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The Scarlet Soul: Stories for Dorian Gray

With the running out of the year it’s time to start posting some of the things I’ve been working on for the past few months. This year has been an incredibly busy one with little breathing space between projects. Last month I mentioned not having enough time to put together a decent mix for Halloween; I also haven’t had enough time to prepare a calendar for next year. The latter isn’t a great loss since last year’s effort was a particularly bad seller but I still like doing them when I have the opportunity.

Before I get to one of the big illustration projects, here’s a cover I put together last month for Dublin’s Swan River Press. The theme should be self-evident, and this marks my second entry into Dorian Gray territory. It’s also the second thing that I’ve worked on this year with a connection to Mark Valentine (see this post for details of the first). Swan River publish a range of elegant hardback editions so I’m looking forward to seeing this one in print. As to the artwork, the frame is adapted from a 1900 calendar design by one Oscar Ziemann which I found in an issue of Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. There’s next to nothing about Herr Ziemann on the web so his design may have been a one-off. The poppies are my own replacement for Ziemann’s floral designs; they relate to the hints that Oscar Wilde gives to Dorian Gray’s opium indulgence, and they’re scarlet flowers, of course.

The Scarlet Soul will be published next month but it’s available for pre-order here. My next work for Swan River Press will be a major edition of William Hope Hodgson’s weird masterwork, The House on the Borderland. More about that later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Picturing Dorian Gray

Weekend links 385

• It won’t be out until late January—and then in the UK only—but the blu-ray premiere of The Mystery of Picasso (1956) by Henri-Georges Clouzot was announced this week. The initial run of the discs (there’s also a DVD) will include a booklet containing my essay about the film, something I was very pleased and honoured to be asked to write. Clouzot’s remarkable study of Picasso drawing and painting for the camera was made immediately after his masterwork, The Wages of Fear (also newly available on UK blu-ray), and this new edition will include two short extras, one of which, A Visit to Picasso (1949) by Paul Haesaerts, is an excellent precursor/companion to the main feature. More on this subject later.

• At the Internet Archive: an almost complete run of The Twilight Zone Magazine (1981–1989). While masquerading as a TV-series spin-off, TZ under the editorship of TED Klein was an excellent periodical devoted to horror and dark fantasy. In addition to running original fiction by major authors (Stephen King was a regular), the magazine contained features about older writers such as Lovecraft and Machen along with book reviews by Thomas Disch, film reviews by Gahan Wilson, interviews and more.

• “Bram Stoker was gay,” says Tom Cardamone in a review of Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula by David J. Skal. I’ve not read Skal’s book so can’t comment on its claims but his earlier Hollywood Gothic (about Dracula on page and screen) includes some discussion of “sexual ambiguity” in Stoker’s work.

• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 625 by Elena Colombi, Secret Thirteen Mix 235 by Rhys Fulber, and XLR8R Podcast 514 by Tommaso Cappellato.

• Help, Help, The Globolinks! is a previously unreleased electronic soundtrack by Suzanne Ciani, out next week.

• La Région Centrale (1971), Michael Snow’s epic of landscape gyrations in two parts, here and here.

• Alexander Calder and the Optimism of Modernism: Jed Perl in Conversation with Morgan Meis.

• Illustrations by Lynd Ward for The Haunted Omnibus (1935) edited by Alexander Laing.

• Daniel Dylan Wray on the gay-porn music of disco pioneer Patrick Cowley.

• It’s that man again (and his drawings): Ernst Haeckel: the art of evolution.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Steve Erickson presents A Black Psychedelia Primer.

• Bootsy Collins‘ favourite albums.

• Picasso (1948) by Coleman Hawkins | Pablo Picasso (1976) by The Modern Lovers | Picasso Suite pt. 1 (1993) by David Murray Octet

Weekend links 382

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

The Thing: Artbook

It was just over a year ago that I was asked to contribute to The Thing: Artbook, and the thing itself (so to speak) turned up in the post a few days ago. This is a large, heavyweight volume of 400 colour pages, stuffed to the slavering gills with fanged abominations (and more than a few Kurt Russells), a suitably excessive tribute to an excessive film.

Publishers Printed In Blood have previewed a fair amount of the artwork over the past year but the variety of interpretations of John Carpenter’s (and, lest we forget, John W. Campbell’s) monsters is quite overwhelming. After wondering how (or if) they were going to order contributions from 375 different artists, the book turns out to be divided into sections based on lines of dialogue from the film, a clever idea when much of the imagery reprises the same scenes or characters. My piece, which you can see below the fold, is in the “Nobody trusts anybody now” section.

One surprise was the dedication to Berni Wrightson who died earlier this year. As for Mike Ploog’s original designs for the film’s creatures, I was hoping there might be more of these but the book does open with a couple of Ploog’s drawings.

I’ve resisted the temptation to post favourites by other artists aside from this piece by Steve Thomas. This one stood out for me since it’s a riff on the same lettering designs from fire insurance maps that I pastiched myself a few years ago for Lavie Tidhar’s The Bookman Histories. Not all the artists produced monster art, there are quite a few contributions like this which present the film via infographics or pastiche.

Continue reading “The Thing: Artbook”

Moonshine by Jasmine Gower

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.