Another interim report

Things are slowly getting back to normal... e-mail is now working properly, signal strength on the wireless router is better now we've moved it downstairs and seems to work OK in Mel's new office (once we pick up a card for her computer). Moved some books around and started to fill up the shelves and finally managed to do a little bit of work.

With no distractions from the outside world, thanks to the shaky wireless connection to the web, I've started scanning some pages of original artwork that I had hoped to do before we moved but completely failed to find the time for. So I've a couple of pages of Ben-Hur decorating this little note that we'll be publishing in full at some point in the future.

Long-time readers might recall that I ran Ben-Hur in full last year and the two pages here are from episode 4. Only two of the 40 pages are missing and I'm thinking that it might be a nice idea to publish the story in full without the lettering, with the original artwork facing the printed, lettered version. What do you think?

Something that amazed me regarding Ben-Hur, the original novel by Lew Wallace, is that it is one of the best-selling books of all time (according to this list) with sales of 50 million copies and, prior to the publication of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, would have been in the Top 10 worldwide best-sellers of all time.

Hopefully I'll have caught up with enough of the unpacking to get Bear Alley back up to speed in the next week or so. I'm also doing some writing for another blog for the Illustration Art Gallery. It's a bit functional at the moment and needs some tarting up, but I posted an updated listing of new artwork for sale yesterday which has some nice illustrations. Illustration Art Gallery is a wing of Book Palace, publishers of Book Palace Books, which also has its own blog... in need of some work but now I'm reconnected I might have a chance to get some information together about some of the books that are upcoming. Might even include some artwork from the upcoming Wulf the Briton book.

I'm off to try and catch up on some e-mail as I've nearly 400 unread mails to try and get through. More news soon.