I was at university in sunny Huddersfield. In the grotty cellar kitchen, which would eventually try and kill one of my housemates and where piles of washing up festered till they grew legs and walked out in disgust; on rickety charity shop chairs and a glass table more sinning than sinned against; by the light of a bare lightbulb.
Murder mystery in a box with the best sort of student fancy dress - cheap and hastily thrown on. Homicide on a 1920s floating Mississippi casino. There were feather boas.
Dave, Roger, Jo, Jon, Kate, Vicky: the theatrical clique who defined two whole years of my life, and - some of them - beyond that. I cooked, to the best of a meagre ability. And as they guessed the murderer, Michael Nyman's Fish Beach on repeat.
One of those moments you witness and tell yourself 'remember this'. Frame them in your mind and remember every detail, so that when you hear this music again it will be like flicking open a photo album. Like a polaroid, but one that reminds me of far more than what is captured by the lens. The state of the cooker, the old CD player, the laughter of my friends, me watching them, tears in my eyes. A happy moment. Remember it, I told myself.
Weird things to find yourself doing #1: writing a press release about something you wrote over the course of about five years.
As I'm sure followers of this blog are aware, since 2005 I've been interviewing artists and writers for the Judge Dredd Megazine. These meaty 5,000 word features go into a lot more detail than your normal comics journalism, attempting to get a better feel for what makes these creators tick.
My employers have now launched the first collection edition of my interviews, which features my three-part piece on Carlos Ezquerra, as well as Ron Smith, Pat Mills and Mick McMahon. These guys are, quite literally, legends - they created and defined much of what makes 2000 AD the fantastic read it is today, and as well as giving genuinely interesting insights into their work they're also very decent chaps too.
This 35,000 word ebook-only edition is something of a steal at just £1.99 and, should it be successful, it may well spawn future collections of my interviews with other comic book luminaries.
The official press release:
Legends of the law: 2000 AD creator interview ebook launched
2000 AD has launched its first ebook collection of interviews with some of the biggest names in the comic book industry.This first collection includes a three-part interview with the co-creator of Judge Dredd, Carlos Ezquerra, as well as pieces on the creator of 2000 AD, Pat Mills, and two of the artists who fundamentally defined the look of Dredd – Mick McMahon and Ron Smith.In a new experiment for 2000 AD, the series is being made available in ebook format only – available through Amazon for just £1.99.These long-form interviews from the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine are a unique insight into the life and work of seminal figures in British comics history, covering everything from their childhoods, to their time with 2000 AD and their work elsewhere. Later volumes will include interviews with more top flight talent from the world of Tharg.“These interviews are one of the highlights of the Judge Dredd Megazine and give unprecedented insights into the creative minds behind 2000 AD and its characters,” said Matt Smith, editor of 2000 AD. “Nowhere else will you find this long-running series of long-form interviews, and these collections will allow fans to get an in depth look at the people who made 2000 AD what it is today.”
Yes, you heard me right. And no, I don't mean I'll be in the audience.
Thanks to my ... ooooooh, seven months of experience in the book marketing industry, I'll be providing undoubtfully canny insights and incredibly witty asides at this weekend's FantasyCon in Brighton.
Here're the details if you're attending and fancy coming along:
Sunday 10:00 – 11:00 am HOW TO MARKET YOUR NOVEL/BOOK (Fitzherbert Room): Ian Whates (NewCon), Mike Molcher (Abaddon/Solaris), Jon Weir (Gollancz) Colleen Anderson (ChiZine), Gary McMahon (mod.)
Slightly loftier company than I'm used to.
And I make no guarantees about the stability of my mental state on a Sunday morning after a Saturday evening spent in the bar.
When I used to watch stuff like this as a child ...
This series was my favourite cartoon bar NONE and this episode shat me up for years. There's just something about the Sandman's voice that puts the Fear into me.
I loved this show so much that before going on holiday with my family I would record the audio of each episode on a tape and then listen to it in the car. Problem was, when I was recording I couldn't resist speaking the characters' lines.
Ever since I came back I thought I’d never leave. You’d always been my definer, the fixed point on the constantly moving map, the only unchanging island in the maelstrom.
Leeds.
I only left the city I loved a few months ago, yet when I (all too briefly) returned recently I inexplicably burst into tears. I was born there but had left barely 18 months later; I never had the chance to know the place.
When I returned in 2002, I found I didn’t know it at all but knew instantly that I’d come home. Everything, although new to me, seemed utterly familiar. I took this to be A Good Sign.
How can you love a city? It’s a place, a thing, a stinking, maddening mass of smog and bricks. Yet all through my changing life, in spite of all the different places I have lived in, what brought me back was the fact that I’d always believed that Leeds was where I was from. Now that I was back it was where I was going to be for the rest of my life, where my kids would grow up. With each passing day I could feel myself bonding with the place, feeling more and more as if it was an intrinsic part of me and I of it. I was never going to leave.
Eight years on and I’ve moved. Far away this time - Oxford could not be more different. The new job was perfect and came at just the right point, not just for my career but because I felt I had begun to fall out of love with the city. It had grown too familiar, had begun to annoy me, depress me. I was refreshed by moving away, despite the sacrifices I had to make to do so. This was the Right Thing To Do.
Going back, I realise now that I had fallen out of love not with the city, but with the way my old job made me feel about it. Because that job concerned every part of that bizarre, jumbled, paradoxical place, every part of it had become saturated with the attendant unhappiness. It had become a cancer that was eating away at my relationship with Leeds, with the city I loved and belonged in more than anywhere in the world.
I love Leeds. It is where I am from. It will always be a part of me and I of it. I just can't be there right now, though I one day hope to return and know it again as if I'd never left.
In the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, the priests and their acolytes greet the sunrise with song.
Filling the space between church and the surrounding rock from which they were cut, there is the constant mumbling recitation of scripture from tiny handmade bibles. Gathered in the artificial courtyard surrounding the 10-metre-high stone church, the hierarchical crowd lean on prayer sticks, wrapped in their thick toga-like gabbis, eyes shut as they sway and sing their prayers. From this burbling baseline a single, nasal voice will burst - the caller names the tune, and a tumult of voices responds in Eucharistic song that breaks like hurried waves, each line rising and falling in a resonating vibration through these hand-hewn canyons before crashing down into the low murmur of chapter and verse. The songs produce a mesmerising effect, stretching out time, echoing in the mind, sanctifying the senses. Holy of holies, the great act of faith - the hollowing out of these hillsides - reinforced by endless devotion.
It is no exaggeration to say that the faithful of Lalibela have greeted the dawn in this way for hundreds of years, so much so that it seems to be as much a part of the chiselled rock as the intricate designs carved into the pillars, arches and windows - none built, all made by hand.
An unrecognised wonder of the world - churches cut not into cliff faces, but straight down into hillsides, forming a subterranean village connected by narrow ravines and tunnels smoothed by thousands of feet. Every feature, every room, every floor carved from the bare rock. Inside the churches are cool, even at noon, and are carpeted by rush mats and rugs, the walls elaborately carved or covered with images of saints, either painted onto cotton and plastered to the surface or propped up in huge frames. In one a man has slipped from closed-eye prayer into sleep, his faint snores rendered loud in the cavernous interior.
From the stunning simplicity of the 'north-western cluster' with its busy rectangular churches to the jumbled, maze-like random architecture of the 'south-eastern cluster' and the cruciform Bet Giyorgis, which stands alone - the rock churches of Lalibela are infused with more than 800 years of faith. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is unique. Often confused with the Copts of Egypt, the Ethiopian blending of pre-Deuteronomic Judaism and early Christian theology with a smattering of Islamic tradition has produced a church at one moment alien but at the same time so very recognisable to western Christianity.
Nowhere is a greater expression of its independence from the mainstream than Lalibela, named after the king whose dreams showed him a new Jerusalem cut out of stone. Hidden high in the mountains and ringed by trenches and courtyards, the sides of which are pock-marked by hermit cells and stone graves, two of them connected by a pitch-black fifty foot tunnel cut straight through the rock. These churches are not crumbling monuments of a forgotten past, resurrected for the amusement of tourists. They are the centre of a living, breathing religious community.
The pillars at the entrance to each church are kissed, touched with the forehead, kissed again, touched with the cheek, kissed again. Blind pilgrims in bright yellow wraps pray in corners, hermits sit on outcrops measure out cotton with which to mend their threadbare jackets as the unaccompanied voices rise and fall in praise, and the heat begins to seep into the passageways.
In Lalibela, the priests sing the songs of ages and the echoing rock sings back.
I do not take proper care of it and it is a bit beaten up. It's not the best camera. It often takes so long to take a photo that it misses the moment. Its battery does not last long enough. The flash is rubbish. And the zoom is dodgy, at best.
But it is my camera. It has been with me around the world. And it has taken some amazing photos.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I'm off on another jaunt, this time to Ethiopia, and will be taking my trusty old, slow, battered, battery-draining camera with me. Because it's been with me everywhere, and hasn't let me down yet.
This is my camera. There are others like it. But this one is mine.
This is something that Jenni Hill, one of the editors at Rebellion's sci-fi/fantasy/horror imprint Solaris, is helping to organise. Genre for Japan is an opportunity for creative types to encourage their readership(s) to give a little love following the earthquake and tsunami earlier this month. If anyone is able to help, whether by offering a product or service to be auctioned (signed print or book, writing advice or manuscript critique etc. etc.) or just to raise awareness and get the bids coming in, then that would be great...
Cheers
Press Release: Time to Donate Prizes!
We’ve all heard the news and seen the horrific pictures coming from Japan in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami – and no doubt we’ve all wondered how to help.
Following the example of Authors for Japan, where bids are now closed, we’d like to introduce Genre for Japan, a chance for the comics, science fiction, fantasy and horror communities to unite and show our generosity to those who need it right now.
We are planning to run auctions for genre-themed prizes and we need YOU to donate. We are looking for really fantastic prizes: examples might include signed first editions, coaching sessions with agents for that perfect submission letter or original artwork!
Some of the prizes already donated include a year's supply of books from Tor, signed artwork from Solaris Books and editing/critiques from professional authors and editors.
The prizes will be auctioned on our website, through JustGiving, in aid of the British Red Cross Tsunami Appeal.
If you have something really special to donate, please drop us a line at genreforjapan@gmail.com including information such as a starting bid amount, a sentence or two about the item, and whether you wish to send the prize to a central collecting point or would be willing to post it to the winning bidder. Photos would also help us to list the item, if relevant. The deadline to receive offers of prizes is 25th March, with the auction set to begin on 28th March.
Genre for Japan is organised by: Amanda Rutter: reviewer and webmistress at Floor to Ceiling Books Jenni Hill: editor for science fiction, fantasy and horror publishers Solaris Books Louise Morgan: author and interviewer for the British Fantasy Society Ro Smith: writer and reviewer; blogger at In Search of the Happiness Max Alasdair Stuart is the editor of Hub magazine.
Naturally, the last place I think to mention my new job is my own blog...
I have now left public service to take up the position of PR Co-ordinator for Rebellion, the computer game developers that also own 2000 AD along with Solaris and Abaddon Books.
This is something of a dream job for me - I've been working as a feature writer for 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine for five years after being a fan for over 20 years. It's also a massive challenge - far beyond anything I tackled in my previous employment - as I will be responsible for PR across three different industries, my job will also cover both event management and marketing, and I'll trying to educate the Americas about our fantastic books and comic books. No mean feat. But by God, I'm looking forward to it.
Computer game developer and book publisher Rebellion has appointed Michael Molcher as its new PR coordinator.
One of the largest independent games development studios in Europe, Rebellion also publishes the legendary British comic book 2000 AD, as well as the critically-acclaimed science-fiction and fantasy book imprints, Solaris and Abaddon Books.Michael's role will be to coordinate the PR across the Rebellion group, supporting the developers and editors to maximise awareness of the firm's new and existing products.He will be working with industry and fan contacts to boost awareness of the firm's fantastic brands, as well as establishing a greater presence in markets in both the UK and abroad.He joins the innovative games developer and publishing house in Oxford after five years as a press officer for the second largest local authority in England, Leeds City Council, following a career as a local journalist in Rochdale and Harrogate.For the past five years, he has also been a feature writer for 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, for which he has interviewed some of the biggest names in British comics such as Carlos Ezquerra, Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons.Jason Kingsley, CO of Rebellion, said:“I'm delighted to have Michael on board at Rebellion, he'll be working closely with our fantastic creative teams to bring our games, books and comics to audiences both at home in the UK or abroad.“Whether on the games front or in the pages of 2000 AD and our book imprints, 2011 is promising to be a great year for Rebellion.“Michael said: “I've been reading 2000 AD since I was 11 and was a science-fiction fan well before that, so to now be part of the team at Rebellion is really exciting.“It's shaping up to be a fantastic year ahead for Rebellion – with everything from the new Dredd movie to great titles from Abaddon Books and new releases for Solaris from debut and New York Times Best Selling authors.“Bringing these to new and existing audiences alike is going to be both thrilling and challenging.”
