In 2023, I started experimenting with book cover design just for myself. I had been thinking about pulp covers, old paperbacks, horror novels, and the dramatic visual language that surrounded them. I liked how much information could be packed onto a single cover and how quickly a cover could suggest an entire story.

The idea was simple: invent the books first, then design them.

I started creating titles, characters, strange situations, and little pieces of fictional history. Shrieks from the Hallow and The Altar of Smoldering Souls were part of that exploration. They weren't covers for existing books. The stories didn't exist. I was making the whole thing up and then trying to convince myself that these books had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for fifty years.

What I enjoyed most was everything around the main illustration. The typography had to feel like it belonged to the period. The small blurbs needed to sound like something you might actually find on a cheap paperback. The price, issue number, publisher mark, colors, and layout all became part of the fiction.

It was also an excuse to study a kind of design I have always been drawn to. Pulp covers weren't trying to be quiet. They were designed to compete for attention. Big lettering, exaggerated characters, dramatic color, strange promises, and just enough mystery to make you want to pick the book up.

There is something wonderfully direct about that.

These projects also gave me permission to experiment without having to solve anyone else's problem. There was no client brief or production schedule. I could follow an idea simply because it sounded fun. I could make something ridiculous, push the typography too far, invent a terrible book title, or spend far too much time deciding what a fictional publisher's logo should look like.

That freedom was probably the most valuable part of the exercise.

I spend much of my professional life designing things that need to belong to an existing story. These covers let me start with almost nothing and build the story myself. Illustration, typography, composition, and a little bit of worldbuilding all had to work together to make something imaginary feel real.