More Strange Creatures

Broke the little toe of my right foot in a silly argument with a chair about a fortnight ago - I turned suddenly and caught it on the leg of the chair - and it turned a rather fetching shade of black so I thougfht I'd better go and get it X-rayed. It was broken all right but the medics could do very little with it except to strap it up.

Then on Tuesday, I was in a queue in a supermarket and the woman in front of me stepped back in herhigh-heels and just clipped it. Agony! So still hobbling around.

The Strange Creatures chapbook that I had mentioned might be going ahead as I've been contacted by a publisher who might be interested. It's early days yet but there is a bit of an interest in the strange creatures that I'm doing - some of which I've never seen anywhere else. So working at that and I have almost ten creatures/entities done which Andy, the illustrator, is drawing. Of course nothing might come of it - I never bank on anything until the contract's in my hand - but it's very interesting actually doing it.

As well as that I have a print of the Italian comic that I did with David Lloyd out in Spain - or so he tells me which should be interesting.

I've also been contacted by a publisher in Bosnia about a comic strip but things are a bit difficult there - epecially with regards to payment. The Bosnian marka isn't exactly legal tender here - and he can only pay me in marka as he is a small outfit - and I'd have to get it changed in some other EEC country into euros which isn't exactly the most stable currency at the moment and by the time that would all be changed the amount wouldn't really be worth it. But we'll see. It's one of the things that people don't think of as being connected to writers.

Was talking to Adrian on Tuesday and we're definitely going to go ahead with a kind of scienc fiction posted on the web. The only thing I have to do now is to write it - I have one partly written and am doing a bit on that whilst I'm working on Strange Creatures but it's slow.

The Wyoming trip looks as if it might be on. I'm flying out from Northern Ireland into Newark where I've a 4 hour stopover before catching  plane to Denver and it'll give me a chance to meet the people from Career who are based there. I've been working for Career for almost ten years now and whilst I know a lot of the people there, I've never met any of them. So I'm very excited about that. Let's hope the trip comes off which I'm sure it will. If you are reading this in Cheyenne, I might see you in September.

And of course congratulations to West Ham Football Club who made it from the Championship back into the Premiership. I watched the match against Blackpool yesterday but I couldn't really watch the last couple of minutes - still all ended well. And Chelsea against Bayern Munich although my wife was disgusted - she doen't like Chelsea at all. Anyway, I'll keep you up to date with Strange Creatures and of course A Haunted Mind and American Vampires should be out soon. I'm sure I'll be back again soon

Strange Creatures

Outside the sun is shining but it's incredibly cold. In fact  I was out earlier this morning and there were a few flakes of snow in the air. Snow - in May! Maybe the Mayans had it right and we're approaching the end of the world.

Taking a little bit of a break from writing - well not really - and doing a bit more community work. I say not really because I'm drafting a new chapbook with an artist friend which we might try out with various publishers.

The subject of the book is Strange Creatures and it arose out of some of the stuff I've been doing for Career on odd creatures. A few people have been in contact with me with suggestions for future creatures on the Career blog site and I thought well why not do a bit of a chapbook on these entities. So when Andy contacted me - he worked on some of the books I'd done for Barrons Publishing in New York, it seemed too good an opportunity to turn down. Who'll publish it I don't know but we're putting a sampler of sorts together and hoping to do it like an old-style chapbook of odd and dark creatures which you probably won't find anywhere else. It's an interesting thing to do and keeps my hand in writing whilst I'm doing other things.

I'm also working with Gina at Career on the edits for A Haunted Mind the new Lovecraft book which will be out soon and after that American Vampires which i know some of you are patiently waiting on. After that I'm not sure and so the chapbook is a good way of keeping busy. Hopefully, it'll see the light of day although with the publishing world the way it is I wouldn't think it'll be any time soon - but you never know.

I've had an invite to address a convention in Cheyenne in Wyoming and I might go to that - at the moment we're sorting some of the practicalities out. So if I do and you happen to be in Wyoming around the 29th September, come up and make yourself known to me. I think I should go if we can get it sorted out as it would give me a chance to connect with my US readers.

If you read Chinese or Russian, I have three or four foreign editions out in those areas too. Maybe they'll give me an invite to go over there as well - one can always live in hope!

Anyway, hail is hitting the window and there's football on television I think so might take a break and go and watch that. I'll keep you all up to date about the possible Wyoming trip if we can get it up and running. And if the chapbook takes off we'll talk about that as well.

Things are moving if very slowly.