Status as of Nov 24 14
Back and finally recovered from a brilliant and bonkers Thought Bubble in foggy Leeds. Only took a week to get over it. So good to see old friends and make new ones and successfully avoid old enemies. Signing books at a con is almost as much fun as the vital pit-stops for sustenance in between.
A curious side-effect of spending many years (too fucking many) as a metal fabricator and welder and general steel-botherer is that you wander around new cities paying way too much attention to bridges and overpasses and handrails. You find yourself examining the quality of welds as you pass, silently tutting at the beams and channels in need of a good wire-brushing and fresh coat of rust-resistant paint, admiring the tasty rivet-work. But just look at what you see…
There’s a little reservoir not far from where I live where I sometimes go trout fishing with an old work buddy. A short almost-Victorian-looking steel pier runs for some few yards into the water. It’s a splendid construction, with fine ornate handrail uprights, and I always think of the people who built that pier and who they were, and if they are still alive; I even wonder what the weather was like – did they enjoy doing that work on balmy July days with bees and butterflies flitting past, or did they hate every minute of it, freezing and rattling in their steel-toe boots with the January sleet pelting their weary backs.
Still working on projects which cannot be mentioned. The new graphic novel should be launching at LSCC next March in London. I believe it should be announced either just before of just after Christmas. Really happy with it. Me writing, with the fine duo of Chris Askham on art and Bram Meehan on lettering/design.
I think this is my favourite panel so far…
Made some great contacts at TB. This week I send in a proposal for a six issue series to a rather large company. Fingers crossed and all that.
Also working on a project with someone who is so amazingly talented and whose work I admire so much that I can’t really believe that I’m working with her at all. But enough of that for now. Will post when it’s all kicking into life.
Unrelated: I never knew A Camp did a video for Stronger Than Jesus. It is crazy. Why did no one tell me?
Finally, some nice reviews for my story Echoes, which appeared in Dreams of Shadow and Smoke – Stories for J.S. Le Fanu. The first comes from David Longhorn on the always-worth-reading Supernatural Tales blog.
Very different in tone and subject matter is ‘Echoes’ by Martin Hayes. Here is a Dublin-set story of a haunted house, and that most Gothic of characters, the man with a dark secret. But this is no tale of a murderer unmasked. Hayes’ protagonist is the quintessential monster of modern society, a man who can’t begin to forgive himself, let alone expect forgiveness from others. And yet, thanks to insightful writing, the monster remains a man and is still pitiable.
And this is from Hunter Seitz’s review which appeared in issue 4 of The Green Book, just one sentence because I haven’t got the energy to type out the full couple of paragraphs.
To his credit he ably leads his readers through a sordid alley without spattering them with mud.
Nice. I’ll take that.
