Another short story sale to Nature.  Howard Loves Polly will appear within a month or two, I should reckon.

David Longhorn has posted a nice review of my just-released short story collection Get It Down and Other Weird Stories on the Supernatural Tales blog.

This is, I think, a pretty impressive collection of stories, most of which pack a lot into very few words. Strong stuff, interesting stuff, and above all promising stuff from a writer with the ability to surprise.

Click here for book and ordering details.

This is pretty bloody brilliant. The renowned Atlantis Bookshop on London’s Museum Street will be holding an exhibition of Roy H Stewart’s original artwork from the graphic novel Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste.

The exhibition opens as part of Atlantis’s annual Crowleymass celebrations on Sunday the 1st of December, 2013. 2-5PM. Roy will be there talking about his art and process, and I’ll be there too – chatting, looking shifty, and generally milling about.

There will be over 80 pieces of framed original art on display, along with several grimoire-like sketchbooks which Roy put together while we were working on the book. And everything is for sale. Prices start at £25.

The exhibition will run until the 24th of December.

If you’re planning to attend, the Atlantis Bookshop would appreciate it if you could RSVP at the email address on the flyer. You can also contact them there if you’d like to reserve a particular piece of artwork.

Hope to see you there!

Two new reviews of Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste this week.

The ending really is something quite interesting and special, Hayes and Stewart finding a really involving, and yes, a magical way to end their tale, to end Crowley’s life. But the thing the graphic novel leaves us with, as it should, is that Crowley’s desire to transcend death, and to live in the imagination and the memory of the world, was accomplished. Death took the man, but his legacy lives on.

Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet blog.

The impressionistic style often bleeds over into the real world scenes, kind of like how the world of magic often comes into the everyday life of Crowley. I enjoyed both styles but I particularly enjoyed the “Interlude” chapter which was entirely in the first style and was a nice change of pace and break from the often haunting imagery of the impressionist style. Overall, I really enjoyed this book.

David Ferguson on Irish Comic News

Afternoon.

There’s a bit of a write-up and interview with me about comics and what-not over on downthetubes.net. Grateful thanks to John Freeman.

Further to the info in the article linked above, my malformed short story collection Get It Down and Other Weird Stories will be released at some point in October.

Went to the Roger Waters show last Wednesday, a great gig.

And to the Manic Street Preachers gig last Friday, which was even greaterer.

(Not my video)

Brilliant show.

Writing projects soldier on, some with trench-foot and the odd missing limb. Wheels are still turning. Gears are still spinning efficiently and shedding teeth in equal measure. So much stuff either half-finished or half-outlined that it’s not remotely funny.

A pint. Yes. That’ll make it better.

A long time ago, back when dinosaurs and Jesus were knocking about together and neither of us were quite so decrepit as we are today, Jim Boswell and I worked on a little four-page, grey-scale comic strip called Intergalactic Bank Robbing Teenage Space Aliens On The Run. It was a fun little mad-cap science fiction story, not the heartfelt think-piece you might be imagining from the title. It appeared in issue 12 of FutureQuake and led directly to us doing Project Luna: 1947 together.

Well, it’s getting reprinted soon, which means Jim has been busy changing grey-scale to full colour. It looks really good. See…

It’ll be reprinted in the forthcoming British Showcase Anthology which is being put together by Adam Cheal and published by Markosia on October 1st.

I do feel like a bit of a fraud, I am not British, after all. But Jim is, and he organised it, so I get to sneak into the book like a corpulent, blood-bloated tick hiding in a fold of neck flab.

Since getting laid off from the shipyard in mid May I have done just about bugger all of anything. This must change. So, time to kick into gear and push on with some projects that have been malingering in the edgelands for too long.

While I’ve been dawdling things have been chugging along nicely.

The Crowley book is out in the wild. The signed limited edition sold out in under 24 hours. The regular edition is still readily available.

Project Luna: 1947 is out there in trade paperback. Still a few hardcovers knocking about too.

Get It Down & Other Weird Stories, which collects fourteen of my short stories (ten previously published in magazines like Nature, Supernatural Tales and Innsmouth Magazine, along with four stories seeing the light of day for the first time) will be released towards the end of August.

But it’s time to get a move on with the new stuff.

The as-yet-unnamed WWII/horror graphic novel is ticking along nicely. Chris Askham’s pages are always a treat to see and Bram Meehan’s lettering is consistently top-notch. We’re close to a third of the way through it. Here, have a low-res sneak-peek…

I’ve got a few short stories out there, just need to keep them in circulation until, hopefully, an editor likes the looks of one.

There are a few other comic projects to get off the ground too, along with a couple that got off the ground only to then develop bad knees and rickets before collapsing face first into the dirt. Time to kick them back into life. Or kick them to death and have done with it. Better than having them hanging around in limbo.

Not long now until Thought Bubble in Leeds. Roll on November. I’ll be singing at the Markosia table on both days. Times to be announced.

And it’s off to London the following weekend for what promises to be an exciting event involving my old pal and Crowley artist extraordinaire Roy H Stewart. As Roy said to me recently, “Turns out the occult is a very friendly place.” I’ll post details here once it’s all announced.

Right then. Onwards.

I’ll just put the kettle on first.

AC was know to hold curry parties where he would cook up a pot of his speciality – glacier curry, the recipe perfected during his mountaineering expeditions. It’s reported that during his final days at Netherwood one of his favourite meals to take in his room was a plate of sardines sprinkled with curry powder. That’s why I asked Roy H Stewart to show a tin on the sideboard.

One of his final requests was that his friends gather together to share a curry on the anniversary of his death. On the 1st of December 1948 Lady Frieda Harris, Gerald Yorke and twelve others did just that.

Aleister Crowley: Wandering The Waste

Here’s a little preview of the opening nine pages, to belatedly mark the official launch.

I’m happy to report that the signed bookplate edition from Weiser Antiquarian Books sold out in a little over 24 hours. See the end of this post for details of where you can grab a copy of the standard edition.

Aleister Crowley: Wandering The Waste. 144 pages. You can grab a copy…

Direct from the author, signed and dedicated upon request
Direct from the publisher
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
The Atlantis Bookshop in London (included with each copy is a postcard signed by Martin Hayes)
Sub City on Dublin’s Exchequer Street have signed copies

Available digitally at…

Comixology
Kindle store US – UK
iTunes

Finally, it’s out there.

Diamond Comic Distributors refused to distribute it so getting it onto shelves hasn’t been easy. The book is currently available in physical form from these outlets…

A limited bookplate edition is available from Weiser Antiquarian Books. Limited to 111 copies, bookplates signed by the author Martin Hayes, the artist RH Stewart, and Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski, who kindly provided the foreword. **8th June Update: The Weiser special edition has sold out.**

Also available…

Direct from the publisher
Direct from the author, signed and dedicated upon request
From the US printer via amazon.com
From the UK printer via amazon.co.uk
The Atlantis Bookshop in London (included with each copy is a postcard signed by the author)

Available digitally at…

Comixology
Kindle store US – UK
iTunes

I am told that Project Luna: 1947 is listed in the May issue of Previews.

The Diamond order code is MAY13 0753. If you were to bring that number to your friendly neighbourhood comic retailer she could order you a copy. We should all do that. Yeah! Lets! The 88 page + bonus material pulp science-fiction trade paperback will breach earth orbit on July 1st.

It’s still available for pre-order on amazon.co.uk

There’s an interview with me and Jim Boswell on the Markosia website. Click here to open the pdf.

The Project Luna: 1947 trade paperback won’t be released until July 1st but I hear that the publisher still has a few copies of the very limited LSCC hardcover edition in stock at their fortified storage bunker.

Jim Boswell and I are really happy with how this edition came out – it’s a thing of beauty. Jim’s artwork looks truly superb. The crappy jpeg below doesn’t do it justice.

Usual price is £15 + p&p. But Markosia have just begun a week-long special offer of £13 with free UK p&p.

Full colour. 96 pages including bonus material: sketches, script pages and things of that ilk.

Project Luna: 1947  will almost certainly never be available as a hardcover again.

Gears are slowly creaking into life for the launch of Project Luna: 1947 at LSCC next month.

Matt Soffe kindly produced this thoroughly brilliant poster for us. It’ll be included in the book’s bonus material. Matt blogged about creating the poster here.

A limited edition hardcover will be available at LSCC. Written by me, with art, letters and colours by Jim Boswell. 88 pages plus extras (script-to-art samples, sketches and whatnot). I’ll be there on the Saturday at the Markosia booth should you want a copy defaced with my signature.

A trade paperback release will follow through the usual channels.

Look what the postman just handed me.

A gift, and much appreciated. Peter Cushing by the brilliant Matt Soffe.

It’s based on a publicity still from Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman. Always one of my favourite Hammer films – I taped it on VHS from a Channel 4 late-night showing, probably sometime around 1990. I think I was around 12 or 13 years old. It was a Friday night, I remember that quite clearly because I got up really early on the Saturday morning to watch it. It’s a really great film, written by Nigel Kneale (based on his earlier BBC drama The Creature, also staring Cushing), and features one of Cushing’s finest performances. I wish I had kept a count of how many times I have watched the films that obsess me.

Matt and I have been discussing the possibility of working on a comic together – a joyously monstrous horror book. A love letter, of sorts, to Hammer and Universal monster movies. If schedules allow we might start working on it towards the end of this year/start of next.

In other news: looks like I’ve secured an artist and publisher for a short graphic novel. It’ll probably end up coming in at around 55 pages. Grey-scale I think, maybe some letratone effects. Hopefully out towards the back end of summer 2013.

More info as things solidify.