David Barr Kirtley

Science fiction author and podcaster

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“Power Armor: A Love Story” Art by Blake Reynolds

March 29, 2012 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s an illustration by Blake Reynolds for my short story “Power Armor: A Love Story,” which appears in the new John Joseph Adams anthology Armored.
 

Power Armor: A Love Story Art Illustration David Barr Kirtley Blake Reynolds

Filed Under: art & animation

My Short Story “Beauty” in Lightspeed Magazine

March 20, 2012 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

My short story “Beauty” is now free to read in Lightspeed magazine. Art by Galen Dara.
 

Filed Under: art & animation, my fiction

“Cats in Victory” Art by Jerome Jacinto

February 20, 2012 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s a great portrait of the character Lion from my short story “Cats in Victory,” by artist Jerome Jacinto.

Cats in Victory Short Story Lightspeed Magazine David Barr Kirtley Jerome Jacinto

Filed Under: art & animation

300 Spartan and TMNT Doodles

November 30, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here are some pretty good doodles I just came across in one of my notebooks from USC. Something tells me these are from around the time that 300 and TMNT came out.

300 Spartan sketch

 

TMNT Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Sketch

Filed Under: art & animation

“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

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, my fiction

Family Tree Short Story Art Illustration Michael J. DiMotta

January 29, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley 4 Comments

Here’s an illustration for my short story “Family Tree” (which will be appearing later this year in the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard):

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta

This was a birthday/Christmas present from my parents. It was done by a staggeringly talented young artist named Michael J. DiMotta, who I picked out after randomly coming across his website. I came up with the basic (triptych) layout, but most of this was all him — the mammoth, baroque design of the tree, the sunset sky, the pyrotechnic magic. Obviously he put an insane amount of work into this thing, but I guess he’s not sick of it yet, because now he’s interested in adapting the story into a graphic novel, which we’re currently pitching to editors.

Here are some details:

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
Garrett, Elizabeth, Sebastian (baby), Bernard, Simon

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
Malcolm, Meredith, Meredith’s mother, Nathan

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
The Tree of Victor Archimagus

From “Family Tree”:

    A month later Simon stood and regarded the tree of Victor Archimagus.
    It was gigantic, its trunk as wide around as a castle wall. A good way up, the trunk split into a great V — the two branches that had grown upon the births of Victor’s sons, Franklin and Atherton. From there the branches continued to climb and divide — one for each legitimate male heir — and now over a hundred descendants of the late wizard resided within the tree’s luxurious chambers. (Female children were married off and sent away — Victor had never been a terribly enlightened sort.) The tree was a virtuoso feat of spellcraft, the first of its kind, and upon its creation Victor had been so impressed with himself that he’d taken the surname Archimagus — master wizard. Simon was the only one to have successfully replicated the spell. Families that possessed the rare gift of magic seemed always to be afflicted with low fertility, but the fact that Victor’s tree grew larger and grander depending upon the number of offspring had ensured a frenetic effort to proliferate his adopted surname, and had also — perhaps inevitably — led to a rivalry between the descendants of Franklin and the descendants of Atherton over who could produce the greatest number of male heirs. At the moment it happened that the two halves of the tree were in perfect balance. Today’s presentation ceremony for Bernard’s infant son would change that.

Note: Firefox has a bug which causes it to display colors wrong, so for the full effect use other software to view these images.

Filed Under: art & animation

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

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, the skull-faced boy

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):

the skull-faced city david barr kirtley

And here’s Park without his mask:

the skull-faced city david barr kirtley

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, the skull-faced boy

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

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, the skull-faced boy

“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.

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art

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.”

The skull-faced boy by blazeblackwing     The skull-faced boy by DarkAlley001

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.

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, the skull-faced boy

My Profile at deviantART

November 28, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

I just set up a deviantART profile and posted some of my drawings there. Anyone else on the site? If so, friend me.

While there, I came across this cool story: deviantArtist to Work With Simpsons! Basically, an amateur artist posted a really cool manga-style illustration of the cast of The Simpsons. The image became super-popular, and eventually attracted the notice of Bongo Comics (founded by Matt Groening), who hired the artist to do some work for them. She was also contacted by 20th Century Fox about potentially working on a Futurama relaunch.

Filed Under: art & animation

Family Tree Short Story Art

October 22, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Here’s an illustration I did for my short story “Family Tree.”

david barr kirtley art illustration short story family tree

Filed Under: art & animation, my fiction

Artists Wanted

October 21, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley 1 Comment

Artists Wanted

Jandan’s spectacular fan art for my story “The Skull-Faced Boy” gave me an idea, so I’m going to try a little experiment. If anyone out there wants to do an illustration for one of my stories, I’ll post it on my blog and link to your website and probably also talk about how cool you are.

This blog gets a fair amount of traffic these days, including a lot of people who work in publishing, and illustrations I’ve posted appear pretty high in Google and get a lot of random people looking at them every day.

So if you know an artist who would be interested in the modest exposure of being featured on my blog, pass the word along.

Check out my Stories page to see what I’ve published. Stories that are free to read online are marked with a “Read” link.

Here a complete gallery of fan art I’ve received so far.

Filed Under: art & animation

“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.

Filed Under: art & animation, fan art, the skull-faced boy

Merlyn’s Pen Posts “The Sorcerer & The Charlatan”

April 7, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Merlyn’s Pen has posted the full text of my short story “The Sorcerer & The Charlatan.” This piece, which I wrote when I was about fifteen, was the first story I ever wrote that got published.

David Barr Kirtley art illustration The Sorcerer and the Charlatan Merlyn's Pen

Filed Under: art & animation, my fiction

Merlyn’s Pen Success Stories

March 6, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Merlyn’s Pen was a long-running, high-quality magazine of writing by teenagers. Two of my stories appeared there, and I’m now listed as one its “success stories,” along with folks such as Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep), Amity Gaige (O My Darling), Dara Horn (In the Image), and Asma Hasan (Why I Am a Muslim). I guess this means I’m now officially a “success story.” Awesome. I can’t wait to tell my parole officer. He’ll be so proud. Anyway, my story “Pomegranate Heart,” which appeared in Merlyn’s Pen, is available on their site, if anyone wants to read something I wrote when I was in high school.

David Barr Kirtley art illustration pomegranate heart merlyn's pen

Filed Under: art & animation, my fiction

Realms of Fantasy Magazine Art

January 29, 2009 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

One of the best parts about being published in Realms of Fantasy was seeing the beautiful artwork they did for each story. Here are the illustrations for my stories that appeared in the magazine:

David Barr Kirtley art illustration seven brothers cruel realms of fantasy kyle anderson mia lee

“Seven Brothers, Cruel” by Kyle Anderson and Myunghee Lee


 
David Barr Kirtley art illustration Seeds-for-Brains Realms of Fantasy Scott Goto

“Seeds-for-Brains” by Scott Goto


 
David Barr Kirtley art illustration Realms of Fantasy Blood of Virgins Huan Tran

“Blood of Virgins” by Huan Tran


 
David Barr Kirtley art illustration Realms of Fantasy Save Me Plz Hyejeong Park

“Save Me Plz” by HyeJeong Park


 
David Barr Kirtley art illustration Realms of Fantasy Transformations Rob Johnson

“Transformations” by Rob Johnson

Filed Under: art & animation

Digital Art – Toil and Trouble

December 17, 2008 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

 

David Barr Kirtley art illustration naked sexy witch in cauldron

Toil and Trouble

 

Filed Under: art & animation

Now with Pretty Colors

December 16, 2008 by David Barr Kirtley Leave a Comment

Now with pretty colors:
 

David Barr Kirtley art illustration blastweed

 
From “Blastweed”:

      We arrived at the spaceport, parked the car, and strode into the bar. As we passed through the front door, Don suddenly shrieked and leapt behind me, his eyes darting wildly about the room.
       “What?” I said. As far as I could see there was nothing to fear here other than the happy hour crowd — your typical assortment of lowlifes and deadbeats who would frequent a place like this.
      Don cried out, “Aliens, man!”
       “Don,” I said. “There’s no such thing as aliens.”
       “Oh yeah?” he said, pointing to an empty chair. “What do call that?“
 

Filed Under: art & animation

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Geeks Guide to the Galaxy

Geeks Guide to the Galaxy

Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is a podcast hosted by author David Barr Kirtley and produced by Lightspeed Magazine editor John Joseph Adams. The show features conversations about fantasy & science … Read more

“The Skull-Faced Boy”

By David Barr Kirtley

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“Family Tree”

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Roger Barr

My grandfather Roger Barr passed away early this morning at the age of 98. He was my mom’s father, and was my last surviving grandparent. He was being cared for by my uncle Steve (his son) and aunt Denice — both medical professionals — and was still sharp and good-humored in his final days. Yesterday […]

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David Barr Kirtley

David Barr Kirtley is the host of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, for which he’s interviewed over four hundred guests, including George R. R. Martin, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, Simon Pegg, Margaret Atwood, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ursula K. Le Guin. His short fiction appears in the book Save Me Plz and Other Stories.
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