Bear Alley: Comic Cuts — 22 November 2024

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, November 22, 2024

Comic Cuts — 22 November 2024

The big news is that I will be attending the Paperback & Pulp Book Fair and I will have copies of DREAMING OF UTOPIA with me. I will only have a dozen or so copies, and only a handful of other books (BEYOND THE VOID, TRIALS OF HANK JANSON) on me because I'm travelling up by bus and train and the trolley proved problematical last time.

Lugging books around aside, I'm looking forward to the Fair. If you've not been, its been held the past couple of years at the Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury, Coram Street, London WC1N 1HT. The nearest tube station is Russell Square, although I usually use the central line to Holborn and walk up Southampton Row, as I'm not sure how much time I'd save changing onto the Piccadilly Line and waiting for a second train. [[UPDATE: Um... I might be heading to Russell Square... I've just checked the weather and it looks like Holborn could involve a long walk in the rain!]]

I think next time I'll explore the possibility of getting a return to Stratford and jumping on the underground there. Stratford is Zone 2, so the underground won't cost any more and I might be able to get a cheaper fare than if I travel all the way into Liverpool Street. I swear there was some weird dynamic pricing thing going on when I explored the idea this morning and the cheapest price kept changing. Or I might have accidentally logged into two different sites. To be honest, I don't want to discover that I could have saved some money, as I've already bought the ticket!

I've had a fairly relaxing week working on the next batch of Bear Alley releases. They're slowly coming together, with artwork all cleaned, resized and now sitting in InDesign waiting for the addition of headers, page numbers and introductions. I'm working on the latter. First one is done; the second volume has some space, so I'm planning two longer essays on author and artist which I'm in the process of writing.

I'm also looking at the next index and doing an expansion of an earlier index (not one that has previously appeared from Bear Alley and now out of print). That should keep me busy for the foreseeable future.