Title Illustrated Men Author Various ISBN# 978-1-60820-148-8 (print) $64.99   978-1-60820-149-5 (ebook) $16.99 Release Date July 2010 Cover Artist Michael Breyette Paperback: 164 pages     Available At: MlrBooks (ebook)

Since artists are often called up to turn prose into a visual for such things as book covers, I wondered, would writers be able to pick up the creative torch and run in the opposite direction? I had little doubts they could and it got me excited wondering what they would come up with for my own pastel paintings.

So with that in mind I thought it would be fun to launch a contest and invite friends, fans of my art, amateur scribes, professional writers, really anyone who wanted, to pick a painting from my body of work and build a short story around it.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I wanted to find out if that was true.

Art-inspired short story contributors for this collection include: L. John Williams, Todd Schoonover, Veronica, Aleksandr Voinov, Marquesate, Linda Schnelle, John Stewart, George Seaton, Gabriel Morgan, Alan Bennett Ilagan, Todd Peissig, Harold Dixon, Justin Shepherd, Clare London, and artist Michael Breyette.