Would you kill for your art? Would it kill for you? A painter who kills with blood-tinged pigment. A tattoo artist with a dark past who treats with demons. A sculptor on Venus who carves his life’s history into ice at the cost of his sanity. A ceramic vase that might avenge the life of a murder victim. A haunted song that drives listeners to kill. Art surrounds us. It entertains and nurtures. And for some it can do far more. It can protect a family over generations or bridge the boundary between the realms of the living and the dead. It can be a curse or a boon, a path to riches or to damnation. In Artifice and Craft, speculative fiction authors Lyndsay E. Gilbert, Laura E. Price, Adam Stemple, Brian K. Lowe, James R. Tuck, Briana Una McGuckin, Jordan Davidson, James Maxey, Madeline Dau, Joel Armstrong, C.E. Murphy, Mark Painter, Alex Bledsoe, Alethea Kontis, Gerri Leen, and Jelena Dunato craft tales of art and artistry that are shaded with the supernatural, tuned to the fantastic, and glazed with the unexpected. So listen, watch, admire. But don’t touch, and don’t turn your back. Because these works of art are far more than they seem.
