I'm pleased to write that it has been a busy and productive week. In fact, the weekend was somewhat manic as some information I was waiting on for the AIR ACE COMPANION arrived from my partner in comics list-making, David Roach. It meant a little bit of tinkering to the main checklist and dealing with the ripples that made in the artist and writer indexes, but by the weekend I had a book that could be sent off for proofing.
Well, almost. Some stupid fool decided to bold up a bunch of titles, which I worked on until past midnight on Sunday and was back on at 6:30 on Monday morning. And that same fool had also decided to make some alterations to the captions throughout the book, which meant going through all 120 pages again. OK, so both will improve the book in the end, but if I ever catch that fool, I'm going to have words.
All I needed now was a cover, which I have to confess came together rather smoothly and without much fuss on Monday, which meant that I was able to order up a proof alongside a bit of a restock of various other titles.
The restock is necessary as the sale of the first three MYTEK THE MIGHTY books has sparked interest in some of the other books I've published. I had already ordered some restocks earlier this month, planning ahead for the Comic Mart that's now only eight days away, but I've had a nice little run of sales, which has meant I'm out of a couple of books and running low on a couple of others. Now all I've got to do is keep my fingers crossed that the first batch arrives in time and that I'm left with enough stock to keep people supplied while I wait for the second batch.
I've mentioned previously that keeping sensible levels of stock is becoming more and more problematic. I've now published 46 books over the past 14 years and 36 are still in print (some licensed books have dropped off the Bear Alley list, and a couple of early titles have been taken out of print—the three volume version of Eagles Over the Western Front, for instance, now replaced by The Complete Eagles Over the Western Front). Trying to keep 36 titles in print without bankrupting myself isn't always easy as there can be some big calls on my bank account on occasions—such as now, where I've paid for a fairly large (for me) first print run of MYTEK volume 3, the associated license fee for that book and additional copies of PHANTOM PATROL, two restock print runs, plus the usual sundries like envelopes, book wraps and sticky labels.
There's also the simple matter of space. I just don't have the space to hold too many boxes of unsold stock. I've said before, the house is starting to bulge around the middle and that makes our landlady nervous.
Thanks to family visits, we've had a couple of days where we've managed to get out of the house, which has been nice, given how busy I've been. We paid a visit to one of the local pubs with my Mum on Tuesday and to a restaurant with Mel's parents on Thursday. We also passed on a couple of pounds of unripened tomatoes for turning into chutney as it doesn't seem likely that they will ripen. We've had a good year for cucumbers — we've had a dozen from the one plant — but we've probably only had maybe two dozen ripened tomatoes; some are sitting on the window sill in the kitchen, still looking a little green around the gills. But the few that ripened turned a rich red and they've tasted fine.
I've picked up a couple of old paperbacks by someone I'd like to write up, although it'll be a relatively short piece as these are the only two books I have by this particular author. But I dipped into one and there are a couple of turns of phrase that seem familiar. I'm sure I've read something by this guy before under a different name. Some further investigation is needed.
That's all for now. I'm exhausted!
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