Illustration for the story "Gordy Taber Was Afraid" by Diana Sherman for Talebones magazine.
It is always a joy and delight to get a commission from an editor to illustrate a story which happens to be written by someone I know. Of course, it helps to grease the wheels to have the author actually tell me in advance so I can ask the editor myself.
This was especially fun, since I actually had the author - my pal Diana Sherman - pose.
Diana tells me that she was told at the Clarion writers workshop that her stories were too nice. So she purposely wrote a story about an unlikable, despicable main character - a serial killer. Here we see him having descended into the Land of the Dead. He has to offer his blood to a dead woman, in exchange for crucial information.
The male model is my friend James Lewis Terman, who also appeared - with different hairstyle in my illos for "Karuna, Inc." by Paul Di Filippo.
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Image (c) 2003 Frank Wu