The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits is Upon Us!

Friends, the hour is upon us! The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits, that is!

At long last, after months of waiting for books to arrive, and a crazy week of packing and shipping the rewards to the Kickstarter backers, my 2nd yokai encyclopedia is available to the public!

Pre-order the book now!

Nearly 2 years in the making, this has been an extremely fun and also exhausting project for me. I am really proud of the final product, and really happy to finally be able to release it to the world. At 286 pages, the book is 25% bigger than its predecessor, contains more yokai, and also has a full chapter dedicated to onmyōdō the black magic of classical Japan.

If you loved The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, you will love this book too. It follows the same format, presenting a page of yokai lore and a full color illustration for each entry. In response to popular request, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits also contains a few longer entries, going into greater detail about the myths and legends of certain famous yokai. Just as before, there are silly yokai, scary yokai, strange yokai, and sexy yokai. It runs the whole spectrum!

Anyway, on to the most important question: How do I get a copy of the book?? There are a few ways:

1. You can order it from Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback format. Here is the link.

2. You can order it directly from me! I have a surplus of books from the Kickstarter, and I am offering them on a first-come-first-serve basis. This includes paperbacks, collector’s edition hardcovers, and slipcases for the hardcovers. There are a few advantages to ordering directly from me: first, you help support the creation of my yokai and artwork as the proceeds all go straight to me. Second, I will sign the book using my special signing pen which I got at the Abe no Seimei shrine in Kyoto. Third, you will be getting a super high quality special first edition copy of the book which are extremely limited in number (produced only for the Kickstarter)! I have paperbacks and collector’s edition hardcovers of both books, so you can even get a double set! To order directly from me, send me an email and tell me what you want!

My supply is limited, so if you want one of the collector’s editions try to order as soon as possible to ensure you get one before I run out.

Yokai in the Retrospect

After appearing in the New York Times last week, I was also featured in my hometown’s newspaper—The Retrospect—this week. Though it may not have the prestige of the Times, it’s great little newspaper that I grew up reading, and I am really happy to be featured in it!

Retrospect 5/29/2015

Yokai in the New York Times

This week’s Sunday edition of the New York Times has an article about the recent resurgence (or just surgence? Not sure if it’s a “re”) of yokai popularity in America. I was really excited to be mentioned by name, as well as having my artwork featured pretty prominently in the paper. The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits was also mentioned!

My Shiisaa painting made the front page of the Arts & Leisure section!

My Shiisaa painting made the front page of the Arts & Leisure section!

Books Update

It’s been deathly quiet on this blog since the start of my 2nd Kickstarter. The reason for that is that I have been posting all of the progress and updates on the book work on the Kickstarter page for backers’ eyes only. Since the book has been taking up all of my time for the past year and a half or so, matthewmeyer.net has been suffering from a bit of neglect.

More Yokai

Well, Halloween is over (sadly), and we have to wait 364 days until the happiest day of the year again. However, just because A-Yokai-A-Day is over doesn’t mean that I am finished painting yokai! I’ll continue posting my new paintings on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, but you’ll have to wait for the book to read all about them. So make sure that you are following me on social media, and you’ll get to preview some of the artwork from my upcoming second yokai encyclopedia: The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits.

A-Yokai-A-Day: Taira no Masakado & Takiyasha-hime

Happy Halloween, yokai fans! The best day of the year is finally here! Is anyone dressing up as a yokai for Halloween? I have a kappa costume, and my wife is dressing up as a shishimai (which the mujina is wearing in this illustration).

Because Halloween is the whole purpose of A-Yokai-A-Day, I always save the most special yokai of the project for the final day. Today’s yokai is actually a pair of yokai; a father-daughter team, straight out of the legends. Taira no Masakado is one of the most famous figures in Japanese history, feared as a terrible ghost, and worshiped as a god to appease his anger. His daughter, Takiyasha-hime, was a powerful witch herself. What is more fitting for Halloween than a vengeful ghost and a witch? I don’t know!

These ones are bit long, too, so they should make for interesting reads. To read on, click the illustrations below!

…and don’t forgot, there are still a few hours left to buy my book, The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, for only $1!

Taira no Masakado / 平将門 / たいらのまさかど

Taira no Masakado / 平将門 / たいらのまさかど

Takiyasha-hime / 滝夜叉姫 / たきやしゃひめ

Takiyasha-hime / 滝夜叉姫 / たきやしゃひめ

A-Yokai-A-Day: Goryō

Greetings everyone! It’s October 30th! That means it’s Mischief Night for all of you living in and around New Jersey, and just an ordinary day for all of you other folks. (I only recently learned that this is not a country-wide thing… how odd!)

I just got back from Night of Terror, a haunted hayride nearby, and boy was it fun! It also really put me in the mood for Halloween. There’s nothing at all like a good old fashioned haunted hayride. Aside from that though, the next best thing is of course ghost stories! And after watching a few of my favorite ghost movies, I am very much in the mood to post a ghost for today’s A-Yokai-A-Day. So here you are, for the day before Halloween, a ghost:

Goryō / 御霊 / ごりょう

Goryō / 御霊 / ごりょう