#i always thought it was platinum blonde but the official art makes it more strawberry blonde

[delightfuldevin]

Traced some official art with my redesigns,,

[blackphoenixalchemylab]

American Gods Returns To BPAL!

++ AMERICAN GODS 2017

The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something else-a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs.

People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.

The mountaintop was an arena; he saw that immediately. And on each side of the arena he could see them arrayed.

They were too big. Everything was too big in that place.

There were old gods in that place: gods with skins the brown of old mushrooms, the pink of chicken flesh, the yellow of autumn leaves. Some were crazy and some were sane. Shadow recognized the old gods. He'd met them already, or he'd met others like them. There were ifrits and piskies, giants and dwarfs. He saw the woman he had met in the darkened bedroom in Rhode Island, saw the writhing green snake-coils of her hair. He saw Mama-ji, from the carousel, and there was blood on her hands and a smile on her face. He knew them all.

He recognized the new ones, too.

Neil Gaiman is the winner of numerous literary honors and is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, American Gods, Neverwhere, Stardust and Anansi Boys; the Sandman series of graphic novels; three short story collections and one book of essays, The View From the Cheap Seats.

Neil is the first author to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal for one work, The Graveyard Book. He also writes books for readers of all ages including the novels Fortunately, the Milk and Odd and the Frost Giants and picture books including The Sleeper and the Spindle and the Chu's Day series. Neil's most recent publication, Norse Mythology has topped bestseller lists worldwide.

Originally from England, he now lives in the USA. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and he says he owes it all to reading the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook as a young man.

This series based on Neil Gaiman's American Gods, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine and Bram Stoker Awards for Best Novel, and now a Starz television series.

Visit Neil's official site, American Gods at Starz, and NeverWear.

This is a charitable, not-for-profit venture: proceeds from every single bottle go to the CBLDF, which works to preserve and protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

Original American Gods art by Hugo-winner Julie Dillon.

PERFUME OIL BLENDS $26.00 per 5ml bottle. Presented in an amber apothecary glass vial.

Believe

Shadow was in a dark place, and the thing staring at him wore a buffalo's head, rank and furry with huge wet eyes. Its body was a man's body, oiled and slick.

"Changes are coming," said the buffalo without moving its lips. "There are certain decisions that will have to be made." 

Firelight flickered from wet cave walls.

"Where am I?" Shadow asked.

"In the earth and under the earth," said the buffalo man. "You are where the forgotten wait." His eyes were liquid black marbles, and his voice was a rumble from beneath the world. He smelled like wet cow. "Believe," said the rumbling voice. "If you are to survive, you must believe."

"Believe what?" asked Shadow. "What should I believe?"

He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes filled with fire. He opened his spit-flecked buffalo mouth and it was red inside with the flames that burned inside him, under the earth.

"Everything," roared the buffalo man.

A scent of compression and release, of heat and faith, of plunging through the jet-shadowed darkness of uncertainty. The heart of the land: roots plunging ever deeper into thrumming black soil through the graves of faith, disillusion, and skepticism.

Bilquis

The Queen of Sheba, half-demon, they said, on her father's side, witch woman, wise woman, and queen, who ruled Sheba when Sheba was the richest land there ever was, when its spices and its gems and scented woods were taken by boat and camel-back to the corners of the earth, who was worshipped even when she was alive, worshipped as a living goddess by the wisest of kings, stands on the sidewalk of Sunset Boulevard at 2:00 A.M. staring blankly out at traffic like a slutty plastic bride on a black-and-neon wedding cake. She stands as if she owns the sidewalk and the night that surrounds her.

Honey, myrrh, lily of the valley, rose otto, fig leaf, almond, ambrette, red apple, and warm musk.

Black Hats

"So who were the guys that grabbed me in the parking lot? Mister Wood and Mister Stone? Who were they?" The lights of the car illuminated the winter landscape. Wednesday had announced that they were not to take freeways because he didn't know whose side the freeways were on, so Shadow was sticking to back roads. He didn't mind. He wasn't even sure that Wednesday was crazy.

Wednesday grunted. "Just spooks. Members of the opposition. Black hats."

"I think," said Shadow, "that they think they're the white hats."

"Of course they do. There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous."

"And you?" asked Shadow. "Why are you doing what you're doing?"

"Because I want to," said Wednesday. And then he grinned. "So that's all right."

Gunpowder residue, patent leather, pomade, and aftershave.

Coin Trick

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife. 

 The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

Glittering gold and silver, rolling over knuckles - concealed in palms - and pulled from the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Eostre of the Dawn

There was a woman sitting on the grass, under a tree, with a paper tablecloth spread in front of her, and a variety of Tupperware dishes on the cloth.

She was-not fat, no, far from fat: what she was, a word that Shadow had never had cause to use until now, was curvaceous. Her hair was so fair that it was white, the kind of platinum-blonde tresses that should have belonged to a long-dead movie starlet, her lips were painted crimson, and she looked to be somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.

As they reached her she was selecting from a plate of deviled eggs. She looked up as Wednesday approached her, put down the egg she had chosen, and wiped her hand. "Hello, you old fraud," she said, but she smiled as she said it, and Wednesday bowed low, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

He said, "You look divine."

"How the hell else should I look?" she demanded, sweetly. "Anyway, you're a liar. New Orleans was such a mistake-I put on, what, thirty pounds there? I swear. I knew I had to leave when I started to waddle. The tops of my thighs rub together when I walk now, can you believe that?" This last was addressed to Shadow. He had no idea what to say in reply, and felt a hot flush suffuse his face. The woman laughed delightedly. "He's blushing! Wednesday, my sweet, you brought me a blusher. How perfectly wonderful of you. What's he called?"

"This is Shadow," said Wednesday. He seemed to be enjoying Shadow's discomfort. "Shadow, say hello to Easter."

Jasmine and honeysuckle, sweet milk and female skin.

For the Joy of it

In prison Shadow had learned there were two kinds of fights: don't fuck with me fights, where you made it as showy and impressive as you could, and private fights, real fights, which were fast and hard and nasty, and always over in seconds.

"Hey, Sweeney," said Shadow, breathless, "why are we fighting?"

"For the joy of it," said Sweeney, sober now, or at least, no longer visibly drunk. "For the sheer unholy fucken delight of it. Can't you feel the joy in your own veins, rising like the sap in the springtime?" His lip was bleeding. So was Shadow's knuckle.

Whiskey, mead, honey, gold, sweat, and blood.

Glass Eye

"How'd you lose your eye?"

Wednesday shoveled half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. "Didn't lose it," he said. "I still know exactly where it is."

The depths of Mímisbrunnr: mugwort and frankincense, grey amber and ash.

Laura

There was something he wanted to say to Laura, and he was prepared to wait until he knew what it was. The world slowly began to lose light and color. Shadow's feet were going numb, while his hands and face hurt from the cold. He burrowed his hands into his pockets for warmth, and his fingers closed about the gold coin.

He walked over to the grave.

"This is for you," he said.Several shovels of earth had been emptied onto the casket, but the hole was far from full. He threw the gold coin into the grave with Laura, then he pushed more earth into the hole, to hide the coin from acquisitive grave diggers. He brushed the earth from his hands and said, "Good night, Laura." Then he said, "I'm sorry."

Violets, upturned earth, mothballs, formaldehyde (mixed with glycerin and lanolin), and the memory of the taste of strawberry daiquiris suspended in twilight.

Low Key Lyesmith

"Cigarette, sir?"

"No, thank you."

"You don't mind if I do?"

"Go right ahead."

The driver used a Bic disposable lighter, and it was in the yellow light of the flame that Shadow saw the man's face, actually saw it for the first time, and recognized him, and began to understand.

Shadow knew that thin face. He knew that there would be close-cropped orange hair beneath the black driver's cap, cut close to the scalp. He knew that when the man's lips smiled they would crease into a network of rough scars.

"You're looking good, big guy," said the driver.

"Low Key?" Shadow stared at his old cellmate warily.

Prison friendships are good things: they get you through bad places and through dark times. But a prison friendship ends at the prison gates, and a prison friend who reappears in your life is at best a mixed blessing.

"Jesus. Low Key Lyesmith," said Shadow, and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-Smith."

"You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.

Black clove and cassia flung onto glowing cinders and mingled with slow-dripping poisons.

Mad Sweeney

"Coin tricks is it?" asked Sweeney, his chin raising, his scruffy beard bristling. "Why, if it's coin tricks we're doing, watch this.

"He took an empty glass from the table. Then he reached out and took a large coin, golden and shining, from the air. He dropped it into the glass. He took another gold coin from the air and tossed it into the glass, where it clinked against the first. He took a coin from the candle flame of a candle on the wall, another from his beard, a third from Shadow's empty left hand, and dropped them, one by one, into the glass. Then he curled his fingrs over the glass, and blew hard, and several more golden coins dropped into the glass from his hand. He tipped the glass of sticky coins into his jacket pocket, and then tapped the pocket to show, unmistakably, that it was empty.

"There," he said. "That's a coin trick for you."

Barrel-aged whiskey and oak.

Mama-Ji

Shadow saw the old woman, her dark face pinched with age and disapproval, but behind her he saw something huge, a naked woman with skin as black as a new leather jacket, and lips and tongue the bright red of arterial blood. Around her neck were skulls, and her many hands held knives, and swords, and severed heads.

Spices, cardamom, nutmeg, and flowers.

Media

Waiting for them in front of the motel was a woman Shadow did not recognize. She was perfectly made-up, perfectly coiffed. She reminded him of every newscaster he'd ever seen on morning television sitting in a studio that didn't really resemble a living room.

"Lovely to see you," she said. "Now, you must be Czernobog. I've heard a lot about you. And you're Anansi, always up to mischief, eh? You jolly old man. And you, you must be Shadow. You've certainly led us a merry chase, haven't you?" A hand took his, pressed it firmly, looked him straight in the eye. "I'm Media. Good to meet you. I hope we can get this evening's business done as pleasantly as possible."

A news anchor's cologne, a soap star's perfume: perfect, pixelated, and glamorous; aglow with cathodes and anodes, coated with phosphor. "I offered you the world," she said. "When you're dying in a gutter, you remember that."

Mister Wednesday

His hair was a reddish gray; his beard, little more than stubble, was grayish red. A craggy, square face with pale gray eyes. The suit looked expensive, and was the color of melted vanilla ice cream. His tie was dark gray silk, and the tie pin was a tree, worked in silver: trunk, branches, and deep roots.

He held his glass of Jack Daniel's as they took off, and did not spill a drop.

Sleek cologne, the memory of a Nine Herbs Charm, gallows wood, and a splash of whiskey.

Mr. Czernobog

Shadow saw a gray-haired old Eastern-European immigrant, with a shabby raincoat and one iron-colored tooth, true. But he also saw a squat black thing, darker than the darkness that surrounded them, its eyes two burning coals; and he saw a prince, with long flowing black hair and a long black mustache, blood on his hands and his face, riding, naked but for a bear skin over his shoulder, on a creature half-man, half-beast, his face and torso blue-tattooed with swirls and spirals.

Unfiltered cigarettes, the leather and metal of sledgehammers, aortal blood slowly drying, and black incense.

Mr. Ibis

The smoke stung Shadow's eyes. He wiped the tears away with his hand, and, through the smoke, he thought he saw a tall man in a suit, with gold-rimmed spectacles. The smoke cleared and the boatman was once more a half-human creature with the head of a river bird.

Papyrus, vanilla flower, Egyptian musk, African musk, aloe ferox, white sandalwood.

Mr. Jacquel

Shadow looked up at the creature. "Mr. Jacquel?" he said.

The hands of Anubis came down, huge dark hands, and they picked Shadow up and brought him close.

The jackal head examined him with bright and glittering eyes; examined him as dispassionately as Mr. Jacquel had examined the dead girl on the slab. Shadow knew that all his faults, all his failings, all his weaknesses were being taken out and weighed and measured; that he was, in some way, being dissected, and sliced, and tasted.

We do not remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpose on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

"Please," said Shadow. "Please stop."

But the examination did not stop. Every lie he had ever told, every object he had stolen, every hurt he had inflicted on another person, all the little crimes and the tiny murders that make up the day, each of these things and more were extracted and held up to the light by the jackal-headed judge of the dead.

Golden amber, hyssop, North African patchouli, and embalming spices.

Shadow

"How the hell did you find me here?" he asked his dead wife.

She shook her head slowly, amused. "You shine like a beacon in a dark world," she told him. "It wasn't that hard..."

Grey oudh and bay rum luminous with amber.

Technical Boy

The fat young man at the other end of the stretch limo took a can of diet Coke from the cocktail bar and popped it open. He wore a long black coat, made of some silky material, and he appeared barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek. He smiled when he saw that Shadow was awake."Hello, Shadow," he said. "Don't fuck with me."

It's all about the dominant fucking paradigm, Shadow. Nothing else is important: vape smoke and burning electrical parts.

The Ifrit

The taxi driver comes out of the shower, wet, with a towel wrapped around his midsection. He is not wearing his sunglasses, and in the dim room his eyes burn with scarlet flames.

Salim blinks back tears. "I wish you could see what I see," he says.

"I do not grant wishes," whispers the ifrit, dropping his towel and pushing Salim gently, but irresistibly, down onto the bed.

Desert sand, red musk, blackened ginger, dragon's blood resin, black pepper, cinnamon, and tobacco.

The Norns' Farmhouse

The farmhouse was dark and shut up. The meadows were overgrown and seemed abandoned. The farm roof was crumbling at the back; it was covered in black plastic sheeting. They jolted over a ridge and Shadow saw it there.

It was silver-gray and it was higher than the farm-house. It was the most beautiful tree Shadow had ever seen: spectral and yet utterly real and almost perfectly symmetrical. It also looked instantly familiar: he wondered if he had dreamed it, then he realized that no, he had seen it before, or a representation of it man, many times. It was Wednesday's silver tie pin.

The VW bus jolted and bumped across the meadow, and it came to a stop about twenty feet from the trunk of the tree.

There were three women standing by the tree. At first glance Shadow thought they were the Zorya, but no, they were three women he did not know. They looked tired and bored, as if they had been standing there a long time. Each of them held a wooden ladder. The biggest also carried a brown sack. They looked like a set of Russian dolls: a tall one - she was Shadow's height, or even taller - a middle-sized one, and a woman so short and hunched that at first glance Shadow wrongly supposed her to be a child. They looked so much alike that Shadow was certain the women must be sisters.

The smallest of the women dropped to a curtsey when the bus drew up. The other two just stared. They were sharing a cigarette, and they smoked it down to the filter before one of them stubbed it out against a root.

Dusty, ancient wood, horehound, and sage, with viper's bugloss, mugwort, chamomile, nettle, apple blossom, chervil, and ashes.

Zorya Polunochnaya

Her hair was pale and colorless in the moon's thin light. She wore a white cotton nightgown, with a high lace neck and a hem that swept the ground. Shadow sat up, entirely awake. "You are Zorya Polu . . . ," he hesitated. "The sister who was asleep."

"I am Zorya Polunochnaya, yes. And you are called Shadow, yes? That was what Zorya Vechernyaya told me, when I woke."

"Yes. What were you looking at, out there?"

She looked at him, then she beckoned him to join her by the window. She turned her back while he pulled on his jeans. He walked over to her. It seemed a long walk, for such a small room.

He could not tell her age. Her skin was unlined, her eyes were dark, her lashes were long, her hair was to her waist and white. The moonlight drained colors into ghosts of themselves. She was taller than either of her sisters.

She pointed up into the night sky. "I was looking at that," she said, pointing to the Big Dipper. "See?"

"Ursa Major," he said. "The Great Bear."

"That is one way of looking at it," she said. "But it is not the way from where I come from. I am going to sit on the roof. Would you like to come with me?" 

Pale amber and ambergris, gossamer vanilla, moonflower, and white tobacco petals.

Zorya Utrennyaya

"Why you are standing at the door?" asked a woman's voice. Shadow looked over Czernobog's shoulder, at the old woman standing behind him. She was smaller and frailer than her sister, but her hair was long and still golden. "I am Zorya Utrennyaya," she said. "You must not stand there in the hall. You must go in, sit down. I will bring you coffee."

Sweet black coffee and a touch of ambrette seed.

Zorya Vechernyaya

"You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread." 

Red musk and wild plum, orange blossom and jasmine, juniper berries, sweet incense and vetiver-laced sandalwood. ++ AMERICAN GODS 2017: ATMOSPHERE SPRAYS 

Bone Orchard

Back in prison, Low Key Lyesmith had once referred to the little prison cemetery out behind the infirmary as the Bone Orchard, and the image had taken root in Shadow's mind. That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, nor why he found it so repellent.

Clacking white sandalwood bones, grave soil, and the bruise-purple fruits of death and decay.

Crocodile Bar

It was getting late. He was hungry, and when he realized how hungry he really was, he pulled off at the next exit and drove into the town of Nottamun (pop. 1301). He filled the gas tank at the Amoco and asked the bored woman at the cash register where he could get something to eat.

"Jack's Crocodile Bar," she told him. "It's west on County Road N."

"Crocodile Bar?"

"Yeah. Jack says they add character." She drew him a map on the back of a mauve flyer, which advertised a chicken roast for the benefit of a young girl who needed a new kidney. "He's got a couple of crocodiles, a snake, one a them big lizard things."

"An iguana?"

"That's him."Through the town, over a bridge, on for a couple of miles, and he stopped at a low, rectangular building with an illuminated Pabst sign.

The parking lot was half empty. Inside the air was thick with smoke and "Walking After Midnight" was playing on the jukebox. Shadow looked around for the crocodiles, but could not see them. He wondered if the woman in the gas station had been pulling his leg.

Cedar shavings, a swirl of booze, a flattened French fry, and barbeque sauce.

That’s it for now, everyone -- Don’t forget to see AMERICAN GODS shine on Starz starting April 30!