THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
Doctor Doom
I'm gutted. David Tennant has announced he'll leave Doctor Who after the 2009 specials. Accepting the award for Best Dramatic Performance at the National Television Awards during the interval of Hamlet, he announced that the four episodes would be his last.
Then again, I was gutted (though not quite so much) when Eccleston left also.
Bring on the new Who then... BBC press release here.
Spooks
If you're a fan of Spooks, you're always ready for something shocking to happen. Even though we're always ready for this shock, when the shock comes it's still always shocking! How do they manage it? How can you be constantly surprised by a surprise that you know might be coming at any moment? Sheer genius writing at its very best. I'm still waiting for Tom to come back from his 'early retirement' and that has to be about three years ago.
Brilliant. If you've missed it - cue up that iplayer and don't forget to mail in your messages of support saying how you won't watch anything on the BBC (apart from Spooks) until Ross and Brand are reinstated. Nobody gives a rats ass about Sachs - and I didn't even know he had a grand-daughter.
More later...
Down to Business (1)
This is as good a place as any to post this material so I don't lose it - and if it helps somebody else along the way, all the better - feel free to drop comments on similar links and ideas.
This is a great find: How to get your indie book into comic shops
Therefore, 'tis only right that I pimp their blog also - hardworking puppies that they are: bluecomics. Sami's personal blog is here if you're the type of human that likes pictures and Elizabeth's is here for those feeling more at home with words.
Fuelled by this, it seems like a good idea to set-up a joint blog for Charlie and I for Too Hot for Dogs. This will free me up here to concentrate more on the bigger picture but hopefully it will also let her loose with some thoughts and give her a platform to sound off on me for being a nazi when I ask her to re-do certain pieces. See how that was... here. I'll organise some kind of image link in the sidebar shortly and well... let's see what happens.
There's also a great post about the state of the comic world here at Ted May Comics Junk Drawer.
Enough now... Saw II appears to be on TV in a moment. For some reason, it slipped through the cracks (as did III and IV). I feel a Saw marathon coming on.
The A-Z of writing
In somewhat of an epiphany, over the last week I've noticed that my writing has become, shall we say, underpar. This is not because I have suddenly become not very good at writing but because of the amount of time available to actually formulate a thought before committing pen to paper. The fact that I have nobody to blame but myself was realised on Thursday, so Thursday evening and last night I spent revisiting some of the Smith classics by checking back in with Lester Bangs, Gaiman and co to see how far away from the goalpost I have actually come. (I realise those are two wildly differing styles but that's kind of the point).
The end. It just needs fixing. I need to review the new Cure album across today and tomorrow, so that will be the fixing territory and it will be matched against the Black Stone Cherry review from some weeks ago to see. Buggered if I'm going back and changing anything though.
I've also discovered that Charlie has nearly finished the second issue of Too Hot For Dogs. Not only has she brought out the big guns, she has also come armed with tanks, a jeep and other tactical military equipment that makes me gape with wonder. I thought the story was strong before but now I come to layout the pictures, I see how much more it could be.
This happened with the first one as well and the final copy turned out so much stronger than the first draft we toyed with. This issue starts the story proper rather than being an introduction to the characters and I want to rewrite most of it. There's an internal voice telling me that the story shouldn't be dictated to by the art that comes with it, but if that's a hard and fast rule amongst comic book writers I'm going to throw it out of the window knowing that the finished product will be so much stronger from doing so.
So with all that on the plate I think I shall repeatedly listen to this Cure album and get the hell on with it...
Another odd Saturday
It's getting harder and harder to blog about what I'm supposed to be blogging about here. Despite all projects going well - especially Too Hot For Dogs which is gaining some good momentum especially since Charlotte brought out the big guns to finish illustrating issue two - Zodiac Lung has become a convenient dumping ground to empty my head to make room for plot threads and impossible but solvable scenarios.
Is that such a bad thing? Maybe things will change once I reach a larger critical mass. I take solace (but only a quantum) in the fact that if it's good enough for Neil Gaiman to let his head wander around then it's surely good enough for me.
So I'll chew that over while trying to finish off something called The Angels of Harp's Field... you never know when something might be needed. Yeah - I know I should be finishing up Too Hot. That's exactly what I was doing when this idea passed by that wouldn't work in 2H and I have to nail it.
Talking of finishing things up, I'm due to hear back from the first batch of short stories I mailed out. Jeez - people are slow!
Currently listening to: Laura wipe the floor with the competition on X Factor
Currently watching: Far too many things for my own good but Sanctuary is shaping up just fine.
Currently reading: Just about to finish up A Good and Happy Child which seriously kicks, switched to the audiobook of Koontz's Frankenstein II so I could do it in the car. Next? Past history dictates that I must track down a copy of The Graveyard Book. Law.
This is not good
Woke this morning to find myself almost completely deaf in my right ear. Not just a little bit but almost no hearing. I'm guessing this is not a good thing. It's come back a little now but was made all the more frightening when the phone rang and I wasn't able to hear anything at all on that side of my head. Have decided that today will be a day of listening to Kiss just in case it goes completely!
My internal dialogue is behaving strangely by asking itself which it would prefer - deaf or blind. Sadly I think deaf is preferable due to reading, driving, TV and general day to day events still being possible. Having said that, it would be a massive blow.
Maybe I'm over-reacting. Maybe I should simply buy one of these and get on with the day.
Jimmy Page, Satan, Leona Lewis, God, sisters and brothers
The alien virus continues. It feels like there's something big growing inside me. Not quite so bad as when the Alien bursts out of Hurt's stomach, but close. I suppose people used to watch TV in bed when they were ill. Somehow, blogging seems more constructive. My book is too heavy... poor me.
There doesn't appear to be any footage at all of Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis at the closing Olympic ceremony but there are plenty of stills with the accompanying soundtrack. The best of these is probably this one at youtube. For what it's worth, as far as this sort of thing goes, it's not too bad. As Mick Wall pointed out in his own blog this is more the domain of Brian May than Page, but hey... it's over now. I like Leona. At least she can sing and appears to be handling it well. You can't begrudge success when it's backed by that much talent. With two young girls living in the same house, you learn to like a lot of stuff otherwise you end up saying things like "What kind of man desecrates a defenceless text book!" and "What is that! A Twisted Sister pin on your uniform... you're worthless and weak - you do nothing, you are nothing... you sit in here all day and play that sick repulsive electric twanger..."
Stop now. It brings back too many memories, but for those of you who have no idea what I'm going about - here - and if you're really interested the evening I saw this one day after school, my life changed forever and ever. (If you're already an SMF - this is quite cool, if not you should probably move along the bus).
The Doctor is in (again)
It's probably wrong to be excited about something so small, but in the light of not much else happening today due to some weird alien virus infiltrating my system:
News services are reporting that this year's Children in Need will feature a special to include all seven living Doctor Who lead actors.
The below report is from the Telegraph. The story also appears in the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror.
[Remember: treat all such news as rumour until confirmed officially by the BBC]
The actors are getting together for the BBC charity Children in Need in a programme to be broadcast on November 14.
An insider at the BBC said: "It's a pretty ambitious idea and it's still being finalised. Everything is being kept under wraps but Doctor Who fans are in for a big treat."
The first of the 10 actors to take the role was William Hartnell in 1963, followed three years later by Patrick Troughton and then by Jon Pertwee but all three have since died.
The seven survivors include Tom Baker, now best known as the voice of the comedy series Little Britain, who played the role for seven years from 1974.
He was followed by Peter Davidson [sic] from 1981 to 1984, whose daughter Georgia Moffett has also featured in the programme and who is now dating the current doctor, David Tennant.
The others are Colin Baker, from 1984 to 1986, Sylvester McCoy who had two stints from 1987 to 1989 and re-appeared in the role in 1996, Paul McGann, who took over the role in 1996 and Christopher Eccleston who reprised the series in 2005.
Get your head around this Mr Smith...
What began as a seemingly normal Saturday - for most of the day actually - culminated in an hour of weirdness around 8pm. First of all, a link to a review of Too Hot For Dogs issue one came in from Evil Genius Comics Blog - you can read the review here. Am most please with that and I take my hat off to Charlotte - I didn't think anybody stayed up later than me to get things done, but apparently I was wrong.
My estimate of finishing Russell T Davies' Doctor Who - The Writer's Tale in a single day was the worst estimate in the history of things being estimated. It will take me at least a week to get through it and at least another week to digest it all. Suffice to say, the damn thing is brilliant. So, I'm standing in the kitchen and the devil sitting on my shoulder - the one that keeps whispering 'fake it til you make it' - shouts louder than normal. So I figure I'll text Mike.
Verbatim, here is a transcript of my text:
"I've just been asked to write an episode of Doctor Who by Moffat. Am very excited"
A thousandth of a second later, Mike's calling me up. I decide to ignore it and send another one just behind it that says:
"Thanks. Just wanted to know what that would feel like. Sorry, but it felt great all the same x"
To which Mike replied: "Did you bump your head?" I spoke to him just after this and the odd bit was that he believed that it was the sort of thing that could happen to me, which I thought was very nice - as in, some people could text you that and you'd just delete it and know it wasn't true, but he wasn't entirely sure. To be honest - Mike is probably the only person that I'd believe it of too. So now he'll have to find a better gag to play... let the game begin! (If we sit really still and wait quietly, we might see a Mike saunter past and leave a comment tomorrow...)
Not ten minutes later, JJ calls me up. This one didn't so much surprise me as punch me really hard in the mouth. When I finally got to bed last night, I wasn't really tired, so I dropped my pod on and lay there with a pen in my hand scribbling notes about whatever came into my head. On one page, I wrote the following:
"Wonder where the hell that Baby Dynamite tape is with Paperhouse on it. It must be somewhere in the house."
To give you a little bit of background on this, I've discovered that I write best creatively when I'm doing something else that hasn't been planned (natch), so about a week ago, I picked up my guitar to start writing again. Paperhouse and another song called Naked with Jezebel where the last two songs I ever recorded in a proper studio back in 1995 - and probably two of the best and definitely most commercial I've ever written but the last time I heard them or even thought about them was at least ten years ago. I thought it might be nice to revisit those songs and relearn them as a place to start again from - did I have a copy of it. No. Nowhere to be seen. Not since sometime in 1995.
Like I said, J called - and he says (this is pretty much word for word): "Got a second? I was looking in this box of old radio tapes just now and found this tape with a sticker on the front that says ' wrote you a song'. You'll never guess what was on it..."
With a god standing on either side of me, my response was "Paperhouse?"
"Yeah - how'd you know that?" So I tell him the story and we fell into an odd silence in which we both stood in our respective kitchens 300 miles apart with frowns on our brows. Not sure what to make of that really.. good story though.
Focus
Yes - must focus. Seem insistent on blogging items here that are duplicated in other blogs. Will rectify from here on out.
Finally got around to picking up undelivered parcel from Post Office this morning. How could I have forgotten about the Doctor Who book I ordered? At a first glance, it's very, very good. On all levels. I'll post a review of it later this week - though I think I'll read it all today if I can find the time. It's one of those that you pick up and don't put down unless something 'very important' comes along.
Think I need to take the rest of the day to restructure what's going on here. With so many projects on the boil, I've lost track and certainly lost focus. That'll happen on just a few hours sleep a night.
Man, I need a holiday. More later...
A commitment
I got sidetracked somewhat with that last t-shirt picture blog. I was going to go shopping tomorrow to get some new jeans, but with ebay to the rescue, I no longer have to bother. Bonus.
What I really meant to post was this iconic symbol of gonzo journalism. Today, I have discovered that if I must function in a category, then this is where I well and truly belong. I think Wikipedia sum it up best with their article here.
You know when you belong somewhere when you can find no fault in your surroundings. Hey - that's a t-shirt in itself.
It's a good day on the planet when you find out something good about yourself. In fact, fuck it. I'm gonna get a tattoo...
Hack Attack
In between constructing a Shepherd's Pie that Satan himself would be proud of, synching up my ipod with ical and other Sunday type household chores, I've been doing some research on great writers. No, that's not right - great journalists would be closer to the truth. I've been trying to figure out what allowed guys like Lester Bangs, Cameron Crowe and Nick Kent to sit at the top of the tree like the untouchables. I've still not put my finger on it but I'm getting closer to the bottom line. Anyway. there's a cool article from the Wired archive that begins as follows:
ISSUE 153, November 1996
Editor: Tony Herrington
Reading through Meaty Beauty Big & Bouncy!, a recent collection of "Classic Rock & Pop Writing from Elvis to Oasis", I sense my heart sink, the sky cloud over, radar going haywire with dull and familiar sightings. Despite that sub-title, the book isn't a celebration of music journalism per se, but rather a homage to certain breeds of music journalist. On one level, the selections of Editor Dylan Jones bolster the notion of the latter-day music critic as a pop-celebrity mortician, laptop wielded like a coroner's scalpel, eviscerating the bloated organs of one wrecked pop-life after another.
You can read the full article here, it makes for interesting reading. Being a magazine whore of the highest order, sometimes I sit here and wonder how some of these 'writers' get a gig at these - oftentimes - very high profile publications. I picked up the new edition of Q this week. I haven't picked up a copy in years and maybe like some of you, I simply assume that their writing is the best the UK has to offer. I'll post later about my findings (like you give a shit) but the one thing I do know is that given how small the world is these days, nobody's name is dripping off my tongue as one I recognise let alone respect.
The one thing I do know though, is that there's a small part of me somewhere poking me with a stick to start that bloody list. More later...
Life 2.0
It's a gloriously chilly October morning and another week has gone by in which time has obliterated regular blog opportunities. To begin with superficial items or items of great importance? The choice is all mine - or I could just lump it all in together.
Mere seconds ago I ordered Russel T Davies' Doctor Who book - A Writer's Tale. Apparently for fans of Doctor Who and those interested in the writing process, this is a bit of a no brainer for me and I'm wondering why it took so long for me to get around to it. This week have also been chewing away at a book I thought would be, shall we say, shit. However, Dean Koontz's Frankenstein is rather excellent. Great back story and impeccably delivered, it's restored a little faith from me in a man I long ago thought had lost it. Nice. This week I also picked up a book called A Good & Happy Child which looks like it might be one of those things that I tell people about in hushed voices...
On the music front, I have thoroughly tried to avoid the Metallica album until the hype/backlash has died down. Instead, I buried myself in the Pussycat Dolls album. It's OK y'know... a bit vapid but there's a place for vapid in every life if you look hard enough. Also on the music front, I have some big n juicy news to announce soon that I'm really fired up about but it would be foolish to name it just yet... this is followed by potentially even bigger excellent news and a trip to a lil' exhibition thing called the Rock Archive. Maybe not so little huh.
On the non music front, but something that still involves going outside is the second appearance of the LuchaFest at the RoundHouse. Much excited about this one.
So - this writing thing. Charlotte has give me at least half of the illustrations for issue two so I need to get my head around that pretty fast as that now leaves just four pages to finish up before we move on to issue three. This weekend was the BICS event which I really was going to go up to and launch the first issue, but Charlie picked up a copy that was a little less than perfect from LuLu, so that needs fixing behind the scenes before we go any further. Actually, it's been one of those weeks in which I've just been laying down words instead of anything more than that. Quite important for a writer I think... combine that with some extreme developments in the Dark Hollow/Burn camp and it's just been one of those weeks.
The Idiots by White Subway
http://youtube.com/v/F2fSmvoDpAM
It's just a matter of time before the rest of you can smell the coffee...
Death and the art of dying
Normal service will resume after this short sensible interlude:
It's always good to learn something new about those closest to you. Sarah and I were talking about dead people this evening (prompted by something on TV) and she told me that she talks to them. At which point I should probably point out that she's a nurse and not a psychic hotline operator. It sort of generated out of a train of thought that involved 'what are people aware of after they die'.
She was saying that when people die, she talks to them because she if they are still aware of what is going on when the heart has stopped breathing, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we don't just switch off all at once. For instance, after you die, your hair and nails keep growing. Various other functions carry on too, even if they're in a negative connotation. The biology of a dead body is that things are still happening even if those things are decay.
So, I wanted to know what sort of things she said to them and it was simple things like "I'm going to shut your eyes now" and "I'm just going to put this pillow under your chin so that your mouth doesn't gape open" - I think that's kind of sweet. I find it peculiar that she can spend this amount of intimate time with a dead body but we never even made it to the opening credits of Scream when we went to see it.
Anyway, this continued and I found out that she also catalogues out loud the items that she has to remove from them, such as rings and watches, which get bagged and sent with the body to the undertaker - the bit she doesn't like though is the final part where the face gets covered with the sheet. Almost as if she was personally responsible for saying "The End" to these people.
It's a job I couldn't do. I've never actually seen a dead body. Sarah is not religious but I think sometimes she wonders... when she knows somebody is dying, she'll stay with them and watch them go - to which she always says that it's the weirdest thing. One minute you have an animated body, no matter how frail and immobile and the next moment, a very obvious empty husk that looks the same but is nonetheless, empty. What left and where did it go to? When you're faced with that on a daily basis, you have to wonder comes afterwards, but she doesn't. I think it would drive her insane.
But where do we go? It's obviously the consciousness/personality/character/soul that leaves but where does it go? Does it just go out? After millenia upon millenia of people dying, it's hardly surprising that the possibilities the human race has come up with for what comes next are so disparate and clung on to so dearly. As nice as some kind of afterlife appears to be, it's just as plausible that the series just ends. No commissions for a second season. No repeats. Dusted.
I needed to get that out of my head. Back to thinking about Doctor Who memorabilia now.
Solid Gold Easy Action
First of all, am very excited. I've just seen the double pilot episode of Fringe and it's simply stunning. Some have said it's slow but it's really not. First impressions are that it mixes up elements of Lost, X Files, Heroes and 4400. I guess it will change and settle into something else but it's enough to say, I loved every moment.
With Heroes S3 around the corner and all of our other favourites about to lift off into space for the Autumn season, maybe the nights won't be so empty after all. How geeky of me.
Also, in the mail today, the new copy of SFX landed along with volume 10 of the utterly supreme CrimeWave. CrimeWave probably slips under your radar but it comes from TTA press (who have even higher production values than me) and features some of the best in new crime writing. If you're into the genre at all then you best hightail your ass over to www.ttapress.com - the site is a bit confusing but it's all there... somewhere... and the good news keeps on coming as I see that season two of Californication is out on the loose. Can things get any better?
Possibly. Too Hot For Dogs issue one is now finished. I've had an idea about what to do with it. For some reason, I seem to think it would be a good idea to give it away, a page at a time, here at zodiaclung. Going to chew on it until the end of the month though... there's some other irons in some fires as well, so it's a waiting game. NOT REALLY! I've just seen the "self imposed schedule" and it appears I'd best be getting on with finishing up issue two for Charlotte to get on with and push ahead with issue three as well.
If there's a fly in the ointment at all, it's over how strong a story Seven Days of the Gargoyle is and having nobody to illustrate the damn thing. Maybe the weekend will turn up some talent - Rhiannon has talked me into squeezing back into our wetsuits and going crabbing (aka 'eating candy floss').
Too much to read, too much to do, too much to watch.
Excellent.
A mug is a mug is a mug?
No. A mug is not just a mug. As a bit of a tea drinker, let me walk you through some of my favourite mugs...
This is my favourite mug of all time. It's kind of square on the outside and round on the inside - which is most fitting. It's my morning mug and my writing mug and is in constant heavy rotation. Complete with Scarecrow, Judoon Captain and obligatory Dalek, it's damn classy.
Next, we have the Dalek bowl. In times of great stress, this holds the maximum amount of tea I can possibly make. It's not my favourite but it is highly functional... everybody must have a functional mug. It's only right.
This is my second favourite - the other side has a Cyberman on it (that's the drinking side). Often in use when the square one is hidden underneath much washing up. This one came free with an easter egg... nice.
...and so we move on to the visitors mugs. The kids loved last easter because I went a bit overboard on the eggs that had mugs with them. Both the 24, WWE and the LOST mug came this way - there was also a Desperate Housewives mug and I'm a bit disappointed that I never picked it up as well. So there you have it.
I would however like to point out that I'm really sad... I was actually testing out this Sony Ericsson CyberShot to see what it was capable of.
Experiment over.
