City of the Gods

 

One of the two cool things I got at Phoenix Comicon was a small chapbook called City of the Gods. This is a 32 page preview of a forthcoming novel called CITY OF THE GODS. The novel may or may not be written yet, but the web page and promotional site for it already exists at http://cityofthegods.com.  The story will be about a girl with amnesia who mysteriously appears in the City of the Gods, and who is helped in her quest to regain her identity by a human named D’Molay.  The underlying premise is that the pagan gods of Earth left it for another world–world, not planet–a few thousand years ago, and now all live together in the multi-cultural environment to beat all multi-cultural environments.  However, the gods, being the parasitic co-dependent bunch that they are, really can’t exist without humans, so there are plenty of humans in this god-world, and it is human adventures that really concern us.

 

The chapbook is only meant to whet your curiosity about the novel, and it succeeds in that. But, the reason that I’m mentioning it is that the chapbook is an outstanding piece of artwork in its own right, and this can be credited to Steven S. Crompton, the artist who put it all together. He used lovely colorful painting from some of the old masters like Ingres, Rubens and Breugel (and many others not quite so famous) along with some of his own art, and an electronic collage technique that allowed him to create new juxtapositions of the original art to tell the new story.

Now, Steve is a friend of mine, and a fabulous artist and fantasy author in his own right, and the authors of The City of the Gods (M. Scott Verne and Wynn Mercer) are fortunate indeed to have him working with them. Steve is best known for his erotic tales of Demi the Demoness. Demi has her own following on the web and in comics, and I’m part of it, but this is definitely for adults.  My point is that Steve does some really good work, and he improves everything he turns his hands to.

 Although she is not mentioned by name, it was a pleasure for me to see that two of Steve’s erotic creations, Demi and Kit-Ra, appear as part of the City of the Gods tale.  You can’t keep a good demoness (and she’s oh so good) down.

Where can you get your copy of the City of the Gods chapbook?  You probably can’t. I have number 8 of 40, so there aren’t that many out there. If you think you’d like one, and any fantasy lover would love to have one, you might try e-mailing Steve at sscrompton@cox.net to see if he has any left he can sell you. I guarantee there won’t be many. This will be a rare treasure in the Atroll collection.  (Grin)

I don’t know about you, but I have a passion for fantasy maps.  Here’s the map from City of the Gods.

You can tell this is a world created by the gods. Nothing on Earth is quite so symmetrical. Still, I would be happy indeed to go there for my own afterlife.

End