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Showing posts from January, 2006

Achtung Baby

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New look, whoopy chook. Oh, and if you want to read the archives then don't waste your time. I'll be deleting them in bulk just as soon as I'm able - pretty much all of it is crap anyway, rantings from when my brain did it's short-circuit. Anyway, down to the nitty and indeed also gritty. I'm quite proud of the Andru/Esposito book. I've been told it's a bloody good book, reflective of the amount of time I spent on it - nearly three years. I spent a good 18 months working solidly on it, and the last 9 months of those I worked on it full-time, every day, 7 days a week. However if there's one flaw with it (and I'm sure there's several) then it'd be that there's not a lot of actual writing from my side of things. I transcribed tapes, reconstructed conversations and, in a few places, invented dialogue without changing the course of events, or the feel. Sometimes my dialogue worked better than Mike's and Mike agreed with me. After that amo

Don't Call Him Goth - Clifford Meth's Latest

Nah, that ain't the title. Shame though. This arrived in the email today - watch this space because I'm about to do an interview with Clifford Meth himself. We've crossed swords in the past (mainly over Barry Windsor-Smith - one thing we can agree on is that BWS is a very odd fellow indeed) but Clifford has nothing but my respect - I'd walk over hot coals coated in broken glass for this guy. And I'd not do that for many. Go and buy the book - I know I'm about to. -------------------------------------------------------- The book is called METHo.d. It was originally titled Mean Little Stories, but comics legend JIM STERANKO, who designed the cover (which is sensational) rather insisted on the new title and it's hard to say no to Jim. Especially when he's doing your cover. METHo.d. is illustrated fiction in the Byron Preiss WEIRD HEROES tradition. There's art by Steve Lieber, Al Milgrom, Jordan Raskin, Michael Netzer, Paty Cockrum, and Wm. Messner-Loeb

Writers Stonk

Some of this will only make sense if you've read the comments to my previous post. I did attempt to reply there, but I soon realised that it'd take up too much time and space, so I felt here was just as good. Well I'm cured of my writers block for now. I went back and forth with a few people who's opinions I value above others, Chadwick made some very good suggestions - as he always does - and Norm Breyfogle hit the button right on the head. The problem was that I'd spent too much time trying to fit the words into a format that it'd never suit. I had so many footnotes that the book was in danger of being titled; "Gentleman Jim Mooney: A Life In Footnotes" That'd not sell many copies at all. Norm took a swing at it, we went back and forth until he suggested that I remove all the footnotes and merge them into the text. The results? Twenty five pages of pure text in six hours. I've not had a burst of writing like that since I wrote a 20 page U2 a

The Second Album

I've always been interested in hearing the second album by anyone. The general consensus is that the debut album by anyone is going to be the killer - it's generally the best material culled from the writing/touring stage and it's just the best of everything. The second album, the follow-up, generally consists of what didn't make the grade for the debut. Examples of this include Boston's Second Coming (half an album really) and U2's October. Despite having some solid material in the form of Gloria, Tomorrow and the title track, October is nowhere near as good as Boy. On the flip-side are albums like Led Zeppelin II and Queen II - both far superior to their respective debuts. So what's the point of this? I'm now experiencing the former problem. I'm currently writing my second book, a biography of Jim Mooney, and I've stopped dead. I'm thinking my biggest problem is that I've started this book in the same style that I did for the An

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