OK, so we’re 5 days into the new year, at least here in Tokyo which — like Australia — is ahead of most of the rest of the world time-wise at least.
Completely self-indulgent news to report?
Planet Goth, or Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth, or whatever we bloody well end up calling novel #4, has been accepted by Perfect Edge Books in the UK and should be out about midway through the year. We got a wunderbar pre-publication review thanks to the very cool Lori Alden Holuta (thanks, mate!).
Also comic book Tales to Admonish #2 (the series I do with artist Matt Kyme) will be launched in Melbourne on January 26th — Australia Day, no less. Sad to say I won’t be there. Again. Ahhh, the tyranny o’ distance.
And I have a new story coming out through one of my favourite online noir/hardboiled sites, Shotgun Honey, on February 21st.
Otherwise?
We had a chilled New Year’s Eve here in Tokyo — watching enka (演歌) standards by elderly types, silly Guinness Book of Records attempts, and Kōhaku Uta Gassen (紅白歌合戦). The best part? The 70-year-old lady ripping into Harry Belafonte’s ‘Banana Boat’.
Over the past 3 weeks I’ve had my head buried over the past few weeks in a range of comic books… everything from re-reading Savage Tales #1 (May 1971), with art by Barry Smith, Gray Morrow, Gene Colan, John Buscema & John Romita, and yarns by Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Denny O’Neil & Roy Thomas — something that helped defined my childhood — to the entire Ed Brubaker/Steve Epting run on Captain America (vol. 5, #1-50). Plus Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ), Matt Fraction, David Aja & Annie Wu’s recent brilliance with Hawkeye, and also some Eisner, Steranko and Masamune thrown into the sides.
In between I’ve been squeezing in a real novel (Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection, which I’m also really digging), a bunch of Roy & Suzie short stories, and contemplating ideas for novel #5 of my own.
Big thanks as always to all the support out there for the various projects — to people who read this stuff as much as ones who critique it.
The Tobacco-Stained Sky: An Anthology of Post-Apocalyptic Noir received a great end-of-year blurb from Gordon Highland, along with Junkie Love by Joe Clifford and Angel Falls by Michael Gonzalez.
Not forgetting last year’s novel Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? — which scored a lovely end-of-year review from Ant @ SF Book Reviews.
Scottish scribe and all-round nice person Fiona McDroll nominated the novel alongside Tony Black, Heath Lowrance & Josh Stallings in her Books of 2013, as did OzNoir @ Just a Guy That Likes to Read.
Ta, mates! 😉
Andrez Bergen / Little Nobody 