Category: {fantasy}

Fantasy

Weekend links 382

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Raven (2015), a metal sculpture by Taiichiro Yoshida.

• “Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light [at the Smithsonian American Art Museum] restores Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968) to his rightful place in the history of modern art.”

• At Brown Noise Unit: a fascinating, lengthy interview by Philip Kaberry with Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) et al, with particular focus on O’Malley’s work with Japanese musicians.

• Erik Davis talks to scholar, writer, and mythographer William Rowlandson about Jorge Luis Borges, magical trees, Yankee mysticism, and the power of the weird and murky.

• The first issue of the world’s first magazine of fantastic art and literature, Der Orchideengarten (previously), has been reprinted in full with additional English translation.

• At Muddy Colors: the month in covers for September/October which includes my cover for Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng (and which is on sale now).

• At 3:AM Magazine: Adam Scovell talks to horror author Ramsey Campbell about the ghost stories of MR James.

• Paralysis: Live at Silent Night #8, a new release on (limited) cassette and digital by The House In The Woods.

• At Dangerous Minds: Jozef van Wissem buries the dead in his new video, Virium Illarum.

• PKD Files — A podcast about the life and work of Philip K. Dick.

• Russell Cuzner on The Strange World of Nurse With Wound.

• Clark Collis on the rise and fall of Fangoria.

• The North Star Grassman And The Ravens (1971) by Sandy Denny | Flight Of The Raven (1979) by Emerald Web | Kill The Great Raven (1979) by Snakefinger

Moonshine by Jasmine Gower

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Presenting yet another cover design for the house of furious automata, Angry Robot Books. This one won’t be published until next year but the cover has been previewed on the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog so I can show it here. Like Under the Pendulum Sun, this is another fantasy scenario with a fresh take on fairy lore:

Daisy’s starting a new job and stylish city life, but mage-hunters out for her dark magic threaten to destroy her vogue image.

In the flourishing metropolis of Soot City (a warped version of 1920s Chicago), progressive ideals reign and the old ways of magic and liquid mana are forbidden. Daisy Dell is a Modern Girl—stylish, educated and independent—keen to establish herself in the city but reluctant to give up the taboo magic inherited from her grandmother.

Her new job takes her to unexpected places, and she gets more attention than she had hoped for. When bounty hunters start combing the city for magicians, Daisy must decide whether to stay with her new employer—even if it means revealing the grim source of her occult powers.

The brief this time was for something with an Art Nouveau/Art Deco feel. I had plans at the outset to incorporate some of the Art Nouveau stylings seen in the Netherlands circa 1910 but that idea was dropped in favour of a more overt collision between Nouveau and Deco. The latter element was essential since Jasmine’s story borrows much from the Roaring Twenties with its city setting, Prohibition theme, speakeasies and dance halls. The poses of the figures are based on the chryselephantine sculptures that were popular in the Deco period; the Daisy figure I borrowed from a statue by Ferdinand Preiss of a Charleston dancer.

Moonshine will be published in February 2018. Meanwhile there’s a lot more of my illustration work waiting in the wings. So far this year I’ve created 55 illustrations for four different books, and there’s even more to come. This is what is known as a busy time. One or more of the books will be out before the end of the year so, as always, watch this space.

The Heart of the Lost Star

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Presenting my cover for the third book in Megan Derr’s gay fantasy series, Tales of the High Court. Since this cover follows a pattern established with the first book in the series, The High King’s Golden Tongue, I’ve posted volumes one and two below for comparison. In my post about the series last year I said that I appeared to have exhausted the Viollet-le-Duc illustrations which I was plundering for the (collaged) architectural frames. As things turned out I was able to work up a new one but if this series continues then further ingenuity will be required.

The Heart of the Lost Star will be published by Less Than Three Press later this month. Meanwhile, I have a number of other projects—most of them horror-related—waiting to be officially revealed. As always, watch this space.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tales of the High Court

Weekend links 371

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• My cover design for the Doug Murano-edited story collection, BEHOLD! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, appeared here last December but a repost is in order since the book has been published this week by Crystal Lake. Back in December I didn’t have a list of the featured authors but I do now: Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Morton, Brian Kirk, Hal Bodner, Stephanie M. Wytovich, John Langan, Erinn L. Kemper, John FD Taff, Patrick Freivald, Lucy A. Snyder, Brian Hodge, Kristi DeMeester, Christopher Coake, Sarah Read and Richard Thomas. The foreword is by Josh Malerman, and the interior illustrations are by Luke Spooner.

• “How do you memorialize an artist who refused to remain identical to himself? How do you remember one of the great philosopher-artists of memory?” Ben Lerner on the elusive Chris Marker.

• Diabolical Fantasia: The Art of Der Orchideengarten, 1919. A welcome reprinting of art from the German magazine of weird fiction compiled by Thomas Negovan. (Previously)

• Coming in September: Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise, a documentary by Reto Caduff and Stephan Plank about the great record producer.

• The Roman Roads of Britain mapped by Sasha Trubetskoy in the style of Harry Beck’s London Tube Map.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980).

• Ian Shank on the trove of erotic Roman art that scandalized Europe’s royals.

• At Haute Macabre: Biblio-alchemy: The Liquid Library of Annalù Boeretto.

• What makes a French film noir? Andrew Male has some suggestions.

• David Shariatmadari on how 1967 changed gay life in Britain.

• Mix of the week: Gated Canal Community Radio.

• A Gallery of Moods by Mlle Ghoul.

• Loe And Behold (1970) by Sir Lord Baltimore | Behold The Drover Summons (1983) by Popol Vuh | Beholding The Throne Of Might (2014) by The Soft Pink Truth

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

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Once again I’m a little behind with putting new pieces of work on these pages, a consequence of the reduced rate of posting and the delay between finishing various works and them being announced by publishers.

Under the Pendulum Sun is a fantasy novel by Jeannette Ng whose cover was revealed this week by Angry Robot. I was very pleased with the way this one turned out so it’s good to see it being given a positive reception. Jeannette’s novel is a dark hybrid of Gothic drama and fairy story, the main characters being a pair of Victorian missionaries attempting to bring the Gospel to Arcadia, a very real and very sinister fairyland. The model is that of the Victorian missionary heading into what were regarded as the benighted places of the world then finding themselves and their beliefs subverted by the alien culture they were hoping to enlighten. It’s a clever concept, and the novel is filled with strange invention, so much so that I had to scale down the amount of things I wanted to get into the cover. This often happens with inventive novels (the ones I’ve done for KW Jeter suffered from this), you find yourself with enough material for three or more covers but only the one cover to contain everything.

There’s no need for me to go into any detail about the art and design when I did that earlier for the cover reveal at Fantasy Faction. The book itself will be published at the beginning of October.