It's been quite a week. Work continues on various projects and (pleased to report that) various projects are all very healthy - though I might have had a little meltdown mid-week. I'm hoping that's something all writers go through and also hoping that it will pass. It's not constructive to throw all your stuff out of the window. My interview with Andrew Kaufman is now available to read at The Void right here - I think that might be part of the reason for the meltdown. It's a little like listening to Led Zep before you go into the studio and then wondering why the hell nothing is good enough but it sure as hell beats listening to the Ramones and then thinking you come up to scratch. Anyway, I've kept this offline for a long time, but if I can keep everything on schedule, here's a little something you can look forward to later in the year. It's from a book called The Twisted Root that I've been working on in between other things, but the time has come in which I actually need to get a first draft wrapped up by May to hand over for first draft illustrations - which is the very thing I thought I'd show you:
I am really excited to be working on this more than I have been - it was going well, but once this (along with a couple of others) came in, that really set the fire going in my head. This is my friend Henrik Gallon who is so incredibly brilliant, I am most often speechless. More on this in the coming weeks - I must get a schedule type thing going so that I can leak my own information.
MUSICAL INTERLUDE - FOR FATHERS GONE, FOR THOSE WORKING HARD AT IT AND FOR THOSE STILL TO BE:
Man that's a good song - great band too. For what it's worth, I never got the chance to say goodbye to either of my fathers. Give your old man a call just for the hell of it.
Anyway, here's some more Black Stone Cherry to raise the mood:
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Talking of Dads, sometime last week, Eleanor picked up about three months of newspapers from hers to use for the various animal houses kicking about the place. They've been in the back of her car until I brought them in a couple of hours ago. I started to leaf through them in search of er... well, I'm not sure what I was looking for but I did find a few cool articles and learned that this is totally the best way to read the papers. In one big three month stack, giving yourself no more than about 20 minutes with the whole lot. Somewhere in amongst all of this was a great interview with Gary Barlow (and now I look, I find it's from October 2012 - maybe there were more papers than I thought).
Over the last few years, I've kind of grown to really like Mr B. I wouldn't mind an hour with him myself to run up some words. This interview, it's kind of about reinvention (though for my money it could have been a lot more about reinvention - but it was for the Sunday Telegraph) and it struck me that the only way to stay on top of any game is through reinvention - and the game is even putty in your hands if reinvention has been your guiding principle since day one.When nobody knows what to expect, nobody expects anything - the rules then are that you have to take it as you find it and like it or not like it.
A good example of this is David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Bolan might have those perfectly crafted gems and some fine moves but (as much as I love that stuff) it's hard to listen to his entire body of work before it starts wearing a little thin. Bowie on the other hand - I don't always like everything he does, in fact, some of it I don't like at all - has albums for many occasions. I suspect that unless you start out being like this and then find yourself in business with a record company or a publisher, you will have a hard time changing tracks later on. When people invest money, they expect money back - and when people expect money back they usually fall into line with the thing that made them money in the first place.
I'm throwing that out there because it seems to be a good idea to keep yourself moving if you want to do the thing you do until they stick you in the ground. The alternative to this is eventually becoming a parody of yourself - and nobody wants that. Do they?
Maybe if you're a one trick pony, it's all you've got.