Comic Cuts - 12 April 2013

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The good news: the proof for the Ranger book is in and looks pretty darn good. There were some minor problems which have now been fixed and copies should start shipping out next week as promised. The pre-publication orders are around the mark I expected – just over, in fact – and I expect copies will continue to sell over the next few months. The Lion has had a little boost, too, and is now nudging the 100-sales mark. It should be the first Bear Alley Book to reach three figures – I'm not exactly cranking out best-sellers here!

Hence having to take on some actual paying work, which I have been concentrating on for the most part this week and which will be taking up most of the next month. After that I'll hopefully get on with the next book (Boys' World) and have that out in June. I'm also hoping to have another strip book out during the summer... and I'm not being secretive here, I genuinely don't know what it will be as I have my eye on two or three different titles.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with Bear Alley at the same time, although there may be a break in transmission for a day or two towards the end of the month as we will be attending some comedy gigs that are part of the Colchester Comedy Festival. We have tickets to see Richard Herring, Mitch Benn (he likes Doctor Who) and Mark Steel and, fingers crossed, might be able to squeeze in a couple of other shows depending on how the finances hold out. For Bear Alley, it means I won't be around to write anything for a number of evenings.

Long-time readers will know that we try to get out to comedy gigs when we can. There are awards for comedy that we vote in, such as the recent Chortle Awards. I've said in the past that I listen to a lot of radio (ranging from the regular 6.30 pm comedy slot to the recent Radio 4 George Orwell season) and to many podcasts. A selection of good podcast listening would include Answer Me This, The Bugle, The Comedian's Comedian, No Pressure to be Funny, Pappy's, anything by Richard Herring, Greg Proops' The Smartest Man in the World, and some radio material that's easiest to get via podcast, including The Infinite Monkey Cage, More or Less, Pop-Up Economics, and a lot more! If you have any suggestions for other shows I should give a try (I'm not into football and most of my film review needs are covered by Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo) let me know.

I mentioned listening to plenty of radio, but I have to admit that 9 out of 10 nominations for the Sony Radio Academy Awards were stuff I don't listen to. It was only in the Best Comedy section that I recognised all five nominees. I can't vote in this one, which might be for the best because two of the shows I voted for at Chortle are in the same category: John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, the superb sketch show on R4 and RuhHuhLesTuhPuh (as all the cool kid's are calling it), a.k.a. Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. That's RuhHuh in the photo.

Today's random scans celebrate the writing career of Basil Copper, who died on Thursday, 4 April 2013, aged 89. To his fans he was a fine writer of horror stories, including tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. His novel From Evil's Pillow was a World Fantasy Award finalist.

Copper also wrote detective fiction, over 50 of his novels featuring private eye Mike Faraday. Copper also wrote many stories featuring August Derleth's character Solar Pons. He was the subject of Steve Jones's British Fantasy Award-winning biography Basil Copper: A Life in Books (2008).

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Cities is coming to an end tomorrow. See above for why I don't have a clue what I'll be doing over the weekend and next week. But I'll try to get something together over the weekend even tho' it's my birthday.