Q is for Quezkari

Quezkari is the ultimate Big Bad from my fourth Fighting Fantasy adventure Bloodbones. He - or rather it - is a bloodthirsty voodoo death-god who demands human sacrifices to sate his unholy hunger.

During the course of the book you discover that Quezkari is actually a powerful, evil spirit - a manifestation of the souls of all those transformed into Zombies by the evil voodoo priest Ramatu and those killed by the pirate-lord Cinnabar, a.k.a. the eponymous Bloodbones.

Anyway, so why make a whole post about one monster from one of my books. Well, because Quezkari was realised in pen and ink by ace artist Tony Hough.

I first became aware of Tony's work when Spectral Stalkers (FF #45) was published in 1991. I loved the detail in his work and was intrigued by the cat logo he used to sign his illustrations. Next up was Night Dragon (FF #52) for which he also painted the cover.

And then, when I was commissioned to write Knights of Doom, I was delighted to discover that Tony would be illustrating the book. He also painted the cover for the book and I was struck by his use of a purple palette when there was the risk that my choice of image could have resulted in something much darker.

I was to work with Tony again when Bloodbones was finally published by Wizard Books (in 2006) and I think that his work for that book is even better that his illos for Knights. During the course of the last year Tony has coloured some of his Bloodbones illos in photoshop and the results have been outstanding. And his picture of Quezkari was among those that were updated.

Tony has produced his own artbook called Fragments - The Fantasy Art of Tony Hough. It includes some of the aforementioned illos here as well as others based on characters from my books and you can order you own copy here.

I understand that Tony's now a trained tattooist but I haven't heard of anyway having one of his Bloodbones or Knights of Doom illustrations turned into a tattoo. If I ever decided to have ink done - you know, a nice subtle one, right across the whole of my back - I reckon I could do a lot worse than have Tony turn his illustration of Quezkari into a tattoo.