I've had to take a few days off to write an introduction to a book and earn a bit of money. Sales of the Longbow book have slowed to a trickle even with the money-off offer that's running at the moment. If it doesn't generate any sales, I may revert back to full price to take advantage of the little uptick I see from buyers on the run up to Christmas. It would make a nice present... just look at that Don Lawrence artwork at the head of the column!
The piece I'm writing (not quite finished as I write this) is for a gorgeously illustrated book of pulpy SF covers. I'm not sure how much more I can say as I don't know whether everything has been cleared yet. What I can say is that it's right up my street and I've been doing a deep dive into my own past as a reader and collector.
Which leaves me with little in the way of news to talk about. We had a fairly geeky Zoom quiz on Sunday, with rounds on Judge Dredd and SF TV, which I thought we had stormed, but a round on Tolkien proved our downfall. While I was confident that Mel and I had won, when the points were totted up, it proved otherwise -- we were a point shy of top spot, losing to (I'm sure she won't mind being described as) another SF nerd. If only we'd known what a siphonophore was (it wasn't all SF).
I've also spent a little time sorting through some old comics, so there might be one or two things popping up on EBay in the near future. This morning, for instance, I went through all my copies of Starblazer and pulled out a dozen or so duplicates that I've managed to pick up. (Most of my copies were bought as they came out, although a few I had to miss out on when I was short of a penny or two. I think I'm now only about 18 shy of a complete set.) The goodies that will probably be on offer soon will include Savage Sword of Conan, Dracula Lives, Heavy Metal and Penthouse Comix, with more to come as I sort through more boxes.
Next week, I'm back on BAM!, so I'm hopeful that there will be some news on that soon. I'm having to take on most of the writing for this first one, but I'm hopeful that, once people have seen it, I might be able to attract a small team of writers who can help out. I have a few already, but a few more never goes amiss.
Having not moved out of Wivenhoe since March — except that one trip to have my eyes tested back in August — the days and weeks are pretty similar. Our day consists of two walks, work and watching a bit of TV during the week. At weekends we can welcome a small number of people (thankfully it has always been less than six, so the new restrictions have not caused any problems), sometimes in the house, sometimes in the garden. We're still sticking to the rules, as, thankfully, is everyone in our immediate neighbourhood.
I managed to finish off the last few episodes of Snowpiercer, which did not disappoint. We watched the French serial The Last Wave which was a ho-hum piece of hokum, and we've a lot of programmes about Japan that we recorded a few weeks ago that we're finally getting around to watching. For a bit of daft entertainment, we discovered Stu Goldsmith's The Infinite Sofa on Twitch TV (older episodes can be found on YouTube) some months ago and have been regular watchers ever since. It's part chat show, part interactive game show, all daft show, with comedian Goldsmith as host.
The idea, I think, was that he would invite people who donated to join him (via Zoom) to watch and interact with the guests. Over the months, rather than new faces each episode, the chief donors have been a small group of avid fans who make up the pool who receive invitations that week, so the faces on the 'sofa' have become familiar. A little like Romesh Ranganathan's 'Nation' where you also began, over time, to discover the personalities, quirks and talents of the wall of people who appear on the show. The members sat on the infinite sofa are not Romesh's focus group, rather they're a nice bunch who are there to hang out and have a laugh.
It may take a couple of episodes to get into as catchphrases and memes can develop with terrifying speed thanks to a constant stream of chatroom chatter — we missed a couple of episodes and we're still trying to work out some of the weird additions to the common language of sofa dwellers. But it is entertaining, daft and, frankly, it's just what you might need in these trying times.
I'm away now to finish this introduction. I'll let you know what it's about when the book is announced.
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