The Great and Secret Thing is on hiatus for the time being. Not sure when we’ll be back, but we will.

Spring has sprung in Our Fair City and everyone is outside enjoying life and taking the kiddos out to see what they can see.

“Pormorcameran” – A Nonsensical Word 16.04.2011 Moses never had a last name, but that never bothered him. Not much ever bothered Moses, to be honest. His master said it was on account of him being simple. But, then again, his master fled the city instead of getting sent off to fight, and Moses didn’t put [...]

Here are a bunch of photos I kinda like. I took them while covering the Madonna Circle 75th anniversary black-tie charity gala. All images © Brandon Dill Photography Please don’t steal them. That’s a jerk thing to do.

This weekend was the first 48 hour Memphis Music Launch, presented by the Memphis Music Foundation, EmergeMemphis and the Launchpad – basically a whole bunch of nonprofits dedicated to improving Memphis. The concept was that people could pitch any kind of music or business music idea to the other participants. Then, 8 pitches would be picked to [...]

Blood Diary / Deer Song Loneliness sneaks, succeeds only when full on blood and berries – the feast of the lonely on a Saturday evening. On a Sunday, no one answers. Framed in suntan and a problem: there it is – the lonely. Every other is another I used to know fully. In the deer [...]

Often my favorite images are ones taken that don’t necessarily work for the nature of the story or the style of the publication where the photographs will run. I tend to forget about them, but I’ve revisited a few from the last several months and I’d like to share them. I’m offering them up without [...]

The building was obviously alive, the way it sighed and shuddered and sometimes even shrieked. Which was yet another thing he could never get used to about the future. They’d given him counseling sessions when he came out of cryo-sleep. It was legally required they’d told him. That, and they weren’t going to let him [...]

Row toward. Swing. Birds are in my body. Recovery. Huffy with dream. Cold cream. Bloody lamb- are you bred to be a gentle bee? Recovery. Cold dream. The birds. Body.

All images © Brandon Dill Photography Please don’t steal them. That’s a jerk thing to do.

Bedroom Eyes 28.03.2011 The sawbones had finished with her and waved the two lawmen in. She was laid up in bed, a thick wrap of fresh gauze around her head, holding a mass of bandages against where the bullet had grazed her skull. Sawbones had said if it had been any closer, she’d be blind. [...]

Building up and tearing down and feeling good and feeling better.

The smoke brought him into this world, and now it looked like it was bound to take him right back out. Chained in the center of the room, surrounded by braziers of smoldering incense, he thrashed mercilessly as the white, pungent smoke swirled upwards. Around the room, holy men repeated droning chants. “Free me!” he [...]

Environmentalist and Living Lands & Waters founder Chad Pregracke assembled a team of volunteers from local industrial companies and college students from around the country on an “alternative spring break” to help clean up one of the trashiest spots along the entire Mississippi River; McKellar Lake, the main harbor for the city of Memphis. Read the article about the [...]

His hands, from the right angle, looked like gnarled tree roots, but they knew her body better than they knew anything else in the world. She’d lose herself thinking about them, sometimes. Those hands and the things they could do. Then, when the grinding of her thighs got to an almost painful point, she’d realize [...]

The man with the crimson eyes. A bit of an old illustration today. For those of you not as nerdy as I, this is the character Cyclops from the Marvel book “X-Men”. Not much to say about this one, just a quick doodle of a latex clad super-mutant spewing a hot beam of plasma from [...]

Just a bunch of us folks taking advantage of a February warm snap in Our Fair City.

Hey all, I was too busy getting engaged last night to have time to write anything. Opening Lines will continue next week. Here’s some Memphis Fast Fiction in the meantime. Wish You Were Here 01.03.2011 Dearest Jerry, I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits. I never know where you are these [...]

This week’s character is cooler than you and he’s got the non-prescription glasses to prove it! Just another random character design this week. This was originally titled “Adam is a Hipster” until I realized that the current species of hipster has evolved so far past this look that the label no longer applied. I also [...]

Hitomi remembered the awful tension everyone felt the year the census numbers showed that cyborgs outnumbered humans. It reminded her of the vids she was shown in school from the race riots a hundred or so years ago. The last gasp of White America as the dominant racial force in the United States, rattling its [...]

He’s totally hip in a non-descript, poorly defined way. Not a big story behind this one. Random sketch of a guy that I liked enough to make into a random illustration of a guy. ‘Dude Johnson’ is the name I tend to use for people that have no real interesting characteristics to speak of. This [...]

I was hired to photograph several veteran fine-dining servers for Memphis Magazine’s annual restaurant poll issue. I was worried about finding a way to make the subject matter interesting. The art director thought a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” idea might go a long way toward explaining what these folks tolerate [...]

The things random passersby threw into the gravel pit never really surprised Daniel, until today. It was a small box, wooden, with bits of metal leafing and darker wood inlay. It was a wholly simple and rustic thing, not at all what the groundkeeper expected to find in the construction area behind the high school. [...]

Some more Flash procedural chaos magic design.