The waiting is almost over. After a couple of weeks delay, I'm told that I should have the necessary paperwork for THE PHANTOM PATROL next week. Hopefully at that point things will be able to motor along swiftly and the book will be out in September. Having lived with the book for fifteen years, I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am that it will—finally!—see the light of day.
In the meantime, I have been keeping myself busy with a couple of things. I mentioned last week that I was writing a history of Utopian Publications, who published science fiction and spicy magazines at various points in their short existence. The owner, Benson Herbert, had an interesting career outside of the firm, a physics teacher before and later the founder of the Paraphysical Laboratory, where he investigated telekinesis, telepathy and various other paranormal phenomena.
A story of a second publisher, Lloyd Cole, is also woven through as he was heavily involved with Herbert during the war and immediate post-war years, 'till he ended up in jail.
It's quite a story. I finished the main essay on Monday, although I've still got to carefully go through the whole thing—all 16,000 words—and work up a couple of additional pieces before I start putting it together. I spent Tuesday scanning some images, although I need quite a few more as I have only a limited number of those wartime publications. Not sure what I can do about that. I've said many times that I have dozens of stories to tell, if only I had the cover scans. I'd rather write these things up with a heavily-illustrated book in mind rather than doing it for Substack or as an e-book. You need the images to really understand what was going on.
I haven't forgotten the Scion book. I'm still tinkering with the text, and I have a lot of scans already, but a lot of thhe copies I own are in very poor condition and I want them to look as good as possible, so I have been doing a lot of Photoshop work whenever I have my old PC open. Unfortunately, that "lot of work" is spread over only a handful of covers as they each require so much work.
That's why I embarked on the Utopian book, which will be shorter and hopefully easier to put together... maybe in time for the next book fair, which I have a feeling is in November. If it isn't, and I've got my dates completely mixed up, it gives me a deadline anyway.
I've also written a short introduction to an upcoming Rebellion reprint which I need to read through and get sent in to the editor.
That leaves Friday free for what I'm hoping is a bit of excitement as I gather the first single off the new Frost* album is due to drop at around 11 o'clock [the video did on YouTube, but audio dropped at midnight on some platforms]. This is the first new music since... well, there was a bonus CD you could get with the Island Live blu-ray, which had two new tracks which came out in 2023 and before that the Day and Age album, which came out in May 2021.
There's a saying in Prog Rock circles "As patient as a Frost* fan". We will wait and wait and our patience will be rewarded, eventually, with a staggered and stuttering countdown already underway to the release of the new album on 18 October. All we've heard to date is a 10-second clip of a track on a mysterious radio that's tied to Spotify at a new website, and a few seconds of a Thread... it's a tricksy way of building up some tension amongst fans, but I'm getting old these days and sometimes it would just be nice if someone said "The single's coming out on Friday," rather than this trail of breadcrumbs that we're all trying to follow.
There's a whole bunch of goodies due out in the next couple of months: David Gilmour has a new album, as do Pure Reason Revolution, Big Big Train – a live album & blu ray (already ordered) – and Lesoir in September alone.
It's going to be a musical later summer!
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