Buy a Villain!

Paul Haines, Australian horror author, having been diagnosed with bowel cancer, had sections of his bowel removed and enduring six months worth of chemotherapy, has recently discovered he has spots on his liver. Paul has met this news by reloading his guns and is going to fight it with two other forms of chemotherapy for cancers like his, combined with a monoclonal antibody called Avastin. Avastin, however is not part of Medicare or the private health system’s funding at this stage. It costs $20,000 to do it. Money that he doesn’t have.

So the Aus Spec Fic community is raising money through donations and the ART THAT SCARES YOU auction, live at artscaresyou from 14-28 August. There are Jane Yolen poems, anthologies, early Shaun Tan originals, signed books and anthologies and more being added over the two weeks.

You even have the opportunity to get a Kathleen original! A very small villain, with villainous disguises (vampire, ninja, invisible man). Original pen and ink on 5.5x9cm card.

(The superhero paperdoll in the background (not part of the auction :) is from a printout of the self-portrait paperdoll from my first moleskine exchange contribution).

Bidding information is here.

WARNING: Some of the contributions and posts are dark, horrific (in the sense of genre) and/or visceral (in the sense of, well, viscera), so if you aren’t into that but want to help and get some art, read the post headers before you click through to particular offerings.

17/08/08 ETA:

Newsflash: Artscaresyou has now added an index of auction items, which should make the process of choosing (and bidding!) much easier.

Illustration Friday: Homage

With the Illustration Friday topics, I usually pretend the illustration is to accompany an article on that theme and go from there. I went a little further sideways with this week’s topic and decided to do an illustration for a piece on neologisms and the fun (and problems) of watching language develop through popular media. The reference, of course, is to the Buffy-ism of forming nouns by adding “-age” to, well, everything.

The house is intended to look invented and fantastic, but is also an only-slightly-edited version of the view from my verandah. The hill opposite is so steep the houses on it appear to be balanced on top of the trees.

Comments and critique are always welcome.

(And there are still free bird (and other) prints available).

Books I did buy in America:

Wicked – Gregory Maguire. Very well written, but I’m not sure what I think about it yet – possibly because it looks like fantasy but is actually ‘literary’ and so reviewing it as fantasy (my genre) is like trying to review Unbreakable as a superhero movie. That’s what it’s about but not what it is.

Countess Below Stairs (a.k.a. The Secret Countess) – Eva Ibbotson. Sigh…. The precedents manager and I are having an Ibbotson bookswap, and what can I say but that these books are pretty much perfect?

Ready or Not – Meg Cabot. Just not as good as “All American Girl”. Which was just *fun*.

Maus – Art Spiegelman. I haven’t read it yet, but I do have the Strand/Art Spiegelman book bag to use once I have. Second hand with dodgy (im)perfect binding.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation – Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. A fascinating and good idea, but more emotive than I have come to expect from illustrated books (from which you can probably tell the sorts of graphic novels I have read). Worth the (second hand) purchase price just for the time line.

My Crowd – Charles Addams. Confession: Before I went to the Museum of Comic Book and Cartoon Art I did not know about Charles Addams – only the Addams Family. But… hehehe. Werewolf in a planetarium. Snrrk. :)

Amphigorey, Amphigorey II and Amphigorey Again – Edward Gorey. If you don’t know Gorey, think of Lemony Snicket as the lovechild of Gorey and Nesbit. At his wierdest, I adore him. Then there are the parts that would be excruciatingly crude, rude or gory if they actually happened on stage or you could work out what the heck *was* happening. For the record, my favourite Gorey is The Doubtful Guest. And no, I don’t know what it is. Possibly a beakless penguin-aardvark in tennis shoes.

Up and Down New York – Tony Sarg. Not a lot has changed.