, once he read the manuscript. Needless to say, I still can’t believe how smooth the discussions went.
Which is also when I found out he’s local. Steve Crisp resides 30 minutes from where I grew up. All that time and I thought he was based elsewhere. Only on discussion with him did I discover this and we exchanged emails for some time before organising a meeting yesterday in Kent. The meeting went very well and was over all too quickly. It would have been easy to spend hours in his company, the man is so humble and patient and extremely talented, we could have chatted for hours. He provided me several concept arts (which are now a prized possession) and I was asked to think it over.
So, this afternoon, I selected my artwork choice and locked it in. The meeting with Steve was a true bucket list moment. Steve has been an inspiration to me for many years. He was polite, professional, very funny and so grounded and down-to-earth that I wondered if this was the man who truly terrorised many a Laymon fan in the 80’s and 90’s. He terrorised me and he was my first choice as an artist if I ever managed to get this far with my novels. And here we are, several years later…I still can’t believe it.
I may still be cooped up in my ‘amazed fan’ bubble for many days to come.
If you want to see Steve’s work, his link is below. When the art is done, I will post here and rave about it. After all, it’s a dream come true for many reasons.