That’s right folks, the madness that is Phoenix Comicon starts in just a few hours! I probably won’t attend this year because of schedule conflicts with other work and art stuff. If you’re brave enough to deal with the heat and crowds, I can promise there will be lots of insane, wonderful, awe-inspiring moments for…
Read More Phoenix Comicon 2017The rewritten, expanded version of my smutty M/M space opera romance, Moro’s Price, is now up for pre-orders at NineStar Press. It should hit other vendors in a few days to a week after publication on June 26, 2017. A shout out to my brilliant editors, and to cover artist Natasha Snow. She managed to…
Read More Moro’s Price revised edition now on sale!Americans are so myopic, sometimes. In the rush to ‘teach to the test’ or advance our science and math education (well, until Betsy DeVos became Education Secretary), we’ve forgotten that art can involve some high levels of math and science, too. Follow this Racked.com and Twitter thread for an in-depth look at the MetGala dresses…
Read More STEM and artIt’s May 2017, and America (and the world, really) is still reeling from perhaps the greatest case of affinity fraud ever perpetrated: the election of Donald J. Trump to the American Presidency. Let’s look back at Tate Publishing, as a company deeply interlocked with some of the mindsets enabling Trump’s election: nominally ‘Christian’ worldviews…
Read More The rise and fall of Tate PublishingI have this featured over in links, but it’s worth a closer look and a shout-out: Shaderunners. From the comic’s ‘About’ page: One part Prohibition fantasy, one part Robin Hood, and a whole lot of epic heist, Shaderunners follows a group of ragtag bootleggers and bohemians who band together in an effort to steal colour…
Read More Shaderunners webcomicI’ve had this piece of fiber book art in mind since 2011-2012. I’m glad I held off until now: even Mitt Romney’s version of the GOP has been eclipsed by the current crop of corrupt, venal, sanctimonious, and utterly incompetent politicians gracing the Republican Party. (And I say that as a former GOP member!) ‘Politics…
Read More First Look: Politics As UsualIt’s April, and I’ve been so busy with my own art and writing I forgot one of April’s cherished traditions. It’s Hugo Awards nomination time! And that means another Pie Fight GIF, this time courtesy of the very topical film Dr. Strangelove. I love how stoic and dignified this poor guy looks…kinda the way most…
Read More 2017 Hugo Awards List!Typically, it’s April and I only just starting to upload 2017’s book arts pieces! Here are the roughly 1.5x3x.25″ faux-inlay covers (outside and inside) for BREATHE. I showed a first look at the pages last year. They’re a gathering of Latin mottos I thought were particularly appropriate for the current state of the world: Dum…
Read More BREATHE coversBecause it’s now illegal to show this image in Russia, I thought I’d feature it here. Added 8/22-2017: Actually, I’m debating about taking it down. On the one hand it will certainly infuriate Putin loyalists and Putin worshippers among the US Republican Party (because Putin’s predominately white Russian ethnostate is their Disneyland.) On the other…
Read More Gay Clown PutinBased off a great Twitter thread earlier today, I’ve cleaned up this version of a ‘Nazibasher’ stencil design. More anti-fascist art can be found here on Pinterest. My compliments to the original stencil maker. I’d love to cite you but we both know that may not be safe. Disclaimer: I’m making no money off this…
Read More Resistance StencilIt’s done! It looks like this: It started from an old beige cotton Dorfman Pacific Legionnaire Cap, bought at Popular Surplus when that was still around in AZ. Around 2003, for a Halloween event, I put the cap into a salmon-pink dye bath. Then doodled some red fabric paint on it, and stitched a raggedy…
Read More Pussyhat Legionnaire CapMy friend A. G. Carpenter and the great people at Falstaff Books have released ‘Of Shade and Soul’, the second novella in her Southern gothic ‘Touch’ trilogy. Delaney Green might be dead, but she don’t mean to stay that way. As she searches for a way back to the realm of the living, and the…
Read More Of Shade and Soul: A Touch Trilogy NovellaA test piece from circa 1991, made with scrap linen, plain old paraffin wax, acrylic dyes, a lot of cheap paper towels and a thrift-store iron, and a design borrowed from Balinese carvings and an amaaaazing Chinese celadon vase (Thank you, ASU West Library). I’m posting it because it’s fun, fierce, and there’s only so…
Read More Dragon Batik, a PussyHat, and the Tax Day MarchSo apparently there were at least three times as many people protesting Trump in Washington, D.C. Saturday 1-21-2017 than attended Trump’s inauguration the day before. The National Guard has confirmed it the largest single-location protest in American history. If you count all the *other* protests in the US and worldwide, participation numbered in the millions.…
Read More Crowd sizes and why they may actually matterJust so we’re clear. This guy is not heroic, he’s not smart, and he’s not honorable. He got where he is in life by being the exact opposite of those three qualities. He’s gold-plated pewter proof that if you have enough money, you can steamroll your way through life, aided by people who want to…
Read More Trump = FascistI could almost get away with the stub listing ‘It sucked’. The many and varied ways 2016 achieved maximum suckage will be studied in later history (if there is anyone left alive to study it). I’m not raising my blood pressure detailing those slings and arrows tonight. Instead, I want to talk about good things.…
Read More 2016 year in reviewAs if 2016 hadn’t sucked badly enough before this, December saw news that two more publishers were going under with messy implosions. In both cases, authors and readers were left hanging. Torquere was a small erotic romance publisher once reasonably respected, but torpedoed by mismanagement over the last few years. The bigger news a few…
Read More More publishers behaving badlyThe predatory vanity publishing world is not limited to fiction. Academic and scientific papers are also a hot commodity, since the legitimate markets can have high entry barriers in fees and vetting. A host of predatory and often outright criminal publishers have surfaced to ‘serve’ those customers. Many scientists and academics need to publish work…
Read More Beall’s List and fake academic publishersFirst off, to the Russians who keep trying to hack me: why? I’m small fry, not worth your effort. I have 13 subscribers with a handful of other readers, and I run a blog that is mostly a wall o’text. No pretty pictures, no clickbait ads, and no one powerful cares what I think. Granted,…
Read More What up, Russians?While we’re looking at the economic and social issues coalescing around the Ghost Ship fire, we need to accept that exploitation of creatives is so common it’s basically a tenet of American culture. The vanity publishers I talk about in the ‘Filigree’s Rule’ section of this blog? They’re only one of the more-blatant tips of…
Read More White Walls, Ghost Ship, and the arts in America