Mary and I just launched a site for Debra Austin, an author whose first book will be published in the fall by Simon and Schuster.

The book is set 500,000 years ago, with a tribe of homo erectus, our early ancestors. How best to make readers connect with its central character Snap, when she is so distant from us? Working with the author, we thought the best way to go was to illustrate the site with scenes from Snap's life, working to show her humanity.

We looked around for a Tacoma artist who could help us with this, and decided to go with the wonderful Chandler O'Leary, who recently had some nudes up at the Woolworth windows on Broadway. Since Snap lived in a culture before clothes, we needed someone who could be faithful to the human body but also imaginative in the details of these pre-humans and yet still specific to the details in the book. It was a tricky challenge, but Chandler met it with great success. Here's one of my favorites, illustrating a scene from the first chapter:

The five illustrations are scattered throughout the website, and hopefully encourage potential readers to click around and explore as much for the pictures as for the content.

We had so much fun with this project. Any other authors out there? Mary Holste Design is totally ready to build you a website.