New Work Published: Lovecraft Ezine Issue 15

Available now, for your eldritch enjoyment, is issue #15 of the Lovecraft Ezine.  This time around, I illustrate the lead story, "Bus Stop" by Jerod Brennen.  I had a lot of fun producing art for this creepy little tale, helped by the fact that I was watching the new version of "The Thing" while I drew it, so I think it has an extra little bit of tentacular goodness.
You can read the story and see the illustration for free here, or, as always, you can get the magazine on your Kindle or Nook. 
Also, while you're at the site, why not check out their store...there's lots of interesting Lovecraft related goodness there, including some fantastic statues that are at least worth looking at.
Meantime, here's my illustration from issue 12 of that same magazine, from the story "A Catechism for Aspiring Amnesiacs" by Nicole Cushing.  It's really more of a photo-manipulation, but I think it was very effective, and earned me some good comments from the story's author, so I must have done something right.  Enjoy.

New Work Published: Powers vs. Power Volume 3!

It's been too long since we've had a new volume of stories from Robin Reed, so I am happy to report that the latest and final chapter in the Powers Vs. Power saga has just been released.  Once again, I am happy to have provided the cover art for this collection of superhero-based stories, this time with a tribute to some classic superhero comic book covers (a cookie for you if you can name the issues being referenced!).  You can see a preview of the cover below, but to get the book you've got to head over to Smashwords and grab it for just 99 cents!  While you're there, be sure to grab the first two volumes in this series, and let me also recommend Robin's other book, "Mama" and "Halloween Sky",  two of the finest works of horror available on Smashwords.  You could grab the lot of them for just a few bucks and have yourself a summer's worth of good reading.  I know I've just nabbed a copy of "Powers vs. Power" vol. 3 and am looking forward to diving back into that world.  With a cool cover like this, how could you say no?

He Sung the Body Electric: RIP Ray Bradbury

Naturally, the net is abuzz with the news that Ray Bradbury passed on. To say that his work has been influential on me is beyond understatement. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" gave my consciousness a good kick in the pants when I first read it, and I think "Halloween Tree" should be recommended reading for every young person. I have had the pleasure not only of reading his work, but also of hearing recordings of him reading his own stories, listening to dramatizations of his work in OTR show like "X Minus One" and seeing him host television adaptations of his stories in "Ray Bradbury Theatre".  Actually, I don't think there's a medium I enjoy where I haven't encountered Bradbury at some point.
I still find myself turning to Bradbury time and again, most often when I'm looking to experience that wistful, bittersweet sentimentality of which he was clearly a master.  I don't think there's an October that passes without my breaking open at least one of his stories, and knowing that there's still a lot of his work I haven't read, I don't know that there ever will be such an October.

 In his collection "Quicker Than the Eye", Bradbury had a story, "Last Rites", in which a time traveler visits famous authors on their deathbed to see them off with the knowledge their work would long outlive them and move readers for generations to come.  While I cannot see that an author like Bradbury was unaware of his own effect on literature, I do like to fancy that in his final days he was blessed with a time traveler of his own.  Certainly if any author in this last century deserved such a visit, it was him.

"I give you my hand on it, and pledge my soul and my heart's blood." The visitor
moved to do just this, and the two men's fists fused as one. "Take these gifts
to the grave. Count these pages like a rosary in your last hours. Tell no one
where they came from. Scoffers would knock the ritual beads from your fingers.
So tell this rosary in the dark before dawn, and the rosary is this: you will
live forever. You are immortal."