The Grey Men of the Desert of Dust

The Grey Men of the Desert of Dust 1:


The Grey Men of the Desert of Dust 2:




The Grey Men of the Desert of Dust is one of my few "Mural" pieces. The narrative of the story is driven more by an archetypal series of images and concepts than by characterization, creating an effect of a long, perplexing mural.

I've been told that works like this are almost unpublishable in the current reading environment because of the nonexistent use of character driven plots. That probably won't stop me from writing them though, and I have some hopes, some day of writing an entire book in this mode.

It would be my own Sistine Chapel of the weird. It would also be an attempt to take the "weird" or "uncanny" story and do something with it that I do not think has been successfully done to date. It is a characteristic of these kinds of stories that they start to flounder past a certain size. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath always seemed to fall a little flat of my expectations, and I have yet to find a truly "weird" novel.

I might record and post another one of the mural pieces at some point.