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“Cats in Victory” Short Story to Appear in Lightspeed Magazine

February 3, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

My short story “Cats in Victory” will be appearing later this year in the new online science fiction mag Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams. For more on the origins of the story, read this post here. Basically the story is a response to some of the stuff that bugs me about the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up with.

And here’s a colorized version of Jandan’s fan art for the story. This is a prequel image, sort of her concept of what the character Lion might have looked like in his early “Anakin Skywalker” phase, before he turned into the person (er … cat person) we see in the story.

David Barr Kirtley Jandan Cats in Victory Art Illustration

Fan Art 1/7/10

January 7, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s a terrific piece of fan art for my story “The Skull-Faced Boy” by Allison Jamieson-Lucy, an Alpha grad. Also check out her profile on deviantART.

She writes, “I’d been meaning to listen to ‘The Skull-Faced Boy’ ever since listening to you read ‘The Skull-Faced City,’ but only got around to it lately, now that it’s cold outside and school is out. I drew while I listened, and it ended up being Ashley, freshly skull-faced.”

the skull-faced boy david barr kirtley art illustration

Fan Art 1/6/10

January 6, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s some more fan art from Blazeblackwing, for my short story “The Skull-Faced City.”

So here we have Dustin (the skull-faced boy), Jack (now a decapitated head), Ashley (Dustin’s bride), and Park (a former scout sniper who works as a sort of bounty hunter for Dustin and who goes masked when outside the city to hide his skull face):

And here’s Park without his mask:

Fan Art 12/31/09

December 31, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s some great new fan art I just received. The first piece, by Blazeblackwing, depicts the characters from my story “The Skull-Faced Boy” as they appear at the end of that tale. It’s funny, I don’t know if anyone remembers what my website used to look like back in 1999, but the main graphic looked almost exactly like the half-skull smiley face on Ashley’s T-shirt there.

The skull faced boy david barr kirtley fan art

The second piece, by Jandan, is a sort of prequel image for my story “Cats in Victory,” in which she imagines what the characters Lion and Tiger might have looked like ten or fifteen years before the story takes place, when the deadly and vainglorious Lion was just a shy pupil.

cats in victory david barr kirtley jandan fan art

“Cats in Victory” Fan Art

December 22, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley 2 Comments

Here’s some more fantastic fan art from Jandan. These are the dogmen from my short story “Cats in Victory.”

David Barr Kirtley Cats in Victory Art Illustration Jandan

Cats in Victory was a long-running series of mostly unfinished cat vs. dog picture books I did starting at about age 4. I recently rewatched season 1 of Thundercats, which just came out on DVD, and found the show nowhere near as good as I remembered, and I was actually kind of irritated by a lot of the unexamined subtext of the show re: ugly and/or different = evil / mindless deference to authority (especially supernatural authority) / reflexive violence, so I decided to resurrect Cats in Victory, which in its original incarnation was wholly shaped by these messages I absorbed as a kid, and repurpose the fictional world as a critique of some of the values (or lack thereof) of children’s television.

Skull-Faced Boy Fan Art on deviantArt

December 16, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley 1 Comment

I just discovered these two images over on deviantArt that were inspired by my short story “The Skull-Faced Boy.”

Blazeblackwing, creator of the first one, writes, “Hi. I was told that you were on here by a friend. He saw that I had drawn a pic titled ‘skull faced boy’ and said to see what you think of it. I first read it in a zombie collection of stories and loved reading it! I didn’t draw the skull-faced boy in the way I hoped you saw him, but in the way my own interpretation of him was.”

DarkAlley001, creator of the second image, says, “Recently I’ve become a maniac about podcasts — can you blame a person when the news is so depressing? One of these would be Pseudopod, an amazing source of horror/suspense/thriller short stories. I’ve been thinking of creating something for these stories for awhile, and with Halloween just around the corner, I feel inspired.”

And, if you missed it, also check out Jandan’s skull-faced boy art. I also have a deviantArt profile.

“The Skull-Faced Boy” Fan Art

August 28, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley 1 Comment

Here’s a spectacular piece of fan art for my short story “The Skull-Faced Boy.” View the high-res version.

David Barr Kirtley Jandan art illustration The Skull-Faced Boy

The artist writes:

So I got the anthology The Living Dead about two weeks ago. DEVOURED the book. And this is the one story that really sticks out. I’ve had this image in my head ever since I read the short story … I don’t think I quite did the image justice, but for the most part I am happy with it nonetheless. If you are a zombie nut, GO READ THIS STORY. Hell, GO BUY THE BOOK. You will NOT be disappointed.

Check out the rest of her portfolio over on deviantArt.