Comic Cuts - 17 September

Another week with little to report. There was the usual round of scanning and odd bits of writing and a couple of pitches for articles (one accepted, one to be decided); only ten boxes emptied (a third of what I managed last week), although I've shifted quite a few books around. Then there was the morning I opened up a box of paperwork and tried to sort that out. Two hours later I'd thrown away some paperwork devoted to house insurance that dated back to 1996 and a couple of other miscellaneous bits; the rest went back where it had come from.

So now I have half a box of paperwork and I still don't really know what to do with it. That's what this new house lacks: drawers. I chucked out a small unit when we moved thinking that it was old, tatty and that we wouldn't have room for it. Now I'm beginning to regret it. It had three drawers where I used to keep all of that kind of things (being a freelancer I have to keep receipts, old household bills and the like for years). Now the paperwork's in a box or three and there's nowhere for it to go.

So much for computers creating the paperless office.

I'm now down to around 40 TV tie-ins to scan and working on box number 12 of books for sale, each of which holds 30+ books. I'm hoping to have over 500 books disposed of by the end of the current bout of scanning. Leaving me a lot of empty but fairly tidy-looking and neatly-stackable boxes. It doesn't take a genius to guess where all that paperwork is going to end up...

And if that doesn't work, I can always make a desk out of the books, like this one (pic. via Boing Boing)

This week's theme, prompted by the celebrations of Battle of Britain day mid-week, has been war novels and novelisations and we'll continue with more next week... but for those of you who have been missing the comic strips we'll also have a yarn called "The General Who Never Was" for your entertainment. As usual, I'll be running the Recent Releases and Upcoming Releases at the end of the week (I usually time these so they turn up on the last Thursday/Friday of the month). So if I've not emptied any more boxes before next week's Comic Cuts you'll know it's because of pulling double duty on Bear Alley.

Our column header today is in memory of E. C. (Ted) Tubb, who died last Friday. Author of over 130 novels, I think this one sums him up nicely: "Science fiction at its best"—unpretentious, action-packed, colourful and imaginative. On the occasions I met him he seemed to me as unpretentious and imaginative as his novels and just as memorable.