What a bullshit title for a blogpost, yeah?  But I am intending to write a little bit about POD and Lulu for the next little while, here, and I know it’s not going to be terribly interesting to about 99% of you, so a figure a nicely boring title might serve as a warning to folks to steer clear for a bit.

To the one percent of you that are interested: I’ve really no plans to write up any how-tos.  Lulu’s FAQ and Help sections, frankly, cover everything you could possibly need to know from start to finish.  I don’t know how well the other POD services out there have documented their upload/process/etc, but I imagine there are probably about a billion resources out there if you’ve got any skill with google. 

But I am– via twitter, blogs, Whitechapel, general internet chatter– seeing a lot of “Well, how’d this-or-that work?” comments and queries, and since I did just put Shivering Sands together (read: Warren did all the work, and then I made ‘er pretty), I figure I’ll try to answer some of those.

(And you can twitter at me if you’ve some burning question you want answered, too.)

So, today, to go ahead and get this one out of the way, I’m going to address the– well it’s not so much a question as it is a sentiment– thing I’m seeing the most: Apparently, there’s a bunch of folks paying close attention to how Shivering Sands does so they can figure out if POD is “worth their time.”

And I have absolutely no fucking clue what that means, so I’ve just got to talk about it.

The time spent on this book is a really simple equation: (Warren wrote some stuff) plus (I fed it into book format) plus (we uploaded everything into Lulu’s super-simple book-maker) equals (Tada! Book!).

Now, I have to assume that anyone asking about “worth the time” already has at least 32pp of content they want to do something with, right? Because, if not, the question that’s really being asked is “Can you give me some excuse to make something?”– and really, fuck those people.  Because if what you want to know is, if you get your thumb out of your backside and actually do something, is someone going to pay you for it?  Well, you’re looking at the wrong career, kiddo.  You don’t actually care about publishing so much as you wouldn’t mind a no-risk game that gets you a book and some money at the end of it.  If, you know, someone can assure you there’s a book and some money at the end of it before you do anything. 

If you’ve already started hyperventilating and thinking about typing up a scathing blog retort about how nothing’s worth doing without an advance (if only someone would pay you to start writing it) then I’m really very likely talking to you, and lemme just save you some time: your pingback isn’t even going to show up on my blog so I can pay you attention, so don’t bother.

But, okay, for the rest of you with 32pp of something– and that’s art or notes or blog entries or a story or recipes or instructions or your manifesto or anything– 32pp is what you need to make a perfect-bound book with Lulu, and that’s most of the time you need to put in, right there.

Lemme repeat that:  If you’ve got 32 pages of stuff that’s not doing anything else right now, you could have a book ready to start selling on Monday.

Now, granted, you’ll have to put in a little time telling people it exists after you’ve hit the “publish” button.  But time left to publish?  Depends on how fast your internet connection is: you’ve got to make a Lulu.com account, upload your content into their bookmaker, type your name and title into their covermaker, and hit a button to push it live.  Could take a whole hour.

And, of course, that’s just running with the pre-made templates on Lulu.  I’m a crazy mechanic that hasn’t used a template for anything, ever (and I’ll probably get into that in later posts) so it took me a leetle bit longer to put together Shivering Sands, yes. But, let me ask you: what’s your blog running on?  A pre-made template?  Something someone else made but it works so well for you that you don’t really think about it?  Well then, there you go.  Lulu’s got you covered.

(If you made your own blog install out of magic and popsicle sticks, then you’re a crazy mechanic, too, and we’ll talk later.)

So, I mean, you can watch Warren’s book for the next couple of months to see if he can somehow convince you that your time will be well spent putting together your own book, I guess.  But I really don’t know what the hell you’re looking for.  You just spent more time reading this than it’d take for you to get started on Lulu, so your measure of “worth it” is obviously a more complicated equation than mine.  Because my time was well spent the minute I got my proof copy in the mail and Warren and I both went “Ooh lookit yay!”

You’ve just got to figure out what you’re really waiting for, is what.

At last.

Here’s the whole first chapter of the comic. Please link as widely as you wish. Penny needs her audience. Each page shows individually, and you simply click to advance.

What’s the Singles Club? Is it any good? Well, here’s what we put together for the blurb…

Has a song ever changed your life?

Did you ever wonder how?

Kieron Gillen (Thor, S.W.O.R.D.) and Jamie McKelvie (Suburban Glamour, Siege: Loki) return to their critically acclaimed urban fantasy, where every song is a spell and every gig a chance for magical misadventure. The Single Club describes one night at a club and traces seven individual-yet-interconnected stories of an evening gone right and wrong.

It’s a night you’ll never forget.

Phonogram: The Singles Club collects all seven of the Singles Club stories, plus a new glossary, covers gallery and copious ?Making Of…? material.

?Ambitious and beautiful, Phonogram is a magnificent piece of work. File it next to your favourite albums. ? - Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Freakangels, RED)

?Every issue of Phonogram feels like a lovingly crafted mixtape from a best friend. What could possibly be better than that?? - Eddie Argos (Art Brut)

?This is my favorite comic. ? - Matt Fraction (Casanova, The Invincible Iron Man)

?My Desert Island Comic. Music to my eyes.? - Gareth Campesinos! (Los Campesinos!)

“This is the beauty of Phonogram: that it can illuminate that power that music has over all of us” - Gavin Lees, The Comic Journal.

?It should already be clear by now, but let?s get the formalities out of the way: this series of Phonogram is nothing short of brilliant.? - James Hunt, Comic Book Resources

?Phonogram is great comics… there?s nothing else like it.? - Kyle Garret, Comics Bulletin

And here’s four more we wanted on the back cover, but didn’t have room for…

?Just when I think I can?t love this comic any more, Gillen and McKelvie set out to prove me wrong.?- Sarah Jaffe, Newsarama

?We?re past the point with Phonogram where it can really be judged by any sort of normal critical standard.? - Seb Patrick, Comics Daily

?Image isn’t putting out a more consistently awesome series.? - Jesse Schedeen, IGN

?This comic is a holy book, a magical thing offering redemption and the tools to unbury meaning from the poorest of territories.? - Bobsy, Mindless Ones

If you want to buy, it’s available from your local comic shop from today if you’re in the US or tomorrow if you’re in the UK. Due to the comic slipping, it’s currently not available to order from Amazon, but there’s other fine online retailers willing to take your money. If you’re in the US, you can get it from Midtown. If you’re in the UK, try Forbidden Planet or dropping a mail to Page 45.

As almost certainly the whole comic universe will know by now, it’s been a battle getting to this, but it’s something Jamie and I are ridiculously proud of. To be momentarily melodramatic, it’s the single best thing I’ve ever been involved with and if I died tomorrow, I’d be fine with it. I got the chance to do this.

Also, from the House of Ideas…

SIEGE BLOCKBUSTER TIE-IN!! War has often come to Asgard before…but never like this! As the Shining City suffers the most brutal earthly attacks in its history, Thor and his allies fight to stay alive and save what they can! Might be a lost cause…The critically acclaimed breakout THOR run by Kieron Gillen (DARK AVENGERS: ARES) and Billy Tan (NEW AVENGERS) barrels on strong and takes turns you won’t want to miss!

WRITER: Kieron Gillen
ARTIST: Billy Tan, Rich Elson & Batt
COLORED BY: Christina Strain & Matt Hollingsworth
LETTERED BY: Joe Sabino
COVER BY: Mico Suayan

Size: 32 Pages

Price: $2.99

And here’s the preview. You will believe a very fat man can jump.

Good morning, scumbubbles. This is warren ellis dot com. And Brandon Graham has posted one of his huge lovely blog entries overnight. So go and read that instead.

Here’s today’s progress on the new steam-horror fin de siecle project about ghosts, guilt, elder gods, and monster-hunting in the aftermath of two gruesome murders:

Project: (tentative title) Maplecroft
Deadline: None
New words written: 683 (meh)
Present total word count: 2520 words



Things accomplished in fiction: Continued gettin’ shit done. This first segment is told by a physician/neighbor of an unfortunate family; at the moment, he’s relating events that happened two years previously … events that look rather alarmingly like things he’s seeing again. This is an intro of patterns and peril.

Things accomplished in real life: Straightened house; made preparations to leave for Portland tomorrow (bought train tickets, confirmed hotel room); went to Walgreens to nab a couple things I forgot yesterday; spent some quality time with Amelie, giving her lunch; talked to Emily at Oregon Public Broadcasting about doing Northwest Passages on Thursday; did nothing else but sit around with Bloodshot edits and try not to freak out at how bad they are and how much work I need to do — no seriously, if I were my Bantam editor I would’ve sent me an anthrax-o-gram by now, because this draft is godawful.

Total Official Word Count of 2024: 25,576 words

Stan and Billy were scrabbling along in the vines and mud as usual when they ran smack-dab into something altogether extraordinary.

"What d'ya make of that?" wondered Stan.

"Got no idea," breathed Billy. "Big, though."

Indeed it was. Big and round.

"Like a giant bubble," Billy continued.

Stan rapped one hand on it - knock knock. Then he frowned and smacked Billy across the back of the head.

"Ain't no bubble," he said. "Hard as a stone, it is."

Billy made an equally dour scowl and took a knock-knock turn himself. "So it is! But not solid, I'm thinking. There's a thud in it, too. Like wood."

Stan pondered for a moment. "Well," he said, "maybe we can chip it open, like, and see what's inside, then."

And so they set to it with their teeth, gnawing and nibbling. Sure enough, it weren't no stone and with some force they suddenly cracked through the surface?

?and goop drippled out.

"Nasty!" shouted Billy as it started getting all over his fur.

Stan tried to shake it off his paws but it wouldn't all come loose. He tried to lick the last of it off, and?

"Whoa, Billy!" he exclaimed.

"What?" his friend asked, looking up irritatedly from the stickiness on his fingers.

"It's good!"

Billy took an experimental taste off his own fingers. It *was* good.

They looked at each other for a moment, and then nothing further needed to be said. They cracked that thing the rest of the way open and positively bathed in the slimy, chunky, multicolored goo that poured out and all around it, swimming and flipping and soaking in it, eating it off the ground and even off each other.

And so it was that the last fertilized dinosaur egg on Earth became a truly decadent feast for two lucky rodents.

------
For consideration: there has to have been a last one

"She Just Likes To Fight" is currently my favourite piece off the new Four Tet album, THERE IS LOVE IN YOU, which Domino Records were kind enough to provide me. Funny thing is, I was about to buy the CD anyway. It’s a beautiful album, but this is the one that’s going to obsess me for a few days, I think…

I spent most of the morning and afternoon rehearsing my speech, listening to how it sounds, and making sure it times out right. The old improviser in me even played New Choice a few times with some ad-libs that amused me so much, I ended up writing them into the text.

Writing this speech and preparing it have been the singular focus of my life for so long now (in linear time, it's only been 6 or 8 weeks, but in hyperfocused mental writing time it's been much, much longer than that) that I feel sort of adrift, now that it's finished, like I don't know what to do with myself.

This reminds me of something an acting teacher once told us near the end of a 10-week acting class.

He stood on the small stage where we did our scenes and leaned against a tall chair. "You guys are all here because you love performing," he said, "and you hope to beat the odds and make a living as actors."

He absently scratched at his beard. "If anyone told you that this would be easy, they lied to you. It isn't."

I knew this, because I took this class in my early twenties, when I felt like I was never going to be a successful actor (or anything) again.

He continued, "This class is almost over, and whether you choose to come back here and do more workshops or not, you should keep performing, whether it's in a 99-seat theater, or in a scene study workshop that meets once a week." He leaned forward, folded his arms across his chest, and lifted up one hand, extending his index finger. Over the course of the class I'd come to think of it as his I'm about to tell you something very important pose.

"Some of you will be lucky enough to have several auditions a week, and when you do, you'll start to feel overwhelmed by the preparation ... if you're doing it right, you should feel overwhelmed, because if you don't, you're not working hard enough. But sooner or later, you're going to consider dropping out of plays or stopping your workshops, and just focusing on the auditions. That makes sense, because you're getting to perform at auditions all the time, and we all know that nobody really goes to see live theater in Los Angles, right?" He pointed around the room as he said this, and let his palm fall open, like Hamlet contemplating Yorick, when he asked the question.

Some of the students murmured in agreement. Every last one of us would have been delighted to discover that we were so overwhelmed with auditionsNot enough time to perform because we're so overwhelmed with auditions?! This was a problem that all of us would have loved to have. 

The instructor shook his head, and folded his arms back around himself. He took a few small but dramatic steps - this was an acting class, after all - and faced us again from the other side of the stage.

"That's the worst thing you can do."

We all waited for him to elaborate, and after a very long few seconds, he did. "When you're performing in a theater or doing workshops, you're working with other actors, and you're doing it because you love the performance. You love the character, you love the story ... you love something about it enough to do the work for the sake of the work.

"When you're auditioning, though, you're not in a performance environment. You're never on a stage, and you're rarely in front of people who are fully engaged in what you're doing."

Many of the frustrating auditions I'd had around that time, where I felt like the people in the room were interested in everything but what I was doing, flashed though my mind.

"So if you make auditions the only place you get to perform, it will slowly but surely unravel you. Because you're not really performing, you're auditioning. Do you all follow me?"

All of us nodded in agreement. He spoke as deliberately as I'd ever heard him speak, punctuating almost each word by pointing his finger or waving his hand.

"You have to give yourself a place where you can perform for the sake of performing, and you have to go there every week. Think of athletes: they practice between games, and so should you."

He started to walk back to his desk at the foot of the stage, and then abruptly stopped. He whirled around and said, "You know you're actors because if you don't act, you feel like something is missing. Don't give an industry that doesn't care about that the same way you do control over when you do it."

It could easily have been a sales pitch to get us all back for more workshops, but it wasn't. It was a life pitch, from the same teacher who told us all that, if we hadn't already, we had to find something we loved, something that truly mattered to us, that wasn't acting. "You can't let acting consume your life," he said, "you can't let it be your life, because life experience is part of what makes great actors great. You have to live a full life, so you have something to bring to a character when you create it."

I don't know how many of you who read my blog are actors or creative types, but I hope you'll heed the advice that acting coach gave me, thirteen or so years ago, because I have, and it's made all the difference to me, both personally and professionately.

Probably best to do some catching up before the NEW STUFF! BUY! PLEASE BUY! post tomorrow.

This hasn’t been solicited yet. Due in July…

Yes, that’s a Jaime Hernandez cover, showing CBGB. Because BOOM are publishing a comic series of comics set in that most famous of New York clubs. The first issue features a story by myself and the evil Marc Ellerby, with Sam Humphries and Rob G doing the other one. Marc’s and mine is… well, put it like this: at one point I was considering having the Phonogram characters in it, but backed away for a variety of reasons and went in a different urban fantasy direction. This is certainly the closest you’ll be getting to Phonogram for a long while. Frankly, if you blacked out the Spirits eyes, it’d be a bloody Phonogram story.

Its current title is A NYC PUNK ROCK CAROL and it’s story structure is exactly what you’re thinking. It should be a lot of fun, even if I have to work with Marc Ellerby.

CURSED MARC ELLERBY.

Also the June Marvel solicits are up. Only one thing in it, which is the S.W.O.R.D. trade.

X-MEN: S.W.O.R.D. - NO TIME TO BREATHE TPB
Written by KIERON GILLEN
Pencilled by STEVEN SANDERS
Cover by JOHN CASSADAY
Spinning out of ASTONISHING X-MEN comes a story that will take you places you?ve never been! After Secret Invasion, Agent Brand is no longer the top dog at S.W.O.R.D. Forced to share her leadership post with former Avengers-liaison Henry Gyrich, Brand is less than pleased. Will the arrival of her boyfriend, X-Man Beast, help her out? Not when she discovers Gyrich?s plan for fixing S.W.O.R.D. is to rid Earth of ALL ALIENS! Brought to you by Kieron Gillen (DARK AVENGERS: ARES), Steven Sanders (Five Fists of Science) and topped off with covers by ASTONISHING X-MEN artist JOHN CASSADAY! Collecting S.W.O.R.D. #1-5
120 PGS./Rated A ?$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4076-4

Everyone who worked on this is really pleased with this. I wanted to be His SpaceGirl Friday and - at its best - I think we managed to bring that into being. Also, Death’s Head with a minigun.

I didn’t actually print any S.W.O.R.D. 5 reviews, which were all really positive. Don’t speak ill of the dead. Let’s throw down the first few I find: Comic Book Resources, Comics Bulletin, Comics Daily, House To Astonish, Department H and Hot Ink.

Frazer and my story in the Mystic Hands of Doctor Strange was also received a lot of applause, which was good. Fun to do something so openly magical in the Marvel U, which stretches those Phonogram-derived muscles. Some reviews: IGN, Comic Book Revolution, Too Dangerous For A Girl. Oh - and as a little local colour, these are the people who inspired the actual story: The Socialist Patients Collective. I’ve wanted to do something inspired by them ever since I discovered them - which was when first researching Baader Meinhoff on the back of the Luke Haines album back in the 90s, I think.

*****

Here’s some assorted press, of various sorts.

Firstly, here’s an interview with House Magazine, of Soho House Club fame. The whole magazine is online, and I’m on Page 18 with a hilarious posturing shot and some hilariously posturing life-style Q&A. Lots of fun all around and hyper stylised.

Secondly, at the other end of the scale, here’s a very casual rolling interview with King Impulse over at Outhousers. Over an hour of rolling Skype yabbering, written up for an audience who is assumed to know most of what we’re talking about. Fun and pretty much as authentic as I get.

Finally, I was on Marvel Hotline to talk about tomorrow’s Thor 608.

I especially like how no-one in the youtube comments has any idea what I’m saying. I haven’t listened to this one, as they’re always off the top of my head and I just throw random thoughts around. Hopefully it makes some sense to someone.

*****

I swear there was more I had to post, but it’s slipping my mind. May as well plug a gig I’m going to tomorrow night…

Tickets here, though I’m going to chance the door.

David Garcia Studio releases the second of their MAP publications, pamphlets that unfold into an A1 infoviz poster. Details on how to find a copy at the link. Me, I’ll have to try and get to the Architecture Association bookshop sometime soon.

MAP 002 QUARANTINE investigates the concept of containment and it’s spatial implications through research, projects, and the realm of architectural ideas. Four projects are treated on this issue: A Domestic Isolation Unit, an Instantly Quarantinable Farm, a Zoo of Infectious Species, and a Quarantined Library on a cargo ship…

My latest Fast Company piece went up last night, in commemoration of World Water Day 2024. This was the perfect opportunity to talk a bit about my time at the LAUNCH inaugural event, which focused on -- surprise -- water. In the essay, I talk a bit about three of the ten innovative ideas we got a chance to explore at the LAUNCH meeting. Here's one:

Dutyion Root Hydration System, a mouthful of a name for something that's actually pretty remarkable. The system takes a specialized form of hydrophilic plastic and converts it into heavy-duty tubes suitable for below-ground irrigation. If you run saltwater (or similarly brackish/unusable water) through the tubes, the plastic wicks the water out as vapor, permeating it into the soil, which can then support many kinds of food crops and trees. That is, this plastic would let you irrigate orchards and farmland with sea water.

There are still plenty of questions, most critically about how long the plastic lasts and how to bring down production cost (it's not cheap, at present), but the utility of something like would be enormous. Test uses in the Middle East have already shown quite a bit of promise; one use that could be of particular value would be to maintain trees to fight desertification.

This was actually the first item we talked about at LAUNCH, and it really set the tone for the meeting. A technology in the early stages of development, with some good test results already available, and with incredible potential for transforming the landscape. The pilot projects really underscore just how powerful this kind of tech might be: rows of fruit trees growing in the sands of Abu Dhabi, watered only by seawater pumped from the Gulf through the dutyion tubes. As I say at the end of the Fast Company post:

On this World Water Day, 2024, it's hard not to feel a bit of hope for the future.

Eight years ago today I wrote my first livejournal entry.

Never did get around to migrating the old blog here, with the exception of one spectacularly strange entry from 1997. No, it's not the dream entry, it's a conversation with someone I was getting to know.

Funny how not-having-your-voice comes through in the re-reading.



I notice how little I write now.

Comparisons aside, I'm still the same person. Same fingers, same eyes, same brain. Perhaps less motivation to share, or overshare, now that I have a name that shows up in the Google search engine.

BERG co-founder Matt Jones just forwarded me a missive from one Ms. Daisy Ginsberg, an artist and scholar who uses design concepts to “explore the implications of emerging and unfamiliar technologies, science and services. She is fascinated by the macroscopic view, the larger-scale social, cultural and ethical consequences of engineering invisible organisms.”

Ginsberg and a handful of fellow researchers are putting out a call for artists, designers and scientists to collaborate on a well-funded synthetic biology exchange program called “Synthetics Aesthetics“. The project sounds like it will offer immense potential for personal growth, as well as aid other up-and-comers from a wide range of disciplines in developing completely new ways of thinking about and approaching the relatively newborn field of creative synthetic biology.

What is synthetic biology, exactly? Read on:

Synthetic Biology is a new approach to engineering biology, generally defined as the application of engineering principles to the complexity of biology. Biology has become a new material for engineering. From the design of biological circuits made from DNA to the design of entire systems, synthetic biology is very much interested in making biology something that can be designed.

Traditional engineering disciplines have tackled design by working alongside designers and developing longstanding and mutually-beneficial collaborations. Synthetic Aesthetics – a research project jointly run by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Stanford University, California – aims to bring together synthetic biologists, social scientists, designers, artists, and other creative practitioners, to explore existing and potential collaborations between synthetic biology and the creative professions. Interaction between these two broad fields has the potential to lead to new forms of engineering, new schools of art and design, a greater social scientific understanding of science and engineering, and new approaches to societal engagement with synthetic biology.

This website provides detailed information on the project… and useful information on synthetic biology and its relationship to art and design. As the project develops, the site will feature the results of our work and track the collaborations we establish.

Intrigued? Read their FAQ here. Specifically, they are looking for twelve people: six synthetic biologists and six designers/artists to take part in collaborative two week residencies. You have until March 31st to apply.

---

Post tags: Art, Design, Flora & Fauna, Future, Science, Technology

Someone called Gaspard Winckler on Twitter pointed me at this page, which has a download link: Delia Derbyshire creating electronic music as backdrop to recordings of people talking about their dreams, broadcast on BBC radio circa 1964.

This programme of sounds and voices is an attempt to re-create in five movements some sensations of dreaming – running away, falling, landscape, underwater and colour. All the voices were recorded from life (by Barry Bermange) and arranged in a setting of pure electronic sounds… Delia’s editing and repetition, together with her dissonant, often terrifying musique concrete soundbeds, make this distinctly uneasy bedtime listening….Her collaborations with the poet and dramatist Barry Bermange for the Third Programme showed her at her elegant best…

Six pages of SUPERGOD #3, which is out tomorrow in North America and Thursday in the UK and elsewhere. There is much talk about drugs, God and time.

I am failing at recording all the stuff that’s coming into the office. Which is bad, because my office is a dump and stuff gets lost or forgotten or possibly reproduces in the corners.

As noted a couple of days ago, I’m on a Delia Derbyshire kick again. The TOMORROW PEOPLE CD there contains a bunch of Derbyshire stuff under the name Li De La Russe (she was still under contract to the BBC at the time, and TOMORROW PEOPLE was an ITV show). The red CD is "classic" Radiophonic Workshop, and the bottom one is a broader spectrum, 1958 to 1997.

I’m writing a sequence on Project Drill today which my co-writer indicates as including "the machine that goes ping." Therefore I am playing some of the greatest Machine That Goes Ping music that Britain ever produced.

Jon Brooks, of the hauntological unit The Advisory Circle, is podcasting. Am downloading the first podcast now. I have a great and well-documented fondness for all the creatures of Ghost Box Records, of which The Advisory Circle is one.