[ a n a m e l e c h ]

it is Halloween, my blu-ray player is working overtime and owls are going nuts outside my window. rapture.

working on the short fiction collaboration with Phil Rossi, and the season is ripe for such nonsense. this first plate is for his short story "Anamelech," available for free here as part of his "Fiction in Five" collection. it's done in the style, as best my clumsy hands can approximate, of Stephen Gammell. Gammell, known best for his work on the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series, shaped much of my childhood and ranks among my personal deities. thank you, Stephen.



the final book should have ten tales to it. so. onward.

enjoy today. this is life.
/.n [while watching "House of 1000 Corpses"]

[ r e n d e z v o u s ]

every Halloween story i've ever done is more or less a love letter to the season.

this one is just a little more overt.



i think this is the first time i've used a pun in art. i blame my time in Japan.

short and [hopefully] sweet this year - the new job, life, etc hasn't exactly bestowed upon me infinite seas of time to invest in cathartic exercises that would probably land me on any number of psychiatric watchlists. i always saw moving to Iowa as an opportunity to participate in a "proper, Midwest Halloween," but of course we ended up in some crazy Indian summer that's made it unduly difficult to get into the season. the good news: Indy Screampark with my crew was implausibly even more epic than last year, and some of the local attractions have been up to snuff.

trust me. i have sampled across a number of states this season alone.

close your eyes and embrace those dark dreams. that's what October is for.

/.n [while listening to Samael]

[ s t u m b l e _ L I V E ]

seven months later, this showed up:



but it came with a DBK tshirt, so it's all good. ended up redoing the back cover art (see 19 Mar 11) with black-trimmed white lettering, which works much better.

i'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

"Eden" hits print next month, and now that this year's Halloween project is going live (post in about five minutes) it's time to focus on my next co-billing with Phil, an illustrated print collection of ten dark microfiction tales.

get it.

/.n [while listening to Black Sabbath (Dio!)]

[ s u m m e r _ r e n t a l ]

as promised earlier in the week:



the story was originally podcast as "Squidman," i kid you not, so i could not in good faith put a dark spin on this one. no inky, muted, writhing tentacles fumbling at door latches. no looming silhouettes with, er, questionable implications. this was actually my second take at it, and it reminds me of "Day of the Tentacle" and Jan Piénkowski's "Haunted House." both of those are lodged within the blackest remnants of my childhood heart.

"Summer Rental" is my second co-billing with old Rossi-time, available on the Amazon Kindle store for a buck or as a podcast at Horror Addicts. i would say that the latter is free, but you have to skip a literally unbelievable 45 minutes of intro to get to the blasted thing.

a colleague told me yesterday (i think... the days have been, of late, a grimy smear) that she saw Halloween stuff in the wild. at Lowe's, of all places.

field trip tomorrow.

/.n [while listening to Halfbreed]

[ e d e n _ p r i n t _ e d i t i o n ]

events continue to transpire.

relentlessly.

i'm "all settled in" up in the surprisingly rad Quad Cities area of IA/IL. while i am, at present, grievously behind in my preps for the fall semester, a while back i found the time to do the cover art for the upcoming print edition of Phil Rossi's Parsec award-nominated novella "Eden." it's available here at Podiobooks for free, or shortly as a handsome dead tree version from Dragon Moon Press. the original podcast art for "Eden" was one of the first entries in this blog, way back in the Devonian on 31 Jan 09. i hope you will agree that this one has been cleaned up a bit.



more stuff for/with Phil is in the pipeline. i knocked out a cover for another upcoming e-pub of his, "Summer Rental," which i'll post upon its availability on Amazon. it's one of my favorite covers, i think.

oh, and then there's the big, bad Halloween project.

soon.

/.n [while listening to Rush]

[ f r e d ]

it has been a while. things have happened.

i successfully completed my PhD, but you can imagine that running the gauntlet of the defense and the ensuing, all-consuming vortex of edits, immediately followed by a conference / series of bacchanalia, left little time for The Art Thang. you would be correct in this assumption.

so. despite presently having no business doing the same, being mired in a manuscript submission, transcontinental move, and preps for fall, i nevertheless fired up the old Wacom (i really need to name this thing) for Phil. he recently unleashed his first entry into the Amazon short fiction / Kindle market, "Frederic's Little Secret." it's available here for a buck, or was originally Podcast on Visionaries Short Fiction.



i'm starting to explore a hastier, more impressionistic style... trying to point in the general vicinity of something that creeps up on you in the most ungentlemanly of ways, rather than overly render it beyond, quite frankly, my level of skill. i'm really looking forward to having summers off so i can work on stuff like this every day.

i'm redoing the Eden cover for print soon, and Phil and i are planning to launch a short fiction anthology this fall. ten [very] short stories, ten plates. he gave me equal billing on Fred, which is both rad and a nice step forward.

we shall see where this goes. i'll be around.

also. um. Halloween is coming. a proper Midwest Halloween. the bug bit a couple weeks ago, and i am lost.

/.n [while listening to The Toadies]

[ s t u m b l e ]

analyses were running last night, so i did the right thing: broke out the bourbon and horror movies and finished up this art for Ditched By Kate's debut album "Stumble." the cover changed less than i anticipated, and the rest... well, i dig. i hope you will too. need to get back up to DC to see these kids play.









wolfmoon tonight. let's get it.

/.n [while listening to The Vision Bleak]

[ d b k _ m k _ i i ]

the boys (and girl) have an excellent new website, courtesy one Chooch Schubert. i submit that the upcoming EP "Stumble" is pretty [expletive deleted] excellent, and you can listen to it in its entirety at that interwebs address. first two DBK concepts in the last post missed the mark, which i suspected they would as the whole gravestone concept seemed off.

here is a new one, met with approval (read: will probably see dramatic revision) by Phil. yes, this is how i spent my Valentine's Day. no, you most definitely should not worry about me. sometimes i work in mysterious ways.



/.n [while listening to Ditched By Kate. again.]

[ d i t c h e d _ b y _ k a t e ]

Phil has a new project, which means he needs new art. band's renamed - "Ditched By Kate" - and has a seductive little corner of the web here at reverbnation. go forth, one and all.

his original pitch: "Things that come to mind, ending up in a ditch after a long and crazy night...shovels, bottles, booze, [ladies]. I think you get the idea. It's in the music." and then he rattled off some stuff about a shovel and a gravestone and i started getting questionable ideas. here are a couple quick concepts; have no idea if they will in any way, shape or form resemble the final product.





i should have been working on science, but the photoshop is a powerful, jealous mistress. alright, back to work.

/.n [while listening to Ditched By Kate]