K.V. Johansen

@kvjohansen

Author. Epic fantasy: Blackdog, The Leopard, The Lady, Gods of Nabban, & The Last Road (Pyr). High fantasy: The Wolf and the Wild King (Mystique). Spring 2026: Breath and Bone, new sword & sorcery from Candlemark & Gleam. Cdn, Bay of Fundy. www.kvj.ca

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K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· 22d

And I think my friend's bass is done. It sounds very nice.

A bass built from a Solo MMK-10 kit (i.e. a Music Man Stingray style), sapphire-blue stained (I think more lapis lazuli), egg-shaped white pickguard, rosewood aka pau ferro fretboard, headstock stained dark oak, all very glossy and pretty, in a guitar stand in a pale hallway. A brass-bird-headed cane is behind the bass by accident because our house is a cabinet of curiosities.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· 22d

Will do! It's a MusicMan-style kit from Solo. Mahogany body, maple neck, rosewood (pau ferro, I think) fretboard. Here's a "before" photo; I'd just taped it up and painted the cavities with conductive shielding paint.

Newspaper-covered table in the cellar next to stacked firewood, with an unfinished mahogany bass body, cavities very black, just painted with graphite conductive shielding paint, surrounded with blue masking tape. It hasn't even been sanded yet and still has a bit of gloss from the sealant they put on before shipping. The unfinished neck is lying beside it, fretboard likewise covered with masking tape.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jun 9

I have books in this year’s #FictionFest showcase and it’s going to be so much fun! Sign up to get a reminder when it starts at FictionFest.ca 🍁📚

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· May 25

If you love to #ReadCanadian, have we got the book fest for you! Check out this showcase full of #books from authors all across #Canada (including mine!), for all ages and fiction genres! 🍁📚 ➡️ FictionFest.ca

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· May 24

Something BIG is happening, and I’m involved! Check out the virtual #BookFair featuring #Canadian authors from all across the country at FictionFest.ca! 🍁🦫📚

A black square image with contrasting red text and an image of a open book, taken end-on, with the pages splayed open so it looks as though someone is flipping through them. Red maple leaf images are arranged to look like they are spilling out of the book. Text in the top left corner reads: “Something BIG is happening! FictionFest.ca”

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Apr 27

Proof of book: Breath and Bone is out May 18th but if you're attending @tricon-hfx.bsky.social you'll be able to get a copy a day or two early!

A stack of Breath and Bone by K.V. Johansen, one book in front of the stack. It's overall bluish, shows a tall woman warrior and a shorter woman with a harp, in a forest. Cover art by Laura Galli. (In the background, some potted plants and a sunny window.)

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Mar 29

Shiny! this is my PRS-style one from a few years ago, built from a kit from Solo and finished with about 20 coats of Tru-oil gunstock oil. The neck is seven coats and buffed with steel wool to get that satin finish that's so good to play.

Glossy deep emerald-green PRS-style Solo kit guitar with quilted maple veneer, showing off its shininess. There's an ivy plant behind it.

The neck of the same guitar, mahogany, stained lightly with both dark oak and forest green rubbed on and rubbed off, leaving it streaky and foresty; then Birchwood-Casey Tru-oil gunstock oil, seven coats, buffed with 0000 steel wool to get a satin finish. Shown against a background of winter-weathered oak leaves and a juniper bush in Marsh; the old leaves and juniper are the exact colours of the neck.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Feb 26

I did say I have no skill in woodcarving, and this head is shaped from spruce 2x4. However, it fits nicely on the original dowels and makes the antique decoy something interesting to look at rather than a disturbing headless body.

Antique duck decoy, very weathered and cracked with a big split running lengthwise in its body, which is black with an oblong white outline and a blue flash on the wing, suggesting it's meant to be a mallard. The new head is more roughly shaped, lacking smooth curves, but gives a reasonable impression of a duck, the head stained dark emerald green, the beak painted yellow with a bit of darker shading, a white neck-ring.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Feb 23

Okay, I won't be getting a new microwave at Home Hardware, I guess. I search "microwave". They display results for ... Wait for it. "Hammer arrestors."

Screenshot showing that a search of Home Hardware for "microwave" has brought up "hammer arrestors." Whatever the heck a hammer arrestor is.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Feb 16

Duck head progress. Duck-Kryten looks a bit less Kryten-like now. I'm reasonably satisfied. Not a woodcarver; working with a lump of old 2x4 that used to prop up a leaky washing machine ...

View of left side of the duck head, shaped from a piece of rubbish spruce 2x4 with a backsaw and chisels and then sanded to round things off. It's a reasonable silhouette of a duck head with some slight shaping to the tip of the beak.

Right side of the same duckhead, on which you can see a big crack in the wood, and the remnants of the brown wood-stain that was meant to stop it rotting when it was propping up the leaky washing machine.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Feb 9

Duck head progress: Spouse says it looks like it was designed by the people who designed Kryten. I say, it isn't finished yet and I'd like to see you do as well with a lump of old 2x4, a backsaw, and a chisel.

Antique duck decoy, headless: it's very weathered; the grain is showing through the black paint. Blue wing patches outlined roughly in white. New head, currently just piece of 2x4 shaped with saw and chisel to a somewhat blocky but recognizable duck head.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Feb 1

What is this "Raven"? It's the conclusion to the Forest Duology begun in THE WOLF AND THE WILD KING. www.kvj.ca/wolf.html

Cover of The Wolf and the Wild King; digital painting (not AI) A black wolf, head lowered, looks at a sword leaning against a tree. Night, snow, conifers on the horizon, northern lights. Cover art by the author.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jan 19

Maybe not.

Sleek grey cat lying curled on his back in a towel-covered chair, the tip of one fang showing, eyes wide and glinting with evil intent.

Sleek grey cat lying curled on his back in towel-covered chair, reaching out a blurry paw, claws spread, in order to bat at a human. It's a sign of affection, he claims.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Dec 20

Finnegan says hello to Alfie. Or not. Probably he says, "Yoww-oww-owwl..." and there is flying fur and so on.

Sleek grey tomcat looking pleased with himself, lying on an armchair patterned with gazelle and mammoth, on a cushion depicting a fish with the word "fish" on it just behind him. The mighty hunter surrounded by mementos, I guess.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Oct 15

I really did not intend to predict where things were going. The Drone War, kids' sf about a rather better form of AI from 2007. (If you take a look at the whole image, you'll see the rather Vulcan-bomber style UAV which is also a drone-mothership flying in the upper part of the illustration.)

Cover of 2007 middle-grade sf espionage book The Drone War by K.V. Johansen, showing a sunset lake with a bank of low cloud and a drone mothership looking rather like a Vulcan bomber or, sadly, a Shahed missile, flying towards the viewer. Cover by Artemisia, photo and graphite illustration.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Oct 6

Okay, you want to see the original Return of the Jedi ad, don't you?

Photo of July 1983 Halifax Mail-Star newspaper, with an ad for Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, and other things, including the band the Blushing Brides playing at Lucifer's.

Photo of July 1983 Halifax Mail-Star newspaper, with an ad for Return of the Jedi. "A Brilliant Imaginative Piece of Moviemaking."

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Sep 7

I think they sell bodies and necks separately so that you could do one with high-end hardware if you were so inclined. This one looks like it already has a bit more of the wiring soldered than my kit did. The soldering's what makes me sweat!

The neck of a bass in a kit from Solo; rosewood fingerboard, plus other parts still wrapped in plastic and foam sheets.

Unwrapped unfinished body (mahogany) of a MusicMan-style bass kit from Solo, in a box of parts. The oval white pickguard is attached but about to be removed so I can work on the body, which needs sanding and finishing.

Assorted bass hardware, including a cheap cable and strings included so one can test it after assembly.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Aug 25

Fancy outdoor shot of the forest guitar, a PRS-style kit from Solo. Sounds great. The neck slipped a bit when I was gluing but I filled the tiny gap with glue & sawdust and it intonates nicely anyway. Lovely sound.

Emerald green PRS-style kit guitar posed outside in front of a juniper bush by a snowdrift. The body is figured maple veneer over mahogany; the finish is gunstock oil; it glows in the sunlight.

Back of the same guitar up close; streaky translucent forest-green on mahogany, the red-brown showing through a bit. Glowing.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Aug 3

Hier ist ein Foto von Juni, wann er hat mit uns eine Woche gebleibt. Er hat die viele Fenster und Pflanzen sehr gern.

Grey cat on a windowsill behind a camphor tree.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jun 26

Here's one for the internet, anyway. We call it the Shenstone rose; it's from my great-grandmother's farm in Shenstone. Probably a double Scotch rose, Rosa pimpinellifolia, of some type, judging by the leaves.

A branch of many roses, small, double, white, against a background of green containing feathery asparagus, some other rosebushes not yet blooming, and ... generally multiple shades of green and shadow, many leaf-forms: green complexity. It's a rose that only blooms once per year and has small, fine foliage; probably a scotch rose. We call it the Shenstone rose as it's from my great-grandmother's farm in Shenstone, Albert Co.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jun 14

Over on the other place, the US Dept of Defence has put Russian flags on its flag day post.

Sybertooth Books observes: "US Department of Defence puts Russian flags on its 'Flag Day' poster.
Appropriate, given that their commander in chief and his cabinet are lobbyists for Russia." The US Dept of Defence post natters about freedom freedom rah rah rah and has segment of an American and below the words "Flag Day" the bars of a Russian flag, white-blue-red, three stars, then another Russian flag. (Americans still haven't caught on to "defence" noun and "defense" verb.)

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· May 26

@tomlloydwrites.bsky.social As promised, a not-very-impressive photo of a yearling black bear, taken from an upstairs window at the in-laws' cottage, to further convince your kids of our exotic wilderness adventures. The neighbours call it "Junior." We take bearspray to walk around the orchard.

Yearling black bear running across a green hayfield towards some apple and chokecherry trees not yet in bloom. Safely photographed from an upstairs window! If you are imagining this rather than actually seeing it, you are probably getting a better picture than the phone did.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Apr 29

Fanjoy leading, but only one poll reporting so far.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Apr 29

Current snapshot!

Just a current snapshop for someone whose page crashed; typing it all out will make it out of date anyway.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Apr 12

Helle purpurot und gelbe Krokus in alte brune Blaetter.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Mar 31

The stick-mincer! aka garden shredder or electric wood chipper. It works really well. I got through two small brush piles; only one big one left. Plus, everything that will fall in the coming freezing rain ... We have a lot of trees!

A Canadian Tire Yardworks electric garden shredder/wood chipper, a fetching teal blue, grey, and white machine looking like a seventies robot; consists of a sort of hopper above a bin, cleverly designed to make it very, very hard for a human to contact the stick-mincing bits.

Evidence of mulch: fairly finely chopped mulch from branches, twigs, stalks and so on, around a small, still leafless haskap bush.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Mar 16

Here you go!

Large toy library gorilla sitting on a small children's table below a display of Pratchett books, the biography front and centre. The gorilla is wearing a black crocheted wizard's hat with a pride ribbon and a sea-turtle badge pinned to it with tiny Canadian flat pins. Around his neck is a nametag that says, "Hello/Bonjour, My name is Ook ... Ook NotTheLibrarian, Because I am a gorilla, not an orangutan. "

Novelist at Off-Farm-Job, captured (of course) laughing with eyes shut. Wearing a sage-green crocheted wizard hat and a tattered green terrycloth wizard's robe. Remove the hat and they could be cosplaying Arthur Dent rather than Rincewind's woodsy cousin. In hand, a sheaf of questions for the Pratchett pub quiz. In background, library book-shelves.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jan 31

Another shot of John Macnab because it's such a nice map, this time with the ornate title page.

Map from John Macnab by John Buchan, the route of the stalkers around the glen marked in red, plus the ornate title page, with sort of Art Nouveau ornamentation.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jan 31

John Macnab by John Buchan -- a very finely drawn map!

Map of the Scottish glen where some of the action of Buchan's John Macnab takes place. The route is marked in red.

K.V. Johansen@kvjohansen· Jan 31

Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome. Another Ransome fan already posted this, but I think I managed a flatter photo.