Happy New Year

No New Years resolutions or looking backs at 2006, I know what was good in '06 and what I want to do in '07 so I'll just try and get on with it.
Hope you all had a good Christmas and all the best for 2007.

Here's to you Clarence

Christmas is almost here, but working in a shop and preparing for Christmas insanely early (and I'll be there tomorrow (Christmas Eve) after we close up putting the Sale in, gah!) makes it sort of fade to the back of my mind.
My favourite moments still happen, the cheese/biscuit/port on Christmas Eve tradition my wife and I started a few years ago. Opening presents early Christmas morning and looking to see if there's a channel showing Laurel and Hardy, or any good b&w film. Crisp cold nights in town/city centres, people wrapped up, twinkling lights and stars and the promise of snow.
Christmases to come will have the added bonus of enjoying it all through our daughter's eyes and that will be the best gift of all, work or not.
And so, as tiny tim observed "God bless us, everyone!' Merry Christmas to everyone who's ever dropped by, I'll be raising a festive glass (got a present that looks suspiciously like a bottle of single malt) to you all!

Good for you sir!

It's the kind of bold, moral and possibly mad move that impresses the hell out of me (it's why I love Bill Watterson), an independant children's author has asked amazon to remove his book from their site as he would rather support indie bookstores. Read a bit more about it here.

What have I been up to?

As Peter points out, I've had an out of character bout of no posting.
Time's been taken up with Olivia, work (retail + Christmas=AAARGH!!!!), getting back into exercising again (great timing I know) and roughing out artwork for a story in the upcoming AccentUk Zombie book.... sneak peaks artwise coming as soon as there's something peakworthy. Been catching up on some reading too, but nothing particularly great as it turned out and I don't want to be negative about other people's work. I do have a proof of Joe Hill's upcoming book to read which I'm hoping will be good. Thanks to the new age of information the big secret that he's Stephen king's son wasn't a secret for long (nice to hear it was as much a surprise for his publisher, although I bet it now makes it's way onto the marketing!)
Better get back to things.

Did you know the last post was no. 400?

Well I had to squeeze it in on the odd spare minutes, but I’ve managed to finish the first pass at a new comic script called ‘Wedding Bells’, and I’m quite happy with it. It’s the first time I’ve tried just plotting something. My usual method is to make it up as I go along and then rewrite, fiddle, procrastinate, scrap, cut, paste and generally worry the thing into submission. Plotting doesn’t feel like proper writing, it’s still making it up as I go along, but without actually trying to write prose. Now I’ve got a full(ish) plot I see the wisdom. There’s the framework of a story that I can easily mess about with and there’s still enough room to add new stuff so I hopefully won’t feel like I’ve stifled off any possible future creativity.
It still sort of bugs me that Burgess made up Clockwork Orange as he went, but then if I start talking about my writing and Burgess I’m onto a bit of loser aren’t I:) And, y’mow, whatever works for you.

oh wow

Hope you've all been following the links on the right, if not you might not have seen Kazu Kibuishi's new incredible elephant illustration on Bolt City and your life will be much sadder for it.

Pens and pencils and bears oh my!

If there's one thing I love it's interviews with comic folk, seriously, I've got loads of TCJ as well as other comic magazines and have reread the interviews many times (including the massive Charles Schulz interview!) TCJ's interviews are amazing, long indepth and insightful, but one thing they do lack (apart from when Dylan Horrocks mentioned it) that I've always found utterly fascinating is 'tool talk', so I'm dead chuffed to see a blog devoted entirely to tool talk. Hurrah!

*** edited to fix links and ease Peter Bangs pain:) ***

One for the ladies

Don't know how true it is the this'll be the first of it's kind, but it is good to hear that DC are launching a new line of graphic novels, called Minx (wonder if they'll be 'minnie'?) aimed specifically at girls. A group of good and interesting creators and some nice ideas means that once again girls comics look better than boys. Don't think this would've been the case in the US as much (mainly romance titles there), but in the UK there was a quite a tradition of good girls comics.... that may be an exaggeration, but there's been enough of them. I've got a whole bunch of Jinty comics with some top stories in them and if it wasn't for the ridiculous price they go for on Ebay I'd be trying to get back issues of Misty (I really should pick up the fan produced Halloween special - esp. as Garen worked on it), a comic I remember borrowing off my cousin way back when.

Bugger

Bloomsbury returned my manuscript today. Disappointing getting a form rejection after the positive response from Orion. Unfair of me really, can't expect publishers to take time out to critique every manuscript they receive.
Few more publishers to try though before I let Simian rest and see if I can interest someone in something new.