Computer Art?

I've always enjoyed messing around with Photoshop and other various computer programs that allow you to cobble together images or even create something of your own. And you don't get paint all over yourself whilst doing it either!

Rhys Hughes has been brave enough to put some of his paintings up on his blog (done the more established way with paint, brush and paper) and pretty good they look too.

So, every now and then I'm going to torture regale you with some of my own artwork. The first one is from my 'blue' period (five minutes ago) and I've called it:

'Wet Jumper On A Rainy Day'



Can you tell what it is yet?

Free 'Flames of Herakleitos' Taster

Steve Upham of Screamingdreams has sent me a pdf of the first few chapters of my novel 'Flames of Herakleitos' which he is putting onto a SD's disk to give away at next weekend's Fantasycon in Nottingham. As this is an exact copy of the book I thought I'd put a taster of the story on here as well. Therefore if you click on the link in the header, or here, FIRE! you'll be able to download and read the first forty pages of the story. Hope you enjoy it, oh, by the way, you'll need a pdf reader which can be found here: Adobe

Fantasycon details:

When?

19th - 21st September 2008

Where?

Britannia Hotel,
1 St James Street,
Nottingham

VanderOrc

Jeff VanderMeer thought Walter (Stan Nicholls' Orc) on his book cover was too ugly and decided to beautify it with some strategically-placed stickers.

Orbit got wind of it and came up with a competition for the first five people to send them their attempt at improving on Walter's appearance. Here is my shot:-

Just goes to show, sometimes things aren't as bad as they first seem.... hehe, sorry Jeff!

The Fix Cone Zero Review

The fine people over at The Fix (an American review site) have done a write-up of Cone Zero

“And now for something completely different.” In Cone Zero, a Nemonymous anthology/magazine from Megazanthus Press, the authors remain unassigned to their stories pending the next edition (or some other future revelation)".

The reviewer is a certain Janice Clark who enjoyed the whole anthology. So far all reviews for Cone Zero have been positive and one reviewer even mentioned Cone Zero and The Nebula Awards in the same sentence! WoW!

A Parting Gift (Fantasy Short Story Podcast)

I thought I'd try my hand at Podcasting so I've recorded a Fantasy Short Story of mine called 'A Parting Gift' It was harder to do than I thought. First of all I got tongue tied and had to do about a dozen different takes. Then I wasn't happy with the mic so I bought another one. I still sound as Welshy as anything though and even if the story doesn't make you laugh then probably my narration will! Boyo, like! Anyway, the link is up the top, or here:

A Parting Gift

It's in mp3 format and is about 5.5meg, the software used to record was Audacity which is great to use and what's more, it's free!
The fine background music is by Bjorn Lynne and his site is well worth a browse and downloads of effects etc can be obtained from Shockwave-Sound

I hope you enjoy the story, let me know what you think :)