K.V. Johansen
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kvjohansen.bsky.social
K.V. Johansen
@kvjohansen.bsky.social
2.2K followers 730 following 5.5K posts
Author. Epic fantasy: Blackdog, The Leopard, The Lady, Gods of Nabban, & The Last Road (Pyr). New high fantasy, The Wolf and the Wild King, out Nov 2024. Cdn, living on the Bay of Fundy. I also write as Kris Jamison. she/they www.kvj.ca
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kvjohansen.bsky.social
I really did not intend to predict where things were going. The Drone War, kids' sf about a rather better form of AI from 2007. (If you take a look at the whole image, you'll see the rather Vulcan-bomber style UAV which is also a drone-mothership flying in the upper part of the illustration.)
Cover of 2007 middle-grade sf espionage book The Drone War by K.V. Johansen, showing a sunset lake with a bank of low cloud and a drone mothership looking rather like a Vulcan bomber or, sadly, a Shahed missile, flying towards the viewer. Cover by Artemisia, photo and graphite illustration.
October 15, 2025 at 10:49 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Okay, you want to see the original Return of the Jedi ad, don't you?
Photo of July 1983 Halifax Mail-Star newspaper, with an ad for Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, and other things, including the band the Blushing Brides playing at Lucifer's. Photo of July 1983 Halifax Mail-Star newspaper, with an ad for Return of the Jedi. "A Brilliant Imaginative Piece of Moviemaking."
October 6, 2025 at 10:14 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
I think they sell bodies and necks separately so that you could do one with high-end hardware if you were so inclined. This one looks like it already has a bit more of the wiring soldered than my kit did. The soldering's what makes me sweat!
The neck of a bass in a kit from Solo; rosewood fingerboard, plus other parts still wrapped in plastic and foam sheets. Unwrapped unfinished body (mahogany) of a MusicMan-style bass kit from Solo, in a box of parts. The oval white pickguard is attached but about to be removed so I can work on the body, which needs sanding and finishing. Assorted bass hardware, including a cheap cable and strings included so one can test it after assembly.
September 7, 2025 at 11:10 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Fancy outdoor shot of the forest guitar, a PRS-style kit from Solo. Sounds great. The neck slipped a bit when I was gluing but I filled the tiny gap with glue & sawdust and it intonates nicely anyway. Lovely sound.
Emerald green PRS-style kit guitar posed outside in front of a juniper bush by a snowdrift. The body is figured maple veneer over mahogany; the finish is gunstock oil; it glows in the sunlight. Back of the same guitar up close; streaky translucent forest-green on mahogany, the red-brown showing through a bit. Glowing.
August 25, 2025 at 7:46 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Hier ist ein Foto von Juni, wann er hat mit uns eine Woche gebleibt. Er hat die viele Fenster und Pflanzen sehr gern.
Grey cat on a windowsill behind a camphor tree.
August 3, 2025 at 11:47 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Here's one for the internet, anyway. We call it the Shenstone rose; it's from my great-grandmother's farm in Shenstone. Probably a double Scotch rose, Rosa pimpinellifolia, of some type, judging by the leaves.
A branch of many roses, small, double, white, against a background of green containing feathery asparagus, some other rosebushes not yet blooming, and ... generally multiple shades of green and shadow, many leaf-forms: green complexity. It's a rose that only blooms once per year and has small, fine foliage; probably a scotch rose. We call it the Shenstone rose as it's from my great-grandmother's farm in Shenstone, Albert Co.
June 26, 2025 at 1:02 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Over on the other place, the US Dept of Defence has put Russian flags on its flag day post.
Sybertooth Books observes: "US Department of Defence puts Russian flags on its 'Flag Day' poster. Appropriate, given that their commander in chief and his cabinet are lobbyists for Russia." The US Dept of Defence post natters about freedom freedom rah rah rah and has segment of an American and below the words "Flag Day" the bars of a Russian flag, white-blue-red, three stars, then another Russian flag. (Americans still haven't caught on to "defence" noun and "defense" verb.)
June 14, 2025 at 10:37 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
@tomlloydwrites.bsky.social As promised, a not-very-impressive photo of a yearling black bear, taken from an upstairs window at the in-laws' cottage, to further convince your kids of our exotic wilderness adventures. The neighbours call it "Junior." We take bearspray to walk around the orchard.
Yearling black bear running across a green hayfield towards some apple and chokecherry trees not yet in bloom. Safely photographed from an upstairs window! If you are imagining this rather than actually seeing it, you are probably getting a better picture than the phone did.
May 26, 2025 at 1:41 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Cool! The Wolf and the Wild King: High fantasy born of myth & folklore, of the dark and the trees and the winter’s cold...Assassin & dutiful son of the undying Queen, Mairran is dispatched by his mother to find the killer of an earl whose life was offered in an unsanctioned sacrifice to the Forest.
Cover of The Wolf and the Wild King by K.V. Johansen, cover art by same. Painting done over many weeks in Krita; that's a digital painting program, not AI. A black wolf in a snowy landscape looks warily, head down, at a 10th-C-ish sword leaning against the bole of a dark tree. The pommel of the sword is a single dark blue stone. The horizon is blotchy dark conifers, with the northern lights rose and green behind them against an dark blue-black sky.
May 1, 2025 at 2:16 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Fanjoy leading, but only one poll reporting so far.
April 29, 2025 at 2:54 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Current snapshot!
Just a current snapshop for someone whose page crashed; typing it all out will make it out of date anyway.
April 29, 2025 at 2:50 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Helle purpurot und gelbe Krokus in alte brune Blaetter.
April 12, 2025 at 10:46 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Science fiction writer points scored. Thing in my book is now a real thing:
www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...

The book in question being The Drone War: www.kvj.ca/drone.html
Cover of The Drone War (a Cassandra Virus novel) by K.V. Johansen. A calm lake by sunset with a large aircraft, with smooth, futuristic curves flying towards the viewer, a bank of purple cloud behind it. Cover art incorporating both photography and graphite pencil work by publisher Sybertooth's in-house artist "Artemisia."
April 11, 2025 at 12:51 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
The stick-mincer! aka garden shredder or electric wood chipper. It works really well. I got through two small brush piles; only one big one left. Plus, everything that will fall in the coming freezing rain ... We have a lot of trees!
A Canadian Tire Yardworks electric garden shredder/wood chipper, a fetching teal blue, grey, and white machine looking like a seventies robot; consists of a sort of hopper above a bin, cleverly designed to make it very, very hard for a human to contact the stick-mincing bits. Evidence of mulch: fairly finely chopped mulch from branches, twigs, stalks and so on, around a small, still leafless haskap bush.
March 31, 2025 at 12:01 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Here you go!
Large toy library gorilla sitting on a small children's table below a display of Pratchett books, the biography front and centre. The gorilla is wearing a black crocheted wizard's hat with a pride ribbon and a sea-turtle badge pinned to it with tiny Canadian flat pins. Around his neck is a nametag that says, "Hello/Bonjour, My name is Ook ... Ook NotTheLibrarian, Because I am a gorilla, not an orangutan. " Novelist at Off-Farm-Job, captured (of course) laughing with eyes shut. Wearing a sage-green crocheted wizard hat and a tattered green terrycloth wizard's robe. Remove the hat and they could be cosplaying Arthur Dent rather than Rincewind's woodsy cousin. In hand, a sheaf of questions for the Pratchett pub quiz. In background, library book-shelves.
March 16, 2025 at 12:24 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
I did my own cover art (for various reasons) for The Wolf and the Wild King, which came out from Mystique last November. I was aiming for something a bit more Post-Impressionist than I managed, but I'm reasonably pleased with it. Painted in Krita; my late dog was the model for the wolf.
Cover of The Wolf and the Wild King by K.V. Johansen. Digital painting also by K.V. Johansen. A winter scene: snow, night, the sky streaked by northern lights. A black wolf, head lowered, warily approaches a sword (of the Carolingian or “Viking” style) leaning against the trunk of a large, ancient, bare-branched tree. The snow is deep, but crusty, with only a thin fresh fall over the crust, disturbed the wolf’s feet. The pommel of the sword is a single, rounded, opaque, deep-blue stone mounted in claws. Dark conifers line the horizon.
February 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Another shot of John Macnab because it's such a nice map, this time with the ornate title page.
Map from John Macnab by John Buchan, the route of the stalkers around the glen marked in red, plus the ornate title page, with sort of Art Nouveau ornamentation.
January 31, 2025 at 11:44 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
John Macnab by John Buchan -- a very finely drawn map!
Map of the Scottish glen where some of the action of Buchan's John Macnab takes place. The route is marked in red.
January 31, 2025 at 11:42 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome. Another Ransome fan already posted this, but I think I managed a flatter photo.
Endpaper maps of Great Northern? by Ransome: the islands, and the glen where the children lead the bird-collector astray to save the nesting great northern divers, aka common loons.
January 31, 2025 at 11:40 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Huntingtower, by John Buchan ...
Endpaper map of the old tower and estate on a Scottish cliff in Huntingtower by John Buchan
January 31, 2025 at 11:38 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Behold, the Cube! (It's a giant freezer full of robots and frozen blueberries or maybe cranberries, I forget which.)
Photo taken from a height (the Crabtree breezeway, if you're in the know). The tops of green summer trees in the foreground, the upper storeys of a gabled house and a flat-roofed commercial building glow pale yellow in hazy sunlight; then more trees, and then, in the distance, against a sky of low, muted horizon cloud (or maybe fog over the bay) the Cube rises. A massive stark white cube seven storeys high (or thereabouts. Windowless. Mysterious. Ominous. (The entire view is about to be destroyed by a highrise, as well as the university's planned destruction of the breezeway to expand the library to hold fewer books. The Cube, however, will endure. It just won't be able to be photographed with this lovely framing.
January 27, 2025 at 11:18 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
By the way, Spouse was researching 80s Berlin; I couldn't find him a good clear transit map online so I unearthed mine for him to scan. In case you, too, want to see it, here it is. 1985. I carried it with me everywhere in a clear vinyl pocket folder with my student ID.
A map of S- and U-Bahn lines in West Berlin in 1985; the usual different-coloured lines crossing at right and 45-degree angles. The Wall is identified as a sector-border: "Sektorengrenze."
December 1, 2024 at 12:56 PM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
Meanwhile, if you like high fantasy, dark fantasy, deeply troubled heroes, winter wars and dragons, or know someone who does, The Wolf and the Wild King might be a nice gift for yourself or that other person. Trade paperback and ebook. www.kvj.ca/wolf.html
Cover of The Wolf and the Wild King by K.V. Johansen. Digital painting also by K.V. Johansen. A winter scene: snow, night, the sky streaked by northern lights. A black wolf, head lowered, warily approaches a sword (of the Carolingian or “Viking” style) leaning against the trunk of a large, ancient, bare-branched tree. The snow is deep, but crusty, with only a thin fresh fall over the crust, disturbed the wolf’s feet. The pommel of the sword is a single, rounded, opaque, deep-blue stone mounted in claws. Dark conifers line the horizon.
November 29, 2024 at 10:42 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
As it's P.G. Wodehouse's birthday, it's a good day to show off these excellent books by N.T.P. Murphy: the two volumes of The Wodehouse Handbook. Reveals the world that Wodehouse lived in and the sources of the many quotations and references he used so brilliantly. www.sybertooth.ca/publishing/W...
Volume One: The World of Wodehouse. A Wodehouse Handbook, revised edition, by N.T.P. Murphy" A pen and ink sketch of Wodehouse's face, a grinning, bald, elderly man. A tobacco pipe hovers by him and dimly in the bacground are silhouetted a pig, a golfclub, an engagement ring, a tophat, an ocean liner, cocktail glasses, and the masks of tragedy and comedy. Volume Two: The World of Wodehouse. A Wodehouse Handbook, revised edition, by N.T.P. Murphy" A pen and ink sketch of Wodehouse's face, a grinning, bald, elderly man. A tobacco pipe hovers by him and dimly in the bacground are silhouetted a pig, a golfclub, an engagement ring, a tophat, an ocean liner, cocktail glasses, and the masks of tragedy and comedy.
October 15, 2024 at 9:59 AM
kvjohansen.bsky.social
How about I post the cover for The Wolf and the Wild King, out Nov 19th in ebook, coming in trd pbk soon too? Swords, sacrifice, a dark winter. Preorders for the ebook are up: books2read.com/u/mV1Dep Go ahead, rt this to all your friends; they'd probably like to read it too, right?
Front cover of The Wolf and the Wild King, by K. V. Johansen, published by Mystique/Crossroad Press. A black wolf, head lowered, approaches an ancient tree, thick-trunked and bare-limbed; it looks like a beech. It’s winter; there’s a heavy crust on the snow with a light dusting of new snow over it; the wolf walks on the crust and leaves only faint footprints. A longsword leans against the trunk of the tree; its pommel is formed of a rounded dark blue stone held in bird-claws. The wolf appears to be both curious about and suspicious of the sword. Conifers run dark along the horizon. The night sky is streaked with northern lights. The style is slightly stylized, oil-painting-like, with very saturated colours, and was painted digitally in many, many layers using a Wacom tablet. (Art by K. V. Johansen.)
October 11, 2024 at 10:19 AM