UNCANNY MAGAZINE!

first... a little about WHY Lynn Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are hurling space unicorns everywhere....

" As one bright woman in the letter column opined, even mythical creatures in space need to hang out with other friends on occasion to swap and discuss great stories. Uncanny readers began referring to themselves as members of the Space Unicorn Rangers Corps, reflecting the inclusivity and originality of perspectives inherent in its readership." ~read more

Here's the table of contents for issue 1, and now.... COVER REVEAL!

full cover art

Pretty Little Dead Girls

a darkly bit of lovely that Mercedes M. Yardley got me tangled in.  Here's the cover art for her new novel, Pretty Little Dead Things:

in good company (a few upcoming projects)

Two things:

1) The kickstarter for Uncanny Magazine just went live with announcments about who some of the cover artists will be:

Cover art! @juliedillon @galendara @matthewdowsmith Carrie Ann Baade and Tran Nguyen! https://t.co/BBivE9I9LA
— Uncanny Magazine (@UncannyMagazine) July 29, 2014

2) I'll be joining a great lineup to do some internal art for Shadows Over Main Street, a forthcoming Lovecraftian anthology:

Galen Dara @galendara, Vincent Chong and Paul Carrick add their artistic talents to the #mainstreetshadows. http://t.co/MTDnBZlx1l
— Doug Murano (@muranofiction) July 22, 2014

VERY COOL STUFF with VERY COOL CREATORS.
 

final cover for The Future Embodied

It was a pleasure working With Mae Empson and Jason Andrew to create a cover for The Future Embodied. With table of contents full of amazing writers I'm in high anticipation to get my own copy.

character studies for Elementari Rising

I had the pleasure of doing some character sketches for Nancy Hightower's upcoming novel Elementari Rising (going to the publishers soon!)

Here are my two favorites:

Seinna, a character from Elementari Rising written by Nancy Hightower. Art by Galen Dara.

"Sienna could scarcely see more than ten feet in front of her, nothing but murky shadows of leaf and limb. The foliage underneath her feet had turned to such a deep shade of blue-green that it almost looked black, and was joined by thick vines snaking their way across the path. Another clearing lay up ahead where the daylight was allowed to settle unencumbered.

She moved in the direction of the path, but stopped at the sound of a twig snapping. She lifted her torch high. “Who’s there!” she yelled. No answer. She moved slowly towards the path when she heard another crack.

To her left, two yellow eyes peered out from the deep shadows.
“So, you’ve found me again,” Sienna said as she backed away. A deep growl emitted from the trees. “Come on then. We’ve not got all day,” she baited, reaching inside the folds of her outer cloak.
Slowly the white wolf crawled out of its hiding place, teeth bared as it continued to snarl. The widow pulled out her dagger and brandished it with one hand while holding the torch in the other. “Remember this? It gave you that nice little scar. I’d be happy to give you another,” she said, almost growling herself.

The wolf sprang." ~excerpt from Elementari Rising.

Samara, a character from Elementari Rising, written by Nancy Hightower. Art by Galen Dara

 "The little girl was near Jenna’s age, perhaps a year younger. Her dress and sleeves were ripped from the thickets, leaving scratches on her arms and legs. She stopped to shake the snow from her short dark hair while a whimper escaped her lips. Then she bowed her head and sprinted forward. A blast of wind swept the white flakes side to side, making wispy snow snakes that followed her. Another gust and the snakes writhed, each piece blending into the other until one large serpent began to slither behind her, closing in...." ~excerpt from Elementari Rising.

AFP tarot deck kickstarter

Guess What? The Amanda Palmer Tarot Deck I created art for four years ago (and then the project got shelved indefinitely)... It's BACK IN THE WORKS! A kickstarter to fund it launched last week and has already surpassed it's funding goal by double.


Keep in mind, the only way to obtain one of these decks is to make a pledge before the kickstarter ends on September 4th. 78 cards, each one created by a different artists, this deck is going to be amazing.  I am so thrilled to be a part of it.

A little background: I owe Amanda Palmer an enormous debt of gratitude for getting me back into art to begin with. It was 2009 and it had been years since I had painted anything when she shared a whole bunch of photos of herself nekkid for anyone to appropriate and interpret artistically as they pleased.  Crazy, right? But it happened to be the the jump start I needed. I picked up brush and paint and started working again.

When the idea for the Amanda Palmer tarot deck started floating around shortly afterwards I was all over it. I initially planned on doing the Three of Swords, but I had also just finished dying over her Who Killed Amanda Palmer Photographic Evidence collection and decided that the Ten of Swords, with it's over-the-top melodrama was just the thing for me. I went with a stabbed-in-the-back-AND-thrown-over-board-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean setting. Why?... Well, why not?

Valya wrote a beautiful post about just how perfect a tarot collaboration with Amanda Palmer is:

"For those unfamiliar with her work, Amanda’s songs, while fiercely intimate, are also iconic. She sings about abuse, addiction, abortion, heartache, love, abandon, regret, and hope; and her songs give voice to the dreams and fears of fans around the world. That would be enough to endear Amanda to her fans, but she takes it further to connect with them on a personal level at shows, ninja gigs, and online. Amanda opens herself up, and people often walk away saying that the experiences were intimate, inspirational, and transformative.
That is what the Amanda Palmer Tarot is about: Intimacy. Inspiration. Transformation." ~read more

And now, here's a few of my preliminary studies and work-in-progress shots for the AFP 10 of swords.

preliminary studies for the AFPtarot

studio shot of the painting in progress

another studio shot, painting in progress

final painting, 10 of Swords. AFP tarot.

(Makes me want to start painting again. Digital is awesome and perfect for what I do, but I miss getting my hands dirty.)

For more updates and info about the AFP tarot project check out their tumbler, twitter, and facebook page. 

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ Glitter & Mayhem ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Presenting the cover of Glitter & Mayhem!

(✧ I'll be cleaning sparkles out of my studio for a long while ✧)

Cover art and design by me :)

A little while ago Lynn M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas and John Klima asked if I might possibly be interested in doing some work for an anthology they were cooking up in partnership with Apex Publishing. My answer was OMG YES!! 

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

Glitter & Mayhem

"Step behind the velvet rope of these fabulous Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror tales of roller rinks, nightclubs, glam aliens, party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, and debauchery. Dance through nightclubs, roller derby with cryptids and aliens, be seduced by otherworldly creatures, and ingest cocktails that will alter your existence forever.

Over 120,000 words of brand new fiction from some of the best writers in the business are ready to bring you the most glamorous parties in the multiverse. "

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

Glitter & Mayhem is available for pre-order plus stay tuned for information about the launch party at WorldCon where the editors and I will be signing books.

))✧SQUEEE✧((

Meanwhile, here's some work-in-progress glimpses into creating the cover. This is the preliminary sketch we released as a sneak peak for the Kickstarter:

preliminary cover sketch, by Galen Dara

The nature of our cyboristic lead jammer's roller gear took some work. Simple skates just didn't seem right. Two pieces of reference I leaned heavily on were these (rather incredible) modern chariot skates and these (completely mind boggling) circa 1910 roller skates.

click for larger view

Her hair was also something I had to play around with quite a bit to get the right feel. I tried tentacles (couldn't help myself) and cable wires, but soon realized such elaborate coiffures distracted from the whole of the piece. A little experimenting revealed she had a taste for short red hair.

click for larger view

Etc etc etc, until the final painting (ta da!)

But enough about the cover. Here's a peek at the star-studded Table of Contents.
 ✧((zang))✧

Introduction by AmberBenson

Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster by Christopher Barzak

Apex Jump by DavidJ. Schwartz

With Her Hundred Miles to Hell by Kat Howard

Star Dancer by JenniferPelland

Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane by Cat Rambo

Sooner Than Gold by CorySkerry

Subterraneans by WilliamShunn & Laura Chavoen

The Minotaur Girls by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Unable to Reach You by Alan DeNiro

Such & Such Said to So & So by Maria Dahvana Headley

Revels in the Land of Ice by Tim Pratt

Bess, the Landlord’s Daughter, Goes for Drinks with the Green Girl by Sofia Samatar

Blood and Sequins by Diana Rowland

Two-Minute Warning by Vylar Kaftan

Inside Hides the Monster by Damien Walters Grintalis

Bad Dream Girl by SeananMcGuire

A Hollow Play by AmalEl-Mohtar

Just Another Future Song by Daryl Gregory

The Electric Spanking of the War Babies by Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. Johnson

All That Fairy Tale Crap by Rachel Swirsky

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

If you need more shiny stuff while waiting for the book release, go peruse our pinterest board. To wrap it up, here's a little gold plated burlesque on roller skates. Just for you. (FYI, she does get down to pasties by the end. NSFW.) 

Booth 521 @ SFAL

SFAL banner

Just a reminder, Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 2 is in less than a month. I'll be hanging out at Booth 521 with Evan Jensen and Li Grabenstetter and a bunch of art stuff.  Come say Hi! See you there :)

For more about the event, follow Spectrum Fantastic Art on Twitter and Facebook.

catching up: a few things I haven't blogged about yet

Each of these should have been it's own blog post. (Maybe one or two of them will be, eventually.) But here's a quick run down of what I've been doing lately (in no real order.)

First... FIRESIDE! In a breathtaking down-to-the-wire kickstarter, Fireside relaunches on July 1 as a monthly website and ebook, each with two pieces of flash fiction, one short story, one part of a 12-episode fiction experiment by Chuck Wendig. I'll be doing monthly art for them, and created this promotional piece for the kickstarter. (Here's the Q&A with me on the matter.)

Also, last month we just wrapped up a successful Kickstarter for the Glitter and Mayhem anthology. I am working on the cover art right now; here's a preview of the preliminary study:

And OZ REIMAGINED! I spent All of last October buried in emerald cities and yellow brick roads to create the cover art and individual art pieces for this John Joseph Adams anthology. Here's a bit about creating the cover art, and an interview with me on the process. (Plus...both  i09 and the Mary Sue feature glimpses at the internal art work)

Also last year I had the titillating delight to work with Shanna Germain, Jaym Gates, Janine Ashbless, Lee Moyer and Bear Weiter to bring Geek Love to life.

 

Along with finishing up the Glitter and Mayhem cover this month, I am also finalizing the cover for The Future Embodied, edited by May Empson and Jason Andrew.  Here's a glimpse at the preliminary cover sketch for that one: 

Finally, over the holidays I got the chance to get my horror on, working with Stephen Carter on his historical ghost novel, The Hand of Glory.

Okay, well now. I feel a bit more caught up. More about whatnot later.

A Sexual Experience, by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Occasionally, you get a chance to do something that you really shouldn' t put in your portfolio... but dang.

I present, A Sexual Experience, by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Robert Jackson Bennett - A Sexual Experience from Jake Sam on Vimeo.

You know you want this.

badass women.

(because I love strong women of all types...)

You probably don't get more different than Sunstone magazine and Lightspeed magazine, but between the two of them I've had the chance to illustrate some awesome female power lately.

For the Sunstone magazine (my lingering connection with mormonism) I worked with Holly and Stephen to re-envision Heavenly Mother and the Creation of Eve and some additional Goddess imagery to boot.

THEN, I got a story from Lightspeed to work on: Ruminations in an Alien Tongue, which featured a most intriguing protagonist: Birha, a brilliant, aging scientist living on a far away planet in the distant future.

NOW, I'm illustrating another story for Lightspeed that will go up in May, featuring a handful of kick-ass-century-old-space-age-warrior-women, fighting for their life on Callisto. (Can't wait for you to read this one!)

Life is awesome right now.

Illustrating EMPIRE STATE, the soundtrack

from the Empire State website:

"Empire State is a novel by Adam Christopher set both in New York and in an alternate reality version of that same, great city.

It was the last great superhero fight, but the energy blast ripped a hole in reality, and birthed the Empire State – a young, twisted parallel prohibition-era New York...

The novel is out now from Angry Robot Books, and we’re inviting you to create your own works based in the world of Empire State.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, musician, sculptor, puppeteer, interpretive dance major, or poet, we’d love for you to come and create. We’re calling this WorldBuilder, and you can find out more by clicking on How to Join In."

John Anealio has lent his skills to the worldbuilding by writing this amazing song:



(Then he let me get my own noir on to create the cover art for the song. Thank you John!)

Illustrating 'Ruminations In An Alien Tongue'

'Ruminations In An Alien Tongue' by Vandana Singh just went up over at Lightspeed. It is a breathtaking, heart wenching, poetic epic of a story. A brief teaser:

"She had gone up the ladder, stepped through the round opening. Darkness, her footsteps echoing in the enormous space, the light she carried casting a small, bobbing pool of illumination. This was the alien stronghold considered invincible by the human conquerors, to which the last denizens of a dying race had crawled in a war she had forgotten when she was young. She had expected to find their broken, decayed bodies, but instead there was a silence like the inside of a temple up in the mountains...
That was the moment when everything changed. For her, and eventually for humankind. She had been young then."
~read more

It was a privilege to work on an illustration for this Story.

Lovecraft eZine.

I don't think I've mentioned this here before, but I've been doing a bit of work for an awesome little online publication: the Lovecraft eZine. Dedicated to news, art and fiction of the R'lyeh variety. Here's the piece I illustrated to accompany That Old Problem, by T. E. Grau, which just went live.

A teaser:

' The man seemed on the verge of tears that didn’t come. That never would. Not anymore. “Why did you even make me? Why would you bring me into this kind of world?”

"There was a void, just like before I arrived. They left it empty, you know. Wasted, hollow… And when I came here, when I found it, I wanted to fill it back up. It’s the way of things."

“It’s YOUR way of things.”

The bald man shrugged.

“You do so abhor a vacuum,” the long haired man said with grim bemusement.

“I was lonely.” ' (read more)

It's been a pleasure to work with the mastermind behind it all, Mike Davis and all the other individuals involved in keeping the zine oozing with new stuffs. Go sniff around a bit, see if you don't find somethings to make you happy.

Meanwhile, here's some of the other illustrations I've done for the lovecraft eZine. (Looking forward to many more)

Beauty, by David Barr Kirtley.

David Barr Kirtly's story, Beauty just went up over at Lightspeed. It's an amazing story, here's a taste:

'“....No!” he raged, pacing back and forth in front of the mirror. “No! This can’t be happening.”
Nicole watched from the bed. She said softly, “How?”
“I don’t know. The spell was gone, broken, it—” He turned on her suddenly. “You! You did this to me.”
“What? But I . . .”
He sat down beside her and took her by the hand. “Do you still love me?”
“Of course I do.”
“With all your heart? Like you used to?...”'

Go read the rest of it, now!

I had the pleasure of doing the illustration for it. Many thanks to Lightspeed for that opportunity.

Also, for kicks, I assembled a few more thoughts on monsters.

ScapeZine and Tales To Terrify.

A few places where I have been busy lately:

Lauren Dixon has a stunning piece of fiction, Double Dutch, over at ScapeZine (go read it NOW) and I had the privilege of doing the accompanying Illustration:
Also, I grace the current issues of Tales To Terrify:

Currently, I am doing up an illustration for the Bronies anthology, and finishing cover art for Bibliotheca Fantastica.

Keeping busy, and out of trouble.

Mostly.

icy cold stuffs for Apex Magazine.

Issue 31 of Apex Magzine just went live! It's an amazing line-up of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, edited by the amazing Lynne Marie Thomas. Oh... and I got to do the cover art :)

I met Lynne at World Con this year, where she brought up doing some art for the December issue, "Something cool and atmospheric".

It was a delight to work with Lynne to create the cover, and the content inside is just delicious. So go buy a copy! You won't be sorry :)

The Troupe (by Robert Bennett)

Bragging rights~ I read the early draft of The Troupe. It is AWESOME.

Now, you have got to go RIGHT NOW to the book's website and get a tiny taste for yourself (readings, music, easter eggs, etc).

It's hard to choose... but I think that the scene for Stanley is my favorite:


Alrighty, now, you have got to pre-order your copy of The Troupe on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Booksamillion, or google Ebook, or indiebound, or iBooks, or Mysterious Galaxy, ( etc...) You Must Have This Book!

((It was a pleasure to work with Robert Bennett, creating the illustrations for The Troupe's website. His vision and talent are astounding.))

Undead Love Song (by John Anealio)

With a heads up, the song is a bit... "salty" ;)



John Anealio's tribute to Rigor Amortis, with a special nod to Steven Scearce's story, Second Sunday in September. It was a pleasure to create the art work for this, Thank you John.

Broken Time Blues lives!!!!

Remember that book I did the cover art for?
It can now be yours.

"Announcement

Hey, you! Toss on your glad rags and get a move on. Broken Time Blues is roaring into Reno for WorldCon. Be the first to get a gander at tales of moonshinin' and alien burlesque; flesh-sculpting artists and chickens on the run. If you're hip to the jive, slip on down to the release shindig at 2pm on Saturday, August 20. But don't be slow, and speakeasy: the bulls and hawks are always listenin' in."

Authors include Shirley Jackson winner Robert J. Bennett and game-author/Heroic Adventure author Ari Marmell, along with Weird tales from Frank Ard, John Dewey Nakamura Remy and Andrew Romine; beautiful, touching stories from James Sutter, Lucia Starkey and Barbara Krasnoff; and action-packed romps from Morgan Dempsey and Jack Graham; and dark tales from Amanda Davis and Ryan McFadden.

Interior art by myself and the amazing Evan Jensen.

You know you want this. You know you need this.

(Huge thanks to Jaym Gates and Erika Holt for making this collection happen. AND, incidentally, for providing all the text for this post :) You ladies are amazing.)