Sorry to say that there is still no news on THE PHANTOM PATROL other than I have it all ready to go. I'm still waiting on the paperwork, although I'm not in the position I was fifteen years ago: we've agreed a print run and a price and all I need is something to sign and somewhere to send the advance payment.
In the meantime I have been writing about 'spicy' stories in magazines published shortly after the end of the Second World War, and more specifically about the relationship between two publishers, Lloyd Cole and Benson Herbert, and the dozens of interconnected companies they created, often with other people named as directors.
My main focus was to write a piece about a company called Utopian Publications and how and why that morphed into Utopia Press before imploding. However, I've spent most of the week writing the build-up to Utopia's magazine output and only reached them on Wednesday. Mind you, it's an interesting journey, involving dodgy practices, jail time, 'art studies' in saucy magazines, police raids and... Bob Monkhouse.
I've had a fun time trying to piece that lot together; moving various chapters around like the faces of a Rubik's Cube to try and get the story straight. I think I've managed to knock it into shape so that anyone reading it should now be able to follow the various twists and turns. One of the best things about writing this piece has been discovering a lot of new details that I'd never known before. I've written up a number of publishers since the heady days of The Mushroom Jungle, but I'm tackling Utopia and its suburbs for the first time.
I'm pleased to say that HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES is selling steadily and I've just had to order myself a few more copies to keep my stock levels up. When I dreamed up Bear Alley Books, the model was always for print-on-demand publishing, chiefly because I was unemployed and broke; moving house and having to set everything up from scratch again, and spend time putting together some books, didn't help my bank balance much.
But the idea was that POD meant I didn't have to carry much in the way of stock. However, now that a lot of the forty or so books I've published are sold through eBay and Amazon, the turnaround times they demand means I need to have copies to hand to fulfill orders immediately—and each new book adds another £100+ or so of stock that I have to find space for.
Better get back to my smutty magazines... and I need to think about how many copies of the various books I'll need to take to Colchester's very own comic swap meet on 12 October. I won't be able to bring copies of everything, as I did last time, so if there's a specific book you want me to bring, let me know so I can make sure I have a copy/copies in stock.
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