Actually, this entry has nothing to do with the ancient Northern Hemisphere spring festival (I’m Australian and May means late autumn there), not the International Workers’ Day (the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago), nor even the distress signal ‘Mayday’. I was thinking of a play on May to use in the title, thought of day, and stuck all three together. Silly, I know. Shhh. More importantly we’re hereby celebrating international Free Comic Book Day (4 May).
So see within for the freebie.
First up, the gratis stuff that (hopefully) lured you inside!
To celebrate Free Comic Book Day, here’s a 4-page, noirish collage-style yarn (above) that will be appearing in two anthologies this year: My personal collection of short stories, comics, novel off-cuts and magazine/newspaper articles—The Condimental Op, out in July—and the anthology The Tobacco-Stained Sky, out later this year through Another Sky Press—see here for details.
To access the freebie download click HERE, but for this weekend only; after that the link will be disabled. Hope you enjoy.
This is also the latest self-indulgent update of writing stuff, so now you can tune out or hit ESC if you so choose.
In last month’s Flash In Japan column over @ Forces Of Geek, we set the stage by asking a few upcoming international artists to tell us their thoughts on Japan—from manga through to the country’s culture—and you can read Part 1 here.
These people are all young, pushing the perimetres of comic book and sequential art along with visual stills, and they’re ones I worked with closely in the development of upcoming noir/comicbook novel, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, out later this year through Perfect Edge Books. The artists include Juan Andres Saavedra, Rodolfo Reyes, Harvey Finch, Paul Mason, Carlos Gomez, Andrew Chiu, Saint Yak, JGMiranda, Hannah Buena (see picture, left), Giovanni Ballati, Maan House, and Fred Rambaud.
So, for the merry month of May we’re continuing our insightful yack @ FOG, this time focusing on that bastion of global fascination, anime, and the second part of this discussion should be online in the next few days.
Meanwhile, there’s a nice, fair review of my last novel One Hundred Years of Vicissitude (2012) at Fanboy Comics. The paperback is actually retailing now at US Amazon for 26% discount (Amazon UK 10%), but the digital version is 77% off. I think all these percentage figures are making me go cross-eyed; sorry ’bout that.
Finally, as mentioned, things are revving up with next book Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, the final production proof of which is almost finished. It weighs in at 450+ pages, with 35 pieces of art, and should surface via Perfect Edge in around September or October.
To stay abreast of what’s happening, check out the Facebook page for Heropa here.
And we now have a silly book trailer/videoclip.
Andrez Bergen / Little Nobody 