Memories Bleed Beneath the Mask
Randy Henderson
Vanessa Golitz
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Randy Henderson was born in the states of wonder, awe, and Washington. He quickly learned the joy of escaping to fantasy worlds, from Middle-earth to Earthsea, from Amber to Pern, from Valdemar to Midkemia. He took some amazing vacation photos of these places (in his head) that he shares with all the friends he made (also in his head). His head has become rather cluttered.
After toying with such impressive creative pursuits as latch hook and recording really clever answering machine messages, Randy realized that what he wanted most was to write. It was not as easy as it looked.
Many years of dabbling followed, during which Randy studied social sciences and worked at a variety of jobs, such as weight-loss counselor, Alaska factory-boat worker, and writing tax sob stories for CPA clients (his first paid fiction), before he finally settled into IT.
Randy decided to get serious about his writing, and attended the Clarion West writing workshop where he learned things … dark and mystical things about the art of fiction, things best left unspoken. Ask him, and he’ll gladly speak of them.
Randy then wrote new stories—faster stories, stronger stories—and began to publish in wondrous places such as Realms of Fantasy and Escape Pod before winning Writers of the Future.
He has since sold additional tales to editors with excellent taste in fiction, as well as a humorous urban fantasy series to Tor. The first novel in his series Finn Fancy Necromancy is forthcoming in February, 2015.
Visit Randy on his website at: randy-henderson.com.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Vanessa Golitz was born in 1988 in a small town in Germany. As a child she sometimes watched her mother draw and paint with pastels and watercolor as a hobby and continued to draw and paint into her teens.
At age 16 she received her first graphics tablet and started to learn digital painting in Photoshop Elements. Some personal issues during that time, including bullying and the divorce of her parents, led her to give up painting a few times, but she eventually went back to it.
After graduating from high school, she considered attending art school, but as there are no art schools in Germany that teach the classical art fundamentals needed for mastering realism, she decided to enroll in English and Spanish courses at the university instead, since she has always enjoyed learning languages.
At the same time it became clear to Vanessa that the market for fantastical realism and fairy tale illustration is a very small niche, where only a handful of artists make a living. (Most do not, and the pay doesn’t even come close to the equivalent of minimum wage.)
She struggled with personal problems and dropped out of university, working small jobs, and today holds a steady day job while working on her painting skills in her spare time.
She plans to soon make a portfolio website for her work. Her goal is to become a better artist and to reach a skill level like that of her favorite artists, such as Donato Giancola, Cynthia Sheppard, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, James Gurney and others.