From the twilight zone of the sleep deprived...

Still trapped in the writing hole with only action figures and my in-progress painting of She Hulk for company, with the use of various stimulants, all legal unfortunately*, but thought I’d break out to make a few announcements and show people that I’m still alive—no mean feat after surviving an Irish 30th birthday in London which ended up with me skinning up at 8am—see post below for London trip stuff. I have added some new links that need to be ‘bigged up’ in the parlance of our times.

First up is Laura Tooth, who has recently extricated herself from a joint blog, and has set up a much anticipated 100% Tooth-only site, you have to read the archives to find out from whence the name ‘came’.

Found myself reading this great book, which I recommend to anyone. It’s great to feel like one is in a fraternity of writers, linked by our irascibility, bad sleeping schedules and worse habits. The ethergut blab-blogosphere is of course a perfect meeting place for such a dissolute brother and sisterhood. Top screen and comic writer John Rogers' blog is a great starting point, through this I have discovered the excellent Web presence of some of the creators of the stories that consumed by misspent adolescence: Chris Weston, Mark Millar and Rian Hughes

Every comic fan has ‘their period’, for me it was the late 1980s early 1990s ‘British anthology boom’ reading stuff like 2000AD, Blast, Crisis, Revolver, Strip, Deadline, Expresso, Overkill, and Meltdown, in rural Ireland, it was like being invited to some cool London party or other. It’s a joy to see some of the creators of these frantic, amazing stories with great sites. Not least of which is Warren Ellis, whose site is a joy to behold, scratch that, it’s less a site than a glimpse into an amazing electronic brain, a mixture of philosophy, photos, updates on his titles and rants. While looking for advice on writing one could do no worse than aspire to having "ideas" that feel like this:

A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea". And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation. That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.
From my chair.

Read the full post here.

Better get on with it, I just just saw a fox run past my window so it's nearly dawn, the 'milk-float of doom' will soon whirr by marking the beginning another day preceeding a sleepless night of unproductiveness--got to get me some of that tyrannosaur sex radiation.


*I haven’t gone the Philip K. Dick amphetamine route just yet: (advantages: you can bang out a novel in a night, disadvantages: supposed alien consciousnesses beam things into your brain via a pink light. Oh, and being married about five times, don't know if that is an adavantage or disadvantage.)