Author: Ryan Williamson
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A Fistful of Demons
Headlined by veteran storyteller David J. West, A Fistful of Demons assembles over twenty of the freshest voices in the Weird West genre into one massive anthology of short fiction that will take you on a wild ride unlike anything you’ve experienced before.
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The Spear of Destiny
Magdalena, a young Mayan woman belonging to an order of demon-hunting priests, nuns, and monks, is sent by the Vatican on a quest to recover the lost Spear of Destiny—the very lance that pierced the side of Christ. In her quest she travels to America and is joined by an old friend, the fabled lawman Zarahemla Two Crows. To recover the spear, they must battle cultists, unholy beasts, and conqueror a forgotten monastery possessed by an unimaginable evil.
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The Art of Digital Remixing
I’ll admit right off the bat that I’m not an illustrator. I have no drawing or painting talent whatsoever (aside from stick figure cartoons that my kids find mildly amusing). But one thing I’m somewhat good at is digital remixing of other people’s art.
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Destroying Angel
“They ripped me from my mother’s arms. They raised me as a soldier, sworn to serve our god-king. My service brought them glory. Too much glory. They left me for dead here, at the edge of the universe. His son grows inside me. The son of a god. And for the sake of my son I shall burn worlds, I shall free my people…And I shall kill my god.”
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Kintsugi and the Human Soul
As a philosophy, Kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
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Book Cover Smackdown II
I’ve designed quite a few variant covers for The Widow’s Son, and have run several of them through A/B testing with my target audience. Here are the results.
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Cover Wars
Finding the optimal cover design can take a lot of iterations. Sometimes you hit it out of the park with the first try, and sometimes it’s the tenth. Sometimes a cover looks great in full size, but becomes lost in a muddy blend of colors in the thumbnail.
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Call for Submissions: A Fistful of Demons
Mahalas Press will be publishing a Weird West/Western Horror anthology of short fiction titled A Fistful of Demons from both debut and established authors in the Fall of 2022. We are based in the US, and welcome submissions from around the world.
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A Tale of Two Blurbs
I have two blurbs for The Widow’s Son competing for my affection, so I decided to A/B test them. The target audience was male SFF readers between the ages of 25–44.
Gossamer Wings and Other Stories 