Beautiful Creatures II

The next instalment of my Beautiful Creatures sequence is now up where it should be for all who are interested. You can find it published right here at Serpents of Bienville where it belongs. I hope you dig it - this one's a little more personal than the first. Hopefully I'm finding my groove early on with this. The wheels are already spinning over where I'm going next. 

This instalment features the inimitable Arthur Rackham. I hope I did him justice.

If you're new to Rackham (and the only excuse for that would be if you are young) you can find a stack of high res images here, but his entire life's work is probably online if you want to dig.

The Magazine went to the print shop today - that's another thing off the desk for a few days. Slowly, the pile of things to do is getting smaller - but only in theory, because as soon as one thing disappears from it, there's always another ready to take its place.

Anyway, I've downed tools for the rest of the day to get a grip on real life for five minutes - and that requires a soundtrack... and today, Act V: Hymns With The Devil In Confessional from The Dear Hunter is making quite an impact. It looks like this and you can find the band here.

It's great to see a band still putting some thought behind their album art instead of running up junk with a band pic on the front alongside the first font that became available. Their previous - Act IV: Rebirth In Reprise - was also looking sharp and is also a damn fine album. 

This is not a hit 'n' run listening affair however. You will need all of your senses and no small amount of attention span... but you will be well rewarded.

There is obviously also Acts I-III available but they're not up for streaming so you'll have to put your hand in your pocket if you love them.

And while I'm on the subject of beautiful things, I found these images of home yesterday. I've been away too long and need to head back just to check in with my soul.

These shots were taken by Richard Outram who you can find here on twitter. The man sure has an eye for what makes home 'home' that's for sure.

Now... there must be some food somewhere in the house.

Two Towers

Who wouldn't want to go into work when it looks like this:

There are worse walls to find yourself staring at. Just the kind of place to be getting along with Project X - so that's exactly what I did. I might even have some details about that to talk about soon... maybe even a sketch. Very excited by this - as soon as it's a little bit further down the line, I'll reveal what I can.

In other news, I've been looking around for months - seriously, it has been months - for a place to contribute material online. I've considered a few literary magazine type places, some pop culture websites but they all seem to fall short just where I need them not to. When business and art clash, boy do they clash heavily. Anyway, I've done my time of reviewing music and books. In a world where reviews are populated by people that can bothered clicking on some stars if they like or dislike something in the extreme, there's not a whole lot of enthusiasm from this quarter to correct that particular human trait.

Cutting to the chase, a few years back, I did some work with Sean Herman - a tattoo artist from Alabama - and this week discovered he has launched a spin-off site to his 'day-job' called The Serpents Of Bienville. It's all kinds of things. It's a site/blog about life and death, art, horror movies, music... and who knows where he will take it next - I love it. I figured it might make a good home for some words and so, we talked, talked some more and well... I'll let you know when the delivery is made and there's something to look at. For my part, I've decided to write about things I don't normally and I'm excited about where it will take me as a writer. Sometimes we all need a little push right?

So, days are good right now. I put another issue of The Mag to bed tomorrow - even though I'm pretty sure I only put the last one to bed a week ago - and then I have, not a week off as such, but a week in which I can be creative, organise things and roar through all the things I've been to busy to roar through for a while. I've got all the things I've mentioned at least a hundred times here to finish - maybe some will get figured out and maybe it's time to retire others for the immediate future but there are also very live things flipping about. The things that are flipping about are exciting... maybe the others were nothing more than good ideas at the time. I have come to realise that there is no harm or shame to change your mind about something. That's what a mind is for. One day something can be the greatest idea in the world, the next you can come at it from a different angle and see something totally different.

In fact, it would be stupid in the extreme to not change your mind about something if you wanted to... if you've become bored or disillusioned with them. That's what a mind is for. Thinking about stuff. I don't particularly want projects around that are going to find themselves a home at the back end of the album. 

Did you buy Slippery When Wet when it came out? I bet you a substantial amount of money that Wild In The Streets is not your favourite track on it.

This week has been mostly fuelled by Steven Tyler's new album - We're All Somebody From Somewhere - and I like it a lot. I didn't fall in love with it immediately, but after a week of hanging out with it, it has grown on me like ivy. If you're looking for something to keep you company through the day, give it a whirl. I'm also liking the new Switchfoot album which is called Where The Light Shines Through. Try that too. Just because they're Christian doesn't mean they don't write good songs. 

Talking of culture-type things, also on the horizon to hopefully fill a Californication sized hole are a couple of new shows heading our way. This one had better be all it should be considering where it comes from (and how long he's had to think about it):

Meanwhile, there's also this:

One of them must be worth making a song and dance about, surely. Looks like a good week for writing and rock n roll from where I'm standing. 

Le Fin.