Vincent Chong, an English artist and digital wizard, provided a whole series of wonderful-gruesome illustrations to go with my story, 'You Will Hear The Locust Sing.' Click on over to his site for a look at more.

Seth Fisher worked up the illustrations for "Fanboyz," my first ever story for Marvel Comics and it was my great good luck to be paired with him. If the story is a success, the lion's share of the credit belongs to him. His web page contains so much delicious eye candy, you can get glaucoma from staring at it too long. You were warned.

Langdon Foss is another artist worth checking out, and someone I hope to work with in the near future. His illustrations feature an irresistible blend of the surreal, the horrifying and the futuristic. Anyone who wants a taste will find plenty to devour on his web site.

Several of my favorite writers keep their own pleasant little hidey-holes on the web. Grab a torch and explore any of the following caves:

Ray Bradbury

Michael Chabon

Neil Gaiman

Christopher Golden

J.K. Rowling

And here are a few other digital mine shafts worth lowering yourself into:

Salon.com
Home of the best literary criticism on the web, and the most likable book critic in the country, Laura Miller. It’s also a great place to go for news, and thoughtful political and social commentary, especially if you want a break from the right-wing windbags shrieking at each other on talk radio and the news channels.

The Readerville Journal
If you spend an unhealthy, even excessive amount of time thinking about books... well, join the club. This club. If you’ve been reading something you like (or hate) and you want to talk to someone about it, this is a terrific place to share your thoughts with people who actually care. There’s also a good chance that while you’re there someone will recommend a book or a writer worth discovering.

Also worth exploring is Shocklines which is kind of like Readerville for people with a specific interest in horror and fantasy.

And if you share my unhealthy preoccupation with comic books, you might check out Millarworld, which is home to some of the most cogent and amusing talk about the art and business of the four-color world on the web.

And here are some of my favorite small presses. If not for these guys, a lot of remarkable, off-beat fiction would never see the light of day. Especially when it comes to genre work, the small presses routinely provide a vital alternative to the kind of thing you get from bigger, mainstream publishers. I’m not going to take any cheap shots at the mainstream houses – I’m as crazy for Harry Potter as anyone - but I do think they reflexively avoid anything they can’t instantly categorize, leading them to value what’s safe more than what’s good. That’s a mistake the following small imprints never make:

Cemetery Dance

PS Publishing

Small Beer Press

TTA Press

Subterranean Press