THE PEN IS MORE PORTABLE THAN THE SWORD
RIP BROTHER...
Sigh. Macho Man Randy Savage joins the big list of wrestlers no longer with us. You can read the story here.
One final "ohhh yeah!" for the road?
A WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
What a weird week. When I got back, Eleanor had been busy taking stock of "all my shit" - which basically meant filling a lot of black bags with stuff she didn't want anymore. Inspired by this, I took a good look around the house and filled rather a few myself with absolute garbage. Where does all this stuff come from - and why is it still here? With that under the belt, I took another look around and decided that I would give at least half of my book collection away. I shipped some to my Ma, gave some to Eleanor's Dad, dropped a stack of 'read once' hardbacks in at the library and donated about 200 paperbacks to the charity store.
Anyway, now a few days have passed, I couldn't even tell you what 95% of it actually was - and there doesn't seem to be any more space than there was before either, so tomorrow I think I may repeat the exercise. It might be a little harder this time, but I've grown to quite like the idea of owning very little. Long-time readers will know that I go through this exercise reasonably often and I can thoroughly recommend it. It's very liberating not being attached to anything at all.
All of that didn't stop me from buying a copy of Daytripper - I've heard nothing but great things about this book - shall report back later... if I remember.
•••
Good observationalists will notice a new tab at the top of the page called Under The Rose. This is a little project that I've been meaning to start for a while now. It can live here for a little while and if it gets to be as big as I hope it will, I'll move it to a new home where it can fend for itself. I've also just about finished building the store - or at least I have behind the scenes. I just need to order some stock in and I'll take off the gloves and see what happens...
•••
That's about it! Can't believe it's Saturday again. Looking forward to Doctor Who this evening. Last weeks Gaiman driven episode was easily one of the best I've seen in a long time, but I'm really hopeful for this week and next (two part episode) as they're fuelled by Matthew Graham, co-creator of Life on Mars. Gaiman is probably the best novelist alive today but Life on Mars... that's a whole different ball game! Bring it!
ROAD TRIP (1,342)
Steven Moffat, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg? How can Tintin possibly be anything but everything it should be.
I won't be holding my breath but I will cross my fingers - this one seems to have been an eternity in the making.
I'm not entirely sure what I've been doing in the week since I last posted. An awful lot of work that's for sure - the results of which will make themselves public soon enough. I have fallen behind with my own projects though. I guess a few late nights will fix that soon enough though I'm not sure how much later I can get without just running 24/7 all the time.
•••
Back on the Virgin Express again today. I wonder if somebody has ever knocked up a graph that shows exactly how much creative writing gets done on a train. There are lots of people with id cards on strings on board today - this must be in case they forget who they are. The Man always likes to remind the automatons of their place.
I had the opportunity to sit down with a very clued in somebody today and spent some time figuring out exactly how much work Facebook could do for a project. Quite a lot apparently if you get it right. I even considered for a moment resurrecting my Zodiac Lung page over there but instead came across an cross-bred app that goes by the name of Networked Blogs that hooks into Facebook pretty seamlessly as far as I can tell. Let's see exactly how syndicated and networked we can get. So far so good.
•••
A few months back, I bought this great "road bag" from Scaramanga. Cost me a fair few crispy ones too but I love it. It had to be big enough to cater for a weekend trip so I opted for the larger option of those available. It's getting good and battered now but damn, for a shoulder bag affair, it's freaking heavy. I thought I had really crunched down on the amount of stuff I had packed this time, but it seemed just as heavy as ever. I guess a MacBook and an external hard drive with all of their associated power cables and leads mount up. Throw in a book and some pens and I've not really cut down on very much at all.
So, the question is, how do I cut down on what is already a minimised amount of essentials.
Given that when I'm away, I don't really ever do heavy duty InDesign or Photoshop work, maybe an ipad with a dump into a dropbox account is the answer. Or, could I actually get away with just working on the iphone? Maybe that's a bit extreme. Possible, but extreme. Maybe I'll give it a try next time. What would be really helpful is if the train carriages were packed with USB sockets for charging stuff up - somebody really needs to get that into development.
AN EXTRAORDINARY SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
Have you ever really wondered about how coincidence works. Some think a coincidence is just that. Simply coincidence. Others - me included - may rather think it something more. What kind of writer would be happy with coincidence simply being a random pairing of events? Anyway - when I do my days in the office, I get to stay with my Ma. Once a month is far better than once every three years which is what she used to get before.
Anyway, there I am on the train (see yesterday's post) tidying up and collating all the notes I'd written for my Doctor Who script, when a thought struck me. I should probably gather together all of my favourite Doctor Who episodes and watch them again just to get into the flow of what I think are the greatest parts of the rebooted series so far.
This amounts to about ten episodes. The first couple are easy. Family of Blood/Human Nature and Blink, but I bought those when they came out and so far, is the only Who DVD that I own. The others would be - in no particular order - Rose, The Girl In The Fireplace, Parting of the Ways and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. There's a few others for sure but those are the handful that I would consider essential re-viewing items.
OK - eight. It was close enough.
So, it was kind of odd - never mind "coincidence" - when I walk into my Ma's house and find this little stack of Doctor Who DVDs on the stairs. Between them, they contain all of the episodes mentioned above. They belong to my little sister Lucy who has Down's Syndrome (which is only relevant to illustrate the fact that she's obsessive about Doctor Who, Buffy and James Bond) and at 32 is not so little any more either. Apparently she decided she just didn't want these ones anymore.
Not the other 40 odd Doctor Who discs she could have chosen from in her vast collection of "stuff". These five.
That, my friends, is truly bizarre. However, she might change her mind at any given moment, so tired as I am, I thought I'd best stay up for a little while and rip 'em to my hard drive while opportunity is here. That's a gift horse with its mouth wide open anyway you choose to slice it.
CARNAGE IN COACH D
Discovered this evening that if you sit close to the first class carriages on Virgin trains, you can get free WiFi. Not economy WiFi either. Proper able to do stuff WiFi. Trains are always an excellent source of amusement. Sitting behind me is a woman with two kids who are getting their five-a-day for sure! One Big Mac and fries with extra cheese, one jumbo bag of astro belts, one family size bottle of cola, one slap to the back of the legs (now illegal - apparently - but this evening more than justified. Everybody in this carriage agrees with me) and one hour of sleep. Are the ten-ton fiery neon signs dropping from the skies not visible enough?
I only noticed this because the album finished on my ipod. At first I thought everybody was pissed at me for having it too loud (has been known), but there's no way they can hear me over the carnage in Coach D.
EVERY LITTLE HELPS...
There's nobody here for me to talk to, so blog will have to suffice. Last Friday, Rhiannon locked herself out of her phone by tossing around with the pin number lock. Dumb for sure, but you live and learn. Now, her phone says is PUK Locked. I spoke to the guys at "customer support" last night and they said I needed to get a new SIM and then they would switch over her balance to the new SIM and all would be well.
Tesco. Awesome. Every little helps.
Except, at 20 pence a minute today, they tell me that unless I can tell them - for security reasons - how much credit she had left, they can do nothing. I tell them "hey - the phone is locked up, so I can't get in the phone to ask it and tell you..."
Several people from Monkey Call Centre girl right up to Mr Shiny Suit tell me that this is data protection and for my own good. I say that I can tell them almost all the phone numbers she will have called in the last two years, I can even read out any text messages that have been sent, list all her favourite numbers attached to the clubcard that's tied to the phone number - in fact, I can do anything but ask the SIM - that's locked in case you didn't hear me - what it's damned balance is.
"I'm sorry Sir - you must have an idea what balance is on the phone. It will tell you after each call how much is left."
"I'm sorry Mr Shiny Suit. She's ten years old. She knows when Doctor Who is on but that's about all the attention the world is given right now. Do I have any other options?"
"I'm sorry Sir - you must have an idea what balance is on the phone. It will tell you after each call how much is left."
Did he really just say that to me twice or was it just a recording.
"Dude - you're telling me that it's game over?" At which point I lost it a bit and dug deep into my bag of Dee Snider's best and paired up some choice sentences containing the words: fucker, the slightly more expansive motherfucker and cocksucker. Not in that particular order and I may have added some nouns as well. I forget now.
So. That's that then. I shall insert a new SIM card. I shall give her a new number. I'll top it up with some more credit and she will be happy again and move on. I shall stay with Tesco for her phone simply because the triple your credit thing goes a hell of a long way with a ten year old.
Me? Ahh... I am slightly older. Slightly more pissed off about this than she is. I appreciate their data protection but customer service is a two way street, yes? Don't you just hate it when a company has far too many good offers on the go to dump them totally?
What I have lost here? Maybe twenty quid and half an hour of my time? Is it worth fighting about? Is it worth knocking over a big display stand in-store and walking away so that they have to clean it up and waste their time?
Monkey Call Centre Girl: I'm sorry you did a degree and then got reduced to whoring yourself to The Man. Things will get better.
Mr Shiny Suit. I'm sorry I spoke to you like a piece of shit. I know you're only doing your job. I'm also sorry that you probably had to buy your suit in Top Man because you get paid £3 an hour even though you too have a degree. Now you're a manager, things won't get better at all I'm afraid. This is it for you. You are in The System. You are The Man.
Looking at the big picture, how does anybody with self respect allow themselves to work in a call centre? Any call centre!
Selling heroin to bullfrogs holds more self worth and it probably pays better too.
Fuckers.
PROOF OF LIFE
Bank Holiday Monday - got back from Southampton (Titanic Ink) a few hours ago and far too buzzed up to sleep. I don't know why driving makes me like this but it's certainly better than the sleepy alternative.
Lying on the carpet when I got back was my first proof of Black Dye, White Noise. If I do say so myself, it's almost everything I wanted it to be. Being as it's still in its first proof, I have plenty of time and resources to dedicate to actually making it all it should be now. This means adding the Rob Zombie, Nikki Sixx and Warrior Soul interviews I wanted to include originally and chose not to in order to keep something back for the future but I've changed my mind. There's also some pre-production work to do as well at this stage - a few minor edits to some of the copy, twice more through the proof-reading mill and some technical glitches that I hadn't banked on such as the text being a little too close to the spine on the left hand pages for my liking. Never happy...
For anybody who thinks independent publishing is an easy way out, to do it properly you need to be harder on yourself than anybody else could ever be. You have to wear a multitude of ill-fitting hats until they are comfortable and mostly, you will need to treat yourself like a third-class citizen until you are happy with your project as an outsider. Then - and only then - can you stand back and have any confidence in it. Anything other than total brutality about your book will result in weaknesses that your potential readers will spot at twenty thousand paces - most of whom will also gladly tell everyone they see.
My personal favourite form of self abuse is taking said copy of Black Dye, White Noise and putting it in the middle of a table and surrounding it with similar books that I have a lot of respect for. Of these, there are many. When I feel it can justifiably sit there and fend for itself, then it can go on sale. That seems fair.
I think that was advice if anybody was looking for any…
Did we like Doctor Who this last Saturday? Yes, we did. Rather a lot. I've had to stop myself from looking at the spoiler pages online now - I think I'll just roll with the punches from here on and take it for what it is that's coming. On Sunday morning, I took a few hours over breakfast to re-outline and re-plot the script that I was writing for the show. As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I do need to point out here that this is an unsolicited script, but maybe if I simply pretend the BBC asked me to do it, the law of wishful thinking will come into operation…
TIME TO PLAY THE GAME...
Funny. No matter how busy I am, there's always room for another TV show in my life so long as it's decent enough and Game of Thrones is turning out to be a pretty big deal. Superb production values and a killer script have given it the edge over much of the other spring competition and although Doctor Who has begun in fine style, both Supernatural and Fringe are nearing the end of the road.
Swords, wolves, magic, big horses, beards, fighting, buxom wenches, a dwarf and a barren snowscape as a backdrop. What's not to like. It's pretty grown-up though if you're thinking the kids might like it…
Busy day yesterday - sent away the pre-final pages and cover proof designs for The Language of Thieves & Vagabonds and Black Dye, White Noise. I thought I was much further away from finishing them than this but hard copy proofs will put me well ahead of the game...
During the up and downloading of proof files, I happened to come across a decent online store facility that does what an online store is supposed to do, so I guess an amount of hours over the next few weeks will be dedicated to branding it properly and setting up 'stuff'. With so much at your disposal on the web these days, it's no wonder we all have multitudes of pages that do very little in the big scheme of things.
As part of my abandoning of facebook, I've spent the last week hiding all comments that come up on my friend-feed to see if I've really missed anything - and I haven't. Which got me to thinking, a much better (totally selfish) way to use facebook would be to simply switch everybody off so that when I go on there, I can see if I have any messages and leave without getting involved in what's going on in the 'street'.
I'm still not entirely sure why I'm so reticent to dump the bitch.
File under pending!
AN OLD MASTER, A NEW MASTER, MASTER BLASTER AND MASTER MIND
Not too far from where I live - maybe 20 miles or so - the big awesome deal that is the "hugely anticipated" Turner Centre opened last week in Margate, so this past Friday, Eleanor and me drove out there to check it out.
This picture is of the staircase that leads to the first floor and is totally cool. When I get a house with some stairs that aren't made of a broken windmill that fell over down the road, I might construct something similar.
As somebody who is appreciative of art in all its forms, I am totally qualified to say that the Turner Centre is disappointing in the extreme. That's a polite way of saying it was shit. Considering the amount of money they've pumped into it and the PR behind it, it's a disgusting and shocking waste of an opportunity. I spent longer and was genuinely more interested in the art exhibition at Rhiannon's school last Christmas - and there was more on display.
I'll go on record here and say that unless they pull something very special out of the hat in the next 12 months, this time next year it will be little more than a venue with a brilliant staircase for local bands to play in.
…and so to Doctor Who. As I said before, I didn't much like the first season with Matt, but I didn't much like the first season with DT either. Nobody was more fired up at the end of yesterday's Impossible Astronaut than me though. Killer TV in the extreme. Faith restored, I have turned into a small child when it comes to Saturday evenings for the next few weeks.
And I don't care.
For uber geeks - here's some bonus stuffage that's pretty cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdClwdQvKXo&feature;=player_embedded
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFEk8Nx-1Tc&feature;=player_embedded
Couldn't actually find anything happening today to go under the headings of Master Blaster and Master Mind but it would have been wasteful to let a good blog title go to waste. Suck it up - sometimes things can be disappointing.
Currently drinking: Cloudy lemonade. Cloudy lemonade is cool.
ROLL UP, ROLL UP.
Was talking to a friend I haven't seen for ages earlier this week who is a Doctor Who fan and we got to talking about some other shows. He mentioned Carnivale to me to which I replied it was one of those shows I had always meant to watch but had never gotten around to.
He said: "Dude - you have to watch it. It's the sort of show that you should have written!" That's the second time in my life somebody has said that to me about it. What else was there to do but get in the car and go track it down. I haven't started watching it yet because if it's everything I think it will be, I'll be hooked and I have way to much to do this weekend. Apparently they canned the show after just two seasons of the planned six, so I guess there'll be lots of unanswered questions come the end of the run. Still - I'm up for the journey. Screw the destination. Lost got to the end and that was disappointing. Maybe some things are better left mid-season after all...
Also picked up volume two of Locke & Key while I was at it. Still not rating Joe Hill as an author despite his heritage but he's a damn fine graphic novelist.
Back at the kitchen table, I'm just finishing off The Ballad of the Goat Faced Boy. Once I'm done with my part of it, I think Mark is going to need a fair old whack of time to finish up his parts, but that's cool. No rush and it looks great. It's kind of shaping up to be like Dr Seuss on bad drugs. I'll start posting some extracts shortly - we have a few pages rolling already.
Next totally exciting project is a 'proper' book called The Black Wood. I've been toying with this one for a while now and my buddy Henrik Gallon has come on board to make it a joint project which is always cooler than working on something by yourself. Right now we're thrashing out the finer points of time-scales and plot lines but it's coming together just fine. I've got an initial sketch of one of the characters from Henrik - I'll see what he thinks about posting it here this weekend. I think the book might be quite some time in the making but that's OK. We're going to be doing this one 'properly'...
At which point, I actually sat down this morning and said to myself "how many projects!" and counted them up. They are legion. Some are very close to completion so that's my first priority while I get the others started off but I've made a promise to myself that I won't start any others until the end of the year now. That's not to say I won't start filling notebooks with dozens of ideas that will never hit the ground but some will - they always do. The rest of 2011 looks something like this:
Tattoo Bible II, Black Dye White Noise, The Language of Thieves & Vagabonds, Tattoo Vixens II, Junk Machine... and then I have changed my mind about the release dates of the rest, but if I can get through that lot by the end of the Summer, I'll be good shape for the Autumn season.
I'm also toying with something a little drastic. Getting old now and my knees are shot away but I'm quite missing ju-jitsu. I've been invited to enter into a competition in July by my club and I'm seriously tempted to go for it despite not having been training for well over a year (might even be getting on for two). I'm also tempted to enquire about getting involved with Lucha Britannia in some form but that's a whole other story that I'll reveal in the next few weeks. Either way, I need to lose about 20 pounds over the next couple of months and start looking ten years younger instead of ten years older.
Far too much danish pastry eating going on whilst writing at the moment.
HERE BE WOLVES (1)
This is very, very cool... not sure about the book though. Maybe I'll pick it up, but probably not unless somebody tells me it treads a new path.
SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY (III)
Books come and go around here - chew 'em up and spit 'em out, but there are some that I actually look forward to. "Look forward to" is probably an understatement though. When I get word that John Connolly has a new book headed for the shelves, I start to get pretty excited. I've must have said this very same thing many times over the years this blog has been going and The Burning Soul is no exception.
Connolly writes the best 'crime fiction' in the world today. Take it from somebody who eats at least two a week - and I use the term 'crime fiction' loosely, for the ongoing saga of Charlie Parker is much more than that. The Burning Soul isn't released until September though... that's a long old wait.
Thrashed out some deadlines this morning for the oncoming Tattoo Bible II. Scary deadlines, but let's get it on all the same! We should have a cover image mocked up over the next couple of weeks for it that will make it a little more of a reality - it's kind of hard to see how it all fits together today with thousands of files littering dozens of folders but I'm looking forward to this one as it's more of an authoring project than an editing one.
Don't quote me on that though until it's over.
More later...
HIT THE ROAD JACK, HARES and HAIR...
Rather an impromptu road trip last night. Got invited to a preview of the Hare Styling Exhibition - part of a charity fund-raise for Great Ormond Street Hospital - a guilt by association kind of invite via Mo Coppoletta. His piece for the event is real good but will probably go for a load more cash than I actually have never mind be willing to give.
There's a crackload of other people involved as well - check out the website here and here for more info. Paul McKenna and Nicky Clark put in an appearance - there may have been others, but if so, they went completely over my head - or under it, depending on your point of view. I'll be loading the pics from the exhibit up somewhere over the weekend. Stay tuned for rather a lot of hares - and rabbits too as some people don't seem to be able to tell the difference. City dwellers I guess.
Spent what was left of the evening culling nonsense from my digital life and bringing it all back home into a manageable place. Not even the biggest media whore on the planet needs as much stuff as I had signed up to. Whatever I've thrown out though has been integrated here by now, so you won't be missing anything. Next piece of waste of time nonsense to go is that personal facebook page. I'm still in two minds about it but I don't want to spend the rest of my life relying on little more than a database with blue rectangles as decoration.
Don't want it. Don't need it. You know where I am. That's why the Gods invented email. Now that I've decided that, I feel like I can get on with writing instead of concerning myself over whether somebody has stuck a post-it to my door. If anybody wants to chat, I'm online all day long and most of the night through ichat (or AIM if you're not Macced up) using my gmail address.
Disappearing to Portsmouth for the weekend for the first of two tattoo conventions down there (this year, not both at the same time) in a moment. Instead of hemorrhaging cash into any arcades I might find (and I have no doubt there will be plenty), I'm thinking on checking the place out to see what the spoken word scene is like down there. Also on the cards is a hook-up with my "other sister" (kind of like the "other mother" in Coraline) who I have never met - long story on my Dad's side! I did try to put her off as she had a baby a couple of days back but she is determined. That must be where those 'trooper genes' come from.
To wrap up, pictured here is my hot lunch date with Hoss who lives across the road. Not sure who that smiley young daughter type thing is though.
This picture reminds me of something else.
Back when I was a kid, across the road from my Grandmothers house was this dog called Ricky. Man, he was old and grizzled. Some kind of sheepdog cross with a bear or something. He was awesome, but hell he was old.
Anyway, take a look at this last picture below. This is just what he looked like. I guess once upon a time, he was sprightly, had a shiny coat of black & white and was king of the world.
Sadly, this is not a dog but a picture is of the back of my head. Eleanor took it on the train last night on the way home.
In two years, I will look just like my new buddy William Michaelian who you can find here. He does cool stuff - follow him!
Tomorrow I will call him up. Maybe he will have some advice for another old dog across the pond.
YOU HAVE BEEN FACEBOOKED...
Facebook is a lousy mistress and I hear the bell ringing! As of tomorrow morning, I shall be killing off this "zodiac lung" page at facebook. It doesn't do what I need it to and these generic blue bars and the way it lets me play with things, well is not how I wanted my "writing profile" to be treated. It simply makes me "another person in a big room" - that's not arrogant, it's just not how I want to be seen in that part of my life. That said, I would still love those of you who have been kind enough to link up with me on the page to continue, so if you're not hooked in already, I've made it more than easy over at my main blog (where this all feeds from). You can subscribe via RSS into Google Reader or Feedly (same thing with bells on), you can follow the blog in the followers box and google will do whatever you've asked it to do for such things and as of today, you can also just drop your email in the "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" box and whenever I post, it will email you the contents.
Comments have also been enabled again on the blog - I did take them off - but have restored it with a caveat that I have to approve comments before they go live. Last time there were some crazy spammers playing a nice game!
Blog is at www.zodiaclung.blogspot.com.
(Personal face page is still alive for the time being, but that might have to go too as I can admin all work related material through the Skin Deep page. File under pending)
Footnote - there's a box on the blog called FRIENDS OF ZODIAC LUNG - which hosts a little graphic hook-up from google for followers. I think it's updating behind the scenes because the last time I looked it was taking it's sweet time to update its ass - if you're thinking of checking in using that, maybe give it a day to settle its head.
SEXY (1)
Have re-enabled comments on the blog here pending facebook obliteration! Damned time sucking piece of crap is no better than a notice board with post-it notes on it that blow away a few seconds after you put them up!
I am liking the new advert for Tattoo Dynamite that we put together yesterday though. Will hook it up to the Jazz store and its amazon page in 'books' just as soon as they go live. Actually, the amazon page is live already but they haven't filtered the stock in yet, but you can still order it.
Just a couple of weeks left now for this years entry into the Alibi crime writing competition. Last years proved very interesting as it actually forced my hand to get product finished, so this year they're going to get Inspector Kang short story number three which is called "Your Own Backyard". That will make an unprecedented two shorts in a month released as "Roll Away The Stone" is also almost done.
Let the games begin!
VINDICATED - THE APP...
I know it wasn't really much of a prediction but I found out yesterday that there will be Cybermen in this next series of Doctor Who. One down. Three to go.
While I was waiting to pick Eleanor up at the train station yesterday, I thought I'd sort out the apps on my iphone. To cut a pointless post short, here's my top five apps:
5. Guitar Tuner - pretty good, does what it says on the tin with minimum of Christmas tree lights, which is a good thing. All I want to do is tune my guitar...
4. TV Guide - for those times when you really can't be bothered walking from the kitchen to find out.
3. Image Comics - awesome. I've spent more cash on their comics because of this app than I have with any other publisher which means it works. It's also slick and puts the others to shame. Total shame when you consider who 'the others' are.
2. Maps. A little dull I'm afraid but it's gotten me out of a hole more than a few times! Also good for seeing how long it would take you to walk from home to Peru when you're waiting for something.
1. In at number one with a bullet is the Trainline. Totally essential for anybody who uses trains a lot and faster than their site too. Drilling in, they have this neat little thing called "next train home" that finds out where you are and delivers times in seconds. Brilliant.
For what it's worth, there are also some shitty apps that shouldn't be - such as dropbox which we use daily at work. You can't upload docs - just photos and video. While this is probably more like a clash between dropbox and iphone... I don't care. It doesn't do what I need it to.
Game over.
WE"RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT...
It's getting harder and harder to find time to blog at the moment but here we are again all the same. I finished putting together The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds late last night, so at the end of the week when I'm done with the covers (hardback and paperback), it's off for a first draft proof which means I'm actually ahead of schedule for an August release. That should give me a good two to three months to put together the spoken word part of the package - The Company of Liars - and then I'll take stock of it again a bit closer to the time.
Being ahead of schedule on that means I can concentrate a little bit harder on The Ballad Of The Goat Faced Boy and finish the second Inspector Kang short story Roll Away The Stone. To plan any more than that this month when I have a workload from hell to complete would be foolish, but I've planned it anyway... you know how these things go.
The most exciting news I've had for a long time though is that after months of planning in my head (though it may even extend to years in the research department), I've finally found a great tattoo artist to ink my half sleeve (bottom half - wrist to elbow) at Tattoo Jam this year. His name is Henrik Gallon and his work is incredible - you may have to enlist the help of google to translate it, but there's no real need to. I think his work speaks for itself. Even though I know the basics of the piece, I've handed over total artistic control on it and I'm really looking forward to getting it done.
This week, he sent me over this extremely cool picture as a present. Forgive my not so good photography, I think I need to get the big Canon out - I don't think I've taken one good picture on the iphone since I've had it. Anyway, that's going up on the wall with the cool stuff I've collected from days gone by from Alice Cooper and co.
That woodcut style of his just knocks me out every time I see it. If I had any time between now and August, I swear I'd fly the hell out to Stockholm and get the damn thing started as soon as possible. Anyway. I have to wait and so will you. I'm not even sure that I'll actually post it here for a while either. It's not often I get something that's just mine these days.
Talking of cool people and cool stuff - the equally awesome, but in a totally different way, Terry Bradley shipped me over a couple of fine, fine limited edition prints that I am totally smitten with. For a start they're so fucking big and pristine, I'm going to have to get them professionally framed, so at the moment they remain in their travelling tube for safe keeping until I can get into Canterbury and visit a serious picture framer.
It's not often I really fall for anything that I work with on a grand scale - and I do try to be as professional as possible at all times - but these two have really knocked me out. The fact that they came in quick succession of each other is a nice coincidence. I should point out here that these are not the only two gifts I have ever received, but they are the only two that I am going to keep. All others I have given away to either the guys that work on the mags with me or readers who have gotten the point of what was going on. You have to keep that machine moving properly otherwise it will just fall apart. (Life lesson No. 364).
Nearly there now - I'm making the most of actually some blog time!
I came across some pictures of The Silence today (shown here). As far as I can make out, the Doctor Who crew gave them to the Daily Express - which is an odd thing to do as they were pretty well under wraps until that point. I haven't seen any leaked pics anywhere but maybe it's all part of the controlled build up to the launch.
The fact that there's so much emphasis on The Silence this early makes me start to doubt my initial predictions for the show - which, for those who got left behind with my crazy ideas are as follows:
1. The big story arc this series has to be Omega 2. River Song is the returning Valeyard 3. River Song is also Omega's wife 4. Amy is a Tardis of some description 5. There will be Cybermen this series 6. and Daleks 7. And a Yeti
er.. that will do for now. I've gone all old school...
Also unleashed this week was the Torchwood trailer for this summer's Miracle Day series. It has to be said, the trailer sucks (and the posters were even worse), but that's what you get for inviting in American co-funding for a British show. Then Starz went and blocked anybody watching it, quite likely on the grounds that the thousands of UK fans that watched it on facebook, let them know what they really thought of it.
I'll still be there though. Children of Earth slayed! If you've never seen it or worse still, have no idea at all what I'm talking about, here's a treat:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf
Phew!
Currently reading: Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill and The Snowman by Jo Nesbo (that one on an audiobook) Currently listening to: The Parlor Mob: And You Were A Crow Currently considering: shutting down Mac and watching an old episode of Starsky and Hutch But will probably: Read
GALLOWS POLE
Dare I say it, things are moving along pretty well here. Tattoo Dynamite is off the desk - I hope it's as good as I think it is. There's a lot of competition out there at the moment, but this is a newsagents bookazine affair rather than a "book book", so distribution will be totally different.
Meanwhile, back in the sunny office upstairs, have begun making some solid inroads into my spoken word project. At the moment, it's going under the title of The Company of Liars and will kind of be a companion piece to The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds - but without any repetition of material (for that would be a bad thing). Headed towards mid-August with both of those but there's a fair old whack of work to get through.
Having mastered the technicalities of home recording, getting it to sound good and taking it as close to pro-studio production as possible, I need to figure out which is better - podcasting kit or GarageBand. If the plan doesn't fall apart and I haven't miscalculated how much material you can get on a CD, it should tip in at around 30 tracks and I'll make maybe four to five freely available as samplers to get it rolling.
Not even looked at the download options for this instead of knocking up hundreds of discs but the bigger plan is to start getting out to perform at some regional shows along the south coast here. My (well educated) guess is that it's probably tough to sell people the idea of paying for download material once they have left the venue and the odds of them picking up a spur of the moment CD are reasonably high - assuming they were going to buy anything in the first place.
Anyway, I made a couple of prototype tracks available online earlier this week to get some initial feedback on the concept itself and was met with much positiveness from trusted sources who I know would say it was shitty if it was. This is known globally as a "good start".
It's back to Ballad of the Goat Faced Boy later this week - which will probably surprise Mark a little. He probably thinks I'm dead at the moment...
Footnote: As I write this, there's some biblical scholar on the radio talking about Nephilim - using them as an analogy for challenges in life - biblical scholars should not misquote shit and know their bloody history else they will look very stupid.
UNPLUG THE JUKEBOX...
Last night (Friday, depending where you're pulling the Zodiac feed from), I was invited to a secret gig.
My buddy Woody was celebrating the opening of his new studio in High Wycombe - Woody's Tattoo Studio funnily enough - and happened to have in his back pocket, something rather special (well it was for those of us who were there) in the shape of a miniscule audience of around 40-50 people to watch Adam Ant play a completely off the radar gig.
Surreal would be a good descriptive for it, but it was, to coin a well worn phrase, fucking stellar. I don't get excited about an awful lot of music events these days, but this was something totally unique and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. This officially becomes the furthest I have ever driven to see anybody play live without getting on a plane, clocking in at a glorious 242 miles.
I'll crack open the full skinny on the event tomorrow, load the rest of the pictures up and just to prove that I love you all more than life itself, I filmed the entire show on my phone which I'll load up to my YouTube channel shortly afterwards as well.
For those considering scorn, doubt or anything similarly negative about the return of the Ant, it would be the wrongest you have ever been in your life. This is the real deal.
So inspired was I, that this afternoon I went out and bought some new strings for my Ovation, so now we're all in trouble.
