Forging Dragons
Or Most Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Dragons (Or At Least a Certain Amount) A new book coming out is always fun, generally as it means the editors involved are happy to coax me from my lair to go sign copies in some far-flung clime.* FORGING DRAGONS:...
The Requirement
Or An Unexpected Window on the Renaissance Upon the discovery of America by the Europeans, an extraordinary document was copied out and carried by Spanish expeditions on their treks into the wilds of the New World. It was called “El Requerimiento”. Read it through....
A World (Or Two) Away
Or a Few Days Abroad I’ve always been leery of conventions in North America - once you’ve given the convention itself the once-over, there’s not a lot to do outside the convention itself, unlike European events where there’s generally much more that’s worthwhile...
Edinburgh International Book Festival
MEET THE AUTHOR I’ll be giving talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday August 23rd, from 8:00 pm to 9: pm Here’s what I’ve found out about it: The Art of Illustrating John Howe’s meticulously crafted illustrations capture the essence of some of the most...
Summer Installment 2
BEOWULF AND THE DRAGON This illustration was done primarily for the FANTASY ART WORKSHOP, though as usual with me, the circumstances leading up to it are a little more involved. The original idea emerged for the Beowulf Boardgame, but there was no room on the board...
Summer Installment 1
TOM BADGERLOCK STEP-BY-STEP Since there are no newsletters planned for the summer, and we consider it’s rather a shame just to go on silent running for a month, we thought it would be pleasant to at least send out something. Here is the second of the Step-by-Step...
Falling off the Edge
Or Where Things Are Not Always What They Seem When I was small, I clearly remember the third or fourth-grade teacher patiently explaining to us how Christopher Columbus proved the Earth was round “like an apple”. (Some illogical and contrary side of me inwardly...
La Baule (And Back Again)
Or the Inverse Proportionality of Expectation There must be some kind of a law governing the things in which one ends up involved. If the episode on the outskirts of sanity getting my work OUT of Switzerland and INTO France would have had Franz Kafka nodding his...
Rule of Desk
Or A Brief (But Memorable) Excursion into the Hinterland of Bureaucracy Switzerland may not have much seashore, but there are times it does feel like an island (actually, look at any map of the E.U., it is marooned farther and farther inside Europe as the...
Samizdat Palimpsest
Or Where I Learn Something About History. (Maybe.) I’ve been reading a lot of history books lately, initially for research, but in the end because bibliographies are full of tempting titles and the detours signposted thus are obviously more inviting than the trip at...
Coyote
Or Why It All Depends on How You Look at Things Last week, I was going to pursue that Flat Earth theme, but got distracted (again). I had a visit from a friend. My high-school buddy Harold stopped over on a trek through Europe, hot on the trail of Goethe. He told me a...
Spring in Paris
Galerie Arludik, April 17 2008 As part of the launch of the French edition of Fantasy Art Workshop, there will be a little show in Paris, at the Galerie Arludik on the Île Saint-Louis, on April 17th. All the information is on the card below. This is also one of the...
