Bear Alley: Comic Clippings

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Comic Clippings - 10 December

This week's annuals' sales chart: Doctor Who Annual (29,838) is in the top 10 seller's list for a second week but still a long way behind the Christmas best-seller, The Sound of Laughter by Peter Kay (76,952). Heading up the charts are The Beano Annual (14, up from 18, with sales of 22,359), Bratz Annual (15,405, giving it a boost from 47 to 19) and Match Annual (14,938, helping it jump from 31 to 23).

'We never lose our annual obsession' by Catherine Jones from the Western Mail (7 December) talks about the recent rash of Best of books. From the same issue, 'Instructions for making your own Tardis a must-have gift in Wales this Christmas' by Hannah Jones. The reviewer for The Scotsman (3 December) has a theory as to why it's selling so well: "Everyone is buying two copies. One of them is given to the children, who promptly scribble on it with felt-tip pens and crayons. The other is shrink-wrapped in cellophane and kept in a dry environment in order to be sold on eBay to a fanatical collector in 20 years."

(* The Look and Learn preview giveaway came out with the Guardian yesterday and will hopefully give the relaunch a boost. I was a little disappointed by the newspaper format, which is considerably smaller than the relaunched magazine will be, and the quality of the paper isn't as good... but when you're printing over half a million copies to hand out for free some sacrifices have to be made. The preview raises awareness of the magazine and should net us a few subscriptions.

(We took another leap towards completing our podcast, 'Princess Marigold and the Magic Spell', the other day; all five episodes are now complete with a few minor tweaks required before we set it loose on the world. It's aimed at 5-7-year-olds, so don't expect a labyrinthine plot and complex characterisation... but everyone who has heard it so far thought it was fun and that includes some young kids who have been our guinea-pigs... er... I mean, our focus group. With Christmas only two weeks away it looks like it will now debut in early 2007.

(If it's a success, I hope we get the opportunity to do some more.... I'm half-way through the script for 'Island of Secrets' which is a kind of old-fashioned adventure story that you don't get nowadays in which a family crash-land an aeroplane on a deserted island that turns out not to be as deserted as they first think. But don't hold your breath... if we get the go-ahead to do it, it will be months before we're finished because we're doing this on a shoe-string budget and everyone involved has to earn a living. Oh, for that lottery win... )