THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Welcome To The Creepshow III
Jeez - from nothing to much to talk about to way too much to talk about. Where to start? Well, we updated the back cover of the horror book this afternoon to this, which sits much better:
On which note, I also need to catch up with myself by pointing you to Mark's Deviant Art page. He'd be more than happy to hear from people - so long as it's not a big pile of junk-ass nonsense and especially if you want him to do something for you and you're going to pay him! There are other people to thank (massively) and point things at with the production of this project too, but right now I think he's gone away to build himself an online presence! We'll come back to that later...
•••
Over the last few months (quite a lot of months now I look closely) I've been working on writing something for Doctor Who and it's almost finished. For 'finished' read: at the end of a first draft from which I'm likely to have to do twice as much work as I have already, but at least it's not super-rock-hard plotting and stuff. I mentioned this to Mark a couple of months ago and he surprised me today by presenting me with a draft of the front cover of a comic book - and it's seriously excellent. I'm not going to post it here because it 'was what it was' and needs some fixing here and there from a character point of view. I mention it now only to reference back to it later - but not too much later I hope. I'll keep updating about it - and if anything cool happens with it, I'll probably go silent as the grave...
•••
Finally, on what's been a highly graphic couple of days, I've been talking with the artist Jason Edmiston lately - on my travels of his work, I found this, which I really don't have to say anything about other than you can buy a print of it at his Etsy store:
While you're there, you might want to check out his Monsters of Rock series - one of which looks like this:
These walls might be getting a bit busy soon...
Welcome To The Creepshow II
Hot off the er... screen, I just got a rough proof of the back cover from the book project posted yesterday. I think it needs a few tweaks here and there - mostly in the 'Welcome' header but for all intents and purposes, this is pretty damn close to done. This has made me smile this morning because with a front and a back cover, it's starting to very much become a reality:
Welcome To The Creepshow
I'm in my last ten days with the book I've been writing on horror tattoos for the last couple of months - then we move into a very short production period (because we've been designing as we've been writing) before it goes on sale in the big world. I think the official date is 23rd May but you can pre-order it here and as soon as they come in, they'll be shipped out pronto believe me. I thought we were keeping this cover under wraps for a little while but somebody told me the guys back at the ranch had posted it on facebook earlier this week - which is about as 'not undercover' as you can possibly get. I think some of the others posted online are a version behind but this is definitely what the final version looks like:
The book is most definitely more than how it first appears. I would say it's 100% exactly what it looks like it is and then another 100% of extra stuff that you won't be expecting to find. To say I'm really pleased with it would be a massive understatement - even if there are still a few sections left to pull together. Just as soon as I'm done with it and I've seen some proofs, I'll dissect it some more and maybe post some previews of the internals. So far, it's been a great journey - I've made some friends, learned new things and seen some of the most mind-blowing art on the streets today. If those aren't good enough reasons to be a writer and work on fully sanctioned pet projects, I don't know what are.
One final thing I need to mention about the book - after much to-ing and fro-ing, debate, false starts and other things so not worth mentioning here - the cover was digitally hand drawn by Mr. Mark McCarthy. Mark sells adverts in the mag - I knew he was a "bit of an artist" on the side but had never really seen much of his work. The concept was dropped on his desk as something of an afterthought if I'm honest but there's nothing better than seeing someone pick up a baton that's been dropped on the floor and run like hell with it over nothing more than a couple of weekends. I'm sure he has an online presence somewhere - I'll find out what it is and add it to the next 'reveal' of the book. Fine work Sir. I feel some merch coming on...
Anyway, once that's out on the street, I think I'll kick back for five minutes or so before starting on the next one in the series - which will either be Sci-Fi & Fantasy or Comic Books. I haven't decided yet - I'm not even sure if it's up to me. Probably best if it's not because I'll only waste time trying to figure it out.
That will do for today - things to do. Nobody to see - not at close to midnight - but definitely things to do.
The End - Of Two Things
Finally finished what's probably the best crime novel that I've read in at least a year. Actually, read is a lie - I downloaded the audiobook for cruising around in the car but got so hooked, the book found its way onto the phone, some USB sticks stuck into the radio... all kinds of places. If you're big on crime - and especially Victorian crime - The Yard (Alex Grecian) is a total no-brainer. I saw that it just came out in paperback, so you can pick it up pretty cheap if you shop around but the audiobook is really well read which makes a change - some of the books available at audible are so amateur it makes me want to sit down and podcast it myself.
That's one down in the sweeping of the table to make room to get on. Next? I think I'll finish off Hawthorn & Child this weekend and see how the mood takes me. I did go into the bookshop today but only out of habit and because I totally forgot that I said I wouldn't. I got all the way to the back of the store too before I remembered then kept my eyes front, said hi to the guys that work there and left.
•••
This is a good way to wrap up the week:
High Noon on the Crow Road
I don't normally post about 'the day job'. Truth be told, it's not really a day job at all, it's a 'whole life' that has no boundaries when it comes to personal space, which is why I don't give it much time here. That said, let me show you some work form my friend Noon:
While I get that a lot of people don't understand tattoo art or see it as something it's not, Noon ticks every single box for me. In fact, all of his work is simply beautiful. I'm not going to get into some huge discourse here about how people only see what they want to see, but the fact of the matter is they do. Most people only ever see average work done by average guys. Nobody ever really stops to study what's going on out there - if they did, they would see things like this and if they were smart, the big picture would snap into very sharp focus for them.
There are maybe five tattoo artists whose work I consider to be genuinely unique that I would happily let loose on me. Noon is one of them - he gets around the world too. You should check him out. Not least because he's one of the good guys!
•••
I raised my head for long enough today to hear about Iain Banks. Genuinely - the guy is a class act and how sad. One of the greatest living writers on the planet, I was so influenced by The Crow Road and Espedair Street back in the early nineties that even now, I'm still struggling to raise the bar to that standard. I never got on well with his sci-fi alter ego (Iain M. Banks for those who have always struggled with the difference in his work) but I know it's good even though I don't like it. Assuming that the media reports are true - as they seem to have come from the horses mouth - I sincerely hope whenever the inevitable happens that it's kind to him.
Strange days.
It's hard to remember most of the time that from the moment you're born, your body is busy dying of something. Our time here is so short. Don't waste it on things that don't matter.
Doctor Who Monsters! Book Covers! Words On Paper!
You know what, I love tumblr, I really do. It's a great blogging device but in spite of everything, I just can't bring myself to post there. I need to shut it down once and for all no matter how much the fashionable authors of the day like to play there. Besides, regular passers-by here would miss things like this:
As they tend to say in the cool and hip places around the universe, FUCK YEAH, ZYGONS!
That's pretty exciting, it's not even recent news (it's a couple of days old now), no idea how I missed it because that's a big deal. Certainly more so that Number Nine and Rose returning - that was pretty much expected, but Zygons? Nope - I never saw that coming. Being as it's been announced this far ahead of time, I can only assume that it's probably some kind of minor part because you sure wouldn't fire your biggest guns this far away from the big event.
Well, I was excited anyway... roll with it.
•••
I've decided to stop buying books - this is a promise that will last a whole six weeks. I need to get some writing done and also finish the stack that's threatening to topple over if I don't do something about it. This week - and these are my last two purchases - I picked these up. The first for obvious reasons and the second because after I'd read the first five pages in the bookstore, the deal was already sealed with wax:
...and then, nothing. No books for me. The day I come back to reading will be the day Dan Brown releases a new book. Luckily, I know exactly when that is. With the wind behind me, there'll be a tasty new graphic on the blog letting y'all know about my new thing.
Also on my travels this week, I found this painting of Alice Cooper:
If you're a big Alice fan, this KickStarter might be of interest to you (though this painting has sadly gone - not that I had $7.5k to hand over no matter how much I like it). An interesting project that's for sure and one I'll be following a lot more earnestly than the Kiss Kids comic. Yeah - read it and weep. I did.
So - quite a profitable day all in all. Doctor Who monsters, Alice Cooper, cool books with great covers. Even the sun came out for a couple of hours this afternoon. Sometimes, that's all you get - and sometimes, that's just enough.
The Art Exhibition: Redux
Yesterday, I had cause to pay a visit to a publishing company I used to work for something like twelve years ago. A while back, they moved into new premises and have recently decided to decorate it by asking local artists to bring their stuff in to display. It's a great idea because, living with Eleanor, that's something I would know about - the house is full of canvases leaning up against walls and hanging around, or at least it was until yesterday when I took a car full of her paintings over there. Now the house is strangely void of any paintings at all which gives me an opportunity to sneak up some of the art I've collected over the last few years. Anyway, when I got there, I found that aside from the boss and the receptionist, I don't know anybody that works there anymore - but here's a good story all the same.
Many years ago, maybe in something like 2002, I bought a tin of soup for lunch. Why I would buy soup I have no idea, but there followed a conversation in the design studio about how the soup could be used for emergencies and thus, it sat on a shelf just above my head until the day I left because the apocalypse never came (though sometimes in there, it was pretty close). Despite the move and the lack of anybody I know who works there anymore, the soup became part of the company and still lives in a corner of the new studio being looked after by strangers.
I'd forgotten all about it but here's a picture of that very soup:
I love the fact that they've kept my soup. I don't know why but it seems to give some importance to life in a way that I can't explain. Mind you, it says Best Before 2005 on the bottom of it so it would have to be a very serious emergency to crack it open now. I think I would rather starve.
Point Omega & Other Stories
Picked up a book today by a writer I should have read long ago. His name is Don DeLillo - and as happens sometimes, I found that he's been writing forever, so now I feel cheap that I didn't know this - but it happens. I assume his catalogue has just been given a re-release because there's a whole set of brand new Picador's on the shelf of the local store that certainly weren't there last week. They're damn good covers though (yeah - I judged the books by them. Wanna make something of it?). Even though they all sound like I should buy every single one them and bed down for the next month or so, I settled on a copy of Point Omega that looks like this:
It's not very long at all, but one of his other books - Underworld - is possibly one of the thickest books I've ever seen, and I've seen a few in my time. That looks like this:
Getting the picture now? They're all produced in a matt finish too which makes them even better - for design nerds like me, these have been designed by Noma Bar at the London agency Dutch Uncle. Gonna have to get the whole collection - I can feel it in my bones.
Anyway, while I was eyeballing his collection, I found some quotes from DeLillo who apparently doesn't do interviews too often. This one made me nod wisely to myself:
"I was called a cult writer in the 70s, when that meant that very few people were reading me."
Black Dye White Noise: The Audio Adventure
I had forgotten all about this. Some time after Black Dye White Noise hit the 'shelves', I went into the studio with my producer buddy JJ and we recorded this hour long show featuring music from some of the bands in the book - and then we talked about it too. It was a little opportunistic as we grabbed the studio time off the cuff and I think we were a little unprepared for it.
Well I was - it was more of an "I wonder if we can make this work" kind of thing.
Anyway, we both got busy and I forgot all about it even though the intention has always been there to go back in and do it again - particularly now that he's moved himself into a killer new studio.
Yesterday, JJ also remembered about the session and loaded it up for me. This version has all of the interview section stripped out - not because it was bad but because of how long it was. What it has done though is kicked my ass to plan it properly and do it again...
In the spirit of a mix tape, I'm not going to catalogue what we played, you'll just have to listen to all of it from start to finish - and that's the way it should be because listening to Warrior Soul at their peak for even just a few seconds makes me want to form a band again.
James Herbert: Thanks Man...
I just this very minute learned that James Herbert died a couple of days ago. That's pretty sad. Although his best days as one of the premier horror authors in the world are best viewed in the rear view mirror, me and his work had some good times together. Sigh.
James Herbert: Thanks Man...
I just this very minute learned that James Herbert died a couple of days ago. That's pretty sad. Although his best days as one of the premier horror authors in the world are best viewed in the rear view mirror, me and his work had some good times together. Sigh.
The Digital Dilemma
I reposted a quote from Jack White today on my tumblr - you can read it here - it's about having a soul and why some things should matter. I've read it maybe a dozen times now and aside from making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, I've been sitting here this evening thinking about just how right he is. It's one thing to think about how right somebody is but it's another thing entirely to do something about it. Lots of people love music but it become no more than a soundtrack to life rather than the movie itself. So I've decided to put some money to one side this month. Not much, just a couple of ten pound notes. Next time there's a record fair in town, I'm going to give my kids £10 each and take them with me. The rules will be simple:
1. No rush. Chill. Look at some sleeves. See what section the things you might like are in. Ask the dude behind the desk about it but you must find something that you want to take home and listen to.
2. When we get home, you get to drive. You get to learn how to drop the stylus on and what speed things play at. Not quite sure how this will go down - I ma probably more interested than they are...
3. We listen to whatever it is together and talk about it. Why we chose what we did, why it was good, why it was bad. Sometimes, it's OK that the sleeve looked better than the music actually was. That's life in a nutshell.
Maybe we'll even turn our phones off while we do this. The plan might need thinking out a little more but I think it has mileage.
A few years ago, I turned into the amazing digital man... I was full on with the programme. All the way. I've got a hard drive here with over 100gb of music on it. That's a lot of songs. It's my entire CD collection ripped, stashed and sorted - this includes rather a long time when I was publishing Burn and editing Zero - sometimes 20 to 30 CDs a day could turn up. It's about ten years worth. Pardon my language but I've always fucking detested compact discs. That was the first step on the slippery slope as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, when the collection got too big for my actual laptop, I made the hard drive into a jukebox and pointed my iTunes memory at it. Very nice. Hit play and let it roll - and as the months turned into years, I realised what an unholy mistake I had made.
Which is when I rediscovered how much I loved vinyl and had only moved away from it because the industry made me.
That's not music. That's data.
I hardly know any of the album artworks from this collection - and I certainly don't know most of the producers. Perhaps most importantly for me, I don't know any of the songwriters and that can't be right.
This ethos is also present in my book collection. There was a time that I thought it would be a great idea to simply exist as 'me' in the world with everything digitised. I still like the idea of that but as fast as I was upgrading/downgrading (delete as you see fit) my book collection digitally, the new books I was buying were made of paper.
I've been writing a lot recently and if ever I need to reference something, I'm certainly not reaching for my iPad to flip through books. I go straight to my shelves, pull things out, it's a bit of an adventure to be honest. (You can't throw that bullshit around about how you can make notes in ebooks either - that's just a pretentious lie).
Movies, I don't much care about. I have a couple of complete box sets (Life on Mars and Starsky & Hutch) but if they weren't around, no big deal. I could always find them again - probably. I don't define my existence by movies and television, but I do define it by books and music.
But - I am also enthralled with the idea of owning a minimum amount of 'stuff' and being a free spirit in the world. Maybe I should just let my heart do the talking and free my brain up for nothing more than getting work done.
The Hair Bear Bunch
How does that Queensryche song start? "It suddenly hit me like a... like a two ton heavy thing." Yeah - that would be the flu-type bitch that put me down like a dog yesterday afternoon. I haven't been ill for so long, I thought I might actually pass away in my sleep. That's how you know when it's not a dose of man-flu but the real deal. Good thing I didn't die though - that wouldn't have gone down very well on small person's birthday. Note to everybody: if you think you might die, avoid shrugging off this mortal coil on the birthday of people you care about. Nobody wants a spoiler hanging around on their birthday for the rest of their life.
I reviewed the new Bon Jovi album for Mike at The Void this week - it didn't go so well. Mostly because it's not very good. How sad - but it did make me go digging and remember just how great an album New Jersey was, but I don't think that was the band's intention. Should have made a proper record then - and then people (it wasn't only me) would say nice things. Having a solid record deal is not a free pass anymore. Shit, for most people it's a bloody luxury.
I saw a glimpse of the future yesterday. Over at io9, they posted a story about Rutger Hauer's new role in True Blood. Here's what I saw:
Oh yeah. That's not so far away believe me, but I can't leave it at that - I thought I might combine it with Don Johnson's facial hair from Django, which looks like this:
Too extreme perhaps? I think it's quite becoming. I think I like Don's suit better than Rutger's though... file under pending. Will look like a fool in either though...
Plug A Hole In The Blog Type Post
Trying to get your act together to present yourself to the world is a tricky business. I took a few days off from blogging to write and found that when I looked at this blog having spent some time away from it, there was far too much material from other people here. Not that this was a bad thing but - despite what I might have said in the past about only having one home on the web - I see now why people like Gaiman, Joe Hill and Warren Ellis are running tumblr blogs - it allows you to expand on what you do at 'home' without diluting it. People who are into what you do aren't necessarily into the same things as you are - so I've relaunched my tumblr blog here and it will probably grow pretty fast. This last week has been fuelled by a wasps nest in my head over geting things finished. The first is my deadline for Raised on Radio is looming - I'm nearly at a point that I could call a first draft. After that, it should all move pretty swiftly as Eleanor moves in with the red pen and I start to type it up and screw it down tighter. By the end of the week, I'm also looking at launching a new series. I'm pretty excited about it as I think it's got really long legs but that's making me be a little too precious too but I shall try and stick to my Friday deadline. What I'd really like to do with it is launch it in a magazine... file under pending.
Talking of deadlines, I'm almost finished with the new bookazine for Jazz - it's easily the best work I've done on that front and (even if I say so myself) it shows. That's goes into production/design April 1st and is head for a mid-May publishing date. Somewhere in there, I also have another book that I've fallen behind with but all will be well. Honest. I just need to regroup a little but regrouping is hard when you've got two birthdays in the house in the same week and the unexpected snow that's falling appears to be accumulating fast enough to foil any plans to conquer the world.
Onwards... there are many words to put after one another. Preferably in different orders...
Books - Lots Of Them
It's March tomorrow - the year is slipping away fast and those deadlines are creeping up and snapping at my ass from all directions. My current reading list is not helping me feel uber-positive about actually reaching them but no matter. Here's what my current physical world reading list looks like:
Worthy of note here are the top two on the stack that Eleanor brought home from a swift trip to London yesterday and as soon as I'm done with Advent, I'll be diving in. Advent is actually well worth investigating - running along the same lines as Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, it's well put together, if not a little too similar to Dark to really sing - still, it wouldn't be the first time an entire plotline had been re-imagined for a generation that missed the original. How many of you have actually heard of Susan Cooper anyway?
(Note: if you're going to hunt it down, there's some great covers for the book from the original run which makes it look like exactly what it is (an original and exciting pagan-esque adventure - here's the cover for Over Sea, Under Stone) and a re-release which makes it look about as interesting and original as an empty soup tin that you should be ashamed to show up anywhere in public with. You can see that here. God only knows what they were thinking - I hope somebody at the office got suitably punished but probably not.)
I digress - Chris Holm: I read the first couple of chapters of Dead Harvest while I was waiting for Eleanor to finish up swimming. It looks great fun and I can't wait to really dig in. The covers look like this:
and I just noticed that the third book in the series, The Big Reap is due out in July. That cover look like this, so watch out for it:
When she handed them to me, I thought she had been lurking in back street junk shops again, but the idea to go back to a classic Penguin type design is not as easy to pull off as it might appear. I guess once you're rolling with the concept and you know it works, it's a different story. Anyway, the rather excellent work comes courtesy of a design company called Amazing15. That's a link their company right there but for a whole blog post on Holm's covers, simply go here. Mr Holm himself can be found here. Hats off to Angry Robot for harvesting the whole concept too.
Jealous? Just a little. Maybe.
How they managed to pass me by for all this time though... I'm not sure. Something is amiss there. It's not like me to not pick up on a book that's right up my street and has a killer cover. Weird. I think Mr Holm and I could become friends... maybe some day down the road when I too have navigated what seems to be a seven year right of passage onto the world's shelves (which isn't so far away now I look back - man, I took some hefty wrong turns along the way), we'll find out.
Or I could just say fuck it and drop him an email like I normally do...
That was longer than I intended. I'll post. Before I disappear to write some more - a shot in the dark: on the off chance that anybody passing by knows where I might be able to contact the illustrator Basil Gogos, please drop me a note... it's for something to do with the day job.
Big Saturday
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:
•••
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.
Books, Paris, London, Monsters and a New Book
I'm sure I meant to post days ago but kind of got distracted by the day job - still, it gives me a nice opportunity for something I really like. Excessively long posts. Let's get it on: First of all, inspired by a purchaser of Black Dye who let me know he would be reading it just as soon as he had finished reading Orwell's 1984, I thought I might investigate Down and Out in Paris and London - and it turns out that it's worth more than a cursory glance. In fact, it's pretty excellent - which makes something of a mockery of the statement I made here but I've never been afraid of being wrong. Yesterday I also picked up a copy of a book called Business Model You because a) it's really well designed, was curious and the guys in the bookstore were scowling at me and b) I can never resist a book that suggest it might be able to suggest a better way of doing something that how I currently do something. Pending.
I also saw a title that looked pretty interesting, although I can't remember what the hell it was called now - it shouldn't be too hard to find if you're interested. It's about the editor of the Guardian who decided in what little spare time he had, he would master a notoriously difficult piano piece within a year and play it in public. I guess the book is made a little more interesting by the inclusion of the Guardian breaking the phone hacking scandal at the time and a man's already precious time suddenly becoming even more so. The dude has kids too. I think I'm going to have to take a drive this evening a pick that mother up. It's got me thinking that something insanely difficult like that would be good fun while under pressure.
There won't be a book in it, for that would be ripping the man off but borrowing the idea is appealing - not a piano piece though. I'm kind of thinking that even though my guitar skills are limited to writing my own songs and (occasionally) rhythm parts, they certainly don't extend to something that I consider to be difficult - and long. I need to think about this, but if anybody has any suggestions, I'm all ears.
Anyway, nearly finished That's Not A Feeling and Born Weird now as well - it's the weekend and that means book shopping (though by the time I post this, I might have that under control).
Time for a break - here's a great movie poster done with panache and style:
That would be courtesy of Laurent Durieux who has a whole ton of great art right here, but this must by far be his best piece - simply stunning:
•••
On my various trips around the web, I quite often 'call in' on people who I really like - authors and bands mostly - and it still surprises me how widely they spread themselves. Am I really wrong in thinking that your website is where you live online? Is having pages strewn across the digital universe the equivalent of having a house in London, Paris, New York and Syndney? I guess it would be reasonably acceptable to me if the content were the same across the board, but man, if you don't check in on all these people's different houses, you're likely to miss something. Got a new novel out? Tell the world on twitter and tumblr - but forget to update your official site and you've missed your core. Or is that the point after all? That your core will always go to your house and the other places are clip-joints for passers by who might happen to like what you say on that particular day?
Maybe I'm over-thinking it but the more limited my time becomes for - willingly - soaking up what others have to offer, the more places I seem to have to check out in order to keep up. And yeah, I'm using a bit of kit to filter them in. I think I shall strip it down and start again because technology must have the answer.
•••
SUNDAY.
I came back to post today and find that I had filed Friday's post as a draft. I had intended that but I just forgot it was there. No matter.
I spent most of the afternoon finishing up a final draft of my interview with Andrew Kaufman - which is now done. It currently sits on the desk of Mr Shaw, my (temporary) editor as I asked him to check it over. A note on this: you may be wondering if, as an editor, it's weird having an editor - and the answer is yes, it most definitely is. But I wanted a second opinion as, due to the subject, I feared I had gotten carried away. Stopping just short of 4,000 words, I could have gone for twice that but steering a proper ship through stormy seas, I have become at least a tiny bit respectful of word counts.
If all goes according to plan on the editing front, that will go live tomorrow. I'll let you know - as will many other people no doubt.
Following this, I planned up the horror book I'm working on again. I didn't like how it bunched itself up in the middle so I stripped it back to its bare essentials and then started to strap it back together - and for now, it's fine again. Flatplanning magazines and books is a lost art these days. Some of the magazines I look at seriously need to go back to school - and a lot of them are from publishing companies that should know better. Calm. Calm. All I have to do is make the one that I'm in charge of work properly. Anyway, I'll probably change it again before we're done but so far, so good and it looks excellent (even if I do say so myself).
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I bought a few books this weekend. Certainly more than I intended to. I bought a copy of Gossip in the Forest by Sara Maitland and two others that I'm actually not going to tell you about. I've had this idea kicking around my head for a while now and they're to do with that. If it works out, I'll take the blinkers off it soon and cross-link it here. I also remembered that for Christmas, Rhiannon bought me a copy of a book called Advent by James Treadwell, so I lay in the bath with it to see what it was like and was there until the water was cold, so it's safe to assume it's actually pretty good.
I have more work today and it's just clipped Monday morning here. I'm not sure this post makes as much sense as it should but I'm going to hit the button anyway...
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:
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:
...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:
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.
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.
Black Dye White Noise update
New stocks arrived yesterday of Black Dye White Noise looking all shiny and new which is always exciting. This is the batch with the updated softback covers to line them up with the Raised on Radio design ('management' said this was a smart thing to do and 'management' was right), so if you happen to have one of the previous versions, there ain't many of them knocking about anymore, but I'm not changing the covers on the hardback version of it. That's a step too far - when they're gone, they're gone but right now, there's still stocks available.
On which note, I got an email query yesterday asking whether the books were available to buy as hard copies. That query came from within this very site - so, I guess I had better review how that info is displayed here. Maybe it's time to boot up the bookstore page I've been toying with. It's been at the back of my mind for a while but its a good 'n valid point, so thanks Will... file under pending.
There is more blog to come but there are demons in the machinery of the upload images process. Back later - meanwhile, you can do this:
On the decks today: