I've been playing moody melancholic instrumental stuff, mainly Yann Tiersen, for the last couple of hours, trying to get into a good mood for writing things. And it hasn't been too bad, all things considered. Having taken the last three days off for packing, moving back to Sheffield and getting acquainted and sorted in my new apartment, I'm back writing my goddamn still untitled story. It's going to need a title soon, so I can start referring it as that instead of My Still Untitled Story I'm Writing for the Prize. Whatever it's called, it's going pretty well and am almost a quarter of the way through - still going somewhat slow, but whatever. I've never missed a deadline yet, why start now.

Today, Wilson and I got back into drawing our good old Wanderer comic, which I've been typing out for the last few weeks. I actually managed to get the base pencils down for three pages, which Wils will draw over and make better. How we're going to colour I have no idea yet, but one problem at a time. I was gonna scan it and link it here, but now it's too late and I'm sleepy

I'm going to go to my bed, which is nice and comfortable, and sleep soundly now that I've finally organised most of the stuff I brought up with me. It was a horribly long ride (which actually wasn't all that bad, all car trips considered) although for the most part I had this song from A Goofy Movie stuck in my head.

I was going to review chapter 1 of my untitled story and make a PDF of it, post it up on the site but never got around to that. Actually want to embed videos into the Videos section, too, seeing it's empty now and I won't be able to put the clips up for download any time soon.

I might do it tomorrow, and post up a whole new entry just for that. Maybe I'll include some comical video or article or whatever to put with it, as I am wont to do. For now, nothing. Jut the calm, blissful ... calmness of the black background of blog.

...

Calm.

I'm racking my brains out trying to come up with a story for this Pratchett Prize. I am just drawing blanks here, and am considering rewriting the entirety of Dial M for Mephistopheles, making it into one long story instead of this two-parter, but I don't think it would be the best idea. There are a few reasons for this, one being that I don't want to take away the character of Louis M Mephisto from Chris Button. It was originally his character, after all - which originated in a Media Studies project way back when, in 2006 he did - this link's the trailer for it.

I have a setting, which isn't bad, and a sort of reveal at the end, but I have nothing leading up to the end, and barely any plot. I want to start writing it in August to meet the deadline. I think I have too many projects going at the moment - this story, the work I want to do on Spring Heel Jack, as well as the script for Wanderer I want to have finished by September (at least that's going well). 

In totally unrelated news, I am totally digging Belle and Sebastian's new song, this live version here being the only available one. New album is supposedly almost finished with, and I'm looking forward to that.

Time to start reading my Necronomicon (now that I've finally got the bastard back) again. That might give me some ideas. It inspired me to write The Story of the Ultimate Fate of William Sancter last year (well, that and  it was ridiculously loosely inspired by actual in-London events, sort of).

Tempted to also go over a few changes for the site over the next few weeks, so it's probably not going to stay as it is now.

I'll leave you with a message from our sponsors (all credit to LittleKuriboh here)

Just as I clicked on the "create new post" link up on the Dashboard, my computer bleeped in that bizarre way it does when Tweetdeck has some new Tweets for me and my computer's trying to sound like a bird. It was the incredibly awesome Neil Gaiman telling the world about the Terry Pratchett Prize which, if my brief glance over the page is correct, is a competition where ordinary, boring tryhard writers like myself submit to the king of fantasy comedy their completed 80,000-150,000 word stories and, with any luck, if he chooses it, you get a load of cash and a publishing deal.

This is freaking awesome.

I think I finally have something to do this summer. I'm going to go over it in more detail tomorrow, but if it's like that then I have a lot of work to do. My already completed stories (which I'm still not greatly proud of but whatever) come in at 77,000 odd words each, so I'm heading along the right path. Question is, do I start from scratch or do I try to do something I've already got?

With the deadline being December I only have about 5 months left to write it, too, which is really a short amount of time. Oh, there is one little limitation. It seems to have to be set on Earth, an alternate Earth, that is, which is a bit of a pain in the ass.

I am rather excited. But what to write about?

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In other news: nothing. I can't even remember what I wanted to post up in the first place. It was probably going to be something ridiculous and boring like that iPad commercial I hate so much. It's not that I have anything against the iPad (well, I do actually) but the ad is just so stupid. "iPad is thin, iPad is beautiful. It's already a revolution". What the hell is that about?

Oh, I have finally finished one part of script for the first volume of the Wanderer graphic novel we've been trying to do. I sent it to Chris Wilson and he read it and enjoyed it and seemed to know what I was trying to convey anyway. If I carry on at this pace, I'll have finished the two other parts and we'll be on the way to a completed comic. For once.

So far, it's looking like this:

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I'm home, finally, from France. Well, I have been for the last two days now, but I've only just gotten to bothering to go on Blogger. Besides, I spent the first day back running around town for no reason, as the bank holiday meant I couldn't get my bank cards back (which I lost in London), I couldn't go to the post office to exchange some euros, and I couldn't go to uni to get a new ID card. So I decided to go to the learning center to do some work, as my computer was broken. I couldn't get in without my student ID, so defeated, I returned home and watched Infernal Affairs. Infernal Affairs is such a cool film.

Now I've managed to fix my computer, using some House-style techniques. Train of thought went like this.

"Computer keeps blue-screening. What's the diagnosis?" "Corrupted hard drive?" "So, an auto-immune disease? We can't test the contents without severe risk. We can't biopsy without damaging it." "So we look elsewhere. Maybe it's not the inside. Maybe the problem is environmental." "We found the problem: clotted ventilation unit stopped it from working, overheating, causing the computer to react negatively to any heavy usage: including all the anti-virus tests. It only sprang to life once it cooled down, only to shut down again ten minutes later. Clear out any dust, buy a ventilation unit to keep it cool, it'll be fine." Cue bantering between characters, and end credits

... Anyway. France was certainly enjoyable, except for the bits that weren't. People are generally a blast to observe. Sitting on the metro, for example. It's exactly the same everywhere on earth: avoid eye contact, and make sure you don't touch or go anywhere near the person standing next to you. Two people sharing the same handrail? They may as well be having sex.  Sitting in a crowded area is good for two reasons. Watching people do people things, and people watching you draw. The latter is particularly good when they come up to you and tell you how awesome you are at drawing. Because of this, when drawing in public, I tend to find a picture I've already drawn and is already good. Starting from scratch has the risk of the drawing being shit.

The rest of my stay in France was largely me politely refusing everyone's offers of coffee and cigarettes. 

...

Now with everything more or less back to normal, I can spend the rest of the week typing out the Wanderer script, the story for which I finished in France. And I have a new Wacom tablet I want to test out. 

But for now, I'm gonna watch a film. 

My list of things to do has been completed and I'm rather pleased with myslef. I can't remember the last time I have fully completed a to-do list without making stupid compromises. Fifteen things done in like 12 hours, which isn't bad considering I've spent seven of those hours playing Tekken or doodling. And now it's half twelve and I'm forcing myself to convince myself that it's late. I have a weird feeling that the rest of my life will comprise of me battling myself over what time is acceptable and what time is stupidly late. I've gotten to the point where 4AM isn't. That's not good.

Oh drat, I wanted to do some writing before I went to bed (shouldve put it in my to-do list). I might do Wanderer instead. That needs to be written, still. To be honest I have no idea where to take it now. I'm writing an issue to be released (or whatever) before my original first issue, but it's reached the point where I've got all these plot twists,  new characters and stories and shit in my head and it's hard to write anything without accidentally slipping anything in there and thus confusing the audience. Originally the Wanderer was going to have a big ol' coat and hat (he still does), but hid his face for the entirety of the first issue ... because apparently seeing his face would have been bad. Seeing I can't hide his face in this one, I'm scrapping the idea, wondering why it was even a good idea in the first place.

Or maybe I could type up my notes from classes this week. I have a visual culture and representation class which, basically, is looking at pictures and films and analysing the shit out of the pretty pictures, integrated project with the world's greatest film producer COLIN PONS (here's his IMDB...) who's given us a choice of three themes: Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, or the Showroom Cinema. For those of you who don't know, the Showroom is in Sheffield, just down from Sheffield Hallam. Gee, thanks again for your wonderful contribution to our education, Colin. How could we ever have passed the course without you (he's the guy I was talking about in this post here).

You just wonder if he was just sitting in his office, wondering what to pretend to teach us and then looked out the goddamn window. There's amoeba who could teach us better animation.

Then there's our claymation class which no one bar three others attended on Friday for unknown reasons, which was fine because it made everything easier considering the room is about the size of Colin Pons's imagination. (That's three square imaganiums, for those calculating imagination in metric)

Ho hum. I'm going to go find something to write about. Ciao world. I'll leave you with pretty pictures of WANDERER I drew some time back

...

I have a burn mark on the back of my hand, and I don't know how it got there. It looks more like a vampire bite oddly enough and it stings like a bitch, and makes typing and drawing and everything kind of difficult. I have spent the day drawing squares on paper, then doing lineart of faces and rather stationary-looking characters, then getting angry at it, starting again and suceed more or less, to give it to my collaborator to draw over it to detail it. This is going to take a shit load of time. Ho hum. I don't know how many silhouettes and darkened faces I can draw before people get bored of people without faces and mysterious motives and dialogue. Who knew writing and illustrating a comic was so hard. This song is creepy as a motherfucker. The voices go right through you.

When life gives you lemons, follow Meat Loaf's view on it and ask for your fucking money back. Then go out and buy some pre made lemonade and drink it all on the way back. I wish I had paid someone to build this shed for me. My arms are killing me and I am heavily blistered. I must also insist on people who feel like it's a fantastic idea to build sheds, that it's not and that you're all morons for thinking so. Also, wear closed shoes. I have many cuts on my foot, from stepping on sharp things and falling in the rose bushes. But much swearing and pickeled onion flavoured crisps later, it's built, if in a somewhat rickety half assed way. I'm only in this house for two more weeks so it can fall down all it wants once I'm gone. Not my problem any more. I still haven't fixed my backspace key, but I have adapted to it, much like a chameleon can adapt itself to the floor once it's been stood on by a particularly fat person. At least I can finally do the script for this comic. Eight pages, considerably more to go.

Brendan Fraser's awesome. .... Months after getting AC Newman's album Get Guilty I still can't get enough of Prophets. It's a great song and was featured in the season 4 finale of How I Met Your Mother, which makes it that much better. This is what it sounds like. It's such a chilled out song. I've been listening to a lot of it while writing out Wanderer, which is going better than I thought and could actually be the first comic I actually finish (although this won't be evident till we actually get it done. This will take several years). All I need now is to type up a script for the first arc, (or first two issues) and we'll be underway. It would be much easier if my fucking computer was fixed. I miss writing things. Somehow I can't seem to get anything done on other people's computers. Oh, no. Evie just died on Mummy Returns. I kind of wish she wouldn't be brought back to life though, cos she was shit in the third one. Ho hum.

Blog. It's been like a week since I last updated you. For this I apologise. My computer's still on the brink, and it's not good as I don't get an awful lot of anything done, because as I have realised my entire creative career pretty much relies on having computers around, for writing, drawing or communicating. I've had to make do with phones and paper and stuff. What a world we live in. I need to send the damn thing off the get fixed, but I only just got my files back yesterday off the guy who spent 4 days doing what was essentially a two hour job. The other reason I haven't blogged is because there isn't an awful lot to blog about. It's the summer and everything's quiet and I actually haven't tried to do anything. I have spent the last few days playing games I haven't played in years, but not the cool asian mystery game or anything, more like Final Fantasy X. I've been planning a lot of this comic (or graphic novel as is the vernaculer) which I plan on doing with Wilson, about a guy who wanders and helps people out. But right now all I really have is a weak story and a lot of drawings involving a man wearing a fedora and a big coat, assuring me that this will in no way have any cliches.