I have this print on my wall. I love it for its color, perfect composition, and creepiness. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not good.

Click on the picture to see more of Jordan Crane’s prints and books. He is a master of the haunting and the strange.

…by Spear of Destiny.

I heard this song once or twice in the 80s and loved it. Kirk’s voice gave me chills up my spine. I never could find it again until recently when I tracked it down on YouTube. This is terribly, terribly 80s, but I don’t care.

Beats the hell out of the Tina Turner song by the same name. Hmmm, what if she’d sang this one instead?

Click on over to the FREE Stories page. I have added four stories there. Three are bite-sized, one is more substantial. Check ‘em out!

I don’t know much about this guy. My guess is he works as a concept artist in the games industry in China, but I do know that his work is gorgeous, with beautiful, liquid colors and incredible detail. This is a crop of one of his paintings, which are all too big and wide to show here in their full majesty.

Click on the picture to go to his site, but be warned, get yourself a big monitor and a fast connection.

No moshing in the Best Buy for me. I’ll just bang my head at home – to this!

Used to see these guys down at Molly Malones. Now they’re all over the world. All right, Dave King!

Iv is an amazing Russian artist I found on ConceptArt.org. His work is haunting, creepy, disturbing, but at the same time, beautiful and flawlessly executed. To me, this kind of work blurs the line between illustration and fine art.

Iv doesn’t seem to have a portfolio site, so the pic links to his Live Journal Page. Check it out. Lots of new work there.

Woo hoo! For the second year in a row, I have been nominated for a David Gemmell Award, this time for Shamanslayer. The award is for the best heroic fantasy novel of the year. The field is wide and deep and I’m up against some stiff competition, but, as the title of the post says, it’s an honor just to be nominated.

Click on the pic to visit the David Gemmell site and learn more.

These are amazing. This artist named M. S. Corley set out to redesign all the covers of the Harry Potter series to look like they had been done by Penguin Classics in the sixties. They have such a cool, minimalist look, and really well thought out design motifs that appear in all of the covers and tie them together really well.

Click on the picture to go to his site. You can see all the other covers, plus other series that he’s done, including the Narnia books, and Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet novels.

One of my favorite bands, with one of my favorite guitarists, Futoshi Abe, who sadly died of cancer this year at 47. Here they are in their prime. What a wrist!

You know, I was hoping to show you other swords by other artists of the same quality as Jake Powning, but… I’m having trouble finding any. Here are some guys who come close. This sword is a special edition from the Raven Armoury, in England – a beautiful, fantasy-style weapon.

They have a lot of other great looking weapons on their site. Click on the picture to check it out.

And if you know of any other blacksmiths who are doing great work, mention it in the comments or drop me a line. I’m always interested to see what’s out there.