It’s finally here! On Saturday, April 17, 2010, Chicago theater group Collaboraction and I are throwing an Order of Odd-Fish fan art gallery show and costume dance party!

Collaboraction is decorating their space to portray scenes from Odd-Fish. Foppish cockroaches, courtesy of Strange Tree, will be strolling around. There will even be kegs of Belgian Prankster beer, thanks to Matt Mayes and Meg Rutledge!

It’s 437 N. Wolcott in Chicago. From 7-10 pm, it’s the opening of the gallery of all the great fan art I’ve received for Odd-Fish. Here’s just a few examples—click on the thumbnails:

After 10 it turns into a costumed battle-dance party into the wee hours. Come costumed as a FIGHTING GOD for the battle-dancing contest in the Dome of Doom! Register by emailing your name, your fighting god name, and if possible, a picture of yourself in fighting-god costume to domeofdoom@collaboraction.org. 64 duelists maximum; first 20 duelists who register get in free!

What kind of DIVINE BATTLES can we expect to see on April 17?

Yes, all divine warriors eager to prove their celestial muscle are invited: murderous angels, immortal bacteria, supernatural gladiator droids, reverse vampire ninjas, chthonic death-ooze, righteous seraphim clad in armor of holy lightning—fighters of any kind!

Ritual COMBAT-BY-DANCE shall be judged by the warrior-priests of COLLABORACTION, based on COSTUME, fighting STYLE, and signature DEATH-BLOW.

The champion shall have the honor of being sacrificed to ICHTHALA, the ALL-DEVOURING MOTHER, in an OCCULT RITUAL of APOCALYPTIC TERROR!

Tickets are $20 ($25 after April 15) for general admission and $50 ($60 after April 15) for premium admission. Premium admission includes hosted bar, appetizers and access to premium lounge. Get your tickets here, or visit Collaboraction.org for more information!

Wait, What’s This All About?
James Kennedy, the author of the young adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish (Random House Delacorte, 2008) has teamed up with Collaboraction to pull of a unique art show and costume dance party extravaganza for Collaboraction’s 7th Annual Carnaval. THE DOME OF DOOM will showcase the strange, wonderful fan art James has received from enthusiastic readers of Odd-Fish. It will also be a costumed dance party in which guests dress up as fighting gods and battle-dance in a raucous competition reminiscent of the climactic scenes of Odd-Fish. For the week after the opening, James and Collaboraction will host field trips from Chicago schools for performances from the book, art viewings, and theatrical writing workshops led by James. Information about the field trips can be found here. You can contact James directly at kennedyjames [at] gmail [dot] com.

Modern dandy Basil Arnould Price, a fifteen-year-old prodigy whose work on DeviantArt is staggering, contributed this amazing picture for the Odd-Fish art show: a stylish portrait of Ian Barrows, Jo’s best friend in Eldritch City.

I’m blown away by this! Basil really captured the what I wanted Ian to be; both his unstable, adolescent good looks and his tentative awkwardness. The rose in his hand and the butterfly perched on his rifle give him such a fragile, earnest air. It seems fraught with symbolic import, like some allegorical code. I also appreciate that Basil put Ian in proper knightly raiment. It gives it the proper medieval, chivalrous atmosphere. The brooding weather in the background, with the nightmarish half-face in the clouds, is a masterful complement to Ian’s uncertain mood. It’s a really astonishing piece!

Basil writes, “I felt like Ian was sort of an embodiment of the gentle, somewhat youthfully insecure first boyfriend, complete with awkward teenage facial hair. He’s the sort of boy that I can easily identify with. And yes, those are monstrous faces in the background, intended to represent Ichthala, along with the unnamed fish that so lovingly vomits up the city.” Exactly.

What a stroke of good fortune to get someone like Basil to do a piece for this show. He’s a star in the making. We’re dealing with someone who writes for their contact information, “To contact me, you must fire a maroon flare into the sky whilst wearing a purple, smoking jacket.” This is how I talk in a perfect alternate reality.

By the way, fellow Chicago writer Margo Gremmler has done a splendid write-up of The Order of Odd-Fish on her blog, with a creative contest in which you can win a copy of the Odd-Fish paperback and a CD of the movie soundtrack I compiled for the book. Go now! Enter and win!

Back? I’ve got one more piece of Odd-Fish art to share—this one completely different from everything I’ve received so far, an absolutely unique collage from artist Carol Mollica, whom you can learn more about at her blog Artist In Progress.

It’s a collage of Jo Larouche’s life, and I love how Carol integrated the text of the the jacket into the piece, including the warning about Jo being “dangerous” (helpfully pointed out, with dry humor, as “enclosed advice”) and put in so many little subtle touches—the fish and the bird and the mysterious woman in the margin (Aunt Lily? Jo’s mother? A Silent Sister?) and the clip from the British WWII posters (”keep calm and carry on”)! Bang-up job, as they would say . . . as it happens, at work at the U of C, and every day I pass an identically-styled “keep calm and carry on” sign, so that was an unexpected coincidence! Great work, Carol—I’m so excited about the mixture of the realistic and the abstract I’ve been getting for this show. Both Carol and Basil say there’s a possibility that more work might be on the way, and I certainly hope that comes to be!

By the way, on Tuesday I visited Dwight Township High School, about an hour or so away from Chicago, and had a great time. I will be posting pictures and video of the epic visit soon. (Four 85-minute sessions in a row. I was run ragged at the end, but the students were spectacular.)

Last but absolutely not least: I had the great honor of being interviewed by Rick Kogan on WGN Radio 720 last Sunday. You can listen to the interview here. It was a blast, even though I was kind of intimidated at first. Rick Kogan is the last of the hard-ass, old-school Chicago newspapermen—an old pal of Chicago giants such as Mike Rokyo, Studs Terkel, and Nelson Algren.

He also has the most succulent voice in broadcasting: a deep, smooth growl.

To express how smooth I thought Kogan’s voice was, on the show I compared it to a “prime rib wrapped in a velvet cloth soaked in Bailey’s,” but that was a misstep; you should have seen the man wince. No hard-drinking newspaperman worth his salt would be caught anywhere near such sissy stuff as Bailey’s. I chose it because of its “smooth” cloyingness, but no—I should have said his voice was like a “prime rib wrapped in a velvet cloth soaked in fifty year old single malt scotch.” My apologies, Rick.

I’ll be honest. When I put out the call for submissions to the Order of Odd-Fish art show, I expected good art. But I didn’t expect to get my socks rocked off like this. I can’t tell you what an awesome experience this has been, to see my handful of words blossom into gorgeous, skillful, colorful pictures. THANK YOU, ALL ARTISTS.

Today I want to share three pictures from Diana Todd—each one engagingly different, each one showcasing a different aspect of her prodigious talents.

The first one, above—Jo and Ian on their ostriches, with the Odd-Fish banner—is good enough to be a book cover. It’s beautiful! Diana’s clearly spent some time poring over photos of real ostriches, right down to their knock-kneed stance and the imperious look in their eyes. The armor and regalia are exquisite, especially the authentic-looking ostrich tack (stirrups!) and the semi-transparent feather headpiece. This is the best kind of art: doing the diligent research, and then setting it on fire with imagination! Marvelous!

By the way, the young ‘uns might not remember this, but there was a video game called JOUST back in the 1980s in which you fought battles on flying ostriches. I played this game obsessively on my Atari, and it is of course the inspiration for the ostriches of The Order of Odd-Fish.

Please, do yourself a favor and watch this 1980s commercial for the JOUST video game. It is in the grand tradition of 1980s commercials that imply, “If you buy our product, it will come to life and destroy your house.” Commercials were longer back then, giving them time to become completely insane. Hang on for the last thirty seconds—I won’t ruin it for you, but it’s positively Lynchian:

But wait, there’s more Diana Todd art! Such as this, Dame Delia’s field notes for the Schwenk:

I can totally see Dame Delia snatching up a crumpled paper bag and scrawling these expert sketches of the beast as she chases it across Eldritch City. It might be too small to see here, but scribbled among the sketches are the notes “The Schwenk—Struthiconiicopteri Schwenkii” (I love the pseudo-Latin scientific name!) along with “sharp bill” and “crest is rarely raised” and “caught a glimpse of the bird in flight” and “tracked the bird around the city for several hours. It is just as elusive as Korsakov said!” This is beyond fan art; this is an authentic document from Eldritch City that somehow flew into our world.

Diana makes the Schwenk even more enigmatic by never fully revealing it, but only capturing it in a few hastily-executed sketches, each showing a different aspect. Making it feel that much more real. Masterful! At last, the Schwenk has found its John James Audubon.

And now, the last art from Diana—a tableau of the main characters of Odd-Fish. But since it’s Diana, this is no ordinary tableau. Everyone’s hanging by a thread!

What a joyous, buoyant feeling this one has! Ian and Nora are hanging from Jo’s legs, and Korsakov and then Sefino are hanging from Ian’s leg, and Audrey’s hanging from Nora’s arm—and there’s Aunt Lily floating nearby with her own balloon (a reference to her reckless hot-air ballooning in California?), and the Belgian Prankster popping up in the corner. This is just wonderful composition, summing up the essence of all the characters in their expressions and body language.

I love the close attention to detail here. Who remembers Ian’s tan corduroy jacket? Diana does, apparently. And Nora’s Teenage Ichthala shirt is the perfect touch. But my favorite thing is how Colonel Korsakov is pouting about something . . . as though he had been unexpectedly scooped up by Nora’s foot, and is patiently enduring the indignity of flight. Another strength: I like how Sefino looks like a fop, but also looks like a real cockroach.

Smashing work, Diana! To be so talented so early in life is a gift. I’m honored that you’ve done such brilliant work for The Order of Odd-Fish. Thank you!