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.
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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.
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.