Reviewing: sometimes it's beautifully easy. Sometimes it's painful....

Yep, I've just spent the entire night writing a review for Nate Powell's Swallow Me Whole. It's a fantastic book from Top Shelf dealing with mental illness amongst a dysfunctional yet relatively happy family. I read it last weekend. And loved it.

Then I sat down to review it on Sunday night. And Monday night. And Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The words just wouldn't come. Or at least not the right words. So much I wanted to say and yet I just couldn't get them to work. So last night I just went for it. Wrote and wrote and didn't worry about whether it was ordered right, or whether it made sense at the time.

I come back to it tonight and bloody hell, if I haven't got 75% of a good review there. Bit of re-arranging, bit of polish, lots of spell checking and write an extra few hundred words and it's very nearly done. But it's been a painful, frustrating week. Up until that point I was batting 5 in 6 days. Now it's 6 reviews in 12 days. But I can at least go to bed in a better mood than I did last night; convinced I'd just spent a couple of hours writing absolute garbage.

Alan Moore's publishing schedule and Ask Alan?

Pádraig, he of the great interviews (Alan Moore; part 1, part 2, Todd Klein, Neil Gaiman) has put up a very useful list of Alan Moore’s forthcoming work on his Glycon Live Journal. Sadly, the thing I’m most looking forward to is pushed back to possibly 2011 now:

(2011 maybe? But it will be well worth the wait. See here for more details.)

Finally; a reminder that Pádraig is after questions to put to Alan Moore when he meets up with him for another interview in March. Just put your questions in as comments on this post and Pádraig will get them.

Alex Robinson profile:

Alex Robinson, of Box Office Poison and Tricked fame, hads a new book out this July; Too Cool To Be Forgotten:

Andy Wicks is a forty-something father of two who’s tried everything to quit smoking -- from going cold turkey, to the latest patches and nicotine chewing gums -- so he figures he'll give this hypnosis thing a try. What's the worst that could happen? Unfortunately, Andy gets dealt a fate worse than death -- high school! Transported back to 1985, Andy returns to his formative years as a gangly, awkward teenager. Is he doomed to relive the mistakes of his past, or has he been given a second chance to get things right? One thing's for sure … this time he’s going to ask out that girl from math class...

Sounds good doesn't it?
Alex is profiled at the Publisher's Weekly site.