This post was brought to you…

… by the film Millenium Actress, and The Ronettes ‘Be My Baby’, which have taken up the background while I’ve been writing tonight. Here’s a couple of sketches done earlier tonight in an attempt to capture my preferred tools (biro – yes, really) using the tablet.

Martian tripod raises its heat-ray over houses

Martian tripod seen from below

There’s a theme emerging, eh?

‘Be my, be my little baby…’

No one wanted it…

… but finally, my foolish account of the comic that never was – Milk & Honey: A Controversy, finally gets an illustration of the cover of the final issue. This, folks, is all that remains of insane genius, J.. Bennett Stott’s frankly demented final issue of Milk & Honey.

THAT cover - The Death of Sugar, by J. Bennet Stott

I really do have too much time on my hands. I’ve got a novel to be writing…

Ah, there you are…

… come on in. If you’ve been here before, you may notice some changes to the old place. Yes, it’s a bit more compact, I’ve knocked a few rooms together, given the place a lick of paint, that sort of thing. What do you think?

All of which is a faux-Stephen King-esque way of saying that I’ve given the blog a bit of a clean-up this evening. Gone are all the old rambling posts. I’m planning to be a bit more focused with my comments in the future. I should really only say something when I have something to say. For everything else, there’s Twatter.

I’ve also taken the axe to the short story section. In the past I’ve had a nasty habit of finishing a story and throwing it up on here without revision or really any consideration of its relative quality. Tonight, I’ve revised the stories, ironed out most of the imperfections (which isn’t to say I promise error-free reading, it’s been a long day!), and cropped most of the ones I’m unhappy with. The remaining stories are, I think, a decent representation of what I do, and a good foundation on which to add in the future.

I’m not done yet – illustrations come next, a couple of each story, I think. I’m also planning on doing something of my own to replace the old lightning image at the top of the page. Then after that, it’s back to the next batch of short stories. Let’s see, what have we in the box? We have ‘The Human Threat’, which I can say little about other than it’s Wellsian; we have ‘Out of Sight of Land’, an adventure story about a stricken yacht in the Gulf of Aden; and then we have the follow-up stories to ‘Final Girls’ – ‘Final Girls UK’, and ‘Ragazze Finali’. May be a while though – I have a novel to finish first.

But first, bed. You can show yourself out, yes?