"The Secret of Ventriloquism" Illuminated Manuscript pages

Some of the art on the manuscript pages.

To help Dunhams Manor Press with their line of limited hardcover books, at the beginning of the year I offered to donate a piece of original art with each subscription. Designing the scratchboards for the covers and interior illustration generates stacks of sketches that sit in sketchbooks or are simply discarded in the recyclable bin, and if they got into the hands of readers, publisher Jordan Krall and I thought they'd make for a unique collectible. With the release of Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism imminent, I spent the Veteran's Day weekend drawing and painting illustrations on pages of the manuscript sent to me by the author, thinking I'd only do a few... and I became so engrossed in Padgett's stories once more, I went on to create a series of new works that would've easily fit in the book. Each Dunhams Manor subscriber will receive an original "illuminated manuscript" page from Jon's collection.

Watercolored manuscript pages of Jon Padgett's "The Secret of Ventriloquism"

Doing the pages in quick succession, these images explore the themes and mood of Padgett's collection, and this project gave me the chance to revisit some of the imagery, like the blackened screaming skeletons of "The Infusorium." Seen as a set here, the evolution of design can be traced from drawing to drawing, honing the bizarre anatomy with each attempt.

I'm positive readers of weird fiction will enjoy Jon's first collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism, which is available in paperback, eBook, and limited edition hardcover from Dunhams Manor, and I look forward to working on upcoming titles by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Matthew M. Bartlett, and Jordan Krall himself. While I doubt I'll have the time to do another series of "illuminated manuscript" pages like these, subscribers can look forward to receiving more unpublished art from other books in the near future.

"Rowan" by K.G. Orphanides

My latest assignment for The Lovecraft eZine was K.G. Orphanides' "Rowan," set in an old mining town in South Wales where an old evil still lingers. The narrator follows a friend named Rowan to the abandoned mines in an almost mythical, archetypal descent into the underworld... and I'll stop there. Because you should read the story for yourself- and it can be read for free online- and also because that was the point in the story that fixated me upon the characters and where they were going.

I read this story a week after Christopher Lee's death, and I had just watched The Wicker Man DVD again, and I thought there might be a link between Rowan Morrison in the film and Orphanides' "Rowan." While researching rowan trees for an authentic look, I discovered the tree held a place in Norse and Celtic mythology and was sometimes referred to as a portal or threshold tree. It seemed appropriate to place a silhouetted rowan tree at the place where the girl stood, on the brink of the unknown.

Sketchbook page. Rowan designs on the right included rowan trees and a second figure in the foreground.

In my first few sketches, I had the narrator in the picture, attempting to keep up with the girl in the distance, the old mining equipment emerging from the fog behind them, the fog on the ground somewhat luminescent around the heaps of slag. By the time I began etching the scratchboard, I'd discarded the second figure to focus on the girl beckoning to the viewer from the ridge just before she disappears from sight. The skulls in the roots and the sneering faces in the mist were design elements that weren't in the story, but made for an enticing illustration.

"Rowan," 5"x 7" scratchboard

"Rowan" by K.G. Orphanides appeared in issue 35- the Summer 2015 edition- of The Lovecraft eZine and can be read online for free here.