The Alchemy of Love: A Collaborative Endeavor

A collaborative endeavor between artist-of-the-fantastic Alan M. Clark and author Eliza;beth Engstrom, this volume includes eight pieces of fiction and eight paintings. Clark illustrates four of Engstrom's favorite dark and haunting stories, and Engstrom "literates" four of Clark's disturbing images. "Crosley," one of the stories contained in this volume, was selected for inclusion in the 13th annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow.

Elizabeth Engstrom has written seven books, including Lizzie Borden, Lizard Wine, When Darkness Loves Us, Black Ambrosia, Word by Word and Nightmare Flower, which received a Bram Stoker nomination for fiction. She has edited three anthologies, and has written over a hundred short stories, articles, and essays. She is coordinator of the Maui Writers Retreat and director of its Department of Continuing Education.

Alan M. Clark, a native of Nashville Tennessee now living in Eugene, Oregon, has been a freelance illustrator since 1984. He has illustrated the fiction of such authors as Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, George Orwell, Manly Wade Wellman, Greg Bear, and Spider Robinson, as well as his own. He has done childrens book illustration as well as illustrations for textbooks of cellular and molecular biology. His awards in the illustration field include the World Fantasy Award, four Chesley Awards, the Deathrealm Award, and the International Horror Guild Critic's Award. As a writer, he has sold short fiction to the anthologies More Phobias, The Book of Dead Things, Imagination Fully Dilated, Bedtime Stories to Darken Your Dreams, Bedlam, and Darkside, and to the magazines Midnight Hour and The Silver Web. As a book designer and publisher, he has produced Bedtime Stories to Darken Your Dreams, edited by Bruce Holland Rogers, and Imagination Fully Dilated Volume II, the Literated Works of Alan M. Clark, edited by Elizabeth Engstrom.