The Black Paintings is a series I am writing with Michael F Simpson.
Michael is an author who sees things differently to other writers I have worked with in the past. He has a unique eye for setting and characterisation, and I think this partnership is going to result in some freaky stories being created. I'm really excited about how these books are going to progress.
What is a black painting story?
To answer that question, we need to look towards Francisco Goya.
The painting opposite disturbs me more than any other I've seen. Partly because of the painting itself and partly because of the title of the painting. It's called Saturn Devouring his Son. The painting depicts Saturn, who fearing he would be overthrown by one of his children, eats each one of them at birth.
Goya's interpretation seems to depict an adult child being devoured by his father, rather than a baby.
There is much more to this disturbing story, but that's for another time.
Saturn Devouring his Son, is one of Goya's Black Paintings
Devouring is one of 14 images Goya painted, in his later life, directly onto the walls of his house - the villa of the deaf one - just outside of Madrid. Goya was not in a good place mentally when he created the Black Paintings in the early 1820's. Sometimes, being in a bad place mentally, can take an artist to a good place creatively, even though it is a black place.
The haunting, bleak, insane nature of the Black Paintings have taken me to similar places in my writing. The first story in our Black Painting series is called Beneath a Nameless Sky. It's a bleak and insane story, which is why we refer to it as a Black Painting. We do not know how many of this type of story we are going to write, but I don't think it will be more than 14.
If you'd like to meet the co-author you can find him here:
If you'd like to check out the second Black Painting you can find him here: