Comic Cuts — 19 July 2024

The first orders for HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES have been processed and should be landing with people who pre-ordered any day now. I'm still accepting orders at the pre-order price of £19.29 in the UK (a bit more abroad because of higher postage charges).

Copies of the book are also heading here, so I will be able to post links to eBay and Amazon in the next few days.

I do have some big news, but there's paperwork to deal with before I can announce anything. But I think you'll like it.

While I've been waiting on news of the next project, I began a "between projects" project. Usually it's an essay for a future FORGOTTEN AUTHORS essay—and I'll have to get some more together now that volume five is out. I only have one completed and a second about half done and usually there are 12 or so essays in each volume. There are some essays I'd love to write, but they'll take time, which is why I can afford to write them one at a time between other projects until I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is usually when I've about eight in hand.

So that's a project that quite a way off. At the moment I'm concentrating on a history of Scion Ltd., an old paperback publisher who pumped out an astonishing number of gangster, science fiction, western and romance novels, kept a guy locked up until he completed his books, had beautiful "good girl art" covers by the likes of Philip Mendoza, Roger Davis and John Richards, published comics by Ron Embleton, Ron Turner and Joe Colquhoun, and collapsed when the company faced prosecution over the publication of an alleged obscene novel. Along the way they published sexy blonde Dail Ambler, diamond hunter Vic Norwood, ex-con Donald Cresswell and a quality science fiction line by E.C. Tubb and 'Blackpool Wonder' John Russell Fearn, that was so good that all bar three books are still in print.

I've set myself a deadline of having the history of Scion finished by next Tuesday. Why? Because we're planning to take a trip down to the beach on Wednesday and I'm going to treat that as my reward for finishing the first draft. Will I make it? You'll have to wait until next week to find out.

There's nothing like getting a little bit of jeopardy into these columns to liven things up! While I enjoy researching books and comics and putting together the results as books, my life is quite boring, as it mostly involves sitting in front of a computer, digging around in old folders for correspondence, trawling the internet for information, or writing little blog posts about what I've been up to over the past week.

I do take breaks: went for a walk down to the Post Office this morning and, as it was a beautiful sunny day,  decided to keep going and walk down to the river. There I bumped into someone I used to work with at Aceville and had a long chat about the old days; I also bumped into a couple of dog-walking acquaintances, one of whom had a new puppy that needed fussing (an opportunity I wasn't going to turn down). The whole journey was topped off with a pleasant walk back through the park.

And there's always the garden. The new grass is growing and I'm cutting back some trees and the tangle of rogue plants and ivy that was blocking the view out of our front window. I can almost see where the original garden was supposed to end and the lawn begin, but it'll take a few more days to see whether I can clear it enough to put down some more grass seed. Fingers crossed.

I hope to have an announcement about what's next for Bear Alley Books in seven days time.