Not much in the way of news this week that hasn't already been made public. THE PHANTOM PATROL is OUT NOW!!! Only fifteen years late, but what's that between friends.
My main selling platform these days is eBay, where you can buy all of my books, and those nice folks who own the company have reduced their charges, so I earn a little more for every book they sell. I appreciate that some prefer Amazon, but wherever you order from it's precisely the same process: I receive the order, I package it, I print the label and, yes, it's me who has to trudge down to the post box to post it.
I don't mind that last bit as it's the only exercise I get. I've mentioned previously that I'm trying to lose a bit of weight, but it's going slowly. I've lost a few pounds since July, but not yet reached half a stone. Not helping has been two meals out and three large cakes due to Mel's recent birthday. We still have about an eighth of one and two-thirds of another to get through, so my diet has been officially put on hold for another week.
I encourage you all to buy my books, so I get out of the house. I'll leave it to you, dear readers, to plan how you'll get together and work out a schedule so you're not all ordering at once. I'll just be pleased with the steady trickle of orders.
I had my jabs today (I'm writing on Thursday evening), so I'm hoping for a flu and COVID-free winter. Handy as we're going out to a couple of gigs this month—Rhys Nicholson, a flamboyant, spiky Aussie we first saw on Patriot Brains a few years ago and who is currently appearing on Taskmaster Australia, and Kiri Pritchard-McLean, who has been on most British TV and radio panel shows.
Mel and I have seen a lot of comedians over the years, and started a list of those we hadn't seen who we wanted to see, and Kiri Pritchard-McLean was at the top of the list. We also decided that we'd see any Australian or New Zealander who came over as we'd probably not get the chance again, hence out last comedy gig was Urzila Carlson and the next Rhys Nicholson.
I very nearly finished the Tom Tully piece, but had to put it on hold if I'm to have a hope in hell of getting this Utopian book out. I'm in the middle of writing the last of the shorter pieces, so there are two long essays (The Men Who Built Utopia, and a piece on Norman Firth called The Prince of Pulp Pedlars) and three short ones on artist Reina Bull and two writers, R. C. Finney and E. Burton Childs. I'm close to finishing the latter.
Next week I will get my nose down to the grindstone and turn on the PC where I have a copy of InDesign. I have a lot of illustrations already cleaned up, but I'll still have a lot of cleaning up of images to do. I'm avoiding saying "touching up" because Utopian published a great many "art studies". But that's only part of the story, which stretches from bicycling around Sunderland selling religious tracts to studying paranormal activity in Wiltshire.
I'm trying to stock up some Bear Alley books for the Comic Swap Mart on Saturday week—12th October—at the Baptist Church in Colchester. I should now be able to bring along some additional titles as my books have been offered a lift to and from the venue. Notice I say my books... I'm still going to be travelling in by bus!
This isn't as daft as it sounds: I'm still having problems with my shoulder and lugging a weighted-down shopping trolley on and off of buses isn't the ideal way to recover. I've another appointment with a physio next week, so we shall see what further moves they'll make now that we've discovered that the exercises haven't made much difference (and, yes, I did keep them up for the full month!).
More news next week...
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