Member Publications

Thanks X 2!

There was a large envelope in the mail today. It contained my contributor's copy of the Spring 2009 Issue of Tales of the Talisman containing my fantasy poem "When Wizards Dream at Night". I recognized several names in the ToC. That's always a nice thing to see.

However, I happened to be taking a look at this very same poem a little while back and I saw something not so nice to see; I noticed a mistake. Oh no, not that! I actually used the wrong homophone for a certain word; I had typed "reign in the wayward dreams" instead of "rein in the wayward dreams". And this error got past me, my "first readers" (my wife and daughter), and the editor. So now the poem with "reign" instead of "rein" is in print. (I think I probably noticed it too late to try to get it changed.) Bugger!

Moral of the story - things like this happen. Typos happen, word misuses happen, verbiage mistakes happen, even to the most careful and conscientious writer.

Of course, it still bothers the heck out of me. I'm just like that. And I should know better. Shame on me!

Excuse me while I give myself twenty lashes with a wet noodle. Thwack! Splat! Thwack! Splat!...

The Monsters Next Door horror poetry anthology Scattered Verses, Moonlit Curses is now available for purchase here:
http://www.themonstersnextdoor.com/scatteredverses.html

It contains, along with the darkly poetic verse of several other horror poets, six of my own dark works. "Nightmares Fell my Fantasy" and "Howling on the Moor" are previously unpublished, while "The Accursed Castle", "Life is the Life", "The Incubus", and "Your Bloody Face" have been previously published in various venues.

"Nightmares Fell my Fantasy" in particular went off in an interesting creative direction. It mixes medieval fantasy or even historical imagery with a definitely horrific bent. I guess I decided to combine at least a couple of my interests with this one!

"Howling on the Moor" is fairly standard lycanthropic fare, with a slight twist. Let me just say I had the hunting techniques of mundane wolves in mind when I penned the piece.

Buy the antho! Read the poems! Suffer the eldritch chill of moonlit curses!

My illustration of "The Faces" has just been published in the on-line version of Abandoned Towers, alongside my dark speculative poem "The Faces" (published in Abandoned Towers October 2008):
http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/poetry/rfay/faces.html

Eventually, I want to illustrate many of my poems appearing in the e-zine, in part because black-and-white versions of these same illustrations will also be appearing in a work-in-progress (if all goes according to plan). Submitting them for publication in Abandoned Towers gives me a chance to showcase the full-colour versions as well. Of course, I could just post the colour versions to my blogs, web site, and DeviantArt gallery, but I find the idea of zine publication more appealing somehow. Besides, Crystalwizard can always slap the images on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle store, too.

My illustration for "The Faces" also shows the benefit of a change in tools. Instead of using Pitt artist's pens for all of my inking, I've switched to Pigma micron pens for most of my line work. The Pigma microns produce finer lines, and yet their ink seems to scan better than that in the Pitt pens, leaving less "touch-up" of poorly scanned lines in the colouring phase. It makes my job that much easier.

Such clean fresh work. I love the way the faces blend with the wood!

Goth~Ink wrote:

Such clean fresh work. I love the way the faces blend with the wood!

Thanks!

I wanted to go with the look that the faces were actually protruding from the wood itself, and even warping the wood in places. Getting the colour of the faces just right was a challenge; it took me several tries to come up with colours that stood out, and yet weren't too drastically different from the colours in the door and door jamb.

Well I would say you succeeded. I know how hard it can be to match an actual work to the vision you first have for it in your head. Sometimes it can be frustrating if the elements do not translate as you had planned.

My scifaiku "temporal crack", originally published in the May 2009 issue of the web zine Aphelion, is now on-line at Abandoned Towers:
http://cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/
(Click to enter the zine, click on poetry, then click on my name.)
It appears with my previously unpublished accompanying illustration of an encounter between a knight and an allosaur.

My "temporal crack" illustration, along with images of the knight and allosaur separately, also appear on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store:
http://www.zazzle.com/abandonedtowers

My illustration "Polypod at Home" now accompanies my scifaiku "purple methane swamp / yellow vampire tree / polypod at home" (poem originally published in the July 2007 issue of the web-zine Aphelion) in the on-line version of Abandoned Towers:
http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/AbandonedTowers/poetry/rfay/poly.html

It also appears on merchandise in the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store:
http://www.zazzle.com/abandonedtowers

Again, I'm hoping to eventually use a black-and-white (tonal) version of this illustration in a speculative poetry collection-in-progress. Sooner or later, I'll finally have enough illustrations to make this project a reality! (The publisher wants to make sure we have enough pages to print my name on the spine before we go ahead with the collection. Otherwise, she'll be coming back for more art and poetry!)

Wow, great design. Looks nice on the t-shirts and things.

Night Star wrote:

Wow, great design. Looks nice on the t-shirts and things.

Thanks!

It is an eye-catching design, if I do say so myself.

My horrorku "clattering hooves" now appears in the June 2009 issue of Aphelion. Check it out:
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/poetry/2009/06/ClatteringHooves.html

If the poem itself wasn't creepy enough, the truth behind my inspiration is even creepier. The creative spark for this piece came from something strange my wife claimed to have seen, for a split second, on the roof of our current abode. She swore she saw (perhaps with her "second sight") a goblinish, gremlinish, impish being standing on the peak. And my wife is certainly not prone to flights of fancy or hallucinations.

Strange indeed.

Holy shit! Run! Run for your lives! LOL, sorry, couldn't help myself. Man, that is a really bizarre experience she had. Let us know if she has a similar experience.

Night Star wrote:

Holy shit! Run! Run for your lives! LOL, sorry, couldn't help myself. Man, that is a really bizarre experience she had. Let us know if she has a similar experience.

My wife actually saw these things, in her "mind's eye", more around our former home than she does around here. And there were times I swear I saw movement in the bushes outside the old place, in the same spots she envisioned these creatures.

What are they? I don't know, and I don't really care to find out. I just hope the "good neighbours" and the others keep those creepy things at bay! I don't mind the elfin entities in my computer, or the spirit cat making occasional appearances, or the occasional visit from relatives, but those frightful beasties worry me.

You do realise that things that are seen in our 'mind's eye' are usually there but in a different dimension and that what we see is only a small proportion of the actuality of existence? And that these things, as awful as they might look, usually can't affect us even though they are all around us all the time. Oh, how different life would be if we were all privy to what really exists...

Goth~Ink wrote:

You do realise that things that are seen in our 'mind's eye' are usually there but in a different dimension...

Yes, I do. However, I tend to follow my gut instincts regarding their potential affect on mankind. If I get bad vibes, I tend to steer clear. No sense in stirring things up better left alone.

I received my contributor's copies of Dreams and Nightmares #83 today. My illustration "Barixas Hunt" appears as filler art on page 10. This drawing depicts a six-legged draconic hunting beast pursuing a furry beaked barixas (my idea of what an extraterrestrial boar analogue might look like). I utilized a similar composition in my medieval-style "Boar Hunt", and figured such a good thing was worth using twice.

Linky dinky to the D&N web site, where one can find ordering info: http://dreamsandnightmares.interstellardustmites.com/

My cinquain "Yellow Eyes" now appears on-line at Every Day Poets. Please check it out, perhaps leave a comment, and maybe rate it as well. Thanks!
http://www.everydaypoets.com/yellow-eyes-by-richard-h-fay/

Although I was inspired to write this poem after reading a story about a ghost cat, I deliberately left the potentially supernatural nature of the piece ambiguous. It may be a speculative cinquain about a ghostly feline, or it may simply be a literary work about a mundane cat.

After all, there is something a bit spooky about all felines. Traditional lore often linked them to the supernatural. Perhaps those old tales were more than just fanciful yarns. Perhaps the storytellers of yore knew something about cats that we modern folk do not.

The Sam's Dot Publishing anthology Wondrous Web Worlds Volume 8 is now available:
http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#www8

It contains, among other works by a variety of speculative writers and poets, my dark science fiction poem "Explorers". While this particular piece was not my first zine publication (that distinction goes to "Midnight Sabbath", which appeared in DemonMinds in April 2007), it does happen to be my very first poem accepted for zine publication. So I'm quite pleased that "Explorers" made it into the anthology.

Abandoned Towers Issue #3 is now out. And my art is on the cover! Not to mention, my illustrations "Memories of Camelot" and "The Armour of Loki" accompany Bradley H. Sinor's story "And the Wind Sang". And my cover art also appears inside as a colouring page.

The print version of Abandoned Towers is available for purchase here:
http://store.comixpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1408

Wow Richard! Awesome artwork and on the cover no less! Congratulations friend!!

Thanks!

I just noticed today that the anthology A Time To...Volume 3: The Best of The Lorelei Signal 2008 is now out, and available for purchase here:
http://www.wolfsingerpubs.com/ATimeTo3.html

It contains, among other works by various poets and writers, my fantasy poem "Sorceress Devolution". Written in almost a chant-like manner, "Sorceress Devolution" evolved from a weird little poem I first wrote back in circa 1995. It is also meant to be something of a companion piece to "Sorcerous Evolution". I see the two as having roughly similar styles and themes. One of these days, I might actually manage to get them to appear together somewhere.

I don't know how you keep track of all your published work Richard but your portfolio seems to be growing by the day. Do you ever feel a pull to step outside your usual genre and try something completely off the bat and new? I have begun to write again but I get so far into a story when I have another completely new idea and I start writing that. I am so undisciplined I hop from idea to idea never returning to what I started and left....