Samson and Goliath

Just booked a little appointment on Tuesday to visit the people who wield scissors for a living.

That gives me four days to back out.

One Big Crunch

My buddy Ian just sent me an email suggesting - and I quote - that he "thought a blog was supposed to be updated regularly". Wise words from somebody who has drawn one picture in the last two years, but he has a point.

The Gods of Busy have descended on me this last week or so. Today is my last day with this issue of Burn (12) before I hand it over to be made into something useful. I'm giving myself the weekend off though before I start on issue 13. I think that might be allowed. Truth be told, I think that might be enforced otherwise I might find myself divorced and childless! If you read in between the lines, that means I will have stealth notebooks to hand and scraps of paper in every room in the house.

My personal goal of writing at least two short stories a month is going well. The August projects are The Tuba Farm and The Boy With Wasps for Eyes, but they seem to have also been joined by another story that came out of the blue called - at the moment - Feel the Soulbender. The first two stories have been around forever and have needed finishing off for far too long so it will be nice to release them into the wild.

I've also decided that at the end of August, the first issue of Too Hot For Dogs must be published. There's a couple of options of how to do it and because it will set the tone for the other five in the series, it's being analysed from all angles - which is about as much fun as it sounds.

In fact there's been a lot of 'deciding' around here lately, culminating in a 'project timeline' (scrap of paper under fridge magnet). If I can stick to my own self enforced deadlines, by the end of the year I should be in pretty good shape. Over at James Moran's blog, he does this end of year thing where he lists his achievements and analyses how well he's doing in the realm of the Big Picture. It's a great idea and one that shall be repeated here. The one thing I am pleased with so far, is how many comic books I've written this year and thrown away. There must be at least seven. One shot issues, created from scratch and then dumped basically in the name of getting Too Hot For Dogs looking its best. A creative undercoat if you like.

The most frustrating thing with this "fuck it, I'm going to be a writer if it kills me" attitude, is how much work is sitting around doing nothing, but having been in a band and then written about bands for far too long, I've seen some of the best go down simply because they relied on their first batch of songs. There's no point writing a killer book and thinking you're the honey pot because no publisher will give a damn if you can't back it up with the next one and the next one. Which is basically why there's so many projects going on here.

In other scraps of news, my beloved Audi - my best friend (ish) for the last six years will be going tomorrow. I will take some pictures for prosperity. We have shared some good adventures. This Saab thing is OK, but somehow it's just not the same.

I found myself at church again this morning and it's a Friday! It's the last day of kids club so I went to see what they had made and to hand over some cash to for kids in Romania who were saving up for food and water - which kind of puts saving up to go on holiday into perspective. I didn't know that Moses killed somebody - you certainly do learn something new every day! Andy - the vicar - also learnt something new today. That I used to be in a band. Rhiannon has been telling everybody she can find that "My Dad used to be a rockstar when he was a ladyboy". Thankfully, most people are intuitive enough to figure out what she means. I'm guessing the rest of them are just avoiding me now and/or don't like glam rock.

Worse/funnier/cooler still (delete as appropriate), somebody I'm chatting to at a print company found out that I used to wrestle a bit and was called the Black Stallion. What can I tell you... I was young! It sounded cool at the time and was certainly no worse than having a name like El Matador or SharkBoy. I've Googled it already and thankfully, it was so under the radar that no evidence of said miscarriage of justice exists. (How odd that in blogger, it thinks that 'googled' is a typo).

Objects in the rear view mirror certainly do seem closer this week.

Currently listening to: FUEL: Angels & Devils, Michelle Branch: Hotel Paper and Lifehouse: Who We Are.
Finished reading: Paradise Lost (all will become clear as to why later), The Owl Service by Alan Garner and See A Grown Man Cry from Henry Rollins.
Currently reading: Nothing. Must do some writing this week, but it will definitely be interspersed with diving into the superb Vertigo first issue digital archive which you too can also enjoy here.
Clip of the day: Criss Angel turns little girl into an adult and this classic here: (don't try these at home unless you can do it better!)

Them Vs You Vs Me

Blog title today comes from the name of the new Finger Eleven album - lovingly packaged by Hero PR and received by me this very morning in a very appreciative manner. Good start to the day. If you like your rock Canadian sized and appreciate the likes of Our Lady Peace, this is just the very thing and you should buy it from here.

Back to business. This week has seen a thorough investigation into what the whole world is doing in the comic industry. My conclusion? The industry is faring very well and there is some excellent talent out there. Hooked in here is 'book cover of the week': Too Cool to be Forgotten from Alex Robinson

There's something heartwarming about taking an exceptionally ordinary idea and turning it into something really special! Why does it get me? No idea - but the art I like is usually an image that I don't have to think about but says everything it needs to say in one shot. Note to self: drop the guy a line and rustle up an interview for Burn... bound to be a good one by default!

Talking of art, here's a preview of the 20th Anniversary poster for Sandman. I wonder if those 20 years went as fast for Gaiman as they did for me. When you set yourself an icon, it can be hard work to consistently shoot arrows that high in the sky - but then again, it's no harder than shooting arrows at a target on the ground.

Strikes me that I've been very focussed on art for some reason for a while now. For a while I was concerned that I should be concentrating on writing not art - being a writer and all, but that would derail me. It seems to be more about translating what I write into genuinely accessible work. For some reason my (part-time) artist buddy Ian, decided this week to write a script. Maybe he's going through the same thing in reverse. Maybe the Gods have a big plan. Time will tell where that one goes, but is it foolish or sheer genius to have an Opel Manta as the main car in your script?

Talking of Gods, a couple of Jehova's Witness girls came round this morning. I'm always pleased to welcome them into my house. Sadly, this morning I was brushing my hair but I did take their books. If they have spent the time to come here, it is the very least I can do to read their books. I'm hoping that one day soon I'll be able to return the favour and foist some copies of Too Hot For Dogs on them.

Today, I have The Watchtower and also a copy of Awake! There's a good looking article in Watchtower about the Tower of Babel which I shall have much joy in marking up with errors and handing it back next week.

More later possibly - I have an appointment with some rough looking Korean horror flicks right now.

Currently listening to: Them Vs You Vs Me | Finger 11
Currently reading: Spares | Michael Marshall Smith

Too busy to blog?

Almost - but I have found some bloody excellent things on my research travels.

First of all, here's a guy that deserves checking out: Almacan

Then I found this old classic, that's always worth another look. I'm thinking that Charlie should maybe have a stab at recreating something like this for 2H simply on the grounds that I love it.

Arthur Rackham is the man... aside from this image which I believe is called Rackham's Wolves, he also did the one on the right called Solomon and the Stocking - which if my memory serves me correctly, my ma has a small woodcut of - or at least I think she used to... must ask. I think there was a series of them.

Cheating and pimping...

Lurking at some of my favourite places and found this superb cartoon. Check out the original, bookmark his site, spend your money there and raise your freak flag high... Shannon Wheeler is the man!

In 5000 words or less...

It's Thursday and aside from the interviewing, transcribing and general witchcraft associated with Burn that has been going on, I've finished up three short stories - and I'm feeling a bit pleased with myself. My plan with the shorts is to write three a month. One I'll give away for free right here, one will be pitched to be published in a short story magazine and the other will be published through an online magazine/site.

If my maths are worth anything at all, this means that by the end of the year, there will be 18 shorts in circulation which is a good start at collecting collateral on my reputation as a writer. The stories are split into two genres, possibly three. Each month there will be an Inspector Kang story, the other will be in the 'weird tales' vein. I say maybe three because there's every chance they might cross over. It's not really important. The important thing is to get this stuff out there. I should also point out that this will be an end of the month arrangement! That will at least give me time to hit the small presses up and see what happens.

Hey - it's a plan - and I don't do plans.

Along with Too Hot For Dogs steaming along and Almost Human firing on all cylinders, I'd say I was back in the arena of pleasure!

A while back I made a post called what the hell is this? Well, I've found another and it looks like this:
OK, it's not as far out there as my first "what the hell is this" but it still doesn't look right. It's not doctored or photoshopped - in fact, unlike the first one - which I really don't have any clue about and probably never will - I think this is a shoebill. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is. I may have to write a story about it. The damn thing looks like it came out of the Henson creature shop. Maybe I'll do some kind of play on that old story about Gef the Talking Mongoose. Laugh away ye heathens. Gef is the real deal - see the link here.

More "what the hell is this" soon. I'm becoming addicted...

With reference to my good friends comment on my last post:

I feel my case is now at rest. No hair-dresser would be seen dead in this. It's a classic and the reserve of fictional detectives who live on the edge and those who pay no attention to fashion.

And it's black.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours car...

Does it count if it's not actually your neighbour, but you parked next to it at Homebase this morning? Whipped out to grab a new plug for the bath - for some reason, it just disintegrated - and there it was. Larger than life and sexier than Shakira on a sunny day. This has my name written all over it - and I want it right now!

It has everything a car should have. Personality, charm, it's black, leather seats, very cool stick indicators instead of those plastic things we all have now. It was love at first sight, but when I got back to my car, it was gone otherwise I would have left a note under the wiper blade.

I guess the guy can't live too far away. I'm not even sure what it is. I know it's a Citroen - I could see that from about 100 metres away (even with my eyes) but the model? If anybody has a clue please leave a comment. This is the very car that a fictional detective should be driving.

This has also moved me to think that yes, maybe I do need a decent camera on my phone. Again - if anybody has a killer cam-fone, leave a note if you would be so kind.

Later that same evening:
Apparently, it's a Citroen DS and is highly rated by many! Found this rather cool page hosted by Citroen is anybody actually gives a crap except me. Stunningly gorgeous, but I reckon if they'd tried a bit harder, they could have found some archive pics of the damn thing that weren't in battleship grey. If you keep going though, there's a couple of nice shots in there. There's some of the interior here as well which leads me to one conclusion. Car designers today have got a bloody cheek calling themselves designers.

Must find a new house so that there's room on the drive for one of these too if we're being stupid about it...

To the moon and back

I don't think going away for four days really constitutes a leave of absence from blogging of two weeks - please accept most humble apologies. A really cool thing to say was that I went away in search of plastic Kiss bears, but it's just not true. That said, do I want some Kiss bears on the shelf in my office? Yes, I really do - they would look splendid next to other Kiss items. What I really want most is a set of Kiss otters, but I don't think that's on the agenda... not this year anyway. Maybe I should mail Gene.

What I really did was jump in the car and hack it over to the other side of the country for some surfing fun. Despite going over there as often as school will allow us to, I still can't quite get my head around how different it is. It's like going to a completely different country - this time we went with some friends, which always makes it a bit different. Rhiannon still doesn't like surfing much, but I'll put that down to her being seven. Ellie on the other hand isn't far off getting on a big board. Maybe next year. Anyway, we all forsook the big boards this year in favour of the much easier to carry bodyboards. Last time I smacked myself in the face with a big board and crushed one of my teeth, so that was fine by me.

I seem to write more when I'm there too. Not sure if it's because there are less distractions or that I feel I should but some good stuff came out - most of it 2H4D related which is a good thing because it's about time we moved on to book three and got this puppy a bit more finished up. I'll continue this post later on - far too excited today by the final episode of Doctor Who to do much else...

Reading and writing

In my heart, I really don't like shopping on amazon but my bank account thinks it's a good idea. You see, some books you just have to own and John Connolly's The Reapers is one of those. Being a hardback man, it clocks in at around £20 in a real bookstore and it was £8 on amazon meaning I could buy the other two books I had my eye on for less and still have money left over! It's a weird game this discounting lark. For the record, the other two were Spares (Michael Marshall Smith) and The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder which is an old classic from WH Hodgson. Out of respect to my favourite bookstore, which struggles at the best of times, I took the excess, threw in a couple of extra quid and picked up a cool looking book called Stealing the Scream which is a true life detective story about how the famous painting was once stolen and the obsessiveness of one man to find it again.

Anyway, I was telling somebody about this on my way back from the Post Office and they said "I used to read a lot, but now I can't find the time." So I thought I would rustle up a quick top ten list of ways to find time to read... or most other things for that matter.

1. Turn off the TV. Watch what you want to watch and not what they want to throw at you.
2. No really... unless you're a TV critic, turn it off.
3. Wake up. You don't need eight hours sleep. Five or six hours is plenty. Do the math yourself. Do you know how many days of your one and only life you are pissing away like this?
4. Watch out for vampires. Those blood sucking idiots that take up lots of your time when they didn't really want anything. Cut them off.
5. Avert your eyes from facebook or myspace. Speaks for itself that one!
6. Double up on jobs. Read in the bath, while you're cooking... grab some audio books for the less important books and dump them on your pod. This is priceless when you're on holiday and driving.
7. Just read - you don't need an excuse. Down tools every now and then and just get on with it.
8. It will rain eventually, so washing the car is a fools errand!
9. (Wishing I hadn't gone for ten now!)
10. See 1. because I know you're unable to stay away from it.

Now you can read - or do something else that's important to you. Simple.

Haven't looked at 2H4D all week due to schedule with Burn, but this morning my heart called me back to it and it's still got 'it'. So will spend some time with it this afternoon... right now though I have to go to the school fair. If you have kids, this will also be known as the money pit...

(Later that same day.)
So, any money that I potentially saved had I not bought excess books anyway, was swallowed up by face painting, cakes, balloons and a ton of other stuff nobody really wanted, but we all had a good time. A huge flaw in my plan was a quick visit to the book stall, where every book was but 20p.

Fatal.

Two quid later and this weeks stack of books is rather large with over dramatic crime fiction, though to be fair to myself, seven of the eight I bought for Sarah. She reads so damn fast that it's the only way I'll get to read The Reapers before she does. I can make lots of time for reading but I do like to salivate over every single word if possible.

Talking of Sarah, her brother went in for a heart by-pass this week. He's 48. That's put the frighteners on me a bit. He used to be in the army and could run for miles as well as rowing and some other things I've never heard of. Fitness aside, that would be 20 years of ready meals taking its toll then, but my diet is not much better. Note to self: get it sorted.

Currently reading: The Reapers: John Connolly (of course)
Currently listening to: 4 Way Diablo: Monster Magnet

A quick catch-up

Finding it real hard to concentrate this week. Might be something to do with the last episodes of Doctor Who coming up and that far too many people keep sending me this picture and making it worse.

It's very childish of me I know, but it's good to be excited about something outside of this round room of a mind. Ian mailed me today and said he couldn't find any info on what exactly Shocking the Monkey was about. That would be because I never said, but being as he brought it up, I'll elaborate.

It's basically an archive of poems, really short stories and meandering scraps of writing that have been lurking on my hard drive for far too long that I think deserve to be out there. Trust me. The bad stuff is lining the trash can.

At least that's how I thought things were going. Turns out that last night I began writing a short story called The Creeper. Jesus. I must have started it in my sleep because I've written a fair amount of it. Must retain focus though! That's way to many projects on the go, but I don't think you can ever have enough short stories in your arsenal. Too Hot is on ice this week while I finish up with Burn, but that's OK. It's good to have some time away from it to get a birds-eye. Charlie is beavering away at some more art. Apparently, she's been picking up Imagine FX for a while now and it comes with cool brushes on the disc. I didn't know that. I buy it occasionally just to check out what's going on in the world. If you have any interest whatsoever in digital art in all it's forms, it's normally worth picking up, though at seven quid a shot you'd best have a bloody good look at it in the store first!

I'm going to have to take some time off work soon to get my shit together. Still, it's cool to be finally finishing some things off. By Christmas, I should be sitting on a stockpile of many different writings to start farming out to the world - which is basically between Doctor Who finishing and the Doctor Who Christmas special. Just hoping that I don't get car-jacked into X-Factor this year.

Gonna write a classic:

...and if I had an attic I could write in, that's where it would be going on.

Decided to give myself a re-education in classics today, so I went out and bought copies of both Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy. Hulking monsters that they are, it might take me all week to get through them, but chewing them up and spitting them out has to be done. I've read them both a few times now but neither in the last ten years. I think a crash course in their mythology will do me the world of good. Sadly, I also bought a copy of Grant Morrison's The Filth, so those other tomes will just have to wait.

I'm not normally big on pimping my family out to Joe Public, but being as it's public domain anyway, my sister seems to be making something of herself right here. Damn you to hell for eternity for being young and doing it! I jest, honest - go for it. Lay waste to the minions who may stand in your way whilst you're building stuff in the name of progress!

Does that count as a post for today? I haven't done any work yet even if it is nearly midnight...

I want to eat you brains...

Keeping your kids safe on the web: Lesson 1.

As any red-blooded seven year old should, Rhiannon has recently become uber-interested in a) snakes and lizards b) egyptian mummies and c) sharks. I'm sure we'd all agree that any of these are much better than sniffing Pritt-Stick and mainlining glitter stars on any day of the week.

Thus:

"Dad, can I look at mummies on the computer?"
"Sure - you know what you're doing?"
"Yeeess"

Later on, not much later, but later on enough, she came back and said she was stuck and couldn't find anything about them. Here comes lesson one people... wait for it...

When you have a different login for everybody, enforce it. Sarah had left her screen on, so instead of logging out and in again, Little Miss Clever simply stayed on it to save time. Search one for "mummys" revealed some interesting results and thankfully, she only looked at the results, didn't see anything she might like and revamped her search criteria to "dead mummys".

Being as she didn't see anything she fancied in those results either, she chose a different tact. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and our final crackerjack search of the evening was "pulling your brains out through your nose with a stick".

At which point, Sarah walked in and saved us all from a bucketful of grief. Check out the searches for yourself. I honestly thought she was going to end up at some milf-hunter website when I heard what she'd done - thankfully, all was reasonably safe.

I think that was a get out of jail free card we just played.

Lesson of the day? Always set your wife's ability to look for stuff on the internet to as close to zero as you can get. It will save you much money in the long run as she won't be able to buy shoes.

The other lesson is obvious. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all that.

I finally picked up my Saab 900 today. It seems OK. It's not an Audi, but then again, it's no tin-pot Ford either. It's the first time I've had a clutch in about five years, so that's weird for a start. Then just about everything that can be is in the wrong place - the people at Saab have some odd solutions to living in the modern world. The ignition is down between the gear stick and the hand brake. To start the car, you have to have it in reverse with the clutch down. To get your keys out of the ignition when you've stopped, you have to put it in reverse, and then swtich the engine off before you can get them out.

I kind of like these quirly little things in a car. It has the compulsory 'check engine' warning light on the dash too which probably lit up about three years ago, but at least it doesn't pump CO into the car when you put the heater on. That's always a bonus... and I thought the boot was big in the Audi. The Saab's is like nightclub!

Those things happened outside of my head today. Inside my head, I've finally finished issue one of Too Hot For Dogs. I'm not even looking at issue two until at least the weekend. There is so much to do with regards to the business end of the stick that if I don't do it now, it will never get done. Plus all the time I've been chipping away at that, I've discovered that the other half of my brain has been busy fleshing out the remainder of Almost Human, so once I'm done here, I reckon there's a few chapters of that to be pumped out before bed.

In a tiny snippet of other news, my buddy Neil has asked me to write a few bits on Bon Jovi for his new book on er, Bon Jovi. Neat. Must go up in the loft and find my memories of "glory days long since past". I feel a New Jersey session coming on.

Silence in the Library

There is silence in the bloody library as well.

I have been totally floored by how good Doctor Who was this week. It can only be good news that Stephen Moffat is taking over the honcho position when RTD hangs up his gloves next year - not because there's anything wrong with Russ, but Moffat has certainly shown he can handle fanboy drama more than most. How do I know this - because I am constantly captivated by what he does, my kids are scared of all his episodes (Girl in the Fireplace, Blink) and even though events always run along a knife-edge, he still finds ways of dropping in some in-jokes. It's also quite cool that he doesn't have a website of his own. Annoying but cool.

So, the reason for silence in the library at home this past weekend is that Too Hot for Dogs has undergone major surgery. No sooner had I finished the first draft, I stood back, took a wider view, asked a trusted source for an even wider view and went back to the drawing board - not totally, but I've pretty much rewritten the whole script, re-layed all the design elements and even shifted entire scenes around. We decided to drop different art in to the cover slot as well, so if you like the one on the right, take a long hard look because it won't be there tomorrow!

I was pissed off on Friday but yesterday I saw that what had to be done was good and true and today I'm much happier with it than I was before the weekend. There's still about another weeks work to do on it, but that's OK I think. Charlie has submitted some more frames which have made a huge difference, but she's already on the second book with the art so I have some major catching up to do.

You know what though - I wouldn't change a thing. It just gets better every time I update it, but I will stop soon before I break it!

Meanwhile, my buddy Richie has loaded up one of my old songs to some online recording studio and has started rebuilding it from the ground up. I'm well impressed! I find it a bit weird that he still wants to keep the old band name of Spiritwalker but somehow it seems the right thing to do and sits fine with me - probably because I've had it filed under 'unfinished business' for all this time... but it's still weird!

Over at Burn, I blasted my way through the final proofs of three of the main articles for re-launch and it's looking good. It's nice not to have to worry about the design and production of it for a change. That would have been a killing blow to the schedule! It's in safe hands too. JP is good egg, knows what he's doing and is hungry for it. All good things.

Until this first issue of 2H4D is done, I'm not touching any other projects but life goes on around me... my beloved Audi 100 that I've had for five years is finally dead. Well she's actually walking wounded but I refuse to drive her anymore. 170,000 miles on the clock and if I could be bothered I'm sure I could fix her up but I've lost my faith. So after ten years of black Audi's in some form or other, it's time for a change and this time I'm looking at a Saab 900 in silver. It's almost as big a wrench to the i.d. as when I had my hair cut, but I think the point of a car is to get from A to B in one piece - not going to let this one get under my skin too much! Why do we get attached to machines? I blame my parents...

Footnote: I know I said that I wasn't touching any other projects it occurred to me that it was Friday when I ran my initial idea for a kids book called The Black Wood past Charlotte and she said she would be game to illustrate that too. Damn.

Currently reading: Only my own work.
Currently listening to: Anything ipod shuffle wants to throw at me.
Currently watching: Nothing at all.

A mind is for changing

Sitting here in the kitchen with papers, notebooks and other writing devices stacked to tipping point - yeah, I'm in trouble at home - I was tidying up the synopsis for One Hit Is All It Takes and like a bolt of lightning, the title just seemed so wrong. For the want of breaking the deadlock in the head, I switched it back to it's original title of Almost Human and I'll be damned if the whole thing flows like a river going downstream.

It's a good feeling. It sat OK for a while but now I'm nearly at the end and it may have a life other than the one on the operating table, it's important to get these things right. If you're a writer and happen to be reading, don't be afraid to destroy things you create. Sometimes when you're building things, you need really strong scaffolding to get where you're going.

Smoke gets in your eyes

My, how the days whip by and before you know it, a whole week has disappeared with no posts! So, work news: in the quest for an agent, this week I have learnt a valuable lesson. the one guy who I really thought could cut the mustard for me is a jerk. Here's the timeline: mid February, I sent him an email enquiry so as not to waste his time if we were on different pages. Late March, I decide six weeks was a reasonable amount of time to wait, so I followed the instructions on his web page - which is probably what I should have done in the first place. Six weeks on from that I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect a reply that says something like "Sorry...", or "Sure, send me something..." or even "I'm busy for the next four months, I'll be ages getting back to you".

Of course, as is a writers need for rejection, I thought my pitch was maybe under-par, but then I had the good fortune to bump into an author friend of mine. I was telling her this and she said her agent was just as bad at getting back to her. She had emailed him a question about her current contract and received back pretty much the same as me. Nothing.

Anyway, turns out we were talking about the same guy. At my level, I can understand it, but if you're already involved in a relationship, that's just plain inexcusable, so I'm moving along the bus now and just chalking that one up to a lucky escape. There's hundreds of great looking agents out there - why would I want to be involved with one who can't be bothered responding somebody who was important to him a little while ago? The blogs he recommends also suck. Not even a patch on this one even if I do say so myself!

Not perturbed by this, I mailed a publisher out in the States to see if he would be interested in seeing Too Hot For Dogs. Half an hour later, I got a very cool reply saying "Sure - send it across". That's the sort of response you need from a professional. Game on brother. I salute you! It's not a blank cheque but in the quest to be published, a human response calling for action is classed as a victory.

Talking of Too Hot For Dogs, we have about four more panels left to work on and we're done on issue one. In the quest for the best issue I could deliver, I've killed off a million ideas and undertaken a live rewrite which has made it much slicker. Thus, issue one has now become the prologue and issue one will dive straight into the story without the need for all the character introductions - hence a lack of blogging around here.

The downside of a creative burst is that it inevitably throws up other ideas. Most are consigned to the trash, while others are too good to throw away. In the latter instance, the majority are soaked up into Carnival of Souls simply because it's a book where anything can happen and, more often than not, does.

This is why people like me needs publishing deals - so they can spend all day working on them instead of lining the pockets of The Man.

Meanwhile, my buddy Richie read my post about starting to play again and hooked me into an online recording project. This could be very cool. All seems simple enough - maybe some of those ideas I thought were trashy could be harnessed into something there. It's a hard life being plugged into the creative grid. First port of call is probably to reinstall GarageBand and get some tracks started up to get rid of the cobwebs. Excited about that...

Over in the park next door, some cheap ass prick let his dog attack one of the swans who was protecting his cygnets. When the swan came at it, I thought he was going to smack the dog one with the stick he was holding, but instead he let the swan have it. I was over the other side of the lake or quite seriously, I would have been over there... next time brother, next time. Cock.

Currently listening to: Advance copy of Brigade: Come Morning We Fight and The Outline: You Smash It, We'll Build Around It.

Currently reading: The Lies of Locke Lamora: Scott Lynch and er... Who Are You Stripey Horse?: Jim Helmore/Karen Wall (awesome kids book!)

Currently watching: CSI New York: Season Four

Clip of the Day: It's a surprise

Objects in the rear view mirror, growing older disgracefully and a band called Baby Dynamite...

I've just been reading this book about how time is not a linear chain of events but rather happens all at the same time and the 'linearness' of it, is just how we are programmed to receive it. If that is indeed the case, then the past is only a nano-second away at any given moment.

Which was kind of proved to me tonight when my old buddy Lee caught up with me. I haven't spoken to him in what must be 14 years. That alone makes me feel old, but there's worse to come. He's still playing in a band! He was our bassist in Baby Dynamite and now he's playing in a biker band doing biker rallys... very cool. I'm really pleased that he's still going.

Then he tells me that he tracked down Dean who was our guitarist from hell. He's playing in a band called Twin Method who seem to be doing the business.. I checked them out online and, yeah.. OK, I might be a bit jealous. I'm the one who was supposed to have made it! I was the one who had something to say! That combined with some old pics he sent me, got me into a nostalgic spiral. What with Nate and Pete playing together (albeit pub stuff), and just about everybody else I ever played with still doing something, I'm starting to wonder what the hell happened?

Well, I know what happened. It broke my heart and I couldn't go backwards... but time passes and everything happens for a reason. Playing again is something I've been chewing on for a while and it seems that this evening has been a bit of a catalyst. I did it for so long, kicking it in again will be like falling down the stairs! Is there room for another project? Of course there is... always room for another!

Anyway... hooking back up with Lee has been cool. He has a better memory than me, so it's filled in a whole load of blank spaces for One Hit.. things that were actually important that I'd forgotten about!

At least I still have all my own hair! That's known in the trade as a good start...

The best job in the world?

I went to the store earlier this evening to grab some milk and a packet of "these will kill you eventually". On my way back to the car, I bumped into one of the school mums who was swearing at her phone..
"What's up"
"I've called four cab companies and they're all busy. How can they all be busy?"
"Jump in, I'll give you a ride"

Chatter, chatter. Chatter, chatter... how's things, what's going on with..etc..

Then:

"My boyfriend is moving down here next week"
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"A good thing! It will change everything. We won't be so broke all the time."
"What does he do?"
"He's a ghost rider"

Man, I stomped on the brake so hard we both nearly went through the screen!

"He's a what?"
"A ghost rider"
"That's fucking awesome! I don't even want to know what that is - in fact, don't ever tell me because it can't ever be as good as I imagine it to be!"

Imagine that! A freaking ghost rider!! A ghost rider... brilliant..

A bloody ghost rider! Killer!

I love this cartoon...

Ride a White Swan

It's about 300 degrees down here today - not quite hotter than the sun, but close! Not as hot as my brain either which is completely fried. I had an idea for Too Hot For Dogs which in essence, is as great idea, but it also has implications... implications of rewriting the whole second half of the plot. So be it. It's a much better plotline than it was originally and art-wise, will also be a lot more bombastic than what I had originally intended.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that the sinner619 character who currently resides in Carnival of Souls belongs in 2H4D more than anywhere. I guess it's one of the 'can't see the wood for the trees' moments that complete idiots have when they're busy. Anyway, due to the way Charlotte creates her art, this means I have to rustle up a photo shoot in character. This is both good and extremely bad. Good because it will make me create him fully formed in every detail and bad for exactly the same reason. On some level that's probably karma at it's very best as so far I've made Charlie pack suitcases when she wasn't going anywhere, bully her kids friends into standing around like lemons, punch the crap out of a cake in Tesco and travel halfway across the country in search of the most splendid remnants of our pagan ancestry.

This has become the weeks priority and that's fine with me. We need to get this first issue finished up soon so we can commit to publishing it in some fashion, but one thing is for sure - 2H4D will rock your house down!

Over at Burn, things are starting to get busier than ever. My interviewing schedule is getting very full. Fugitiv are already under the belt and what I'm most stoked about this week is hooking up with The Dreaming who are headed up by Christopher Hall (Stabbing Westward). I'm thinking of hooking up with a whole new team of writers to give it a fresh approach... maybe that's a good idea anyway. I think the guys from the original days are probably tired of my diabolic editor ways! Hey, it comes with the territory okay!

Back on planet earth, life continues not to have to shout at me too loud because I'm listening again. I took Rhiannon to the park yesterday and the swans with the nest made from what can only be described as a forest, find themselves the proud parents of six cygnets. Well, they were yesterday. This morning, they're nowhere to be seen. You'd be amazed at what goes on out there. I went to bed about 3am last night and I could hear a dog going for it over there but last year, the seagulls where known to take them away for a tasty snack too. We used to have a swan warden who fed them and watched out for them but I think she died last year, so the swans are fending for themselves now, which is maybe as it should be. Maybe they were just asleep in the nest. I'm not that clued in on the habits of swans and cygnets but I can certainly read between the lines of this particular lesson.

When you get what it is you've been fighting for, there's always some bastard who'll come along and try to spoil the party.

Iron Man tonight! About bloody time too!