Hitting it Back and Forwards

I am currently in negotiations with the publishers of 'The Missing', with them outlining what they plan to do with the book. This contact is allaying my fears but I still have a difficult decision to make as to what I do. Finding a publisher is hard slow work, but then a book deserves the best you can do for it. I'll keep you posted on how things are progressing when I have some more news.

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In the mean time here are a few book reviews:

Subterranean By John Shirley: The character of Constantine, a mage living in London through the Thatcherite 80s and into the 90s is one of the modern days comic books survivalists. His exploits have been recorded in comics since Alan Moore created him back in Swamp Thing and even after the disaster of the movie version the character has continued to enthrall. Subterranean, a 300 page novel should then be full of the dark wit and adult horror that the comics have so carefully crafted over the last twenty years. Unfortunately not. All I can assume is that Shirley had no time to sit down and write a carefully crafted novel so instead wrote a stream of consciousness adventure leaving in all the dreadful parts to keep people amused.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde: A classic pure and simple. He might not have invented the horror genre on his own but this short novel goes someway to establishing the dynamics and structure for all future authors. Part of the One City: One Book programme in Edinburgh, I was astounded about how much this book forms part of a collected consciousness. The story I thought was well known, but it seems most people (myself included) have a strange hybrid version of the story lodged in our minds. The real version is much darker, much more psychological then any Hammer Horror movie ever pertained to.

The Museum Vaults is a sumptuously drawn graphic novel from Marc-Antoine Mathieu. Part of a series of books co-produced with the Louvre museum this fantasy sets Monsieur Volumer on a journey deep under the museum as he attempts to catalogue the different basements and artifacts hidden below Paris. Created in monochrome, the drawings are simple yet the art work depicted is sumptuous. I can't praise this enough.

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I've also picked up the new IDW comic Locke and Key written by Joe Hill which hopefully will be as exciting as his novel. They are certainly as good as, if not better produced than DC's comics.

Read this week:
Subterranean By John Shirley
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert by Marc-Antoine Mathieu