KINDLING — coming soon!

My first short story collection, Kindling, is going to be published by Small Beer Press! All going well, it should come out this October.

A fabulous debut of folk tales and fantasies by an award winning author and illustrator.

Small fires start in the hearts of Kathleen Jennings’s characters and irresistibly spread to those around them. Journeys are taken, debts repaid, disguises put on, and lessons offered — although not often learned — in these fantastic tales. Jennings’s confident voice lulls readers into stepping off the known paths to find “Undine Love,” “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” and further unexpected places and people.

Small Beer Press

I love love love that line “lessons offered — although not often learned”. Tragedies aside, there is something delightful about characters who don’t succeed in fully learning their lessons.

(Thanks go to many people — not least Small Beer Press! — and, as always, very much to Angela Slatter who helped not only many of the stories but also the collection into existence.)

Cover details to come…

(From the 2021 April calendar pattern)

Publication: “Gisla and the Three Favours”

My short story “Gisla and the Three Favours” is now out in issue #43 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (available in print and e-formats).

Cover monkey by Catherine Byun, who has WONDERFUL work — soft, dense, bright, and toothy

The story is about promises and gambles and memorable dresses. It began as a landscape illustration experiment for Light Grey Art Lab, and then turned back into a fairy tale (for clarity: this story is not illustrated in the magazine!).

As Gisla’s mother lay dying, she called her daughter to her.

“When you were only a hope and a happiness, Gisla, I begged three favours of three ladies. I have not lived to repay them. This you must do for me, else when I die, Gisla, my soul will fly up out of my body, as all souls do, and it will beat against the windows of heaven, but it will not get in…”

Here is the full table of contents of the issue, which is available from Small Beer Press:

• fiction
  • Alisa Alering, “The Night Farmers’ Museum”
  • Erica Clashe, “The Shine of Green Floors”
  • Leah Bobet, “The Mysteries”
  • Joanne Rixon, “Wires from the Same Spool”
  • Quinn Ramsay , “The House of the Gutter-Prince”
  • Jim Marino, “Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown”
  • Zack Moss, “If You Had Been Me Then What Would I Have Been?”
  • Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favours”
  • Gillian Daniels, “King Moon’s Tithe to Hell”
  • poetry
  • Anne Sheldon, “Three Poems”
  • Jessy Randall, “Four Poems”
• nonfiction
  • Ayşe Papatya Bucak, “Half-Papatya”
  • Nicole Kimberling, “Time Travel Self-Care System”
• cover
  • Catherine Byun, Cover & Interior Monkeys

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars — pencil and watercolour (this is actually part of a draft of the story — the final is all in words)

Badgers and Unicorns

Two family cards from September! Both ridiculously tiny, although in the first case it was because I started too close to the top of the paper.

Look at this tiny car!

The first is for my dad for Father’s Day. He was always a fan of Badger in The Wind in the Willows, and after illustrating Kij Johnson’s The River Bank, I still haven’t had enough of playing in that world.

The River Bank is a very good book, by the way — even disregarding the illustrations! It was one of the Washington Post’s 50 Notable Books for 2017.

I freehand-sketched the illustration onto the back of a scrap of paper, and then refined it as I cut it out.

The second card was for my niece’s birthday. She is now two and likes unicorns.

This time I sketched it lightly onto a piece of card, then darkened the main lines. Then I went over it with watercolours.

I went with a more horse-shaped unicorn than my usual goat/borzoi hybrids.

Review of Stray Bats

A lovely and thoughtful review of (Aurealis shortlistee!) Stray Bats from Charles de Lint in the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Review at F&SF

 

The chapbook is available from Small Beer Press, and even setting aside that I illustrated it, I think it is wonderful — lyrical and, per Charles de Lint, “luminously earthy”, a collection of vignettes that is a delight to read through, but also just the sort of book to dip into, when concentration is in short supply.

Sketches and notes: their purpose

I was going back through photos and found this unused sketch from Kij Johnson’s The River Bank.

This stage of a project is very charming — the snapshots of moments, the hint of movement (or, as here, stillness) and expression. They are usually just notes for myself, but a lot of the work involved in finishing a more formal final illustration is about trying to capture that lightness. (Although when I’m making sketches that will be the final illustrations, there’s a lot of unseen work involved in trying to teach my hand the shapes of what I’ll be drawing).

 

Sketches in progress for Angela Slatter’s The Tallow-Wife

 

Something I’m gradually learning with writing is to treat the early stages in a similar way: quick notes on an aesthetic, lists of “lush language” (per Kim Wilkins), just sketching the best bits (including sketching with words) so that the heart and movement is there.

And if you are looking for a pleasant, gentle, sunlit story, with nothing more nefarious than foxes and stoats, written with a deft touch and a loving eye, I highly recommend The River Bank.

Aurealis shortlist: Stray Bats

First, enormous congratulations to all the works on the Aurealis Awards shortlist. If you need some reading, that is an excellent place to begin.

Second, I’m thrilled to announce that Stray Bats, by Margo Lanagan, published by Small Beer Press and illustrated by me, is on the shortlist for Best Collection:

It is a chapbook of splendid and fantastic vignettes, very much the right length for reading between many tasks, or when concentration is low (as well as in more optimal situations).

You can buy it here: Small Beer Press.

I always endeavour to take some credit for the accolades received by books I have illustrated or, in this case, suggested, but the nomination really is all due to Margo’s splendid writing.

Pursued by a (small) bear!

I’ve mentioned before how nice it is when someone takes away a drawing and brings it back as something shiny. Well, yesterday, when I was expecting an electrician to carry a sheet of melamine back through the open front door, Sue of Tiny Owl Workshop walked in, bearing treasure!

Back in 2014, I illustrated a cover for Greer Gilman‘s wonderful Ben Jonson novella Exit, Pursued by a Bear for Small Beer Press:

(Gilman’s 2009 Cloud & Ashes was my very first book cover.)

And Sue made the bear!

Look at his little face! His nose! His paws!

I love it so much. I keep stroking the bridge of its nose.

 

See more Tiny Owl work at:

• https://www.instagram.com/tinyowlworkshop/
• https://tinyowlworkshop.com/

Elemental Logics

All of Laurie J. Marks‘ Elemental Logic covers (from Small Beer Press) in one place, together at last!

These are beautiful and unexpected books, laconic and startling.

I put the covers together over several years, starting in 2012 (!), but the line work was all on one sheet of scratchboard, with branches gradually winding across it. Having a tactile interaction with the original style helped a great deal in keeping it fairly consistent. The hardest bit was revisiting the Photoshop file every 2/3 years and trying to work out past-Kathleen’s rationale in setting up the layers.

Here are some of the very first roughs:

From there, we worked up a connected design. This is the sketch which became the final image. I must have read the first two books at this stage, but the last two weren’t yet available, so they’re more just guidelines.

This was (I think) my first time using uninked scratchboard, and inking it myself in the areas I wanted line and texture. So much less chalk dust this way! All scratched with knife blades.

The last book was Air Logic. Once I read the book, I had to work out how to fit the images into not only the style but the pre-existing connecting branches, and keep movement. I still quite like the running figures in the second sketch from the left on the bottom row, but it is a bit Scooby-esque.

The books are now all available from Small Beer Press:

 

Stray Bats — a chapbook

Dachshund droids, sinister crones, shapeshifting children, a plethora of witches, dragonstalkers, familiars, slithering eels and, of course, bats, flit and fly through these pages, aided and abetted by Kathleen Jennings’s inspired pencil drawings. Stray Bats is a madcap miscellany consisting of fifty vignettes based on poems by Australian women. Lanagan delights in playing with language, rhyme, and rhythm.

This could be the perfect gift for that slightly otherworldly person in your life—or for yourself, when you need a moment of magic, a dip into darkness, a spark of light.

For the reader who would like to explore further, there are a list of poems that inspired the author and notes on where those poems might be found.

Small Beer Press have just announced this new chapbook, which Margo and I have been secretly working on — it’s so exciting that it will be a real book in the world in November! Pre-orders are open now on Small Beer’s website, and Margo and I will both be at World Fantasy in LA.

River Bank process – first response

This is the first process post for my illustrations for Kij Johnson’s wonderful The River Bank, from Small Beer Press.

• Second post: Early Design

The first step for the illustration project (after an emailed ohmygoodnessyes when Small Beer asked me about it) was to read the manuscript. I like to print a manuscript, if possible, because then I can draw my responses directly onto it. It makes for a more immediate response, but also means I can match an idea with the relevant passage again easily when I need to go back and check details!

For some projects, like Angela Slatter‘s The Bitterwood Bible and other recountings, the initial response is very close to the final illustration. The River Bank required more work and refinement (you can see at top right that I was still working out Badger) but many of these early notes recognisably found their way into the final illustrations.

Frequently, I find it difficult to objectively assess a manuscript simply as a book – this is partly because it doesn’t yet have a cover by which to judge it, but mostly because I am reading it looking at one very specific aspect: the visuals. It takes a second reading, in a non-illustrator headspace, to appreciate the text on its own terms. The River Bank, however, lifted off the page even on that first, pragmatic reading. I think it’s because of Kij Johnson’s delightful visual language – I’ve just finished her World Fantasy Award winning novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, purely as a reader, and my goodness I want to draw every page.

Next post: Early Design