I find myself staring down the barrel of having to take care of some things hanging off the business end of the stick here. That sounds worse than it is actually - it amounts to tuning the DAB radio into Hairband FM and riffling through blog posts of those who are much further ahead in the writing game than I am (or at least when it comes to bodies of work). Disappointingly, I find that Nick Hornby has fallen right off the blog radar. As he points out himself, he is possibly the world's worst blogger (he's not, I know way slacker people with far more than a two year gap since the last post). Mr Hornby is however a great example of something I would pay good money to get behind the paywall of. I wouldn't expect the world from him and he could always divert any funds he made to his Treehouse project if it made him feel better. It will happen one day with somebody that's for sure - the world will go to war over being expected to pay for such things but as a daily blog surfer, I'd be behind such a thing and you can't argue with the Treehouse idea. It's not like you'd be giving things away for free when you haven't posted for two years? Is it?

Mostly, I think that one day, someone with balls of steel will figure out that to make things 'special' again in the world, we're not going to be able to give stuff away for free forever.

Mr H/Penguin - you can have that idea if you like and count me in.

Talking of which - and I hope I don't get bullets flying into my inbox - here's one of Nick's posts from a really long time ago that made me laugh hard and long:

In Borders… I watch with fascination as a local author rearranges the shop in order to optimise his chances of sales. He is not happy with the container that has been clipped to the section of the bookshelf displaying his book; the container holds flyers advertising a related product but it partially obscures the book’s cover, so while nobody is looking (apart from me) the author unclips it and sticks it somewhere else, where it will partially obscure the cover of somebody else’s work. He then spots someone picking up and leafing through a competing hardback, so he grabs his own and thrusts it into the bewildered shopper’s hands. I suppose this is what we have to do during a depression, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.

These kind of things really happen. I've seen them with my own eyes and pray to the gods of pride on a daily basis that I never feel a need to act this desperately. Good story though. This all came to the surface because I was researching my books of the year list mentioned a while back. I read both A Long Way Down and Juliet Naked this year (remiss, I know. I learned all I know about falling behind from Hornby himself) and forgot how good they were - or even that I had read them at all because I read them both in a day (separate days - I'm not that fast) and then handed them on to be loved elsewhere as I tend to do with great books.

If you're looking for something short to fill a train ride - you might love Everyone's Reading Bastard. If you don't, all hope may be lost.

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I found out today that the greatest book ever written by human being - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is headed to TV. This is either the nest news ever or... well, it is the best news ever but how I feel about it afterwards all depends on how it pans out. Part of me says that I should steer well away from anything to do with it but an equal part of me knows I'll be right there, phone off the hook. I picked this golden nugget up from here - who are definitely some people who should know better than to call it a 'fantasy epic'. That's a cheap shot for search engines if ever I saw one. That's like calling Wuthering Heights, Chick Lit.

Sigh.

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Something else potentially full of excitement is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who - which might hold this in store for us. Interesting. I'm going to stay away from trailers if I can and hope the BBC give them about £8 to make it with so that the whole project hinges on a story rather than the 'digital smartness' that it seems to be geared at. One raised eyebrow to throw in the ring here is that for a long time, Moffat has continually stated that villain X, villain Y etc, from years gone by have not much of a place in modern Who. But given that very same audience won't give a damn about eight of these Doctors, what then? Hell, the older audience only give a crap about seven of them (you can even insert your own number here - there are some pretty dire years to chew on). It will be interesting that's for sure - and I hope with all my heart that they knock it out of the ballpark.

No pressure then...

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Finally, in the continuing import of stuff I had gathered on tumblr, this:

"Jim Tierney - designer par excellence and just starting out by the looks of things. If these and the other samples on his site are anything to go by, I predict very, very excellent things. Check out this pull tab on From The Earth To The Moon. To see the die-cuts on all the titles, click into the site.

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Let's wrap this puppy up and put it to bed with the assistance of some of the mighty Blind Melon...

I started writing a song this evening. I haven't written a song in a very long time and having spent a very long time being a writer of songs (albeit with little to show for it in the long run), I was a little more than 'slightly' disappointed to find how rusty I was. Then again, once I'd started, things began to come back pretty quickly. I've got a couple of days to myself at the end of the week - let's see what happens - and out of interest, along the way I'll give GarageBand a damn good hammering. More intriguing than how rusty I was, is how as artists, we move on without realising it. I dug out the recordings of the last time I put anything of value down and found that lyrically, I really didn't think the same way anymore. Not even close. That means there's going to be an awful lot of material on the cutting room floor before I find my train of thought again.

This rekindled activity comes courtesy of my buddy JJ who is currently building a studio. Actually that's not strictly true. The studio is already there in the shape of Aerial Studios and fully functioning but there are more rooms in the studio space still to be built. A couple of weeks back, we met, we talked, we laughed, we imagined and we looked out of the window and laughed again at how long it takes some dreams to come to fruition and when they do arrive, never come fully formed. They always have more work to be done - but that's OK otherwise it would probably look like somebody else's dream. Go check it out - and if you want to get something on, it's as easy as dropping the dude a line believe me.

Anyway, I was toying with the project name 'Black Like Sunday' but I don't like that anymore. It didn't stand the test of time and certainly doesn't fit the frame of mind that I'm working in. I guess we'll be revisiting this place regularly as winter turns slowly into spring...

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COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Lester Bangs. The one and only in action.

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As much as I have loved playing with tumblr this past year in a multitude of ways, I have decided to say goodbye. Not immediately, but soon enough - like the end of the week. The way things are shaping up right now, I need to pull my sphere of influence in around me (not that it's huge or anything) and not throw it at the four corners of the interverse. It's a time thing that's all. With lots to do and all of it coming along pretty well, even though I could, I don't want to spend my time blogging multiple times. In the real world, I think that call that a commitment - or maybe even a decision.

If you tumblr'd with me, thanks. Now you need tumble no more as all things that were headed for the blog space of never ending length, will now be sunk into posts here - which are more than long enough to handle it. It all forms part of the "12 months to get your online presence together" as promised all those months ago. By by calculations, I think I have just five weeks left to wrap that part of the plan up and I don't think tumblr will be the only casualty of the war either. To be honest, I think tumblr will be just fine without me, don't you?

Anyway, as part of my wrapping up on that front, here's a repost of one of my favourites that I'd posted there about a revamping of the covers of the greatest book of all time:

Here's what I originally wrote to go alongside:

Talking of Matt Roeser (which I was just a single post ago), I couldn’t let this one slip through the net without posting it here as a personal reminder. From the pen of Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is absolutely my favourite book of all time. I love this delicate re-imagining of it but I’m not sure it would have pulled me in initially.

Now yes. Then, perhaps not.

Seeing this is kind of like when your girlfriend has her hair cut really short after a lifetime of long… or something like that.

Just prior to this I also fawned all over his revamping of the Game of Thrones series:

And again, here's what I originally wrote to go with it:

Matt Roeser - essentially cool and very talented book designer from Boston - hit the revamp button on George Martin’s Game of Thrones series a while back and, to be frank, trumped all the designs I’ve ever seen launched onto the shelves. There are some people out there who I seriously need to work with in the future. These are stunning.

Tumblr - I shall miss you a tiny bit, but truth be told, not actually all that much... everybody else, go check out Matt's work. He's pretty cool. We should probably talk.

In the spirit of things, let's wrap up with this. It looked great before it had begun and hasn't faltered one iota so far...