A quick note on comments, emails etc
Just so people are aware, I’m currently not particularly well, and when I’m not well I have to prioritise stuff according to how much or how little it stresses me. Writing actually relieves my stress, so expect me to be positively logorrhoeic here over the next few weeks, but other forms of internet activity (Twitter, email, comments threads and so on) can very quickly raise my blood pressure, and that even goes for people I like.
So I’m very deliberately limiting myself to a two-hour period of the day, in the morning, where I’m allowing myself to take part in Twitter, Facebook, blog comments (including this blog’s comment threads) and personal emails. I currently owe Richard Flowers, Plok and my uncle all at least two long emails each, which will take up most of the next few days’ internet socialising time, so if I don’t respond to your email, comment or @reply, please, *please* don’t think I’m being rude, or that I’m ignoring you. I’ll try to get around to everything, but it’ll take longer than it otherwise would (and I’m not great at that stuff at the best of times).
Doctor Who Post At Mindless Ones
I’ve written about An Unearthly Child over at the Mindless site, as part of a new series I’m doing for them covering one Who story per year for 1963 through 2012. I’ve written about this story before, of course, and I even re-used a couple of paragraphs from one of those posts here, but this is a much longer discussion than I’ve had before.
In other news, my computer’s now working properly again, so over the next few days expect more Bigger On The Outside, more Doctor Watson, and the long-delayed continuation of How We Know What We Know, as well as *possibly* some more Cerebus. I’ll also be contributing to a Thought-Bubble wrap-up post on the Mindless site this weekend.
Brief Update: Bad News (for me)/Good News (for people who like my blog)
Proper update later, but here’s a very rare personal post. Some of you may have noticed the lack of posting recently. It’s been because I’ve been working very hard for months, putting in a substantial amount of overtime, and I’ve also been feeling unwell for quite some time.
On Tuesday I went to the doctor and was told I have high blood pressure. Not “you’re going to have a heart attack tomorrow” blood pressure, but “you need to work *at most* three days a week for the next month and not do anything stressful, and that way you won’t wake up screaming at 2AM thinking your head will explode” high blood pressure. While normally I’m a workaholic, I’m also a workaholic who wants to live to see forty, so I’m following the doctor’s advice.
Since I find writing about the most relaxing thing there is to do, and since I’ve got an enforced break from work, you can expect a *lot* of blog posts over the next few weeks – once I feel better enough that I can look at a screen for long periods of time, anyway…
Top 100 Lib Dem Blogger?!
How odd. I’ve just discovered, from seeing a screengrab at Caron’s blog, that I made the top 100 Lib Dem blogs this year in the Total Politics awards. This after for the last few years I specifically asked people not to vote for me, and this year didn’t mention it at all.
I don’t like the Total Bollocks awards, and the way they legitimise a very Westminster-oriented view of what is and isn’t political, and the way they’re inevitably biased towards the friends of egregious gossipmonger Iain Dale, which is why I don’t like drawing attention to them, but I’m incredibly flattered that anyone bothered to vote for me at all, especially in a year when I’ve not posted much political stuff (other than all the AV stuff, I suppose). So I just want to say thank you to the people (or person singular? I don’t know how many votes it takes) who voted for me.
However, looking at that list, there are a number of very obvious people missing from it, so *next* year, if you’re thinking of voting for me, could you please vote for Debi Linton (who is, as of today, DOCTOR Debi! – congratulations to one of my very favourite people) or Alex Wilcock, or Jazz Hands or Mat Bowles or Nicholas Whyte or Strange Complex or Andrew Ducker (I *think* Andrew’s a Lib Dem – he’s not mentioned supporting the party in a while and I wouldn’t currently want to assume anything).
There are so many good, intelligent, funny writers in this party – so many of whom I am proud to call friends and who are not just better writers but better people than me – that I’m almost ashamed to have made that list. But also still very, very grateful that someone(s) likes my blogging enough to bother voting for it. I hope over the next year I can improve enough as a writer to justify it.
More From Me At Mindless Ones
I couldn’t contribute as much to the latest LoEG annocoms, but I did an almost line-by-line look at Terner’s song which works out at about the length of a typical piece here, while Amypoodle and Zom did the hard work.
More Monkees tomorrow, and a Doctor Who piece on Saturday.
Yet More From Me At The Mindless
Here I contribute about 3000 words and Amypoodle does about twenty million, all better than mine.
I’m going to have something else interesting up tonight, with some luck.
Edit – link changed
More From Me On Mindless Ones
Here. I contribute about 1000 words (or about the length of one of my normal posts here) to part two of the LoEG annocommentations, mostly adding little bits about Aleister Crowley. Amypoodle, Bobsy and Zom all contribute far more (I was ill when we did this one).
For those wondering where I am, I’ve been working on these, having a rest (I’m off work), and also in the last few days I’ve churned out 90 pages of the book on the Monkees I’m doing (which I’m going to publish first and then serialise on the blog, rather than the other way round like my previous ones).
(That kind of thing always happens to me, incidentally – I work very, very hard on the Sci-Ence! or An Incomprehensible Condition type books, and then it’s like the part of my brain that does that kind of thing goes completely to sleep – it’s been like pulling teeth doing the LoEG annocoms, because I’m having to force that kind of writing, which normally comes naturally. But then I’m absolutely fluent with the totally different style I use for my music criticism. I’ve no idea if the Monkees book is any good or not, but it’s coming very fast right now, at least in first draft).
What Should My Next Book Be?
So I’ve finally got An Incomprehensible Condition out of the way, and I’m going to start work on the next few things. My plan is to structure my book-writing like a Claremont A-B-C type plot – have a main book that I’m doing the bulk of the work on at any one time, a second one that I’m writing bits of, and a third I’m planning, then keep moving each book up a stage as I finish.
(This will probably mean roughly one blog post per week on each of the A and B books for a while, unless either of them is a novel. I’ve decided that with the novels I have ideas for, I’m going to write and publish them *first* and then serialise them after the fact).
So I’m interested in which of the book ideas I’ve got people are most interested in reading – and also if there are any books you’d like to see me write. A few things to bear in mind, though:
My music books outsell the others by a factor of three to one.
I have recently joined the Mindless Ones, so comic and TV related posts should go over there unless they *definitely* don’t suit that site, rather than here (so for example posts on new Doctor Who will go over there, posts on old black and white Hartnell episodes over here. Posts about Grant Morrison or Peter Milligan comics definitely go over there, but I’m not sure yet about e.g. Cerebus – there’s a specific feel to that site, and I know some of my material works there, but am not sure how much yet).
Book ideas I’ve got already:
Beach Boys books vols 2 & 3 – this is necessary after publishing vol 1
Guides to Doctor Who episodes, one Doctor per book, starting with Hartnell
A Sherlock Holmes pastiche that has a twist that, unbelievably, I can’t find in any other Holmes pastiche.
A guide to self-publishing, focusing on non-fiction
A look at all Morrison’s DC superhero work (Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, All-Star Superman, Batman, etc)
A guide to the music of the Monkees
A space-opera, high-concept science fiction novel
Guides to the solo albums of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison
A book on Cerebus
A Hammer-style Gothic horror novel
or something else?
Kindle Incomprehensible Condition Now Up
The Kindle version of my book An Incomprehensible Condition: An Unauthorised Guide To Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, is now up here (US) and here (UK).
A version went up yesterday which was badly-formatted. If for some reason you get this, please re-download the book (it might take some time for my changes to be live on all Amazon’s servers).
As always, reviews are appreciated.
Incidentally, I noticed yesterday that this book is in the exact same categories (comics & graphic novels and literary criticism & theory) as Grant Morrison’s own new book Supergods. Not that I’d suggest that you should all buy multiple copies of mine just to push it ahead of Morrison’s book in the charts for a second, just because it’d be funny, but you should definitely do that.
I’ll be updating the books page and the pages with the original essays on with links later today.
(I originally posted this on the 16th. For some reason the post has disappeared…reposting).
Blog Tour Day Five: Mindless Ones
Interview with Botswana Beast and Illogical Volume up here. We talk about Seven Soldiers, Jeremy Paxmam, self-publishing, blogging, and some other stuff. I come across as a bit of an arrogant prick in this one, I’m afraid.
If you’re wondering about days three and four, I’ve been too ill to complete them, so they’ll be happening retrospectively – my guest posts for Thagomizer and Liberal England will be up as soon as I’ve got them finished.
Comments are disabled on this post so you’ll all comment on the Mindless site.
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