Burn Baby, Burn

On my quest to find a new home for the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt store, I found a great one - or at least I think I did. I figured I would test it out first just to be sure... and I decided to test it out with this, just because I could. 

Looks sharp on the screen and all the right things are in place... profits are bigger (that's item number 1 from the earlier post ticked off), the shirts ship within a day (and item number 2 ticked off), they're printed with 100% non-toxic vegan friendly inks... on 100% organic shirts and the company also sport a carbon neutral footprint. That's more boxes ticked that I bargained on.

So, I ordered myself this very shirt sporting the logo of my expired, yet somehow, legendary magazine and it will be here before the weekend. If you're interested in one, they're up for just two weeks (until January 25th) at £10 which is a low as I could make it for a trial and you can find it right here.

...and now, I need to figure out how to make the Big Bear Rescue project work more smoothly. Things sure move fast when you've got a wasp in your hair. The Bear navigation tab up top will now give you a page - that links to www.bigbearrescue.com that will act as a hub for whatever there is on the table. 

I feel like progress has been made.

And now I need to write. In fact, I need to kick the writing up a notch. Today, I have a few things I need to take care of at the magazine, then, I am going into a very different kind of editor mode with my own work to figure out what's great, what needs work and what's drivel. My plan now is to hone (people don't use that word enough these days) my work into a very definite style and not waste time trying to be anything I'm not... not that I do, but sometimes you can catch me thinking such thoughts.

If you asked me to describe it, I would say it was minimalist dirty realism. That suits me just fine. It's what I do - though sometimes, I am guilty of drifting off into minimalist dirty magical realism. That's not even a thing - and because it doesn't exist, I'm finding it very attractive. I'll stick with the first description but that's warning enough that if a talking dog turns up somewhere, it's because it felt like the right thing to do and is more than likely an analogy for something.

I saw yesterday that somebody had described Murakami's work like this: "It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness he weaves into his narratives." 

Yeah. Try pitching that to a publisher and telling them the world will go crazy over it, so I'm not going to worry my head over it. Sometimes, you just have do what it is you do.

The world will figure the rest out by itself.

We Are Oceanic

Humpback Whales. If you were in that boat, you would spend the rest of your life knowing just how pointless it is to walk the planet fearing what might come next or worrying about the day ahead. 

Beautiful monsters.  

Being away last weekend means I missed out on posting the latest Burn Baby, Burn playlist - volume ten! Who would have thought! If it's becoming part of your week, here the link for those of you playing at Apple Music... and because some of you are missing it on Spotify, I appear to still have some free version of the account, so here is Burn Baby, Burn over there - I see no reason why it shouldn't work. Knock yourself out!

Over at the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt project, there's still a good 20 days or so to go before the limited editions are withdrawn from sale - if you were ever intending to buy a shirt there, now would be a good time. Another eleven shirts in the bank means we all get jolted up a notch to superior printing free of charge - so if you placed an order, now is a great time to shake some of your friends into action as well and get a better product for very little effort. 

This past weekend away also put some fantastic artists in the bank as we go along. I'm working on how to play it best but I am not displeased with the direction it's taken... not at all.

More tomorrow... lots to tell and I'm finally catching up with myself here. 

Into The Woods

Today, I hit the Big Red Button on the Big Bear Rescue t-shirt store. The design is available for 30 days only and then it will be withdrawn and replaced with the next in the series. This first one is from my buddy Matt Henbo Henning who you can find here and I love it. 

There's a kids shirt too over at the store but it looks the same as the one on the left here and I thought that might be confusing. The shirts are all organically made and tick as many boxes as I could damn well find on the eco-front. All help appreciated with retweets and things like that. Here's some social media places were you can find the project:

twitter • instagram • tumblr • facebook • justgiving

I'm guessing that some of you may raise an eyebrow over me including f***b**k here as a link. I chewed it over for a long time before I entered Satan's Kitchen and then decided it was a worthy cause to bow down to and when I thought about a little more again, I figured it would be a neat thing to hand over to my small person to manage. She's 15 and must spend half her life on there. That's not been instigated yet... in fact I haven't even asked her but we're approaching School's Out and I figured being a 'social media manager' of a global fund-raising project would look pretty decent when it's time for the bullet to hit the bone.

It sounds like a good plan in my head - I'll keep you clued in. Meanwhile... if you happen to buy a shirt, take a pic of yourself in it and we'll get something cool rolling.

Burn Baby, Burn is now up for whatever it is you like to do with it - though you'll find it coming from Apple rather than Spotify just like I said earlier this week. Let me know what you think - but if you think it sucks, I don't really need to know that, so we can skip that part absolutely. Feels good to be back with Apple. That will teach me a good lesson.

Meanwhile... I'm coming into the final stretch of some writing here. It must be finished by next Thursday and I will throw back the curtain. More tomorrow. I've got an unholy ton of things here to be posting about.

Literary Things

This turned up earlier this week and I hid it from myself and forgot to post it:

Somebody went to a lot of trouble to do that - or at least it looks that way. Maybe it was some slacker working in a corporate job who figured 'fuck it' and spent a morning doing his own thing that was worthwhile. I'd like to think that's how it was put together anyway.

So if you're struggling with some writing, what we can gather from this diagram is... just keep going. Even when all hope is lost, keep putting one word after the other because you never know how things might turn out. More than anything, perhaps this is a diagram of hope.

Meanwhile, my love of noir and pulp novels is no secret. I think everybody loves pulp really - they just don't like to admit it in public. Whether you're a public or a closet lover, if you're also into comic books, Hard Case Crime and Titan are about to release a couple of noir/pulp serials - Triggerman and Peepland. While they appear to be pushing Peepland as the flagship title in the series, it's Triggerman that I'm liking the look of... here's some sneak things that they unleashed earlier today:

There's a lot of scraps around the web trailering both titles so I won't kill the treasure hunt for you but it looks good to me. 

The crows upgraded their gift allowance this week too. After feeding the rabbits, I accidentally left a whole bunch of things on top of their houses along with a whole bag of fresh straw. The following morning, I let Hector out and wandered up the garden with him and found this sitting on top of one of the roofs:

At first, I thought it was a metal dog stolen from a Celtic hoard but on second inspection, it appears to be a plate from the front of a drawer - the fixing that the handle attaches to. I wish I had stuck with my first inspection now, but the thought is there. I'm not sure how good this next photograph is but here they all are... doing their thing:

I tried to make out the sky writing and what they were trying to say but I wasn't quick enough... maybe next time.

That's all for today... Friday's Burn Baby, Burn playlist will be with you sometime late Friday night along with some other random scraps of happiness for the weekend. Meanwhile, I must deliver my next instalment of Beautiful Creatures to Sean, go through some pictures I took of a Gateway To Everlasting Fire I found, finish up a travel piece on Siberia that I'm working on for The Mag, rustle up a synopsis for a big push on the 'finally completed forever' Family Of Noise (did I not mention that before?), and ummm... that's probably enough. 

Oh yeah... and put out the trash for collection. I'll do that now. 

Walkin' The Dinosaur

It's Friday. For those of you who like to drown your life in sound, here's the link to this weeks playlist: Burn Baby, Burn - how did it get to week eight already!

I saw on Mr Gaiman's blog today that he had big plans to visit a hairdresser for a tidy up but due to a rather large storm in those parts (that I thoughtfully sidestepped on my return trip) the only place left open was A Barber Shop. You can read the whole story here. Being a barber is a cool job but let's face facts here... you only walk through that door if you don't want any hair when you come back out. I know this to be true because Once Upon A Time back when I was about ten years old, this very same thing happened to me after I had spent months trying to cultivate a good David Starsky kinda thing:

I have never since stepped through one of those doors again. 

Scarily, looking at this pic here, I see that I have just bought a pair of trainers rather like these. Maybe some things are written in stone.

I've been looking into doing some more book cover design lately - mostly because I like it, it's fun and erm...  therefore I need no other reason. Anyway, the last few things I've worked on that weren't my own (which I should probably post here somewhere because that's whats blogs are for) have mostly been 'literary' affairs, like this:

But I saw this today and thought it was as good as an adventure book could get...

...so I went out and did the unthinkable. I bought a ton of art materials to sketch some ideas out. Me and art materials don't usually mix so well but a plan is a plan is a plan and I'm going work on some alternate covers for H.G. Wells' The Time Machine which has a big anniversary in 2020. Not that it will take me three years (or at least I hope it won't) but it does mean I can play with some big ideas without any pressure.

Not that there's anybody breathing down my neck but you get the picture. 

Three years. Wow. Sounds like a lifetime away. What great things can a man achieve in three years? He could watch a lot of TV that's for sure but I'll try and make sure that's not the only thing I can manage.

Meanwhile, on my travels of working up my next column of Beautiful Creatures, I came across this neat looking movie poster for The Monster. Based on Bertino's previous movies, it might just be something out of the ordinary. It had better be anyway:

Here's the trailer:

That's it for the week. I got some writing to do...

Be cool to each other.

The Weekend Supplement

Friday! Burn Baby, Burn IV is up and Ready To Rumble... and while you tune in, there's a whole load of other great swag to be found in the world. Let's do it:

I have no idea what this is, but I thought I would post it here anyway. Honest I don't.

I picked this up earlier in the week:

...and it's quite fantastic. Nice cover too. If you like (and know your) noir, Blood Count is up there with the greats and that's not something I'd say lightly every day of the week. Reggie is a new name on me though and there are eight previous books in this series that features Artie Cohen too. That should take me to the end of the year. I'll stick that in the win column.

Ummm. Check the hell out of this from Reignwolf:

In other things to get excited about, sometime in the last week, Jack White released this album of acoustic recordings. 

Meanwhile, Roadies finally turned up on Amazon Video this week. I had abandoned TV for the foreseeable future but I've been looking forward to this for months - so you'll forgive me if I Go Dark for a few hours at a time while I plough through it. 

I also found this. I'm not big on YouTube and how it delivers content, but perhaps if it was all like this, I could be converted quite easily. This is a great book review of Roberto Bolano's 2666 by a damn talented reviewer. That aside, if you fancy yourself a reading challenge that reaps rewards beyond what you should get for the price of a paperback, knock yourself out. If you fancy a slightly slimmer challenge, check out The Savage Detectives instead. 

Then I made an appointment for a new tattoo. Big thing. More on that some other time. Have a beautiful weekend lovely people. Time to write.

Burn Baby, Burn 2

This week's edition of Burn Baby, Burn can be found here or if you're one of those who prefer to see the real link:

https://open.spotify.com/user/hangman49/playlist/1Z7m7rrfzPTmCFYYlEQTKw

When I started putting it together I was in something of a classic mood but that soon dissolved into nothing more than a bunch of songs I like driving to. Do we care?

If the music's good, no. We don't care at all.