One of the nicest things to happen to me in the time we’ve lived here in Clarksville has been getting to know Scott Taylor. He tracked me down through the Internet five years ago when he realized that there was this unnamed gaming artist with a strong industrial design background whose work appeared all over classic role-playing material from the 1980s that he was curious about…which was of course me.
After some initial hesitation on my part we became best of friends and have gone on to collaborate on a couple of projects, most notably the books Gun Kingdoms and Airship of Fools. Set in a “mage-punk” universe (steam-punk with magic) both books have proved to be positive, imaginative and readable much like the books we read (and loved) before the success of DUNE made a 500+ page count and heavy psychological content requisites in printed speculative fiction.
Airship of Fools was late in getting completed – I struggled with ongoing upper respiratory infections for most of last winter so my contributions were completed way behind schedule. Scott was goo-natured about the delays but he took so much flak from KickStarter supporters that he lost most of his interest in penning and future volumes.
I’m not done though, so this time I am going to finish the cover, interior/exterior images of the featured vehicle and a master/prototype/maquette for a limited edition resin-cast bust of the series heroine Skyla. I figure if I get all this stuff done Scott will get sucked into writing the next book….and he really needs to. He is one great word-cruncher and should be published a lot more than he is.
This post features the cutaway drawing of the ‘submersible boat” Hammerhead. If you want to know more about this vessel start bugging Scott to write the book.
David R. Deitrick, Designer 