Comic Cuts — 5 July 2024

And the good news is... HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES is almost ready. I've had a second proof and it looks good. Now I need to order up some copies so I have them for publication day, which I've set as Monday 29th July. I've had some delays with delivery, so I'm trying to make sure that the release date can actually be met. That said, if the books come in earlier, I'll send 'em out to anyone who has pre-ordered.

I've set up a page for the book, so you can find some more details here at the HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES order page. I can only sort out my Ebay and Amazon shops once the book is in hand and I will work out the price once I can figure out how much Ebay and Amazon are going to sting me for in fees.

With that one in the can, I have been able to concentrate on another book... which is almost done. I'm just waiting on permission from the copyright holder to launch it, so hopefully there will be some news on that front next week.

In the meantime I have been working on my "between projects" essay. I try to write something for myself between jobs and this time I've chosen to tackle another paperback company, Scion Ltd. I'm turning up all sorts of interesting information that I'll eventually put together into a book in the style of the recent Badger Books' book, BEYOND THE VOID.

It may be a while before it appears as I have my eyes on another project that I want to work on before I tackle another book on paperbacks. Maybe I can work on them in parallel as one is a comic strip reprint and I'll want to have some breaks between cleaning-up artwork.

There's also orders to deal with — I've just had my first order for HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES come through.

All these comic strips and books... and all you want to know about is the garden. Well, gardening fans, I'm pleased / amazed to say that there's now a reasonable grass coverage of far end of the back garden, as you can see from the photos below.

When you look a little closer, it is a little patchy, but I want to let the new grass establish itself before I attack any gaps and put down some more seed.

So while I was waiting for the grass to grow in the back garden, I took the opportunity to attack the front garden, which had the same problems with rampant weeds and ivy, and wildly overhanging trees. In order to do something about the weeds in the grass, I'm mowing every couple of weeks, but I had left a patch that needed to be dug out and reseeded.

I've now done the top (the grass is on quite a slope down from the road) and recovered an area between four and five feet deep and fourteen feet wide, so something like sixty square feet. The grass seed is in and I have been watering it regularly when the rain hasn't been doing the job for me, and some grass shoots are just starting to show through. My next job is to cut back the trees to the right of the picture and see what lies beneath.