Hey there!

Just surfacing briefly from deep-drilling work on PHASE THREE to tell you about the excellent weekend I just had. Spent a lot of it on TRAINS, but it was definitely worth it!

On Saturday I got up at stupid o’clock to catch my first train of the weekend, going from London’s King’s Cross to LINCOLN where they were having a literary festival – AND I WAS ON THE BILL!

See? Halfway down? That’s my name! On the bill! At a literary festival!

Ahem. ‘Scuse me. 😉

Being a public (as opposed to a school-) event my talk was kind of low-key. [No Rowling-style queues round the block – YET!] But the group of people I spoke to were GREAT — full of questions, opinions, suggestions, and, sometimes (thanks, AIMEE!!) what felt like all three at same time!

From Lincoln I hopped another train back to London before heading out again on yet a /third/, this time to BRISTOL for the INTERNATIONAL COMICS EXPO.

This (above) is from Sunday. The gentleman standing beside me in this pic is BARNABY RICHARDS, who, as well as being a splendid fellow and an old friend of mine, is an absolutely wonderful artist. He’s just recently started a webcomic called RADBOD, and it’s shaping up very, very nicely: do click on the link to check it out, and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list.

The Expo was, unsurprisingly, quite a restrained affair compared to the recent New York shenanigans. But it was great fun. The awesome ROGER LANGRIDGE was there, who is always a pleasure to speak to (though possibly not for him – he looked a bit knackered!) And a particular highlight for me was meeting one half of the creative partnership that is Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, who are responsible for some of the finest comics I’ve read over the last six months (SCARLET TRACES, LEVIATHAN and KINGDOM OF THE WICKED, to name a few). Typically, I chose the moment to make a complete fool of myself: recognizing him from a photo in one of his books (or so I thought) I marched straight up to Mr Edginton at the Dark Horse stall and congratulated him profusely on his thrilling writing. Of course it wasn’t him, it was D’Israeli, the artist. -AARRGH!

Here, by way of an apology to him, is a link to D’Israeli’s blog. And do check out the titles above, they’re all absolutely phenomenal! 😉

--------------------------

Comments? Suggestions? Questions? Me and THE WEBSPHINX would love to hear from you! Drop us a line at the Tim, Defender of the Earth Guestbook for current or Tim stuff, or The Black Tattoo Guestbook for Black Tat stuff. First (or demon-!) names only, please. 😉