Or An Alliterative Throwing-In of the Towel
Every now and then, a person just gets too busy to think.
So, I confess. The following is an admission of failure – and a newsletter with little or nothing to say. (Which, it must be said in passing, has never been a reason sufficient to shut me up.)
Am currently working on writing and illustrating two books and (distractedly) researching a third. Suddenly taking the time to write something else than what will go in one or the other seems no only unreasonable but treasonable. (This business of author-illustrator is rather like taking on two jobs at once.)
An unexpected side-effect of writing a non-fiction book was that I naturally end up buying dozens of reference books, which all ended up stacked everywhere they could stack, until, finally fed up with stumbling over and bumping into piles of the things, new shelves seemed the only solution.
I don’t know about you, but in this household, modest unassuming projects gradually assume colossal proportions and I ended up building a full wall of shelves. The books went in (there’s even still room, but rapidly shrinking) and suddenly a particular patch of wall seemed to call out for more home carpentry, so a drawing pulpit got itself made.
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As you can see, I’ve not been totally idle. It’s high enough to draw and sketch standing up (which is currently my only choice, as the selection of tall stools in the commerce locally isn’t to my taste) and is just perfect for my dilettante approach to putting ideas on paper. I can also stash a healhy number of sketchbooks inside – the lid is hinged – so they too are no longer laying about just anywhere.
As for thoughts on paper, hopefully I will be able to marshall a few (there have to be some survivors out there somewhere) in two weeks’ time.
Nor has Dom, my industrious webmaster, been idle. He has put together the first of the site’s slideshows. We’ll be putting up three of the step-by-step illustrations from the six that are in the Fantasy Art Workshop. The first one is here.
In the meantime, foreign editions of the Fantasy Art Workshop are being signed apace, so more news on those when I have something to show. Editions Fleurus will be publishing the book in French, which means we’ll be in Paris at some point this spring to launch that. There will be a new exhibition coming up in France at the end of May – about which more news as we progress, and another for 2009. Finishing touches are being put on the 2009 Dragons calendar.
I’ll be signing books at the FNAC in Lausanne on February 9th at 3 p.m. and will possibly. depending on my schedule, be at the Science Fiction/Fantasy Day at the Geneva Book Fair, but more on that when I’m certain.
John Howe: There and Back Again is actually going to be aired on the Swiss television (you can’t accuse the Swiss TV of jumping the gun, the producers have very actively been trying to get them to find a slot for it for about 3 years now…)
February 3rd, at 12:55 on TSR2.
