As many of you know, I got a degree in geography because I make maps for a living, and the story of place is something that has always excited me. So one of the things I enjoy looking at is people's geographic story. So, Question 1: What is your geographic story? Where were you born and where are all the places you have lived since then?
I was born in Michigan and grew up in Taylor, a suburb south of Detroit. A year after finishing my art degree at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, I followed my girlfriend to Chicago, where she was getting her PhD at the University of Chicago. We got married while living in Chicago and the years between then and now have been a nomadic journey from one side of the country to the other as her career developed. After Chicago, we spent a year in very southern Maryland. It was beautiful but we had to drive an hour for a decent movie theater. Then four years in Tucson, AZ, which was also beautiful but really hot. Now we're in the process of setting down roots in Richmond, VA.
It's been amazing to live so many places and experience so much of the country. I miss things about every place we've lived. If you ever get a chance to attend the All Souls Processional in Tucson, go. It's stunning.
And since I'm a freelancer, I can plug in my computer and be at work anywhere in the world, which really freed up my wife to take the most advantageous gigs she could to further her career.
So, you have been all over the flipping place. Question 2: Is there a place that you consider "home?" If not is there a type of place that you would gravitate to if you could... Mountains, deserts, beaches, etc...?
I still consider the Detroit area home because that's where much of my family is but I don't ever see myself moving back there. Chicago is the city I miss the most. If I could get Chicago, surrounded by mountains and Tucson's beautiful skies, Richmond's mild winters and the Detroit Institute of Arts (a stunningly world class art museum), I'd be extremely happy. That's not too much to ask, is it?
So, really, all you need is massively cosmopolitan urban area nestled in a bowl of mountains within an arid humidity free sky coupled with 4 seasons of weather. Sad to say, but I think that might be too much to ask.
Yes. If you could use your influence to make that happen, I'd really appreciate it.
Well, people from far and wide are curious to your answer of this next question, and I know you are stricken with terror at the mere hint of it. Let's just bite the bullet and get it over with. Question 3: Cake or Pie, which kind and why? Please be disturbingly specific.
Ah, the age old question that divides empires, topples friendships and has ruined countless happily ever afters...
The sordid history just underscores the difficulty of giving a definitive answer. They are both such lovely beasts with their own unique and tantalizing qualities. How can one justly apply some sort of arbitrary measuring system upon them and expect them to conform? Impossible! Only with hubris rivaling the builders of that doomed tower of Babel can one expect to tackle such a quandary and, even then, only at the expense of his beloved sanity.
In this instance I am reminded of foolish King Somdoor, ruler of the Ventiun realm for more years than his subjects would have liked. For you see, he didn't have a great number of hens in his roost, to put it in the local vernacular. He often held incorrect notions about the nature of things, believing clouds to be collected bird flatus or that nails grew only when one wasn’t looking directly at them and the like.
King Somdoor came to the throne at an early age because his father, also a dolt, never properly chewed his food. It was well-worn knowledge in the kingdom that King Hucklock III ate as if he were a pig at the trough, swallowing great mounds of food as quickly as he could. A combination of his poor mastication habits, a blueberry pie and a poorly-timed but also uncouth joke about a barmaid’s bedroom habits led to hearty laughter, monstrous choking and eternal death for Hucklock.
As Somdoor possessed fewer chickens than was optimal, in that moment he saw pie so closely dancing with death that the two of them became directly and irrevocably connected. He arrived at the erroneous conclusion that pie was an evil mortality dealer determined to bring about the end of not only his kingdom but all of humanity.
The day of his coronation, pie and all of it’s confectionary relatives were outlawed.
Prior to the anti-pie decree, the realm of Ventiun had a reputation of having some of the very best pie in all the known world. It was one of the reasons blueberry pie had been present when Hucklock heard the story of the barmaid and her many lovers. A state dinner had been thrown for the visiting emissary from Foldar, a far distant land, and the king wanted to impress his visitor with the hopes of opening new, crust-based trade routes, potentially doubling Ventiun's economic output.
As with anything people love that is put into forbiddance, a black market pie economy flourished in the underbelly of Ventiun. Unbeknownst to the king, the love, production, and consumption of pie continued, albeit to a lesser degree in poorly lit basements and at quadruple the prices.
Somdoor's snub angered Sugour, the god of pastry and betting houses, greatly. Conversely, Laudeeluc, the god of gamblers, also serves as the god of tin foil, which had not yet been invented. This unfortunate bit of timing unquestionably lowered the number of worshipers that recognized her usefulness and greatly diminished her power. Does one believe the house always wins today? Attempt gambling during Somdoor's era when Sugour had the benefit of pastry adoration on his side. Gamblers never triumphed.
Sugour cursed the kingdom of Ventiun, making sure their exports soured in transit and their sports teams forever lost. Only the most stone-headed gamblers bet against the house when the Ventiun Centaurs, the local fireball squad, scrimmaged.
Opposingly, because of their refusal to adhere to the law, Sugour blessed the citizens of Ventiun, helping them to live their lives through luck and happenstance. They regularly found coins on the street. The tax collectors consistently died before performing their duties, leaving money in the people’s purses while denying it to the state. Roofs never leaked and so never needed to be repaired.
Crops failed. The kingdom couldn’t afford to pay, house, or even feed it’s army. The gardens in the mansion died. The kitchen staff had to make due with serving stale barely, rats, and insect carcasses. Stubbornly, they refused to bring in their own personal stashes of beer and venison that were paid for by all the bills found in the pockets of their breeches on laundry day.
The king brooded. He blamed pie for the kingdom’s downfall. It was, after all, when his father was murdered by berry-stuffed-desert that the problems began.
To add to the misery, a moaning soon began emanating from somewhere in the mountains to the east. The kingdom became more ragged and the indecipherable lamentations grew louder. Every night at sunset, gnashing of teeth and incomprehensible, out-of-tune dirges would begin, disturbing the king’s rest. His uneven sleep diluted his already meager judgment even more. The people slumbered through the racket using the earplugs they bought with money street magicians fittingly pulled from their ears.
The king called his most trusted advisor and questioned him as to the source of these aural assaults and how to stop them. The advisor, Gipm, nervously revealed it to be the sorrows of Somdoor’s ancestors, past kings lamenting the passing of their kingdom from greatness and into squalor at the hands of the present ruler. After the first such declaration, Gipm was jailed and lashed. After a week, he regretfully gave the same refrain. After a week’s more dungeon and whipping, Gipm, thought that, yes, maybe, perhaps he had been wrong about that after all and it was just the wind.
Having unintentionally, yet unrepentantly, killed Gipm through dungeoning and lashening, the king put forth a decree. Anyone who ably and thoroughly squelched the source of the nocturnal weeping would have the privilege of marrying the king’s beautiful daughter, Tallulah.
By the standards of the day, Tallulah had already become a legend before she’d even left childhood. Travel was difficult in those times, most men having never ventured farther than even a dozen miles away from whence they were born. High talk of Tallulah traveled at least four times that same distance. Traders visiting the kingdom returned home with tales of her guile and wit.
At the age of eight she calmed the Baker’s Riots that occurred after the pastry prohibition began simply by standing on the back of an ox cart and singing “T’was a Nightly Pleasing,” a tender yet baudy refrain that brought the crowds to both tears and laughter.
“’Tis too bad she ‘as such an oaf for a father,” they would say or “I have no thought at’ll how such a fair maiden sprung from such curdled loins.”
The idea that the king would barter off this fair young mistress, and that she would have to go along with it simply because the king demanded it, caused the people to grumble more loudly. It became common to hear the simple folks openly speaking ill of his majesty right on the street and questioning whether his shriveled bag still held tight to any of its scruff or if he’d become as bald as a newborn in his distress. If he’d had any fuzz left at all, it was said, he would travel into those mountains himself to untangle the nuisance.
Heroes young and old flocked to Somdoor’s domain to try their hand at accomplishing the task, for such a prize as the lovely Tallulah was irresistible. Each man rode his steed off into the mountains with whatever measly provisions the poor castle could provide never to be seen again.
As the years passed, the people felt comfortable that they wouldn’t be losing the jewel of the kingdom, the only proper thing in the castle, their precious princess. It didn’t stop the commoners, however, of giving wintery welcomes to every new sword that passed through or from taunting them with ballads based upon the failures of their predecessors. “The Horrid Decapitating of Spineless Sir Crutchwell” and “The Night Sir Pikedell Watered his Codpiece with Tinkle”, while largely speculative (as the actual fates of the heroes remained unknown), properly wracked the steel of the newly arrived knights. As many began to give up the quest as continued to disappear into the mountains.
About that time, a wandering magician-baker, Cyril, stumbled into town upon his weary horse in search of a room. When questioned about his motives, the unkempt man claimed to be in town for the fifteenth annual Cupcake Cup, a three day, below-the-table baking competition that had developed as a result of the king’s sugary prohibition. The reputation of the TripleC, as it was known locally, had traveled nearly as far as Tallulah’s herself. Only the best bakers reached their flour-dusted hands towards this most elusive and illustrious victory.
Every year as the population of the city swelled like a to-term cow ready to labor, the king would look out of his windows, confused as to the source of the liveliness while wishing he had a tax collector to gather all of the levied tolls and tariffs.
A small man on no real means, Cyril attempted to slumber early, determined to get an ample amount of rest for the next morning’s baking challenge. However, the Pickled Pig’s innkeeper failed to give Cyril his complimentary earplugs, which resulted in Cyril being thoroughly woken up by the ghostly wailing emanating from the mountains to the east.
Having studied thaumaturgy under the wise guidance of the great Purple Rolan (such called as he accidentally dyed himself a lovely shade of lavender while bewitching flowers), Cyril immediately recognized the horrid singing as that of a wood troll and deciphered the lyrics without hesitation.
Quickly rushing to the kitchen, Cyril gathered his needed ingredients and baked until the rooster called forth the sun in the western sky. It broke his heart to abandon his quest for the Cupcake Cup for another year but his skills as magician-baker were needed much more greatly than his skills as a competitive pastry chef. The triumphant unveiling of his loganberry and pear pie recipe would have to wait. A wood troll needed help.
He rode out of town towards the eastern mountains to the astonishment of the hoi polloi. “He told us he were here for the TripleC, not for poor Tallulah,” the suspicious folks complained. “But he ain’t got no sword,” the observant ones noticed. “He’s just loaded up with all those pies.” And loaded up his horse was. Cyril had piled at least thirty pies, a stack equal in size as a good-sized farmhand was tall, on every surface of his horse. They sat on his hindquarters, his head, and even some in Cyril’s own lap. “Wave goodbye to the liar, Honey. Glad we ain’t gonna see him again,” said a miller to his daughter.
A short time later a great ruckus from the eastern mountains startled the occupants of Ventiun. They had never encountered such a noise during the daylight hours before and it gave them a mighty great fright. The rattling and rumbling even caused the first day of the TripleC to be postponed on account of both the tables and the competitors’ hands shaking in equal measure.
At early afternoon the upheaval ceased but the citizens of Ventiun found the peace difficult to accept. When Cyril rode back into town ragged, bruised and pie-less, the people mobbed his horse, pulled him down to sit on a stone and demanded to know what had occurred.
A trumpet blast suspended the questioning and the king barreled forth through the crowd.
“Tell me your story, Stranger, before I have you dungeoned and lashened to death!” The king blew fiercely through his nose.
Cyril bowed. He fell prey to the pride that he felt in the moment. “Just King Somdoor.” The crowd snickered. “Firstly, I do not believe dungeoned and lashened are proper words, your highness.”
After a week of dungeoning and lashening, Cyril once again bowed before the king. “I apologize, your majesty.”
“Continue. How did you stop the witching hour bellows? For they have not intruded upon me once during this past week.”
“You’re problem was simple enough to a properly learned man. I trust that your advisors are not such creatures.” The king shifted uncomfortably as he’d killed his one and only real advisor. “For you see, upon hearing the mourning song of a wood troll coming from the eastern mountains, I understood the creature to have lost its way. Wood trolls do not belong in the mountains. But also understanding that wood trolls are horribly cantankerous when lost or confused, I knew that I could not get near the beast to help it. I baked a mound of pies-“
“PIES?!” The king grew angry. “ILLEGAL!”
After another week of dungeoning and lashening, Cyril was allowed to continue. “You see, your majesty,” Cyril sat upon to floor as he had not the energy to stand upon his feet and his back ached with the power of an entire barn of stampeding horses. “I approached during the day, when the troll would be tired and listless, for they are nocturnal creatures, which is also why your peace was only disturbed during the evening time. And I used the food to lay out a path that the troll could follow. It winded its way out of the mountains to the woods far to the north, where the troll’s songs proclaimed him to have a wife and child. Once back in it’s known home, the troll’s tempest calmed. He allowed me to come close and he, along with his entire clan, thanked me with vigorous hugs I will be glad to not experience in my life again. My appearance upon returning was the result of the appreciation they held in their hearts for me. I am glad to say that your old nightly plague has ended.”
The king thanked Cyril with vigorous hugs, which agitated the whipping wounds dreadfully. He smoothed over any hurt, however, by declaring Tallulah to be Cyril’s proper reward, an outcome that Cyril didn’t have any notion towards as he’d only arrived in town for the Cupcake Cup. He turned the king’s gift away, saying that he could never accept a woman as a simple prize, as if she were a mere horse’s saddle.
Recognizing that Cyril had only aimed to assist the troll in trouble and that helping the kingdom hadn’t been the basis for his action nor had possessing her hand, Tallulah saw the selflessness and honor that Cyril possessed. She fell in love with him at once and a marriage was planned soon after.
The moratorium on deserts still stood. However, given Tallulah’s insistence and Cyril’s rumored skill with floured favors, the king allowed a temporary waiving of the restriction for the day of his daughter’s wedding.
As the king was poor because of Sugour’s curse and Tallulah was much loved by the people, the subjects bound together and organized such a wedding as the realm had never seen. Everyone from the lowest cobbler to the highest merchant attended.
Cyril created a wondrous twelve-tiered tower of spice cake and raspberry icing that the world had never before tasted. The king sat upon his throne happy for the first time in many years, a plate of cake in one hand, a fork in the other and a smile upon his face.
But even after all he’d witnessed, King Somdoor still ate as his father did, as though he was a pig at a trough. He pushed too much cake into his mouth and promptly choked until his soul left his body, making Cyril the new king and Tallulah the queen.
With a magician-baker for a king, Sugour lifted his curse and looked kindly upon the kingdom for many generations.
Pie and cake are both equally delicious and, at times, equally deadly. Treat them with the respect they require.
Also, my wife’s cheesecake is the best thing ever, hands down. If you ever set another cheesecake in front of me, I will kindly eat it and give appropriate comments while recognizing it to be an inferior competitor to my wife’s unexplainable goodness.
Right... so cheesecake it is. Many people find that cheesecake is much less a "cake" but more of a crustless custard pie. You, gentle bard, have chosen the sound of one hand clapping. You have eschewed the typical bivariate notion of "Either/Or" and opted for "Neither/Both," for your wife's cheesecake is neither cake nor pie, however it is both cake and pie simultaneously. Truly cheesecake is the meeting of the "yes" and "no" of "pie" or "cake." Well played, Mr Hilliker, well played indeed.
Man! If only I'd meant to actually be that cool with my answer. Thanks for making me look better than I actually am.
I have mentioned a few times that I knew that I not only liked to draw, but felt pretty good at it when I was five and put a teeny tiny pilot in the teeny tiny cockpit of a jet I drew. Question 4: So when did you realize that art was your thing?
I can't really pinpoint on moment in my life when it all clicked. As a kid I always knew I was going to be an illustrator, although I didn't know that proper term for it back then. I just wanted to do the pictures in books. It was about second grade, though, when I noticed a lot of the other kids were no longer doing their own drawings. Instead, they were asking me to draw the stuff they had in their heads, almost like we were all playing art director & illustrator without knowing it.
My job, as a jackass interviewer, is to make you look better. Stick with me, kid, and I will make you look amazing. It is interesting that early on you found that you wanted, specifically, to be an illustrator. It was comic book artist for me, but none of that super-hero stuff. I wanted to be on Transformers or GI Joe, because I can smell quality when I see it.... something about that last sentence both works beautifully and does not work at all... at the very same time... simultaneously, even.
Question 5: You currently (or in the recent past) do illustration for a few different pen and paper RPG's, do you play RPG's or is it just an outlet for your professional capabilities with no personal interest to speak of? If so, what game systems do you play?
Yeah, I still do some RPG work. At this point it's mostly for Shadowrun. In the past I've worked for AEG, White Wolf, and others. And when I originally got into it, for like the first ten years, it was just a way for me to draw elves and goblins and such while getting paid. I love fantasy and sci-fi and RPG's were the portal that allowed me to make those kinds of images but I never played them. I didn't have anything against them of course! I was, after all, contributing to their creation. But I didn't have any friends that played them when I was in that formative period in high school when people seem to discover them.
