I'm starting to hear from people who have received their copies of the MYTEK THE MIGHTY volumes and I'm pleased to say that I haven't heard a bad word said against them. Lots of positive reviews, which fills me with joy because it means that putting the time and effort into making the books as good as I could was all worth the effort.
I'll be honest, the best bits of the book-making process for me are re-reading the strips after a long break and writing the introductions; the bit in the middle (scanning, cleaning, and occasionally re-lettering the artwork) can get a bit boring a project as big as MYTEK. Designing the book can also be stressful as I'm not trained, using old software and have to do everything from scanning images to writing captions.
Fifteen years or so ago when I dreamed up this daft idea of publishing my own books, the design was almost a hill too far to climb. If I could have passed that on to anyone else I would have, but the simple fact is that I couldn't get it to work; I'd still be sorting out scans, writing captions and all the rest of it. At least doing it myself means I'm only scanning and cleaning up the images I'm using, which saves a considerable amount of time.
And time is quite important. The less time I spend on each book, the more books I can get out. The target for Bear Alley Books was 100 books, mostly written by me but with some licensed books thrown into the mix. Well, I've published over 40 books now, so I'm well on my way. I'm not earning a fortune, hence the occasional disappearance while I work elsewhere to earn a bit of money to top up the bank account, but I enjoy what I do, and that counts for a lot.
At the moment, orders are taking somewhere around 10-12 days between processing and delivery. I can't always let everyone know when books are on their way because Paypal does not supply me with a contact email address and going through their messaging system with individual tracking numbers is too time consuming. I do, however, try to supply tracking information to anyone outside the UK. (But please forgive me if I don't. It's not always convenient to do it immediately, and sometimes I forget.)
Progress on the AIR ACE COMPANION is good. I'm working my way through the main introduction at the moment with only maybe another six or eight pages to go. All the biographical sketches are now finished and that just leaves the index and the creators' index to complete. No idea how long that will take, but most of the tricky pages are done.
I've also decided on my favourite issue from the whole run. It's 'Fighter, Fighter!' (Air Ace 39, February 1961) with some frankly astonishing artwork by Ian Kennedy. I was a huge fan of this story as it was one I had in my collection. When I was editing books for Carlton, they asked for an Air Ace volume and I made sure this one was included, so it's a story that you should be able to find and read. It was reprinted as Battle 798. You should find this story if you get a chance—your eyes will thank you and fill your brain with dopamine.
That sounds like a damn fine idea... I think I'm going to take another look!
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