PROPAGANDA @ The FPI Blog - The week in reviews

This weeks reviews at the FPI blog have been:

Necessary Monsters 3 & 4
Donkey Head # 1 & 2
Melusine Volume 1
Largo Winch Volume 1: The Heir
The Toon Treasury Of Classic Children's Comics

That explains the nightly cries of "Daddy!" then

It's been noticed in Bruton mansions this year that there's a veritable plague of spiders. Rarely has a night gone by without at least one of the ladies of the house screaming for assistance. But it seems we're not alone - even the BBC has noticed.

ill

House has cold. I struggle valiantly through it all.
No, it's not bloody man-flu. Louise has got it as well and she got sent home from work today because she couldn't talk. So whatever it is (we don't think it's swine flu), it's not bloody man-flu.

Other than that, all is quiet at Bruton mansions.
I work, I review, I work, I review. That is my week.
And the strange thing is - I enjoy work AND reviewing. Which is nice.

PROPAGANDA @ The FPI Blog - The week in reviews

This week's reviews to be seen over at the FPI blog:




Cinebook's Lucky Luck & Cedric.
Howard Hardiman's second Polaroids From Other Lives.
Jake Harold's Justine Tyme.
The Art Of Harvey Kurtzman (which is just as good as you'd expect)

Clarifying, explaining and details of my workload...... again....

I said this:

Somedays I wonder what I did before the Internet.
No Google - how would I do my job? How would I have found out what that computer error meant and how to fix it?
No Spotify - how would I find so much new (and old-new) music to annoy Louise with?
No Blogger - what would I do with my evenings?
No Wordpress - what would I write review after review after review on?
No Bloglines - how would I find all of the great news and information to write about?
Then I waffled on about how I loved Remember The Milk.

Certain people (actually just Mrs Bruton) have pointed out that this implies that before the Internet and all the goodies I've mentioned I actually did do stuff - like go out, enjoy myself, relax, talk to my wife - that sort of thing.

I'd like to point out that that was THE POINT I was trying to make. Before Internet things were so much harder yet so much less rushed as well. Both in real life and the approximation of it that I like to call my life. Pre Internet I had time to relax - except, as Louise points out - I didn't actually - for as long as she can remember I've not been the relaxing sort. But before the Internet I had to find more local, less online things to fill my life with and get stressed about.
Ho Hum.

Whereas today I find my workload just automatically expands to overfill whatever spare time I have.

Back then: work at school and work at Nostalgia & Comics. Night-time got taken up with going out and staying in. Then I decided to start doing some reviews and writing about comics for the shop. Suddenly that started taking up a lot of time. There were other things at that point of course - but those are things I'm still not mentioning - one day I shall, but not yet (nothing illegal or immoral I promise).

Now: I'm still working schools, but now I write more and more. And have a huge "reviews to do" shelf to prove it. Except the work over the last two months has meant the reviews shelf looks very slim right now. If I have a good September and October there's actually the vague possibility that I'd be almost clear and in that much desired position to be reviewing the books as they came in.
But that was too easy. So now I've signed up for another reviewing gig. One a month for the next year plus. Nothing huge. But this one has editors, deadlines and word limits. And it's killed me to write the first one this week.
So suddenly my workload expands past the available time yet again.

And you know what - I don't think I'd have it any other way.
It's just the way I am. And I'm happy with that.

But just in case I didn't make it clear this was a joke - at my expense.
(Maybe now I'll be on talking terms with Mrs B again)

Oh, Remember The Milk - how I love thee.... more...

Somedays I wonder what I did before the Internet.
No Google - how would I do my job? How would I have found out what that computer error meant and how to fix it?
No Spotify - how would I find so much new (and old-new) music to annoy Louise with?
No Blogger - what would I do with my evenings?
No Wordpress - what would I write review after review after review on?
No Bloglines - how would I find all of the great news and information to write about?



But most of all - no Remember The Milk.

That would mean no organisation at all.

I'd barely make it out the door before the confusion hit me.

I know I used to actually have a memory. I did. No, really. But after a while that gave way. Then I had a notebook all the way through school and university that became vital to work out what work I was meant to be doing and when it was meant to be in.
Then I got a Filofax and that became the most vital thing for piecing together my life.
Then I got my wonderful Palm m550. And for years that was the thing that organised me, that told me where to be and when.

And then, miraculously, came RTM. I don't even remember when (see what a memory?) but a quick look back on the blog shows me it was here - August 2008. But even then I see it may have been a little earlier. But that means I've only been using it for little over a year.

RTM is so much a part of my daily life that it's joined the small group of online things I'd actually pay for. If they emailed tomorrow and said they were making it a premium only service and it cost £100 a year - I'd pay there and then.

Night of the long review .........

My reviewing day in four twitter posts:

9pm: how hard can 300 words be to write? quite bloody hard it seems. not a good day

1am: 554 word first draft of the 300 word review done. just got to cut it in half then. poo.

2:30am: draft 2 - 450 words. better but not there yet. can i cut another 100 before hitting bed or will I see the dawn first?

3:19am: 3:19 am - the review's down to 314 words on a 3rd draft. That's it. I'm done. Gin and bed. (but never gin in bed.)

You know, when I said yes to doing these 300 word reviews I figured one a month would be a breeze. Oh ha bloody ha.

Tour Of Britain hits Pocklington...

Nearly an hour of waiting, roads closed off, ridiculously hot and sunny, beers in hand - the Tour Of Britain passed through Pocklington and came right past our front door. Lots of excitement, lots of crowds. The police and outriders passed by, the lead two riders go by, then five minutes later the other riders pile through. And that was it.

Good fun though. Nice to sit on the front step, relax and kick back - chatting to all who pass our door.

PROPAGANDA @ The FPI Blog: The week in reviews...

This week at the FPI blog I have been reviewing:





The Pasty Anthology - yep, one anthology on the staple diet of Cornish miners everywhere.
Aldebaran Volumes 1-3 - Fantastical Euro sci-fi
Bloc by Oli Smith and Oliver Lambden - UK Comic supergroup/duo make a debut.
The Photographer - wow. just wow.
Harker issue 7 - another issue, another rave review.

I-Tunes 9 - aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh

2 hours to install I tunes 9 today. Completely messing my afternoon and completely throwing off everything I wanted to do.

The plan was a simple one - I'd already installed it on my I tunes setup on the laptop at work (well I had to do something whilst the SIMs upgrade was slowly clunking away on the server this morning) - and it was a flawless, simple and quick install.

I get home on tim for once - have the whole afternoon to myself, thinking I'll quickly do this, have lunch and start on writing. Install I Tunes, reboot the machine, start I Tunes. Ooops. Error:

Apple Application Support was not found.
Apple Application Support is required to run iTunes. Please uninstall iTunes, then install iTunes again.
Error 2

Well reinstalling didn't work (of course). Didn't work the second time either.
Google around. Stress levels rising. Find this:

1. Download and install WinRAR.
2. Right-click the iTunesSetup.exe icon and choose "Open with WinRAR".
3. Once the EXE is opened in WinRAR, double-click AppleApplicationSupport.msi and when the installer window is open choose "Repair".

And it sort of works. There was no Repair option so just a full install of AppleApplicationSupport had to do - and it worked. Then I had to repeat the process with the Quick Time app in the iTunesSetup.exe and the Mobile App as well to make Molly's iTouch sync properly.

But it was done. The question really is why it's happened? Do Apple really hate us Windows users that much that they think it's okay to stick us with really crappy installations?

But all is well. It did completely throw my entire night out. I'm so far behind what I'd planned to get done. Bah. back to it.

Molly - Year 6 begins now....

That very first day at school seems so far away right now, but also as if it were only yesterday when a tiny little child, looking so much older than she had the day before stood there in her first ever school uniform.

Today she started Year 6, her final year in primary. And her year as Head Girl. We would have loved to have sent her in with this:

h e a d g i r l

across her knuckles as a gag. Except Molly wouldn't let us. Spoilsport.

Oh she looked so big and grown up. Near broke my heart AND made me proud and happy at the same time.

It's the end of the holiday as we know it ....... and I feel fine.

Seven weeks later and the summer holiday is just about over. And it's really been rather excellent. The idea was to spend an awful lot of time relaxing, an awful lot of time having a great time with Molly and an awful lot of time writing. I'm not sure about the relaxing - I've not really had the spare time to do that - but the other two have certainly happened (see here)

It used to be a horrible time, this final weekend of the summer holidays. I'd spend it in a horrible mood, futilely thinking up reasons not to go back, trying to work out a way to find something else to do. But not now. Obviously I'm not saying I'd rather be at work - especially not after having a great seven weeks. But there's no great horror in going back. And that's such a wonderful feeling.

I would write more, but hey, it's Sunday night and I've a last night of holiday to enjoy.

On writing......

Nearly finished with the holidays, but still cracking on with the review shelf. Tonight I managed two reviews, one of which had been haunting me for months - sitting there on the review shelf and intimidating me with it's presence. And the sheer physical joy of actually finishing the review is something I can barely communicate.

There was a point tonight where I sat back in my chair, read over what I'd done and suddenly realised it was finished. Complete. 90% done. (90% done for me is effectively the second to final draft - all it needs at that point is pictures adding, a final read through and final checking - but at 90% all of the real work is done.) And the smile that hit my face at that point was practically beautific.

That's the thing I find about writing. The actual process of writing anything is painful. Hard work. Mentally draining. God knows why I do it. But when the thing I'm writing is done and I'm satisfied with it - that's when I realise that I love to write.

And then I came across this blog post by Stephen Fry;

"It took my friend Douglas Adams to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. “It is almost impossibly hard,” he told me. It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,” he added, with signature paradoxicality, “it all becomes a lot easier.”

It was many years later that Clive James quoted to me Thomas Mann’s superb crystallisation of this “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.” How liberating that definition is. If any of you out there have ever been put off writing it might well be because you found it so insanely hard and therefore, like me, gave up and abandoned your masterworks early, regretfully assuming that you weren’t cut from the right cloth, that it must come more easily to true, natural-born writers. Perhaps you can start again now, in the knowledge that since the whole experience was so grindingly horrible you might be the real thing after all."

The important thing, the thing I read and immediately thought "YES" to was the Thomas Mannn quote: “A writer, is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.”

And then I think - God, maybe I'm a writer after all. And I smile. Content in the work i've done and ready for the work I know I have to do tomorrow. It will be horrible, painful stuff. But if I'm very lucky, tomorrow night I'll sit back in the chair and the absolute satisfaction of having written something I'm proud of will wash over me and I'll go to my bed happy, ready to go back to work with a smile. And I'll do it again and again and again because maybe, just maybe, I'm on my way to being a writer.

PROPAGANDA @ The FPI Blog: This week's reviewing goodness

After seemingly years of putting up notifications of reviews as and when they go live over on the FPI blog I've decided to make a change. I'll just do a weekly roundup of the reviews. Means less cross posting going on, less clutter and (hopefully) more content going on here.

So this weeks reviews......





Green Manor Volumes 1 & 2
Jeff Smith's Little Mouse
The 323 Detective Agency
Redeye Magazine Volume 2.1
Underground Classics

So that's one comedy European book, one picture book graphic novel from the creator of Bone for early readers, one children's comedy graphic novel, one pdf comic magazine and a reference book on Underground Comix. A nice mix.

Late birthday greetings to Molly - but loved nonetheless

Got this in an email from Matthew Craig; creator of Hondle - a comic Molly adores.
Much appreciated. Thank you Matthew - now go and buy some of his comics. Either online or pop into Nostalgia & Comics Birmingham where their burgeoning small press section should feature some of his wares.

Want List - September 2009

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

Sept 2009



October 2009







Nov 2009



Dec 2009



Jan 2010



March 2010




sometime ..... but when? WHEN!!!!?



2010?





And for 2011:

And whilst I think of it - what about fictions?

If you follow this blog regularly, you may have noticed I'm just not getting much up here that isn't either notifications of reviews going up at the FPI blog or repostings of old reviews every weekend.

It's annoying as hell that I'm not posting here more often, but to be honest something had to give in my life this past couple of months and blogging here was what went.

It's a combination of many things:

1. Like I said previously the summer holiday was a time for Molly and I to have fun.

2. The review work (and surprisingly, it seems to have turned into genuine work lately - go figure) takes up so much time to get done to my standards. Standards of course that I always think I'm failing at. Personally I can look back at old stuff, compare it to the new stuff and really hate either: how I used to write or how I'm writing now (or both!). But I love doing it, even though I hate it when I'm doing it - the reward is always that feeling when it all goes right - it's a great moment.

3. The FPI blog: I'm finding more and more that comic related stuff that I would have put up here tends to get saved and I put it up at the weekend when I post at the FPI blog. Sometimes I cross post but generally not.

4. Twitter. I don't twitter that much but find that it's often easier and more fitting to just rattle out 144 characters there than get a blog post done about something.

5. Possibly most importantly, I've had a general malaise when it comes to blogging. I'm sure there's some term for it, but I've hit some kind of blogger's wall recently. I'm hoping it's but a temporary thing and maybe in September I'll get back on the Blogging horse.

So that's it. Reasons Fictions hasn't exactly been buzzing lately. Sorry. Now back to reviewing!

And that was August.....

August is over. September is here.
Still one more week of holiday but it's got a muted, cloudy feel to it - like the last week of freedom. It's nowhere near as bad as I used to get. Hell, when I worked in secondary schools the last week of the holidays was an awful, terrible, depressive thing. Now I'm doing a job I love there's even a bit of me that's actually looking forward to getting back to school to see the kids again. But who wouldn't want to be in the position to be on permanent vacation?

The plan for August was to accomplish just two things:
1. Make Molly's holiday a fantastic, wonderful thing.
2. Get 31 reviews done in the 31 days I had in August.

Well, Molly's definitely had a fantastic holiday. We've done loads of great stuff, we've gone places, we've had holidays and birthdays and surprises and more treats than she can cope with. It's been wonderful. It's not that I don't try to make every holiday a great one, but for me this holiday seemed really important. She's 10 now and going into Year 6 at school - this means that next year she'll be going to secondary and as much as I hate it - next year's holiday will be different - she'll be older and going off with friends more and just wont have as much time for dear old daddy.

So this year was, in my eyes, the last big Molly and Daddy holiday. I think we pulled it off.

As for reviewing; it's a fail, but not by much. 29 reviews done in 31 days isn't bad going by anyone's standards. They're going to be going up over the next few months at the FPI blog. And as much as I was tempted to, I decided against just doing short, clear the shelf style reviews. That's just cheating in my obsessive world.

The scary thing is that there are still 17 things to review on the shelf that I've been sent by folks and a further 20 things downstairs on the library shelves in Bruton mansions that I'd love to find time to review. Hell, I'd love to just find the time to read the damn things.

So on we go into September. I can feel the chill from here.......