"Lizard's Id" cover with text

After many grueling hours of design hell (okay about 15 minutes) I threw some text on this to turn it into a mock book cover.

Remember, this short story about a psychopathic (but sweet hearted!) gangster-cum-comic-strip-mogul is available to read at Paul Deberry's site http://fisticuffswriting.com

Go check it out! It's almost "novella" length, which nobody has time for of course, but maybe you do... Maybe you're that kind of crazy? Are ya? Only you can answer that one.

Short Story Illustration

My old collaborator Paul Brian DeBerry (see Duck Master, written by Joie Simmons, drawn by me, orchestrated by Paul) recruited me to write a short story for his anthology (I'll link to it with more info as soon as I know it myself :))

Anyway, he also twisted my arm to do some illustrations. And I'm glad he did, this was a lot of fun to work on. I'll admit it's really just a colored sketch, not very polished... But these are lazy summer days after all. And I'm swamped with a zillion tiny things pulling me all over the place (or perhaps just over-caffeinated.)

The story is called "Inches Nitely and the Lizard's Id," and is an homage (okay, rip-off) of Elmore Leonard's "Get Shorty", as well as heavily influenced by the TV series (not so much the movie.) However, I do throw in a major twist:  Instead of our gangster lead getting involved with Hollywood, he gets involved with... newspaper comic strips.

Here's the illo: