Dear old Brum, that's where this year's UK 'winter' Convention is going to be held. It follows on from last year's Brighton, and Bristol the year before that. I'm reliably informed that next year's will be hosted in Barlinnie!* Anyhoo I'll be there as I've always been partial to the yellow stuff.** Arriving Saturday afternoon and leaving on the Monday, so you never know might bump into some of you good people.***

*You might want to google Barlinnie prison, Scotchland to get the joke. That's if you think I'm joking of course.

**Custard.

***At least I should be able to talk about 'The Last Posse' at Brum with considerably more certainty as I've just finished the first draft. Yippee!

Hello. Thought it might be a good opportunity to mop up a few loose threads (mixed metaphor there). I did get that Phantom prose story finished. In fact it was approved by King Features (who own the character) without changes, which doesn’t happen every day. And plucky Scotchland did visit the Ukraine and were given a 2-0 beating for their troubles. Ah it was tough watching it. All I can say is Scotchland don’t play their next competitive game until next March and I thank the Lord for that.

It’s probably worth mentioning what I’m doing at the moment. It’s another prose story for Moonstone to be presented in Widevision, where you have text and illustrations. All you Brits out there of a particular vintage need not think beyond the ‘Rupert the Bear’ newspapers strips for an idea of what I mean. Final format is still up in the air I suppose and won’t be fully decided until I get the fecker done. It’s set in the Wild West with the working title of ‘The Last Posse’ featuring a number of characters including Wyatt Earp, Belle Starr, and Geronimo all coming together to battle an ancient threat imperiling a Western town. I should be finishing the first draft in the next week or so. The word count at the moment is heading above 15000. It’s a big and ambitious job and if I do any more prose I’m in real danger of being considered a proper writer, but oh Lordy if you have a couple of moments feel free to wish me well on it.

So what are you up to at the moment?

A little birdie may have told you that plucky Scotland beat World Cup finalists France 1-0 on Saturday. That’s France featuring plucky Thierry ‘va va voom’ Henry and the like. That’s France who had just beaten plucky World Cup winners Italy in their last game. And I was there at Hampden Park shouting my busty head off. What a day. Why are we so good? And now the lads are off to play the Ukraine on Wednesday. Alas I won’t be joining the team in Kiev opting for the closer proximity of the Auctioneers instead. But by gum I’ll be cheering them on. C’moan the lads! Anyhoo better go as Johnny Mnemonic is on the tele.