Comic Cuts - 12 January 2018

After a month where I've had little to show for all the work I have been putting in on the new book, I can say that I'm at last nearly there. I started on the last of the big essays before Christmas, and finally had a completed first draft on Monday. I took a day off of Tuesday to write a related piece which kept me up beyond midnight to complete. Then back to the other piece to start rewriting on Wednesday.

There are a couple of sections that have caused me no end of trouble, trying to untangle various cases of fraud that were perpetuated again and by members of the Heming family, out of which grew quite a writing dynasty. I'll be covering them in volume three, hopefully. Mind you, these plans of mine can often change at the last minute.

I'm still doing a second draft of the lead essay, but it brings volume two of Forgotten Authors to over 64,000 words. I may juggle the contents to add another short piece as I'm thinking of leaving Alfred Barrett (another piece I started before Christmas) for volume three as it will involve some further research. The current line-up for volume two is: Bracebridge Hemyng, Philip Richards, Frank Barrett, Ernest Protheroe (and his son, Cyril), Charles Granville, Louise Heilgers, C. E. Vulliamy, Evelyn Winch, Frederick Foden and David Roberts. Three of the essays run to over 10,000 words and the Hemyng is likely to top 20,000 words by the time I've finished.

That I'll hopefully add to the totalizer next week when I reach the three-fifths mark of my Fifty Forgotten Authors.  If I had any sense I'd start writing very short articles from hereon to get the book finished as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, I don't have any sense, and there are a couple of pieces I desperately want to write that have been bubbling along for years. I also want to attack a couple of old pieces that I can probably add significantly to thanks to the increasing availability of family history websites and old newspaper archives.

I haven't much to add. I could tell you that I fell arse over elbow on Wednesday evening as we walked down the road in the pitch black and rain. One of the roads that will take you down to the quay—on which we're the corner house—was recently resurfaced, but the pavements were for the most part ignored. There's a particular stretch of about forty feet which is crumbling away and full of treacherous gaps. One of which I managed to find.

With nothing supporting my foot, my ankle twisted and I went sprawling onto my hands and knees in a manner that was undignified rather than dangerous. The result was a scratched knee, a scraped hand, a wet, muddy trouser leg and some cussing that I won't repeat here. It was too dark to identify the vicious hole that attacked me.

To celebrate my own loss of dignity, here are some random cover scans.

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