Big Ears, Big Noise and Big Art

In an attempt to make life not all about work when the kids aren't around, Eleanor and self have been looking into adopting some donkeys. One would have been fine but apparently they come in pairs. First of all, you need a field, which we haven't got - but her folks have. A big field at that. Not only is it a great grassy expanse of field but after the fire of a few years back, since the rebuild, there's now also some handy stable type buildings. Actually, not so much 'stable type', it is a bloody stable. Built by a stable company who specialise in stables. You would have thought a suitable place to keep them would be the worst of your worries but there's a spanner in the works. Seems that her folks aren't so keen on having a couple of donkeys hanging around the house. I don't think I'd be able to say no personally but all is not lost. I'm pretty sure that with enough pestering, they'll cave in eventually. How can anybody resist looking out of the kitchen window and seeing these guys:

Donkeys

Lots of work behind the scenes going on here, but having interviewed Andrew Kaufman yesterday... no, it was the day before wasn't it... I am avoiding the task I like least in life. Transcribing the damn thing - and that's nothing to do with anybody that I've spoken to, I find it a total chore no matter how much I enjoyed doing the actual piece. Couple that with the odd grimace at how often I like to interrupt people to lead them down roads I want to go down and you have yourself a mexican stand-off. Still, got to be done, so I might as well make a start. Maybe I've got better since I realised I did this (interrupting) but I doubt it. Just keep telling yourself, it's the destination that matters and not how erratically you drove to get there.

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One of the only blogs I check in on every single day as I've said before is Gaiman. This is mostly because he's both entertaining and posts almost everyday. I kind of like that in a writer. He's writing regardless of what it is. Today somebody asked him about how he dealt with time frames and being under pressure to write when he maybe thought he didn't 'have time' - this is how the enquirer saw their own lot as somebody who wanted to write a story but was finding it hard. Today, he gave the best answer of his online career and it went like this:

"Nobody else is going to do it for me, and if I don’t write it it won’t get written. I’ve got 12 short stories to write over the next 3 days, I have to make it home 1200 miles despite a record blizzard hitting my destination, and I’m probably going to have to do quite a bit of writing sitting in airports waiting for delayed flights. I’ll probably do it because I don’t have any other choices. Like I say, no-one else is going to do it for me."

And that, is the word on the street.

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<MUSICAL INTERLUDE>

This, is simply beautiful:

•••

Those who visit often (or even those who don't but scroll around a lot) will know that I'm an art lover. This week, one of my favourites out there, Brian Ewing, posted some great new monster material at his store and some of it looks like this:

Brian Ewing - Universal Monsters Print

Brian Ewing - Universal Monsters Print

...and I think you should invest heavily. Also on my travels (am in the middle of a project which has lots to do with monsters at the moment), I came across the Deviant Moon tarot. I stopped buying tarot decks once I had Dave McKean's Vertigo deck but this one matches - and may even surpass it. Here's some of the insanely cool images from the deck:

Deviant Moon VI

Deviant Moon XVIII

Deviant Moon PW

You're right. Got my name written all over them huh.

•••

I wonder of I can twelve short stories in three days.

<ON THE DECKS TODAY>

The 10 'Weapons' tracks from My Chemical Romance.

Stand Still, Look Pretty: The Wreckers

Cuttin' Heads: John Mellencamp

Andrew Kaufman: Born Weird

Not that I forgot or anything - more like I forgot to blog about it. I have an interview with author of Born Weird, Andrew Kaufman this evening. I've haven't looked forward to an interview with anybody so much in years.Go read something he wrote. Start with All My Friends Are Superheroes or better still, The Tiny Wife. It comes with an iron clad guarantee that you won't be disappointed. Expect post to be edited later.

Reap The Whirlwind.

Via the magic of cross pollination somewhere on the web, I came across this today:

The Tiny Wife is one of the greatest books ever written. It should only take you a few hours to whip through it but what it says will stay with you for the rest of your years.  I've already bought two copies of this in the last year and given them both away. I have no doubt at all that the one I still have will go the same way eventually. It's an Andrew Kaufman masterpiece that quashes even the incredible All My Friends Are Superheroes. Tom Percival's art only adds to the experience.

One thing I didn't know was that Tom also does the cover art for Skullduggery Pleasant - on which note, if you're not familiar with, you need to get in the car sometime today and get the hell on with it. One day, when I get myself some money, Tom's is one of the first doors I will be knocking on.

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Also on my travels this morning, I see that Rob Zombie's new movie Lords of Salem is almost upon us:

The guy is a genius film-maker. If you've never seen his reworking of Halloween, it totally grounds the original premise into the ground - and as he moves forward, he only gets better and better. The reason for these two things appearing here is 'inspiration'. So long as there are always people out in the world raising the standard all the time of what's achievable, I'll always have something to push against.

•••

Which brings me neatly onto what the hell is going on here. Last night, as stated, the tumblr feed began to be whittled away at, the eagle eyed amongst you will see that the 'social' widget has also disappeared. It doesn't make me anti-social, honest! I think I have seen the light though. The temptation with building an online HQ is to reach as many people as possible in the hope that your name will spread and help you along the way, but it doesn't work how you think it does.

Having given it a push for a good few months, I found myself trying to feed smaller and smaller parts of myself into the grinder - and that's not what I do. There's a few scraps still lying around that need addressing but over the following weeks, I look forward to eeeking them out as well. It's surprising how you can get dragged into the psyche of the world and what it thinks is a good idea.

Anyway, that decision is made. It's a good decision too. Let me tell you why. Take a look at this graphic.

Every single one of those orange rectangles is time taken away from spending it with people I love, time for writing big things - or small things even. Hell, there are eleven rectangles there and you can probably add a few more for every year that goes by. The last sentence on that slide is a lie. People are inherently lazy and don't back track - certainly not from a space like flickr. People are also easily distracted and every single one of those places will pimp something sexy at you to keep you within their own space at the single click of a button. This is business for these people.

I feel better having written that.

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Being as I've already posted two clips for you to watch while you pretend you're doing something else today, figured this would be a fine place to pull in an old tumblr post.

Robert McGinnis

The great Robert McGinnis - all of which have been used as classic pulp covers - I kinda like how they look in their original form, so here they are… I believe Robert is still working - for Hardcase Crime.

Good work Mr Smith. More later... maybe.

UNPLUGGED

Before I begin I guess I had better own up that the Evil Dead poster I've used here, has nothing to do with the content of the post - but, I'm sure we can all agree, it's a great poster and therefore, valid on all fronts. I must admit, I'm totally enjoying romping through the complete series of The Invaders - there's tons of it and even though the kids thought it looked "old fashioned" and therefore presumably dull, it's brilliant.

I've fallen behind with my self imposed deadlines this week. I am due to publish past two of August Moon on the 14th - Saturday if memory serves - but I'm slap in the middle of a proper book deadline and have a show to host at the weekend. I was thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have these self imposed deadlines, but they are good for me. Maybe a better approach would be not to crucify myself when I miss them but instead, gently move them to a more convenient place - otherwise there's no point in trying to do something for yourself on the grounds of 'enjoyment'.

As the more observant will have noticed, I'm still playing around with the site on a 'live' basis. Not always the best of ideas but it works for me. This week, I have retracted all of my material from smashwords (based solely on the fact that it looked like trying to sell your brand new stuff at a freaking online jumble sale) and shall never return. Instead, I have done what I planned to do from the start - it just took me a bit longer to figure it out - and that was to drop everything on the kindle store at amazon. I can't give it away as I would like, but I have made it as cheap as possible and they have given me five days in the next three months during which I can give it away. I've not decided when those days will be yet and I should probably figure it out so that it works properly for people. File under pending until after the weekend...

Anyway, after the weekend, it will be time to start the PR for Black Dye, White Noise. I've kind of just let it sit there at the moment, which is fine by me, but with a week or so clear ahead of me, it will be time to get off my ass and into some friendly radio stations to maybe talk about it.

FINISHED READINGTHE END OF THE WASP SEASON - DENISE MINA

NOW READINGTHE TINY WIFE - ANDREW KAUFMAN and Denise Mina's HELLBLAZER graphic novel THE RED RIGHT HAND

CURRENTLY LISTENING TOTHE PIERCES and ADDICTED TO RADIO/CLUB FM HAIR via this very sexy ROBERTS RADIO

LATER, I MIGHT: Go fencing. Not sure. My knees are more knackered than I thought. Also thinking I might proffer some thoughts on the new ETERNAL LAW show over at The Void.