Bear Alley: Comic Cuts - 20 March 2015

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.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Comic Cuts - 20 March 2015

We're in that weird bit of time in the life of a book where it's finished yet not finished. All the pages for the Don Lawrence Scrapbook are done and I'm happy with them. But I need some distance so that I can look at them with a fresh pair of eyes, so I'm taking a few days sabbatical and trying to crash through a project that is both ridiculous and self-indulgent. It's a book with zero prospects of selling in any numbers, but if I can get it done in a matter of days I'll put the darned thing out for posterity and let history judge its worth. More news next week, I hope.

Back, briefly, to Don Lawrence Scrapbook. I'm waiting on some information from the printers regards cover and spine dimensions; once I have them and we're happy with the image I'll post that so you get a sneak preview. The image I'm planning to use is gorgeous and almost wholly unknown to even the most hardcore Lawrence fan. Again, more news next week.

As we're printing this in China, there's a good chance that the book won't be out until June. It takes around 23 days for the ship carrying the books to get from China to the UK and before they begin shipping we have a lot of work still to do... but I'll keep you up to date on what's happening here and on Facebook.

Noises in the head news: I mentioned last week that I recently began suffering from tinnitus. Well, it hasn't gone away and it's still a huge frustration and very depressing to think that the rest of my life might be accompanied by this high-pitched whistle, but I'm finding ways to cope and ways to control the problem better. I'm still hopeful that the broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory pills I'm taking will achieve something.

Random scans. I have started picking up copies of any of the SF Masterworks series I spot. I had quite a few of these fifteen years ago, but had one of my culls of my book collection and sold them all off. I'm regretting the move every day, especially when you consider the stunning quality of the series: it really lives up to its name and is truly representative of the best of science fiction.

We should have another article from Jeremy Briggs over the weekend and on Monday we'll have the first of a couple of posts celebrating the career of Terry Pratchett.