Still waiting on proofs of the ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE book as I write this, although it shouldn't be long before I have a copy in my hands.
As mentioned last week, I decided to take a couple of days off and headed into town on Friday for a trawl through the charity shops of Colchester. I came away with a nice little haul of books, some of which may well turn up below. It was, admittedly, a bit of a mixed bag—a couple that fill gaps in author runs, for instance, and even a couple of upgrades, although they weren't bought for that reason... I'd simply forgotten that I already had copies.
Scanning covers doesn't sound like much of a break from what I've been doing for work, but I actually enjoy the process of cleaning up covers. It's nice to have something that, even if it has creases and is sun-bleached, I can scan and drag into Photoshop and have an improved version of ten minutes later. Sometimes it takes a little longer—I've spent a couple of hours on some old 1950s gangster paperbacks trying to make them look acceptable—but there's an end result not too long after I start the process.
Don't forget, most of the projects I start are a commitment to months of work. I began working on ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE back in late October and really got going in early November. And this was meant to be a quick project as I already had a large chunk of the history written. (How that came about I'll explain closer to the book's launch.)
This relatively quick project still took three and a half months to complete (writing and design) and I've still to put any thought into promotion and selling. I will say that it looks good for having copies available for Glasgow on March 21st.
Some projects will take even longer (I'm eyeing the Valiant index as one I want to update soon) as there are more issues and more stories to cover; however, it's not something you can mathematically predict: Valiant's 712 issues won't take eight times as long to cover as Action's 86 issues because there isn't nearly as much interview material available from creators describing their work on Valiant in the way that Action has been covered.
Imagine facing a blank screen or a blank piece of paper knowing that you've five or six months work ahead of you putting down that first word and that first sentence. It can be daunting... and that's why I can happily sit for half an hour cleaning up scratches and creases and sticker damage with tiny strokes of the mouse in Photoshop. It's relaxing, although it can be demanding if there's a lot of damage, but at the end of a relatively short time you've usually got something presentable and usable and you're not going to go back to it every day for the next five months!
You can see some additional scans have been added to the Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss cover galleries recently and I'll add some more shortly.
After that it was back to work on Monday, scanning some strips for a book I raised the idea for with Rebellion last year. I'll not say what it is until we've signed contracts—which will be some way down the line because the closer I can leave it to publication day, the later I have to pay the licence fees. I've already got the expense of a print run of the new book and various other running costs that are associated with doing a show.
Scanning can get a bit tedious, so I've mixed it up with a bit of indexing of some books that aren't currently in the Fictionmags Index. Reference books... I was looking for an interview with someone the other day and realised I have a load of books but tucked away on shelves and in boxes, so wouldn't it be useful if I knew which books I was looking for? Yes, yes is the answer, so I've spent a couple of days listing contents of books, which itself can be pretty boring, but not when the alternative is scanning page after page after page...
Keeping me sane is the new album from Big Big Train, a concept piece called Woodcut, which came out three weeks ago. On the same day, the new Solstice live album arrived with a link through to a video of the concert, which Mel and I watched on the Sunday. Absolutely brilliant. We actually appeared briefly in the previous video release which was recorded in Colchester last April. Again, brilliant. I've always thought that the best bands are at their best live. There's an energy and engagement that you just can't get with a studio album, which may have every bell and whistle in perfect harmony but doesn't have the sheer exuberance of a live performance.
This might be a hang-over from my early listening of rock bands like Deep Purple and UFO, where the live album would bring together their best songs, usually note perfect, backed by the shouts of an ecstatic audience. I loved going to see bands live, usually in London or at festivals (Knebworth, Reading, Donnington) or more locally in Ipswich or Chelmsford (the old Odeon, where the likes of Hawkwind, XTC and Wishbone Ash used to play). Happy days!
(If you bump into me at a show, ask me why I was almost arrested after the Wishbone Ash gig!)
I'll leave you with some random scans from my miscellaneous covers file, not all of them cleaned up, but mostly in good nick. Definitely an odd selection...
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