Diary of an up and coming sociopath

It’s a good day for the many fans of my writing. First off, my first proper full-length feature, entitled “Best Kept Secrets” can be found in Micro Mart’s landmark 1000th issue, which hit the shelves this week and will be there until next Wednesday. I’ve got two more articles queued up there, as well as a few more pitches to send off so there’s a good chance you’ll see me in that with fairly decent regularity. I received some incredibly kind words from the editor there regarding the quality of this piece which has encouraged me no end, and thanks are also due to Sarah (who also writes the excellent movie-blog, Sarah Hates Your Movie - which she often does) for entertaining my various newbie questions over the last few weeks.

Second, after starting at CBR as a reviewer, I’ve successfully sold them an article I wrote on spec about the Jack Kirby talk I somehow blagged my way into at the ICA on Tuesday, entitled “Live at Kirby Plaza“. Did I ever mention how much I love living in London? Probably not, actually. I love any city in which I can find myself sitting in a room full of a couple of hundred people talking about Jack Kirby (though I’m kind of annoyed that the Frank Quitely talk is in Edinburgh…) If you’re interested, the average Jack Kirby fan (at least, the average one that turns up to this kind of talk) is about 40% balding, 85% male, 15% wearing a business suit and .5% Paul Gambaccini.

Speaking of comics, I’ve also got my weekly column on Den of Geek, let’s not forget. This one’s on Crossover Fatigue, and to be honest, I don’t think it’s my best. A crowded weekend forced me to go with a weaker idea, and I think it suffers because I wimped out on my original intention of screaming doom for the industry, and instead came out with something that carries all the weight of a sternly-worded parental warning sticket. It’s a curse that I’m sometimes unable to shut down the more moderate sections of my opinion-making brain-centre. If I had a movie blog it’d probably be called “James wasn’t a fan of your movie but he understands what others might see in it.” Ah well. Still, not everything can be our best work, I suppose. Keep an eye out anyway because I think I’ve got a good one lined up for next week’s (which you will find goes up on Monday)

Lastly, I’m getting sick of updating the “Writing” page on my website, which has, thankfully for my career, become quite unwieldy of late. I know it hasn’t been long since the last site overhaul, but I’m going to tweak some more things substantially, I think, though I haven’t decided exactly how yet. Separate personal and work RSS feeds? Quite possibly. I also wonder if I shouldn’t go back through my many years of entries and tag/categorise them all. I’ve been writing this damn thing, in varying degrees of believability, since Jan ‘03, you know? There’s something I can do to kill time…