Missive: The New Epistolarian

A cover for an imaginary periodical. I did the sketch as a quick gesture exercise. I would have really liked to read this issue. The teaser line reads: In This Issue: The beginning of Time  |  1000 Journals  |  Why Mornings are Better  |  The Post Box at the End of the World.

The Lost Pages of the Kama Sutra

A book cover for an imaginary title. We are always loosing something - the libraries at Alexandria, the family photographs. Why not pages from the Kama Sutra?

Black Irish

Another cover design for a book that was never written. I started with a concept for this one - my own (possible) ancestry. Some of the Irish have swarthy skin, tan easily in summer and have dark hair and brown eyes. They are known as the "Black Irish" and are generally supposed to be descended from survivors of the Spanish Armada which was wrecked along the Irish coast in 1588. It seemed a good title for a historic fiction, a family history, or a memoir.

Karma Thief

In 2002 I was creating book covers for imaginary titles. I've always loved book design and if I ever have a ticklish design problem I can often solve it by considering the brief to be for a cover rather than for something else. I was reading a lot of Haruki Murakami and Kenzaburō Ōe at the time. I got the title from mishearing some song lyrics. I still really like the title and maybe one day if I write a novel I'll use it.

&&Co # 1

Blogs are to writing (and publishing) what cameras are to making pictures. They are a great mechanism for enabling; a simple way to make content and cast it about.

On the most abstract level they bring simplicity to the chaos of web pages by setting everything into the unforgiving cement of chronologic order. Perhaps this explains why in the ‘90s everyone had a web site and now everyone has a blog. Progress is the introduction of time. They also look much nicer.

So in early 2009, clearly about five years too late, I began the task of dismantling box19.ca. I have been so invigorated by the ease with which one can push content into the blogosphere, so beguiled by its natural ability to incorporate bits and pieces and fragments and lists and ephemera in an elegant, graceful way, that I’m going to try out a couple of projects that have sat in the dustier corner of my mind for several years now.