Considering I've been trying to get my total number of possessions to something that looks like the number six, how come it's taking so long to move house? Granted there are a number of picture frames (along with tubes that contain prints that I've never gotten around to framing) and a lot of books - none of which count towards the six - but there still seems to be an awful lot of junk kicking around. In my defence, 95% of the stuff that needs moving is not mine but I can hardly leave Eleanor to do it herself can I. Not in my defence at all though is the 5% I forgot about - there is much that can still be pared down. Do I really need two desktop phone chargers/speaker type things? Not really. I didn't buy either of them so I'm not even sure why they're here - but I'm the only one with an iPhone so I guess they must be mine. I might keep one on the desk but the other... it's a small one and whenever I go away, I always put it in my bag and never use it. That can be redistributed to the world for sure.

It's the little things like that causing the backlog. I tell you - if you ever consider attempting to do this, you've got to be ruthless, then ruthless again and then even harder on yourself the closer you get to the goal. On the plus side though, I did achieve my original goal of being able to move all of my own stuff in just one car trip. It was a little cramped (that guitar case isn't small) and there's not really any room for anybody else but that's OK. The work continues - I still think it's a worthy task to pursue.

Also, if you ever find yourself moving house in the future, why not try putting up a shed in the dark that a giant rabbit has to live in on that very night?

It's the most fun you'll ever have with a hammer and your fingers I promise you.

••••

What's next on the agenda? One of the things I've been working on this last couple of months is this:

This is the last in the series of pop-culture related tattoo books for 2013 - and if the comparison to the previous final stages are anything to go by, this won't be the final cover but it's close enough. I'm thinking that I'd prefer a purple masthead to the blue but that's a small thing (and not entirely my decision either) but so far, so damn good. That goes on sale November 14th and I'll post up some links of where you can get a hold of it - I guess I had better start making some plans on what to work on through 2014 now too.

Alongside of this, the book on horror tattoos will also go live as a digital book for the iPad at iBooks on the same day. I've seen a couple of pages from it and it looks pretty damn special... whatever you think of tattoos or digital books for that matter, this is the way forward. In the future, I suspect there's going to have to be damn good reason to commit to print runs. The future of physical books in a bookstore is in beautiful books with much thought and effort behind them, otherwise I am quite content - more than happy in fact - to read fiction on a device.

••••

Something else I've come to realise recently - and maybe should have months or even years ago - is that getting published by a publisher does not necessarily make you an 'authentic' writer. This might take a leap of faith amongst some writers/authors but basically, you either write words that people want to read or they don't. How they read your work isn't up to you. Writers need readers and that's the end of the story. Success will propagate itself because it has to. If somebody comes along and offers you a great deal, that's fine and dandy but if not, it doesn't mean you're worthless - it just means that you have either more, or less, work to do than the next man especially if you're the kind of person who likes to compare and benchmark themselves against the careers of others... as I have admittedly done in the past too and it's a bitch of a thing to shake off but from here on in, fuck 'em. I can't play that game anymore.

••••

For the remainder of the year, I need to put some final touches to a few projects of my own too. There's three that I'm working hard on to see the light of day before Christmas - if I can keep my head together and not get too distracted by kids, animals and the autumn TV schedule anyway. Stephen King was right you know... TV is the enemy but it also allows me to stare blindly at it and never asks me to do anything. Sometimes, that's exactly what you need.

But I'd still put a baseball bat through it given half the chance.

••••

Finally, you might have noticed the Big Bear Rescue project that I've started - it's in the tabs up above there. I figured that with so many people passing through my reasonable sphere of influence in the next couple of months, we could get this bear free pretty easily. I called WSPA to see if I could find out what it took. Was it a matter of money? Did somebody need to head out there? What's the story?

Two weeks on, I'm still waiting for a call back from them. Sometimes you have to wonder exactly what it is that charities do all day long. Sit behind a desk, stare out of the window and worry about how they're ever going to make things happen? That's how it appears. I guess I'll call again - stay tuned...

The guy who lives next door to me has put up this metal bird feeder thing. You know the kind - it's got hooks on it and from the hooks dangle cages that have bread or nuts in them. The smaller birds (right up to the starlings and thrushes) are quite adept at sitting on the little perches and hacking away at the goodies inside the cages. The wood pigeons however are not so agile. I've seen them try for the gold but they've figured out that all they need to do is hang out on the wall and eventually, food falls on the ground - at which point, they simply fly down for it. It struck me that this is pretty much how publishing (and many other things in life) works. The methods are different but the end result is that everybody eats. The key ingredient however is that you need to be gathered around the bird feeder to stand a chance.

We also have a Barn Owl that lives somewhere around here. I don't see it very often at all but last night, it flew down from a tree and pulled the whole bird feeder over. It didn't even seem that interested in the food that spilled out. It was as if it had pulled it down to prove it could eat everything if it wanted to but the owl only looked around it and then flew off - probably looking for mice, frogs and other tasty morsels.

The moral of the story is, if you're going to be a bird, be an owl.

•••

I'm finding it hard to switch gears this week. Moving from horror to comic books for project number two is not as easy as it sounds. There's a stack of books still sitting on the table here full of monsters and people of interest... out of the whole stack, if you're really into that kind of thing (and if you're here, I'm guessing you have at least a vague interest), the biography of Boris Karloff is more than worth a damn but I think I'll spend the coming week in the company of comics and see what flies out of the pages. Any excuse will do to sit around reading comics in the sun (while it's here)... not that I needed one.

•••

Talking of the coming week, following on from my post of a few days ago, my short story The Magic Of 1978 (working title) will be finished up by Monday/Tuesday. Thinking about what I previously posted, I'm going to pitch it out at some top end websites (one at a time) that it wouldn't look out of place on. Having chewed it over for a couple of days, to go for a printed magazine is the wrong thing to do at the moment. I need to gain some traction. Plus - the only place I have to tell you all about it is online right here (and twitter maybe) but here's what I figure:

If I posted: "My story, The Magic of 1978 has just been published in Killer Stories Magazine" - the odds on anybody ordering it are probably quite low. Some might but I think most wouldn't. Not yet. Hell, I don't order some magazines in which there are things I totally adore.

But, if I posted: "My story, The Magic of 1978 has just been published online at killerstories.com" - the odds on fingers clicking the link (because, duh, it would link) to at least take a look, is actually pretty high. Really high in fact and that's a good thing. Job done for everybody pretty instantly - no losers in that scenario.

It's not saying that print is dead and is not for me, because it is for me and very much so - but it's rather like trying to score a job when you've got nothing for people to base an opinion on. For any of you doing anything in the world today, whether you want to be an artist or a comic book writer - name your poison here - unless you're hunted down or are very good at playing the game, you really need some kind of track record for something.

Those are my immediate thoughts at least - it's what the internet is great at, so to push forwards, using the web as a tool for such things is not taking a digital or traditional stance at all. It's simply using a tool because there will be another story along soon enough and that will need a different thought process behind it.

•••

A huge box of books arrived this morning of my horror tattoos book - if anybody is passing by and would like a review copy, drop me an email with details of your magazine or website and I can get that organised pretty sharpish - like today/tomorrow. Once I've mailed copies to all the important people in it, there will be a reasonable amount left for publicity purposes - on which note: first come first served seems like a good rule to dish them out to.

That said, being as I'm so damn happy with it, I'll also give away three copies from my own box - not for any reason other than to share some horror love. I'm not big on buttons and banners on here saying what a swell guy I am for doing so, so we'll just leave it here as a textual afterthought. Again, drop me a mail telling me why you want one and I'll pluck some good ones from the millions and millions of entires that will come in from around the world...

Thats enough for today. Time for some rock n roll and new stuff from Fall Out Boy. The album is Fall Out Boy/Saves Rock n Roll. Man, if ever the world needed FOB, it's now - good job guys. These are all in order from top to bottom and form what I think is collectively known as The Young Blood Chronicles. Lap it up: