Bloggin'

Once again the work of Astanael brings the page to life Third of the four city-states, or states of being expressed through the metaphor of place, is Dis. First, let's address the elephant: yes, the name of the city of Dis comes from the city described in the Inferno of Dante Alighieri, the great City of Hell, which stands in opposition to the (I think flawed) idea of the City of Heaven as proposed by Augustine of Hippo (who was still a genius, though, in my opinion; he just

The Wasted Lands of Earth (and I'll explain the mice eventually), as envisioned by Pierre Joubert, aka Astanael Because Astanael was so very kind enough to produce four pieces of promotional art, as well as "filter coloring" for them, to provide the intended mood for the works, I think it would be highly remiss of me not to explain them. Especially since I tend to think in a highly viceral manner, visualization and kinaesthetics and the sense of touch being vitally important

Author's Note: Please see last week's blog posting for more on the universe of New Rat City, if you'd like to understand some context before reading further. But if you'd rather just leap ahead, heedless of consequences, far be it from me to deter you. Oh! But before you do, I want to mention: I've provided links to all the songs mentioned in the story, so you can listen along with the same background music I had going while I was writing. Again, if you'd like. Since I su

By Leona - A cover for a short story collection that might or might not ever exist; ah, sweet melancholy Next week, I intend to share a shortish story based in the setting of the upcoming novel Angel @ the End of the World, listed on the Books sub-page of this website. Before I do that, though, I thought that some explanation of the setting might be in order. The front cover shown above is for a hypothetical collection of short stories set in New Rat City, my version of the