The 42nd Post

So, it's been an eventful year, some positive things have happened and some not so.

I'm hoping that in 2023 I get complete control of my feet back so I can drive a car again, or failing that have managed to get a modified car that will allow me to get back into my old life.

Popping to Cons... seeing friends... popping into new towns for a look around ... nothing too extravagant.

I will say that we take a lot of things for granted and never really think about what would happen if we lost something that we are able to do without thinking. I certainly never expected to have a mysterious infection hit both my legs and have the impact it has.

I'll not get bleak though... 

Hope to see a lot of you at Conventions around the country next year, or who knows, maybe you'll hear a knock on the door and it'll be me in my new driver-less car.

Actually if it's a driver-less car it'll probably be the car that's knocking on your door.

All the best for 2023... one thing I do know... it's going to be interesting. 

Three big things that happened to me this year - Part Three.

The last significant thing that happened to me was that I've finally managed to buy a house.

Since my divorce I've been renting, it's been a few years now, and I've decided that I like High Wycombe enough to make things a little more permanent.

After months of viewing, placing bids and getting my bids beaten I decided to get my daughter involved in the process. 

I set up a few viewings over a weekend and invited Jemma down to view them with me. If I was going to bid more than £5k over the asking price then I needed a second opinion.

Having viewed a few with Jemma, she quite patiently asked me why I was trying to buy the same house that we used to have. The ones I was looking at, she pointed out, will never be as good.

Jemma then selected a few houses to view and one was nothing that I would have selected.

We viewed it.

I didn't think too much of the look of the loft conversion from the outside, it being one of the box types to maximise head room inside. Jemma, again quite patiently, reminded me that I'd be spending most of my time in the room looking out of it than I would on the street looking up at it.

I really liked the rest of it.

It even had a great shed for comic book storage.

I put the offer in, at £10k over asking price, and requested that they leave carpets and curtains.

My offer was accepted.

I moved in in September.

There's even space outside to park my car so it's not on a road. Not that I can use it at the moment.

Settling in .. sorting through my posters / pictures to decided which ones go where whilst trying to not turn the house into a Superhero gallery.

Had my first snow...

and my first Xmas here... sadly on different days.

Looking forward to making it feel more like 'my house' over the coming year. 

More 'Game of Thrones'

Well, over Xmas break I caught up with the Targaryens in House of Dragons.

I loved all but the last season of Game of Thrones and was hoping that they'd pick up some of the potential prequels and/or sequels. 

Really enjoyed their first attempt...

...can't wait for Season 2.

Managing Kickstarters when you can't drive.

I ran two kickstarters whilst all of this has been going on.

I can't drive to a post office and don't want to keep getting taxis back and forth.

Gary put me onto a Royal Mail service that I wasn't aware of, where they collect the parcels from your home. They even print the labels out for you to stick on them.

A great service that I used a lot in Nov for the WesterNoir postings and that I will use again in a week or so for the Kia Wordsmith postings.

RoyalMail.com

..and you don't have to pay any extra for this service.

Great.

Three big things that happened to me this year - Part Two.

Back on the evening of the 6th July I struggled to get to sleep due to pain in both my legs below the knees. I ended up in absolute agony and had to call 111, as I'd done everything I could think of to ease the pain.

Ultimately an ambulance came out to me and once they'd confirmed that I wasn't having, or going to have, a heart attack weren't really much use.

It pain had eased off a little, but I was left with massively inflamed and swollen legs (below the knee) and feet.

I spent the next week in my rented flat, on the third floor, unable to do much at all apart from take paracetamol and Ibuprofen, keep my legs up and apply hot and cold compresses to my shins and feet.

Failing to get to the Dr in the surgery I eventually booked an appointment with the Health Centre's Physio, as I was struggling to walk, I had developed this shuffle where my feet never left the ground. If my shuffling feet came in contact with a rug or anything like that them I'd effectively fall over it. It was very graceful.

Having to take a taxi ride to the Physio, I found myself sat in the Health Centre on the 13th July, still in some pain (but nothing like the worst of it which was on the 7th). I wasn't surprised by the look on the Physio's face as I did my strange walk, which was an improvement from the shuffle, towards him. I effectively couldn't lift my feet at the ankle, effectively raising the toes, and had to lift my knees high and swing my lower legs to flick the foot out and then land my weight on it, so it all came down together with a splat.

The physio said I had 'dropsy' due to nerve damage sustained whilst my legs had swollen but was stunned by the swelling still there around my legs and ankles and went to see a Dr. He came back with a prescription for a strong anti-biotic.

A week later I was back in, actually seeing a Dr this time, and was prescribed an anti-inflammatory. The anti-biotics had done some good but my legs and feet were still swollen and I still struggled to walk.

A week later, not much improvement I tried to get to see the Dr again, to follow up on the anti-inflammatories, failed to do so and so took a taxi to the local hospital's A&E.

I didn't have to wait too long as it turned out, and after a quick examination was sent to a hospital (not the closest one though) to have a DVT scan.

Another taxi ride later, and after the test I was informed that it wasn't DVT and to come back tomorrow for a different scan.

A few taxi rides later, there's no way I could drive with my feet as they were, and I found myself back the next day with another negative result from another scan. 

I was asked to stay in the ward until they could sort me out.

Although I was only dressed in shorts, t-shirt and saddles (the only shoes I could get my feet into) with my wallet and iPhone in my pockets I checked myself in.

The NHS staff are all wonderful human beings. I was constantly humbled by pretty much everything they did, day in and day out.

A week later and I was checking out again with the knowledge that my thyroid was incredibly small and not producing anywhere near enough Thyroxine.

They never did explain the infections but I had a diagnosis, knowledge of a whole load of things I haven't got and a prescription to sort me out.

It's funny that before all of this I had thought I had bad congestion, my voice sounded very growly and a little drunk. 

Turns out this was all linked and my voice is now back to normal.

Sadly the same can't be said of my feet. My walking is much improved but I still can't lift my toes as I stride along and so I have to lift my feet and put them down carefully in front of me with each step. 

I get overtaken by everybody now.

I still can't drive as my feet can't work a clutch, accelerator or brake, which has a massive impact on my mobility. Missing Cons, having to wfh despite things lifting (rightly or wrongly) from a Covid perspective and generally not being able to just pop somewhere if needed, or fancied.

Looks like this might be it I guess, as good as my feet will get, so I'm going to have to look at cars that you can drive with your hands, an automatic with hand controlled brake and accelerator I guess.

I'll decide after my next appointment with the hospital, at the end of Jan.

Yep, not a great second half of the year and frustrating to still be impacted by it all some 6 months later, but there are people in worse situations.

The Stephenson's Robot Companion Book - and just when the colouring is going well...

.....you come to this page where El Indio! has had a load of fun.

...and you just know that this is going to take quite a while to complete.

Better stock up on the tea and biscuits, select a few good tracks and get cracking.

The Stephenson's Robot - Companion Book

I've been working on pulling together the companion book to Stephenson's Robot.

This will contain the martian robots pages plus the back stories of the lead, and significant, characters from the Stephenson's Robot storyline. 

I now have all the pages I need from uniquely talented El Indio! for the martian pages, and the final back story, this one from the the pen of Russell Olson.

It's been fun working with all these different artists over the years and I think the book is looking fabulous.

As with the Stephenson's Robot book, I'm spending a lot of time remastering this one, moving stories around a little, adding extra martian robot pages and a few other surprises here and there.

Depending on how busy our production schedule is I'm hoping to print this sometime around Summer 2023.

Three big things that happened to me this year - Part One.

This year saw me cut my ties with Accent UK. It wasn't an easy decision to make as Colin Mathieson, Barry Renshaw and I started Accent UK a little more than 20 years ago.

Barry left us pretty early on but Colin and I were regulars at numerous Conventions, in the UK and abroad, over the years and the first 10 years or so were great.

There came a point however when I noticed that we were both looking for different things from Accent UK.

I wanted it to become bigger, to keep evolving, to produce more comics and maybe look to publish the work of others (although I was never 100% sure of this). Colin, for his part, loved the more organic small comic company that produced work we'd written and drawn ourselves. Just as we did when we started. Me with my little Strange Times comic and him with his Zulu - Water Cart Rescue comic.

I think I quickly realised that my artistic ability would never keep up with the ideas that I wanted to get out there, and I soon found myself enjoying the writing more than the art.

As the years progressed and I produced more and more books with more and more talented artists, I was always conscious that my 'stuff' was taking over the Convention tables, pushing Colin's to the edge of the table.

Little ideas I had for improving things with Accent UK, a yearly 'brochure' advertising the Cons we'd be at, the books due to be produced etc for example, never really captured Colin's support. In hindsight, I see now that it was taking him further and further away from what he wanted Accent UK to be.

I dwelled on it for a little while and then during one Thought Bubble Convention I looked at what Time Bomb Comics were doing and it was effectively what I'd been wanting to do for a few years. David Morris and I talked about my joining them, something we'd joked about over the years, and moving my work under their umbrella, and it all looked to fit pretty well. Very well in fact.

I didn't handle the message with Colin very well, for which I'll be forever sorry. I can be pretty direct and immediate when I've worked things out in my head, despite it all being pretty new to the other person. After a few weeks Colin accepted that it was probably for the best, and we started having our own tables at Conventions.

It pleases me to see that Colin now has the chance to take over the whole table and fill it with his own comics and other little bits and bobs, making it much more interesting than our old Accent UK tables. He looks happier too, in his element, and I don't think I'm just trying to make myself feel better by saying that. 

He's selling more of his own books and producing little prints as well.

I doubt our friendship will ever get back to where it was, for which I'm very sorry, but I still think it was the best thing to do.

My meetings with Time Bomb Comics have all been very positive and constructive, we are all pulling in the same direction. The latest WesterNoir TPB Volume 2 is the first under the Time Bomb Comics logo but there will be plenty more coming. 

Re-read an old favourite.

I loved Peter David's run on X-Factor when it first came out. 

Great character development, great situation to drop them all into, solid art throughout. What an interesting Jamie Madrox san be if used correctly.

So when I saw this Omnibus in the local Forbidden Planet I just had to pick it up.

But would it be as good as I remember it?

In short, yes. 

I really enjoyed reading it all again and think it was probably Peter David at his best, although he did a lot of good stories back in the day.

The DVD that surprised me the most this year.

I bought this as I quite enjoyed the latest Suicide Squad and really liked what James Gunn did with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

But Peacemaker? 

Really?

A very two dimensional character in the Suicide Squad movie, but he certainly had layers in the TV series. Very enjoyable.

Look forward to Season 2, and to seeing what James Gunn does with the DC movie universe, although that said I do wish they'd let Zack Snyder finish what he was doing first.

WesterNoir Volume 1 books have reached Diamond's Warehouse

Despite the postal strikes etc in the UK, the boxes of WesterNoir Volume 1 have made it to Diamond.

Hopefully they'll be on their way across the Atlantic over the next few days.

WesterNoir Volume 1 on its way to Diamond Distributions

 It's been a tough year for me, I'll post later about my time in hospital but the ongoing result is that I'm currently unable to drive.

Before all of this happened we got WesterNoir Volume 1 listed in the Diamond catalogue, so that it could be ordered by shops around the globe, and we got a pretty good order from the USA.

And then I got ill, and then I moved house and then I realised that I'd be unable to get the stock from my Storage Locker easily or get them from my house to Diamond's warehouse up north.

Well a friend stepped in to help get them from my storage locker to my house and from there I used the Royal Mail's Collection service to get them from my house to Diamond.

It's a great feeling sending the books on their way.

We'll put Volume 2 in the catalogue sometime next year, probably around June.

 

WesterNoir Kickstarter Backer Rewards...

 ...have all been shipped out, except for the usual stragglers which we'll be rounding up over the next few weeks.

And these include the fabulous commissioned Josiah Black by the very talented Simo.

Enjoy your read.