[full view art]

About DarkEcho

ContactFeatured Art: Rick BerryContentAbout Paula GuranSome Photos

Contact


◊ General information or to contact Paula Guran: Email darkecho@darkecho.com
◊ To subscribe to newsletter, change eddresses, or unsubscribe: subscribe@ darkecho.com
◊ To suggest or update links, please use this email links@darkecho.com
◊ To contact Rick Berry, email art@braid.com



Featured Art by Rick Berry


Please note: Copyrights to all of the artwork reproduced at the top of the page or on "view art" pages of DarkEcho 4.0 and in the left column under the DarkEcho Horror logo on DarkEcho 3.0 is held by the individual artist, Rick Berry and is used by his permission. Nothing may be reproduced, linked, or transmitted in any form without written permission from the artist. If you are interested in rights for these works, please include the title of the piece, specific use and rights you require and email art@braid.com. Mr Berry is also available for original illustration, design and concept work. Please visit the Braid Art site to view more of his work.

Each "page" of both DarkEcho 3.0 and 4.0 is graced with the incredible art of Rick Berry. Berry is an accomplished oil painter, draftsman, and a pioneer in new media. In 1984, he created the world's first digital cover illustration for a work of fiction, William Gibson's Neuromancer. He left school at age 17 to begin a career in underground comics. After hitching east to Boston from Colorado, he shifted his artistic focus and has produced hundreds of illustrations for books, magazines, games, CDs, and comics. In addition to illustration, Berry's early experience in the print production trenches of comics has evolved into specialty editions design work, and has sent him to some interesting places. He was flown to Hong Kong in 1993 to supervise presses and advise the Chinese on current electronic press capabilities. His fine art work can be seen in galleries internationally and online at Braid Media Arts.

Rick Berry Berry has an abiding interest in collaborative work, and, in 1993, joined with Phil Hale to produce Double Memory, an 110 page book that Peter Straub called "...a dazzling achievement." Berry and William Gibson worked together again in 1995 when Braid Media Arts (Berry, Darrel Anderson, and Gene Bodio) designed and executed the CGI cyberspace climax of TriStar Productions' film, Johnny Mnemonic. The sequence was featured in SIGGRAPH's animation revue, 1996.

Berry also has a long-term collaboration with fellow professional artist/illustrator/designer for 30 years. The founders of Braid, their work has received awards from The Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, Spectrum, MacWorld Macintosh Masters, Computer Graphics World, and the Truevision International Videographics Competition. It has appeared in nearly every major computer graphics/media/arts magazine, as well many other publications including books, comics, posters, and a few doorstops.

Berry teaches Digital Art: A Collaborative Approach at Tufts University, as well a conducting lectures and workshops at colleges and corporations nationally on the nature of creativity. He lives with his wife and three children in Massachusetts.



CONTENT


DarkEcho, in general and currently, focuses on literature of the fantastic science fiction, fantasy, horror, speculative fiction, whatever you want to call it. It features a blog, reviews, interviews, and essays. There is a free e-mail newsletter that you may subscribe to.

In the last ten years there have been three major site constructions: the original tacky little site (v.1.0), the first makeover with Rick Berry art during the OMNI era (v.2.0), the massive remodel of about 3.5 years ago (v.3.0), and now the new "white site" (v.4.0).

DarkEcho 3.0 (re-designed and re-launched 1 May 2002)focuses primarily on horror. It incorporates professionally published content from several sources including all of the content of DarkEcho OMNI Horror, originally produced (1996-1998) under editors Ellen Datlow and Pam Weintraub for pioneering professional Web publication OMNI Online (no longer an active site). Universal Studios' HorrorOnline went on the Web in October 1998 and existed in a monthly format through the spring of 2001. Now that HorrorOnline no longer exists, most of the content produced for its horror literature area -- monthly interviews, essays, and reviews -- is also republished here.

Other content came from Spook magazine, the "Waves of Fear" column in Cemetery Dance magazine, the DarkEcho Horror site (established 1995) that was produced in support of DarkEcho, a weekly email newsletter for horror writers and others, and from the newsletter itself.

Further original material from writers Colleen Crary, Hank Wagner, Justin Norton, Fiona Webster, John Grant, M. Christian, and Thomas Roche is also included.

DarkEcho version 4.0, emphasizing science fiction and fantasy (including horror) was launched in October 2005. Along with some original content, there are re-printed reviews and interviews from CFQ magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and "Waves of Fear" column in Cemetery Dance magazine.



About Paula Guran


Currently

Editing:
Editor - Juno Books
Best New Paranormal Romance (anthology series)
Warrior Women (Juno Books, forthcoming winter2008)

Continuing freelance writing gigs:
Publishers Weekly (reviews)
Cemetery Dance ("Waves of Fear" column)
Fantasy Magazine (review editor & reviews)
Writers.com monthly newsletter

Publishing:
Infrapress (Fiction)
Cælum Press (Nonfiction)
Writers.com Books (Writing-Related)

Web Site Design and Webmastering:
DarkEcho
John Shirley
Ellen Datlow
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Writers.com
Messages from Michael
Juno Books
Signs of Witness
Infrapress
Caelum Press
Writers.com Writers.com Books International Horror Guild (Design by Chad Savage)


Literary Agent for author John Shirley

Teaching/one-to-one tutoring for Writers.com/Writers On the Net (see below)

Volunteer Work
Adminstrator, International Horror Guild Awards
The Mirabundus Project (Member, Board of Directors)
DarkEcho Blog/Newsletter

The Very Short Bio (Less than 100 words)

Paula Guran (www.darkecho.com) is the editor of fantasy imprint Juno Books (www.juno-books.com) and its Best New Paranormal anthology series. She reviews regularly for Publishers Weekly, is review editor for Fantasy magazine, and a columnist for Cemetery Dance magazine. In an earlier life she produced weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG award, and a World Fantasy nomination), edited Horror Garage (earning another IHG and second a World Fantasy nomination), and has been a contributed to numerous professional sf/f/h publications. She's a publisher [Infrapress (www.infrapress.com)], teaches, and is author John Shirley's ( www.john-shirley.com) literary agent.

The Long Bio

Paula Guran produced Darkecho, a weekly email newsletter for horror writers and others, for over six years (1994-2001) and was recognized with two unprecedented back-to-back Bram Stoker Awards for Nonfiction from the Horror Writers Association (1998 and 1999) as well as an International Horror Guild Award (1999), and a World Fantasy nomination (1997). She began producing the horror portion of the pioneering professional Web publication OMNI Online in 1996 and became the Literature Editor of Universal Studios' HorrorOnline in October 1998.

Paula GuranGuran is current editing a line of fantasy that focuses on women: Juno Books. Her first anthology for the imprint, Best New Paranormal Romance, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Juno Books publishes two books a month.

She also edited edited Horror Garage for three years. The print zine, an eccentric mix of original dark fiction and garage/punk/indie music, received an IHG award for Best Publication of 2000 and Guran was honored with a World Fantasy nomination for it in 2002. (Note: She is no longer connected with Horror Garage in any way.) Guran also edited the anthology Embraces: Dark Erotica (Venus or Vixen) -- termed in a starred review in Publishers Weekly: "Provocative, intelligent, subversive and, above all, artful." It was an IHG nominee as Best Anthology. While with Stealth Press she edited, designed, and executed the original promotional PDF anthology All Hallows-E: Halloween Tales by Seven Masters of Horror with stories by Ray Bradbury, Peter Straub, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, John Shirley, William F. Nolan, and Al Sarrantonio. It was downloaded more than 20,000 times in the six-week period it was available online.

In addition to the current freelance writing listed above, Guran was the consulting editor for print (reviewing and writing articles about sf/f/h) for Cinemafantastique and has written articles or reviews for Icons of Horror, Supernatural Literature of the World, Locus, Locus Online, The Third Alternative (UK), Event Horizon, Dark Wisdom, Barnesandnoble.com, Gettingit.com, Mystery Scene, Inklings, SciFiEye, Horror, Pulp Eternity, Cabaret, Tangent, ZENtertainment, The Market List, Heliocentric Net, Into the Darkness, D8, for Writers Digest books, and various convention programmes. Some of her work has been translated into German and Russian.

She mentored the The Spook and was a contributing editor for that publication. She authored introductions for the multiple award-winning collection Black Butterflies by John Shirley, anthology Imagination Fully Dilated 2, and Nancy Kilpatrick's collection Cold Comfort. Her essay on the history of Halloween was featured in the award-winning Cemetery Dance anthology, October Dreams. Her interviews have been translated into German and Russian for foreign publication.

Dabs of fiction have appeared under pseudonyms for professional webzines and, under her own name, in anthologies Eros Ex Machina (soon to be republished) and the Stoker Award-winning 365 Scary Stories. Guran is the former fiction editor for Gothic.Net Webzine and previously edited and published Wetbones, a print magazine of cutting edge dark fiction. She has been award-winning author John Shirley's literary representative since January 1996.

She chaired the of the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards Jury for two terms and is a former member of the Board of Trustees. Guran served as a World Fantasy Award judge in 2001 and has administered the a International Horror Guild Awards since 1997.

Guran has moderated and served on panels for the World Horror Convention, SFWorldCon, World Fantasy Convention, the Horror Writers Association Annual Meeting, Dragon*Con, Context, Death Equinox, and NeCon. She's also been interviewed by media including the BBC, NBC-affiliate KVOA, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and several online and print magazines.

She worked for Stealth Press -- a publisher of sf/f/h & more -- in marketing, as Online Content Editor and in other capacities. Guran is the author of The Word Book from Writers.com. She serves as publisher of Writers.com Books and its imprints Infrapress and Cælum Press In addition to her publishing duties, Guran has worked, taught, and edited for Writers on the Net and produces a monthly newsletter for them which garnered her a nomination as Favorite Online Writer for Inscriptions Magazine's 2001 Engraver Awards. She currently teaches Self-Editing: Strategies & Skills, Basic Writing Skills, Fantastic Fiction: Writing SF/F/H, the Advanced SF/F/H Workshop, and Alternative Publication: Small Press & Self-Publishing. A bio quite similar to this but with some lovely "blurbs" from nice people can be found on her Writers.com page as well as descriptions of her classes. If you are interested in editing, critique, one-to-one work, or counsultation, Guran also provides those services. Email writers@writers.com or visit the Writers.com Web site for more information.