Last time I shared my process for making The Book Tour graphic novel. That was a book for grown ups and was also a project initiated without a publisher attached, and some risk of it never finding one.

That was a story I worked on until it was finished. I didn't show it to anyone or put out feelers to editors, without regard for where it would be positioned in the publishing landscape, how it would fit on a publisher's list or even if there was a market for that sort of book.

I didn't worry about page count or set myself a deadline. I let the story run for as long as it needed to. That is risky, foolish and liberating. I avoided second guessing myself into making changes that I thought would make it more marketable.

My forthcoming book, Punycorn, is a different beast. It's a middle-grade (8-12 yr olds) graphic novel in an existing genre (fantasy) pitched to a traditional publisher who has input at every stage. It's much more of a team effort and I changed my working methods to fit within the existing workflow of my publisher.

How long does it take to create a graphic novel? Too long is generally the answer. It's a lot of work to create a world on paper and form a narrative through a series of words and images. Especially so if it's the work of a sole author rather than the product of a creative team taking on separate parts of the process. Writer, artist, letterer, colourist etc.

So, let's go back, way back, back in time to before I was the haggard wreck of a man I am today. Before I was a father. Back to the days of my attending San Diego Comic Con where, before the turn of the millennium, I checked out the Last Gasp booth and picked up this slightly shabby-looking tome.

It's a brick and it took me several minutes to decide whether I could be bothered to haul it all the way back to England. Several hundred pages of black and white photos of Paris from a century before. There's a book in there, I thought. I just didn't know what book, what story, which characters or plot. Over the following decade or so I'd occasionally take it down off the shelf and flick through it and put it back. There was still a book in there, but I was no closer to discovering out what it was.

With Distressed Beeping now out I thought I'd draw back the curtain on the mystical process of making my one page strips. I will skip the messy, angsty bit of sitting with paper and pencil in hand regretting my life choices and stick to the nuts and bolts.

I open Procreate and the template I have for these strips and set up the drawing guides for the lettering.

I choose my lettering brush which is a slightly tweaked version of one that comes standard with Procreate.

I don't recall my exact age, somewhere around 12, that I was pursuing a personal obsession at my local public library. Nothing salacious, unless you count learning the rules of backgammon as a subject of Freudian analysis, which it likely is. For some reason, probably connected with chess or early home computer games, I was seized by the need to learn the rules of various card and boardgames.

It was there that I happened upon a an odd-looking hardback called Fantasy Role-Playing Games by J. Eric Holmes. I immediately caught the DnD bug. I was already susceptible having caught the Star Wars strain aged 7 and my immunity was further weakened by a teacher reading aloud from The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in the soft corner of class not so long after.

I soon had my Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I read Appendix N and Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature. I was knee-deep in fantasy trilogies, Piers Anthony and Terry Brooks. I read with appetite and, so I thought at the time, discernment. To be fair to teen me, I did read The Sword of Shannara and think, wait a minute, haven't I read this before? Yep. It was The Lord of the Rings.

I read an article recently that lifted my spirits. Kids read 25% more books last year compared to the previous year. 27 million books read during the academic year in 2021-2022. That's a lot of books and doesn't appear to include books read outside of the school year. Good news to be pleased about. Not a story about drone strikes, civil war or stolen bathrobes. Nothing to make one despair at the collective stupidity of humanity. Just kids reading for pleasure.

What's not to like? Well, David Walliams is one of the most popular authors, but that's beside the point. Kids are reading and that can only be a good thing.

As I scanned further down the article my heart sank. The worry, according to this survey, was that kids weren't reading books of 'increased difficulty'. So this wasn't a good news article after all. It was a bait and switch. A guilt trip on readers for not reading the right sort of books. Anyone who's familiar with comics will have encountered the accusation that comics aren't 'proper' reading.

Phil lifts the lid on the container and sniffs the contents. What is it? I ask. Soup, she replies.

The container holds a pallid greenish liquid. What kind of soup, I ask, my thirst for knowledge unquenchable. Up from the depths, says Phil. It doesn't describe a flavour so much as a location. Up from the depths of the freezer. Or the back of the fridge. It's the end of the week and we're scraping the edible barrel.

I launch into an off-key (but recognisable) rendition of the 1970s Godzilla theme. 'Forty stories high', I warble. It's actually thirty stories. Hard to gauge the height of an atomic lizard when he's threatening to squish you underfoot. We harmonise the 'And Godzookyyyy' part. I'm taken aback.

In an effort to encourage my productivity, Phil has turned to AI. With the thinnest of prompts she had Chat GPT churn out a newsletter in the style of Andi Watson.

If the style is something cobbled together with a bunch egregious typos while waiting for a two-hundred mega bite file to upload over our antique wi-fi, then our future automated overlord more or less hit the mark. Not the first time. The first time it went 'off model' and was altogether too chatty and upbeat. Two descriptors never used in the same sentence as my name. Also, it knows how to punctuate. It's always going to reveal itself in a game of multiple Spider-Men pointing at each other. I'm the one using the Oxford and non-Oxford comma in consecutive sentences.

It was when she asked it to write a column specifically about a trip to the Post Office that the ghost in the machine spewed out something alarmingly close to my ironic celebration of the mundane. It went off on a sarcastic riff about how fun it was to be an end user of our crumbling national infrastructure and the interesting characters you meet in the queue (there's always a queue). Then it detailed the amusing ways the computer terminals misdirect your parcels. Damn AI has even developed a streak of self-deprecating humour.

Perhaps this isn't the sign that the computers are getting smarter, but that I'm not altogether the unique snowflake of my imagination.

There's a knock at the door. Not yet nine o'clock and we have a delivery. It's a large rectangular box, light for the size. I assume it must be clothing and therefore not for me. I only buy new clothes when I have to, and then with a resentful acceptance that it is occasionally absolutely necessary.

I carry the box into the living room and hand it to my wife. She says it's for me. Me? I check the seat of my pants to make sure I'm not exposing my buttocks. It's a new backpack, she says.

My old backpack has reached the end of the road. The netted water bottle pockets are more hole than net. One half of the bag zips tight, the other hangs open like a split football. The edges are frayed and padding exposed.

Such was the eye catching headline of a book review I saw recently about literary marriages. The book in question is The Lives of Wives by Carmela Ciuraru. She looks at the marriages of the partners of mostly lions (and a lioness) of letters such as Kingsley Amis, Roald Dahl and Kenneth Tynan.

Having previously read the biography of Dahl by Jeremy Treglown I was left in no doubt that his subject was not a very nice man. And not just about his favoured brand of pencils.

I can't help but feel I've been going about this author business all wrong.

Looking at my phone I see on Thursday I walked a grand total of 298 steps. When they say the creative life is about sitting your ass down and doing the work, they weren't kidding.

It's our wedding anniversary but Phil and I have to work. We make time in the afternoon to go for a walk in the bright winter sunlight. Our route takes us through the local park. Despite my filling out a survey for the Green Party a few days before, the issue of the river overflowing its banks multiple times a year has not been solved. The reason global warming hasn't been solved is that I put the survey down on a pile of my sketches and scrap paper and never handed it back.

Although flood waters sit over much of the building site, ground work continues on a pedestrian and cycling bridge over the Severn. The noise of a generator behind the porta-cabins competes with the roar of heavy machinery. We sit in a cafe perched on high chairs at the window to watch the workmen. They are employing a sort of pass-the-parcel approach. Excavator 1 fills a small dumper truck with grey rocks. The dumper truck trundles around the plastic barriers before unloading its burden at the feet of a supervisor in a hard hat. The dumper truck returns to its original position and excavator 2 moves in. It daintily spreads and tamps down the rocks from the pile with the scoop. It's skilled work and the labour is evenly divided so that each member of the team has time to consult their phones between turns.

We sip our hot drinks and speculate on which of the jobs we'd prefer should we switch careers mid-life. I like the look of the excavators. It's precision work, like having an elephant serve afternoon tea without smashing your best porcelain or standing on your foot.

Saturday and there's an irregular rapping at the door. Having worked from home before it was a pandemic lifestyle choice thrust upon the rest of the population, my ear is keenly attuned to the timbre and rhythm of the door knock. This isn't the insistent hammering of the harassed delivery van driver with the motor running and back doors open while stopped in the middle of the road. Neither is it the measured taps of the veteran postal person on their round. Like Pavlov's mutts I know which to spring up from my chair for and bound excitedly to the door. By now the postie could instruct me to sit, roll around and stay and I would comply knowing they will hand over my coveted impulse purchase from World Of Books.

Through the frosted glass of the hall door I see the outline of a figure, but no sign of the neon orange of the Hi-Vis tabard that is the tell-tale uniform of the cold caller. I consider turning back to the front room where my daughter is showing off her new phone. It looks like a Star Trek communicator and Phil and I have spent the last half hour indulging her by reverently ooh-ing every time she opens it at the hinge and ahh-ing every time she shuts it. More reverent ooh-ing is preferable to being asked if I have heard the Good News.

Recklessly I open the door. A man in an ankle length coat and tweed deerstalker leans towards me. I expect him to say, come along, Watson, the game is afoot and drag me to his hackney carriage. Sadly the Ruritarian ambassador has not been found poisoned in a locked room in Knightsbridge, or even a great glowing hound seen prowling Aldi car park. No, he's a representative of the Green Party.

He hands me a folded A4 sheet and informs me that it's a survey that will take a mere sixty seconds to fill in. If I leave it hanging out of my letterbox he will come by later collect it. Thanks, I say. He heads next door before I have time to ask if that's a wooden spatula he's carrying. Perhaps he is going to paddle Moriarty. Or perhaps I imagined it.

To take a break from reverent ooh-ing I recruit the family in filling out the survey. A series of questions require grading from Not Important to Very Important. Not surprisingly they skew towards green spaces, cycling and improving air quality. I grade these as Very Important and am accused of being a Yes Man. A Sheeple. Someone who bends to the party line and truckles from speaking truth to power. I protest that local councillors do not have their hands gripped on the levers of power, but am told true political change can never occur with go-along-to-get-alongs like myself. Under Which Other Issues Matter To You I put NHS funding (an area well outside the influence of local councillors) and to cement my people-pleasing reputation, cycle lanes. I expect great improvements to both in the coming days.

The rain has stopped for the first time in what seems like weeks. Phil and I go for a walk. I leave the survey dangling out of the letterbox as instructed. The river Severn is over its banks and the path around the racecourse is under water. All building work on the planned cycle bridge spanning the river from Gheluvelt Park has halted.

When we return I see the survey is no longer dangling from the letter box. I unlock the door. The rustling sound of envelopes being pushed across the floor tells us that the postie has been. Amongst the white envelopes is the survey that has been pushed back inside.

I can't help thinking a consulting detective would have known this would happen.

Interview

I was part of a round table on making graphic novels. You can read part one here.

Books

Books, books, get y'books 'ere. Christmas may be over but the relentless impulse to consume should not be forgotten. Sate your appetite for new reading material by buying these fine graphic novels from all the places fine graphic literature is sold (book shops, comic shops, online etc). And if you enjoyed them, please write a positive review online. We will be forever grateful.

Simon has made prints from both books and they are gorgeous. Drop by his store and snag one for yourself.

I have a patreon which I update regularly. Tuesdays and Saturdays I post sketches and behind the scenes stuff such as Punycorn colour pages. Thursdays I post a one page comic story.

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I still have books out in the world, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest & the awards nominated The Book Tour. Support my efforts through my store – digital comics – patreon or by leaving a positive review online

It's approaching the end of the year. A time to reflect and each consult our personal Ws and Ls columns. As a 'content creator' it's easy to mistake production for creation. As long as I indiscriminately spray exploitable 'intellectual property' all over the shop I can feel as though I have justified my existence on this planet for the past 365 days.

At one point in my life I considered a day concluded without two finished pages of comic art to show for it a day wasted. The conflict between quality and quantity is always a concern in a medium that constantly demands one's labour. I eventually wised up, but the thrill of mentally tallying five-barred gates has not loosed its grip on me entirely.

I still enjoy making lists for the satisfaction of ticking off each item in turn. Some of us are closer to enlightenment than others. I refer to the eternal wisdom of Toad and Frog by Arnold Lobel:

Comics is a strange occupation. Inventing lives for imaginary people drawn in little boxes with words floating over their heads that requires a wide variety of skills to express and an obsessive focus to realise even in a mediocre way. That is weird even before you get into the prejudices of the English-speaking culture to the medium and the absolute dumpster fire that is parts of the industry.

What if you don't draw the imaginary people, just write the words that float over their heads? How does that work? What exactly is the division of labour. Who's shouldering the burden here? The simple answer is: the artist. But as with much to do with comics, it's complicated.

I'll draw back the curtain and give you a glimpse of the process in two pages.

Here, as it happens, is the first page of the script of a book by Simon Gane and I that is OUT NOW in all good bookstores, comics shops, online retailers and floggers of e-books. I wrote the words. Simon did everything else: art, colours, letters.

Like grown ups, Phil and I sit down at the dinner table to eat Sunday lunch. We put aside our smart phones and do our best to make small talk. Phil, as a genial person who works with other human beings and not figments of her own imagination, is quite adept at this. Me, less so.

I have spent the preceding week sat in the studio/front room working. This rarely, if ever, changes. I could have been asked the same question at any time over the last two decades and I will most likely have given the same answer. It isn't particularly conducive to the flow of stimulating conversation.

Phil casually mentions that she has spent the morning working on her newsletter and tells me all about a long extinct giant flightless bird from New Zealand. I am not listening to the interesting facts about the long extinct giant flightless bird from New Zealand because I am thinking, wait-a-minute, you have a newsletter? I didn't know this. Why did no one tell me?

Sunburn is actually coming out TODAY (at time of typing). March down to your local comic emporium, slam your hard earned clams down on the counter and demand your copy on Wednesday 30th of November or Tuesday 6th of December everywhere else (bookstores, retirement communities, liquor dispensaries, truck stops, all the places good comics are sold in high numbers).

Or just ask nicely and use your card like everyone else.

Whenever possible please support independent businesses. If they don't have a copy then ask to have one ordered.

I had a newsletter all lined up enthusiastically blathering about the imminent release of Sunburn, the latest collaborative opus from Simon Gane and myself. Released Thursday 24th of November to comic shops and Tuesday 29th of November everywhere else (bookstores, retirement communities, liquor dispensaries, truck stops, all the places good comics are sold in high numbers).

Cool, I thought, no need to share my latest composting news and inform my loyal readers if I've set the chimney on fire yet. Update: home composter is going great, lots of worm action. No news on my daughter's worms. And, no, I haven't caused a chimney fire yet, but if I do you'll be the first to read about it.

Instead of my quotidian nonsense I could give the people what they want: product. Goods available to purchase. For Christmas, or whenever. Maybe Thanksgiving?

My daughter is home from university for the weekend. I would like to think it is because she cannot bear to be parted from Phil and I, but I suspect, and our daughter more or less admits it, that it is because she has no food in the cupboard of her shared house. Demands for fish and chips are met. She makes her signature roast parsnips for Sunday lunch. What is the secret to her delicious parsnip recipe? Seasoning, apparently. Which ones and how many remains a secret as valuable as that used for KFC. Finally, after we've enjoyed the parsnips, she makes her outrageous demands.

Children make great claims upon you. From lack of sleep to lack of finances to no lack of worry. From birth onwards they give you their unconditional love and eventually they will want something in return. Today, the purely transactional nature of parent-daughter relations is made plain. The debt is being called in.

She wants our worms.

The composter at her shared house is lacking life. Despite being regularly fed scraps from the kitchen it is absent of vermi-compost. No wrigglers or earthworms are enjoying the potato peelings in the bohemian back yard of her house. She wants our worms to transform her inert, nutrient-deficient food waste into stuff good enough to spread on a garden they don't possess. I am not privy to any long term plans to transform the paved area at the back of her house from a bleak corner with a couple of pieces plastic furniture into a hanging garden or verdant paradise. I only know that the call for worms has gone out and I must decide to answer it.

I had assumed my fatherly affection was unconditional. That I would 'take a bullet' for my child. Wipe their nose. Change their nappy. Donate a liver. I didn't expect to quibble at worms.

I am surprised to discover I have a paternal affection for the worms in the compost bin in our back garden. I am reluctant to part with them. They are Worcester worms nurtured by local soil. Suburban worms of moderate habits. Local worms for local people. My little wrigglers. Can I be expected to send them out into an uncaring world to fend for themselves in the mean streets of university accommodation without a single pang of guilt?

I am left with a dilemma. Who do I choose? Worms or daughter? Whose needs do I prioritise? On the one hand I have an only child. The darling daughter who's tears I have dabbed, butt I have wiped and parsnips I have just eaten (I hasten to add that a gap of well over a decade has passed between the wiping and the eating). On the other I have countless worms.

When it comes down to it, on a purely transactional level, what have the worms done for me lately? I inform my daughter that she can help herself to the worms from the composter. Not too many, I hasten to add, but I am willing to part with a few for the sake of family harmony.

Having reached my magnanimous decision I then discover that my daughter has reservations. She is reluctant to dig into the composter herself. Instead she looks at me from lowered eyelashes and tells me in an exaggeratedly feminine tone that a lady doesn't collect worms.

I sigh and pick up my gardening gloves and trowel. I remove the lid of the composter and several thousand bugs fly into my face. I squeeze my eyes shut, swallow a mouthful of tiny flying horrors and flap my arms hysterically.

I peer into the compost bin at the deliquescent mound of rotting fruit and vegetables. Gingerly prodding the surface with the tip of the trowel, I uncover a writhing mass of worms. Children make great claims upon you, I think as I reach inside.

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Shameless capitalism

Paris, the fairy tale romance beautifully drawn by Simon Gane and written by me is out now from Image comics.

Simon has made two A3 prints from the book and they are gorgeous. Drop by his store and snag one for yourself.

Sunburn from Simon and me is due out November 24th. I did an interview with Matt at Down the Tubes discussing how our collaboration works.

Order from OK Comics and you will get the book with a signed exclusive bookplate.

Order from Page 45 and you will get the book with a (different) signed exclusive bookplate.

We’re very lucky to have wonderful retailers who support our (and many other authors) books so please support them if you can.

Patreon

I have a patreon which I update regularly. Tuesdays and Saturdays I post sketches and behind the scenes stuff such as Punycorn colour pages. Thursdays I post a one page comic story. And this year I am posting a review of the book I have read that week every Sunday.

____

I still have books out in the world, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest & the awards nominated The Book Tour. Support my efforts through my store – digital comics – patreon or by leaving a positive review online

The rug has been rolled up and pushed to one side. Pokers, tongs and the small metal bucket have been shaken free of their cobwebs and put out of the way. The fireplace has been cleared of candles, bills, birthday cards, the stack of soon to expire barcode-free stamps and the wind up clock that neither springs forward nor falls back.

I'm not making room for a hoedown. I'm preparing for the chimney sweep. Chimney sweeps are hard to come by. With spiraling fuel costs everyone wants their chimney swept. I e-mailed one and he promised me a date and a time and a price. I eagerly agreed. Since then there has been no word. He might come. He might not. I could e-mail him to find out, but I don't want to appear needy. A sweep can smell neediness.

The sweep's van pulls up outside the house. He has a few questions before he can start. How long has it been since the chimney was last swept? I tell him that it's been five years. He pulls at his beard. I imagine him putting me in a mental file named: idiot. I am supposed to have it swept every year. I don't tell him that it's probably been longer. I don't want to be demoted to the file named: total idiot.

My feminist credentials have been called into question. Despite raising my daughter (admittedly with some help from my wife) and changing no end of nappies, sleepless nights, warming bottles, countless school runs, noping out of math homework at Primary school level because I was already out of my depth, endless half-terms spent walking around National Trust places, being a stay at home dad, a new man and now, no doubt, a fully paid up member of the Guardian reading, tofu-eating wokerati, I have been outed as a despised chauvinist of the old school.

What crimes against good sense and social justice have I committed? How did I end up on the wrong side of the culture war? The quivering finger of opprobrium has been pointed in my direction. Moi, a museli-knitter of unblemished wooly-liberal reputation.

I stand accused of not reading enough female authors.

Who is it that accuses me? Rabid libs of even more spotless reputation? Below the line trolls? Right wing talk show hosts? Randos of social media?

No. My daughter! My own flesh and blood. Et tu, apple of my eye?

What evidence is there to support such a reputation staining accusation? Who knows what I read and when I read it in the privacy of my own bedroom? Oh, well, um, yes…I post the covers of what I’ve read on Instagram.

As part of my exhausting quest for self improvement and obsessive list-making I have been reading a book a week for the past few years. I began by wanting to force myself off Twitter before going to sleep. Infuriating threads on comics minutiae are not conducive to regular circadian rhythms. I would find myself mentally drafting witty ripostes while staring at the ceiling in the dark, hours after the cavalcade of hot takes had moved on to an entirely new subject.

So much for weaning myself off the overweening socials. In my defence it’s not self-image projection/showing off if you have a memory like a sieve and want some kind of record of what you read a fortnight ago. Reading is good. Reading is stimulating. Reading sometimes sends me to sleep.

Now, let us refer to the evidence. I will check my Insta feed and attempt some rudimentary maths. It doesn’t look good. The record shows that out of forty-four books read so far this year, only nine were written by female authors.

A grim silence hangs in the courtroom of public opinion. Several (male) jurors stick out their tongues as they count on their fingers. The conclusion is indisputable. That is fewer than a quarter.

The judge peers severely at me over her reading glasses. Wait a minute, I recognise that hard stare. It’s my own daughter. She ignores my threats to share baby photos with the court and asks what kind of mitigating circumstances I can provide before sentence is passed. I meekly reply that I read fifteen books by women last year. The judge tells me I am not doing myself any favours. She places a plain back square of fabric on top of her wig, one of the four corners points in my direction.

How do I plead? Guilty, m’lud. Guilty in the first degree.

The gavel is struck. Send him down, declares the judge. I am lead away to the cries of, shame, shame, for shame, from the gallery.

At the dinner for my birthday my daughter gives me my presents. One of them is a book of short stories by Bora Chung. She wishes me a happy birthday and gives me a hard stare. I promise to put it at the top of my To Read Pile.

all

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Follow me and my shameful reading habits at my patreon where I post a review of the book I have read every Sunday.

Shameless capitalism

Paris, the fairy tale romance beautifully drawn by Simon Gane and written by me is out now from Image comics The handsome hardcover features twenty new pages of art and extras from Simon. If you enjoyed the book please leave a positive review online. That really helps us.

Order from the fine folk at OK Comics and you get an exclusive bookplate signed by Simon and me.

Books signed by us both can be bought directly from Simon and from me.

Sunburn is the next book from Simon and me. Due out at the end of November. I have received a copy and it is a gorgeous book. Simon’s colours are amazing as is his design work. It’s a beautiful object to hold in your hand. And it even smells fabulous!

Order from OK Comics and you will get the book with a signed exclusive bookplate.

Order from Page 45 and you will get the book with a (different) signed exclusive bookplate.

We’re very lucky to have wonderful retailers who support our (and many other authors) books so please support them if you can.

Patreon

I have a patreon which I update regularly. Tuesdays and Saturdays I post sketches and behind the scenes stuff such as Punycorn colour pages. Thursdays I post a one page comic story. And this year I am posting a review of the book I have read that week every Sunday.

__________

I still have books out in the world, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest & the awards nominated The Book Tour. Support my efforts through my store – digital comics – patreon or by leaving a positive review online

I arrived at the Lakes comic art festival on Friday and had nothing scribbled in my not so hectic schedule. On a whim I took the ferry to Ambleside and was glad I did. It's a beautiful part of the world and looks even more gorgeous when seen by boat. After disembarking I did a speed run of Ambleside. It's a lovely spot, but I had a boat to catch so didn't have time to buy surplus waterproofs or truly do it justice. I am determined to come back so I can explore at my leisure and enjoy a cheese scone.

(spot the spider)

Lord Hindlip boasts of being from the top drawer. He was raised locally on an estate very close to our house. He is handsome with a healthy complexion and robust body, not to mention decorative. He boasts a rich aroma and is an excellent keeper and an excellent cooker. However, I am sorry to inform you he has disappointed. He has not met expectations. He has lived rent free on our property and contributed the bare minimum. Less than that even. The rotter has quiet quit. There will have to be words, and at the appropriate time, action taken. Cuts will have to be made.

While our aristocratic lollygagger has lounged on a proverbial chaise longue, the conscientious Ms Pearmain has been working industriously to provide for the family. Reliable, popular and of a sweet disposition, she has shared her bounty with us. She has been so fertile that much of what she has borne has ended up rotting on the ground. The rest have been taken from her, brought indoors and their tops and bottoms chopped off with a bread knife. Then they have been skinned and cut into fine slices before being sprinkled with sugar and put in a pot in the oven.

I should have written a column last week, but I didn't. Probably you never noticed and I shouldn't have mentioned it. No one would have been any the wiser.

I would have still seemed like the sort of ambitious cartoonist keen to grow their audience and who keeps their promises regarding newsletters. The sort of person who promised they were back on the newsletter wagon a mere couple of weeks ago. I said I had cleared a bunch of deadlines and I wouldn't be distracted. No more erratic newsletter production, I declared confidently (at the time). Every Wednesday. Well, maybe every other Wednesday. No excuses!

Funny I should mention it, but I do have excuses. Soon after I got back from a literary festival in Italy I came down with a cold/man flu/flu/covid and felt like absolute garbage for two solid weeks. My first foreign trip in over two years. My first proper cold/man flu/flu/covid in over two years. Coincidence? Unlikely. Perhaps it's not too surprising despite wearing an FFP2 mask on Italian public transport.

Some may say it serves me right and was the price to pay for foreign travel/pastries/seeing innumerable churches, piazzas and palazzos. I paid that price by sitting at home for a fortnight doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself. A writer more gifted than me might have spun this tragic situation into literary gold. On the Nature of Mortality. Or: More Anecdotes From My Trip Abroad That I Am Still Going On About Even Though It Was Weeks Ago Now. Or even: Here's A Dozen Out Of Focus Photos Of An Aperol Spritz At Sunset (Sorry, I Am Not Much Of A Drinker And Was A Bit Tipsy At The Time).

I find myself in the secluded garden of the Palazzo Castiglioni just off the Piazza Sordello in Mantua, Italy. I am a guest of the literary festival and am greeted by Fabrizio and Federico from my Italian publisher. Edizioni BD is run by Marco who first edited my book Dumped in Italian twenty years ago. There's been a last minute request for an interview and Federico will act as my interpreter.

I can hardly believe my luck. Here I am, a humble cartoonist, at a literary festival in northern Italy about to talk comics with anyone who will listen. Things really have moved on since the days of BIFF! BAM! POW! Graphic novels have been welcomed into the bosom of the literary establishment. I am listed alongside the likes of Anne Enright and John Banville. I was, I admit, feeling pretty pleased not only with myself, but with the status of the medium.

I am mic'ed up by a cameraman. A nice lady holds an iPad and smiles at me. She is a journalist for Rai TV , the national broadcaster. I am going to be filmed. My smile becomes a little forced. My mind quickly runs through a catastrophising check list of all the stupid things I will say and do that will be seen by the people of Italy. I will embarrass myself, but even worse, embarrass the lovely people of the festival.

Is there anybody here?

No?

Just a pile of bills under the door, flyers for dodgy pizza parlours and assorted spam urging me to claim my free Phillips Air Fryer. I glance around the virtual office and what do I see? A few dusty links, abandoned drafts, fragments of potential masterpieces and a flatlined analytics graph. Emails written: 0. Subscribers gained: 0. Referrals made: 0. Total deliveries: 0. In short, a sorry state of affairs for a cartoonist supposedly 'building his platform'.

When my long-suffering agent asked if I would give a talk to a group of kids comics creators I naturally agreed. What would be the subject, I asked, secretly hoping it would be my favourite NASCAR driver (there is only one answer). Oh, she said, some people in the group are very impressed with your newsletter. Newsletter, I thought. Do I have a newsletter? Panic flashed across my wizened brain, the same way I worry that I have left the gas on at home. Slowly it came back to me. Oh, yeah, the thing I regularly write to keep people up to date with all my doings. That newsletter. She suggested I could talk about getting stuff done, how I manage to write a newsletter while maintaining a prolific career authoring graphic novels.

The phone rings mid-afternoon and I wearily pick it up expecting another call from the familiar voice of the tele-marketer who phones me every couple of days. The usual routine is that I say hello to silence, seconds later they come on the line and say hello half a dozen times against the background noise of a call centre. I remain silent. Eventually they hang up.

It's not what you would call a close relationship, but I do enjoy our little catch ups. It's as close to a water cooler moment as I get in the studio/front room. I imagine there's some sort of deranged startup that will artificially engineer these water cooler moments for solo homeworkers. Sorry to the tech bros planning their next WeWork investment disaster, but you can get this experience for absolutely free just by being a socially awkward weirdo in a rapacious capitalist society.

We are in Wales driving up a steep hill in low gear at the mercy of Google maps. The two previous right turns were not the ones we wanted. One of them was to a disused lead mine. At the third attempt we find the correct route.

I park the car in front of several other vehicles beside a sheer rock face. There's a red sign warning against climbing. With low clouds and rain dripping off the slick rocks it wasn't something I'd considered.

Phil and I meet in the hallway of our home. We nod a silent acknowledgement and don our coats, hats and scarves as our daughter sits in the living room on the other side of the door. Without saying a word, we tiptoe silently out of the house, carefully pulling the front door shut behind us. Once outside, our exhaled breath is visible in the cold air. We hurry along the canal path to a restaurant for lunch.

The reason for our ninja-like behaviour is not an elaborate ploy to avoid inviting our daughter to join us for a meal, but because she is in the middle of an online exam, and we had promised not to disturb her.

Earlier, Phil had poked her head into the studio (front room) to find me huddled in my chair with a blanket over my knees. I'd peered over the top of my glasses as she handed me a book. It's a collection of short stories I wanted. I complained that we had an understanding not to buy presents so soon after Christmas. I had not bought a present. This was a clear breach of our agreement.

One of those Kurt Vonnegut quotes popped up on Twitter the other day that caught my eye. I have always been a bit suspicious of the way social media has used Vonnegut as the sort of sage uncle we always wanted (not the one who "does his own research" on Facebook). The kind of person to put a metaphorical arm around your shoulder, impart some wise words, give you a cigar, shake your hand and leave you feeling better about yourself.

He experienced the Second World War, the Dresden firebombing, he wrote Slaughterhouse-Five and witnessed the worst of what humanity could do to itself. He also gave wry, wise and uplifting graduation speeches. In other words, one helluva guy.

Anyway, the quote was the familiar one about going on an archeological dig at 15 and bemoaning the fact that although he did lots of activities, he wasn't any good at any of them.

It's traditional at this time of year to glance back at the previous twelve months, take stock and try and make some sort of sense of it. I did one last year cheerily titled Horrible Annus. And what an annus it was.

Well, I can't say I am capable of putting 2021 into some sort of order. It took my re-reading of my own archives to jog my memory of what had even happened, nevermind mould it into some sort of thematic shape. Some things I had completely forgotten. Some I still have clear memories of, such as sitting in an architect's holiday home following lockdown and enjoying the silence.

In place of trying to bring order to a chaotic world, take this summary of the year as a series of vignettes. A kaleidoscopic snapshot of stuff that happened, if you will.

Here is my year in numbers:

Time is a circle. Or a flat lozenge. Or is that the earth? Hard to keep up with the onslaught of daily irrationality. Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. Plus ça change and all that rot. Have I ticked all the cliches yet? Another: the more things change etc etc.

Why, it was only a year ago that I was blathering on about Christmas. To quote myself, we have grown our very own mutant strain of coronavirus. This year it's Omicron's turn for fifteen minutes in the spotlight, or will that be fifteen weeks? Nobody quite seems to know yet.

Staying true to newly minted Christmas tradition, our daughter is home from uni, Alan is in the kitchen, a classic has been watched, the tree is up and the decision to stay home again this year appears to have been wise (at time of typing).

That was going to be the subject of this column (and a dozen more) before I pitched the idea to her. Unfortunately she shot it down in no uncertain terms. I have been censored. In my own newsletter.

Now I find, on reflection, with Phil standing over my shoulder with her arms crossed and the sound of her grinding her molars, that his would not be a fruitful line for me to follow as she is perfect and free from every vice.

Except for one: Beers of the World.

Autumn, the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and birthdays. For whatever reason we have a bunch of family birthdays squeezed into a roughly four week period at this time of year. It's a month or so of frantic present buying, cake baking and dinners.

This year also happens to be another birthday, dearer to me than all those family members who have enjoyed countless birthdays and cakes (I jest, family members who read this newsletter). This birthday is special as it is a first. A celebration of one year of life.

The baby can't sit, gurgle, cruise, stand and has a concerning lack of interest in everyday objects. It doesn't drool or giggle or refuse to go to sleep when it is tired. It doesn't wake up in the middle of the night, in fact it just lies there doing nothing. The only upside is that I don't have to change its nappies. Should I be worried?

No, of course not, because my baby is a book. The apple of my eye. The fruit of my...never mind. It is supposed to just lie there. Hopefully not in a pile of remainders with a badly creased spine, but on the bookshelf of a reader of taste and discernment (such as yourself). There it will stay, an asset to the wit, good looks and charm of the owner. Occasionally, as when the owner has guests over, the book will be taken down from the shelf and placed on a coffee table in order to impress friends, family and other freeloaders. It will spark conversation and inspire compliments as to the keen intelligence, fragrant allure and magnetic charm of the owner.

Way back when I was at junior school we had a weekly school assembly. We were led in by our teachers, class by class, and sat cross-legged in rows on the gritty wooden floorboards of the assembly hall.

One morning a red-headed boy, I don't remember anything else about him, was invited to stand up and read a poem he had composed. The lad got to his feet, unfolded his sheet of paper and in a clear, posh voice read out the title, “The Gold Fish Bowl”. A wave of sniggering washed across the hall before breaking out into open laughter. I laughed too. For weeks afterwards we would loudly repeat, “The Goldfish Bowl”, in our most exaggerated Lady Bracknell voices (although we had no idea who Lady Bracknell was) and laugh ourselves silly.

There was a disturbance in the discourse on Twitter recently and I found myself drawn to it like a moth to flame. Generally I avoid such temptations as I am laser-focused on working and I am in no way itching for a distraction. Any distraction from the flashing cursor.

A Hollywood director was boasting that as a bad-ass, cold-bloodied professional creative he did not have time for the muses to gift him a fruit basket of inspiration. He eschewed motivation in favour of (shouting) action. A man of his calibre had to get the job done. Feelings were transitory and so on and so forth. It all came off as a bit sub-Hemingway.

I dislike the macho exaltation of steely discipline, ice baths and must-do attitude in the arts. Real pros have no time for the clouds to part and visions to be revealed to them. They. Do. The. Job. Day. In. Day. Out. Whether they are inspired or not. Inspiration is for amateurs who can wait until the muses shower them with visions. Only then will the spineless dilettantes be stirred to action.

I don't think anyone has said this before but writing is hard. I know, I'm breaking new ground here. Alas, it is true.

You may not believe me if you have read one of my newsletters but these lovingly-lathed sentences do not travel in a straight line from my thought brain, through my fingers onto the keyboard and sparkle, diamond bright, on the screen. They are the result of being rewritten at least once. If not for spelling and grammar (I do honestly aspire to be within spitting distance of The Elements of Style) then for basic comprehension. You would think using a modest vocabulary to relate a boring anecdote about going to the shops would be easy to get over in less than five hundred words. Not so. Not for me, anyway.

This was underlined (in red ink) when I received a copyedited script of my next graphic novel. It was an uncomfortable experience knowing that my silly fantasy story had been pored over in detail by a grown up professional. They had read my dumb jokes and cast their eye over my doubtful punctuation. They must think I'm a complete idiot.

Copyediting is the art of making a text ready for print by making sure it is clear, consistent, correct and complete. Not only the proper usage of language but that story points are consistent throughout. If the hero starts the story driving a red car then it doesn't randomly change colour part way through. This is easier to do when it is prose and complete text is there. It's a bit more complicated with comics as the art and words have such a dynamic relationship.

Saturday and Phil begins packing food for our daughter's return to university. From where I am sitting all I can see is a huge jar of Nutella and several bottles of wine.

Later we watch Little Women. I need to go food shopping and question whether I have the fortitude to see it all the way through. Inevitably I am drawn into the film as the evening light dims. We saw it as a family at the cinema when it was first released at the end of 2019. The Beforetimes. I recall weeping at the trailer for Military Wives.

Luckily it's dark inside by the time the inevitable occurs and I cry ugly and try my best not to sob out loud.

I was absentmindedly gazing out of our holiday let window in Devon when my eye was caught by a family promenading along the seafront opposite. That man looks a lot like Keir Starmer, leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, I said to myself. Of course it couldn't be. My mind was befuddled by an excess of sea air and ice cream.

He was just some bloke strolling by the seaside with relatives on an overcast day at the tail end of August. One of the many pacing up and down wondering what to do after they had ordered a takeaway coffee, eaten fish and chips and been dive bombed by seagulls in this quiet corner of the English coast.

The group stopped opposite my window and the man who wasn't the Labour party leader crossed the road and disappeared into the deli a couple of doors down. Phil had been in there only a few minutes earlier where she witnessed an intense conversation between a mother and her children regarding a jar of Damson chutney. The kids, I am informed, were less than enthused by the condiment. In order to do our bit to boost the local economy Phil returned with an armful of artisanal cookies, a tin of Elderflower Collins cocktail, a homemade quiche and a Portuguese egg custard. Total cost: approximately equivalent to a small yacht or an entire year's groceries from Aldi.

Have you ever met someone for the first time and disliked them for no reason whatsoever? They can be lovely people, kind to goldfish, promptly pay their library fines, replace loo roll the right way (over, not under) but despite all that there is something about them that irks you?

It’s not them. It’s you.

But it might be them.

After all, you are a lovely person who replaces loo roll the right way and would never allow something as vague as a bad vibe to influence your opinion of another human being.

My daughter is freshly, or not so freshly, returned from a music festival (where a negative Covid test was necessary). I can second hand report that the surfer boys are hot, the toilets are cleaned three times a day in the VIP section (the section she wasn’t in), the Lidl pop-up shop selling vegan hot dogs with a glass of prosecco is a bargain and that Gorillaz played a two hour set.

I was also told, in the offhand hand way that teenagers slip a dagger of ice into your heart, that Gorillaz were music for people more my age. A burn on par with the student who listened to the Pixies because it reminded her of her grandparents.

I have only been to one music festival before in my life. Phil organised a family trip to the Cambridge Folk Fesitval around a decade ago where we saw Kate Rusby. It was, I am happy to say, not a full throttle rock ‘n’ roll experience. Much more a picnic in a field sort of vibe.

For three days in a row the auction house has called me up demanding to know when I will be paying for and collecting my watercolours. This comes as a surprise to me as I haven’t bid on any watercolours. In fact I have never bid on anything at an auction house in my life.

The first and third times the woman on the other end has something approaching a phone manner. The enquiry is firm but polite. The second time the voice of a different woman is blunt and, to my ears, sinister. I fear Miss Trunchbull will appear at my home without warning, pound on the front door, take me by the shoulders and shake me violently until my debit card falls out of my pocket. At which point I will be pulled by the ear to the nearest cashpoint and made to pay up on the spot, watercolours thrown at my feet on the dirty pavement.

Phil has a dim memory of something to do with watercolours. Now she thinks about it, yes, it was her. I don’t know who else it could be so we will need to cross county lines to collect the paintings.

A sunny afternoon in August and we drive into the wilds of the countryside to settle the matter. Progress along the minor roads is held up by tractors. Brown signs point to the cattle market. We are in the sticks.

Unlike my ultra-masculine alter-ego Wolf Watson I don’t hunt. No shooting or fishing for me. Killing things is not really my bag. Eating them is another matter. I eat fish. Just none that I have caught myself. I will leave that to the nets, trawlers and environmentally destructive industrial processes far away from my delicate, hypocritical sensibilities.

“I only look this way due to tissue damage from depressurisation.”

Furry creatures with big eyes and cute babies are something else. I won’t eat them let alone kill them myself. I still have the fridge magnet Phil presented to me with Squirrel Whisperer inscribed upon it (the highest honour the squirrel can bestow on human kind) after I dashed into the garden half-dressed and barefoot to rescue a squirrel caught in the jaws of a neighbour’s cat. My erratic early morning behaviour so disturbed the feline that it released it’s victim and my legend was born. Hero, saviour, liberator. You are welcome squirrels. Now it would be nice if you didn’t dig sizeable trenches in the lawn to bury your damn nuts. Thank you very much.

Indulge me while I wallow in a bit of self-promotion. The Book Tour has been nominated for Book of The Year by the Harvey awards. The Harveys are named after Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) an American cartoonist and editor famous for creating MAD magazine. One of the best to ever do it.

As a frame of reference for non-comics people, the Harveys are closer to the Sundance Awards while the Eisners are more like the Oscars. Am I getting that right? Maybe they are the Palme D’or or the BAFTAs or the Golden Boot. I dunno. It’s rarely flattering to compare movies to comics. Comics are the intern that movies has work for free over the summer.

Anyway, I really only wanted to use this opportunity to toot my own horn. Toot toot. That’s it.

Okay. I guess I’ll finish the newsletter.

Football. There’s a lot of it about. Before you stop reading I will not be boring you silly about my lifelong passion for ‘the beautiful game’, childhood dreams of playing in the ‘top flight’ or the disappointment of being picked last for the school team (still too raw to probe that psychological wound). Neither will I rant at length about how much I despise the national pastime.

Growing up and living in England means you are surrounded by the game. It permeates the culture. Loving or hating it must be exhausting. It would be like loving or hating air. Or grass. Or the royal family.

The regular season lasts most of the year, then there are the domestic cups and trophies, rosettes, commemorative plates and invitationals. Much talk of silverware. There are the international leagues, friendlies and competitions. And then there’s the world stage. Did you know the World Cup is only a year and a half away? It’s a lot

To be fully invested, one way or another, is a job of work. I don’t have the energy. I already have a labour intensive, low reward ‘career’ that consumes much of my time.

The security gate swung open on its creaking hinges to let them in. A steady stream entered empty-handed and staggered out carrying boxes, family-sized bags of untouched dried pasta and trailing bedding. The parents were back for the great migration. The weekend when university students leave the secure confines of their halls of residence for the mean streets of shared housing.

The academic year had ended on something of a whimper after a fellow student in my daughter’s flat pinged for Covid which required all the occupants to self-isolate for ten days. Quarantine was over when we parked outside and began lugging boxes on a muggy Saturday morning.

We packed the car and drove not very far to our daughter's new home. Like many student areas it is a little rough around the edges but does have the advantage of being close to Aldi. I was tasked with cutting back some of the ivy that was patiently working its way into the door frame. There's a point where cottagecore has to take a back seat to basic security measures.

Alan will spend the summer in the new digs where a housemate will care for him. I won't lie, I'm a little worried. I hope he doesn't get burgled.

Mid-afternoon is the sweet spot for hitting the post office. Sandwiched between lunch hour and school pick up is quietest. I have finely calibrated my visits to take as little time as possible.

Once there I sidestep the queue and go to the terminals where I mail six packages to overseas destinations. Each parcel requires the address and post code to be typed in one letter at a time via a touch screen. A customs form is then filled out and a barcode sticker applied. Every part of the customs form must be filled in accurately in block capitals. I am warned parcels are now being sent back if the forms aren’t correctly completed.

At the end of this laborious process the machine declines my card. Then it declines it three more times. I breathe deeply, put the parcels back in my bag and go to the bank. My card works perfectly and I take out fifty pounds from the cash machine. The notes feel waxy and unfamiliar in my hand.

At the post office I repeat the process at a different terminal. Taking a gamble I tap my card on the reader and smile as I see the payment is accepted. My satisfaction is short-lived as the terminal crashes. No stamps are printed, no receipts are disgorged. There is no proof I have just spent forty pounds on postage.

It was several weeks ago that Phil and I were woken early by a loud POK. In different circumstances it might have been the beginnings of an intriguing mystery or the subject of idle speculation. Unfortunately, as home owners, it lead to panicked wails of, “What’s gone wrong now?” and, “How much is it going to cost this time?” Houses, unlike Wolverine, don’t heal themselves .

We set off in different directions in search of POK. It sounded to me like a lightbulb going out. I checked the cupboard under the stairs where there’s no room for a boy wizard amongst the embarrassing amount of clutter. One day the stepladder will topple over the Henry hoover and smash the lightbulb. Not that morning. The bulb remained intact. Curiouser and curiouser.

Eventually I opened the front door to find an unsliced wholemeal loaf, a pint of semi-skimmed milk and two halves of a housebrick. Padding out in bare feet I look up to see a brick from the decorative row over the bedroom window has fallen out.

The reviews are in and according to my family last week’s newsletter was “a lot of boring stuff about comics”. I am shocked, saddened, and frankly surprised at their judgement. I worry they’ll be eviserating me on Goodreads next. Don’t they realise that at least 50% of my existence is “a lot of boring stuff about comics”? What do they think I do in the studio all day. Nap? Well, that accounts for the other 45% of my existence. The remaining 5% is family life.

Who, I ask, doesn’t want to hear me whine about how boring scanning artwork is? That is relatable content to the 1% of people to whom it is relatable. In order to prove that my life does not entirely revolve around them, the 5% part anyway, I am going to touch on a subject close to all our hearts: .