The concept of the Dark Paradigm series was born from the Frank Bowen books. An extension of that world, albeit thrown forward into the near future and casting his children in major character roles.
Collaborative partner, Jay Newton and I got together in 2013 and began to literally piece together our ideas with yellow post-it notes on the back of a mirror before upgrading to a white board.
After figuring out the overall series arc plotlines we then focused on each book in more detail, starting with the first salvo, White Horse. This stage was the development of scenes and specifically, timelines of each character scrawled out on large sheets from which we picked the key scenes that we wanted to write.
After that came the beats stage, outlining each scene in very rough form, with snippets of dialogue and a line by line description of what is happening.
So, Dark Paradigm became a series concept but not only that. We wanted to think beyond the series to how we present our vision and this includes many other story and series ideas.
And so, the Dark Paradigm book imprint concept was born and the series will be the flagship with which we want to pin our ideas.
So why crowdfund?
It was a decision we made to try and cover costs such as editing, cover design, ISBNs and marketing. However, we also wanted to give true fans to get something extra like our original notepads, signed copies, character names and even offer to write a story.
For the covers, we opted for the 99Designs platform which is a crowdsourcing website. Plenty of talented designers put forward their concepts and we then debate, argue and choose the winner. The initial cover design will have an impact on the entire series and carry through the brand.
You can see an early reader poll here
We’re very excited to get started and hope some of you reading this want to get involved.
Help support the Dark Pardigm series and imprint at IndieGoGo starting from just One Pound!
