So… what’s the deelio with me then? What have I been up to? What, if anything, have I been accomplishing lately? What do I want to / will be accomplishing?

Good questions, all.

Well, let’s see… Over at Atomic Fez, I’ve been happily prepping four books for release at the end of March / beginning of April! Read about that here.

That’s… pretty much it, actually. Books are consuming all my daily life, really. Well, waking life, certainly.

Other things have occasionally taken place. Sleep, for instance. That seems to be a once-every-twenty-four-hours pass-time. Food, also, seems to be recurring, but with more frequency than sleep.

The bathroom has finally been completed – hooray! – thanks to the fact we “got a man in”. The final stumbling block to me doing the job was when I realized that today’s tiles are made slightly different a dimension than yesterday’s tiles were, so the new tiles wouldn’t fit perfectly in the space the old tiles were in. The result of that was that all of the tiles needed to come off the wall, with the probable need of repairing yet more wall-board, plus having to trim a big whack of tiles to weird shapes around the window in the wall [image, left], aaaaaand who knows how much else in the way of complications. Merely trimming the tiles to fit around the window was enough of a complication to make my head spin, so we called a guy for an estimate, accepted it, and he started last Monday.

By the time yesterday arrived, he’d re-built some of the wall at both ends of the tub, removed the inner sliding window in the wall and tiled the inside of that hole, replaced all the wall-board, removed the shower doors with a curved rod and shower curtain, replaced the shower head, and repaired some of the wall outside of the existing tile area as well as extending the tiles so they better cover the area which gets wet. End result: what feels like a brand new bathroom!

So that’s excellent.

One of the oddest things discovered during the process of readying the wall for the new tiles was the fact that cardboard was used as a construction material.

You see – and this is starting to sound like an episode of Holmes on Homes, isn’t it – the wall surface of the gypsum board was a bit different than the surface of the wallboard behind the tiles might have been, were the shower wall-board attached directly to the studs. So, behind the thinner shower wall board some 1/4″ cardboard was placed to fill the gap to maintain a flat wall surface.

No, really. That’s what someone did [see image, left]. Probably it was my (now late) Father-in-Law, as this was the sort of “good enough without spending any money” approach his work around the house took on from the mid-1980s or so.

Anyway, it’s all done properly now.

Preparations are nearly complete for attending World HorrorCon in Brighton at the end of March, and then onwards to the SF-based Odyssey 2010 (aka: “EasterCon) the next week-end.  How the hell we’re going to pay for it is something we’ve not solved, but it’s nearly impossible to make a go of it selling books without proving to people they actually exist by having them on a table at a convention somewhere, so there we are. There’s a few days I don’t have to stand in a Dealers’ Room selling books, so I’m planning to hit the British Museum and the National Gallery again, plus possibly a pub or two. Look to see daily summaries here again covering that in all its glory.

So… that’s about it for me, I suppose.

What’s new with you, then?

No, this isn’t a book that I’m publishing, sorry.

Hell’s Belles is another novel in the brilliant “Brenda & Effie” series of books written by Paul Magrs (pronounced ‘Mars’, because he’s English and they do that sort of thing to confuse the rest of us). It’s set in Whitby, England, and follows two ladies who have a rather infernal connection to things hell-ish.

The other three books in the series are very much enjoyable, but the new one I know little about, save for the fact I wish very much to read it.

Enter the contest on his blog and possibly be one of the five lucky people to get a copy of the book. All you have to do is explain, in fifty words or less, why you want to visit Whitby to meet Brenda and Effie (note: trip to Whitby, UK or any other locale named “Whitby”, and/or meeting ladies named ‘Brenda’ and/or ‘Effie’ not supplied).

Go here and do it now.

Way back a few months ago you may recall a post about how the old publishing company was part of the Short List for the British Fantasy Society’s annual awards.

Earlier today (a couple of hours ago, I think), it was revealed that Tim Lebbon’s The Reach of Children won for Best Novella.

Congratulations to Tim are very-well deserved. Especially well-deserved as it was some of the finest writing I read last year, probably only second to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (which hadn’t been read before).

ADDED LATER:

For those who wish they had been in Nottingham when the award was announced, here’s the next best thing: VIDEO!

For an odd bit of fun, count the number of very un-hairy male heads involved in Horror Writing. No idea what this means, or which causes which to take place.

A bit odd celebrating the achievements of a publishing venture I’m no longer associated with, but the work of my fingers and mind-bones is still there in black-and-white, so there’s something. News of the following reached me awhile ago but as it’s only been announced now, I’ve kept my lips restrained.

The following books and heir contents have received short-list nominations for the 2008 British Fantasy Awards, with winners to be announced at the convention in September of this year in Nottingham, UK.

	Best Anthology: The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories, Ian Alexander Martin, Editor
The August Derlith Fantasy Award for Best Novel: Rain Dogs, Gary McMahon
	Best Novella: The Reach of Children, Tim Lebbon
Best Artist: Lee Thompson, cover artist for The Land at the End of the Working Day, by Peter Crowther
	Best Short Fiction: “The Tobacconist’s Concession”, John Travis, appeared in The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories Best Short Fiction: “Pinholes in Black Muslin”, Simon Strantzas, appeared in The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories

So, get out there! Vote early & vote often via the BFS site: CLICK THIS BIT HERE ! If you are a member of the British Fantasy Society or if you attended FantasyCon ’08 last September, then you are able to cast a vote to determine the winners in each category.

— M E D I A      R E L E A S E —

Early this morning, in a scene evoking the announcement of the Oscar® Nomination, the new publishing house Atomic Fez Publishing was announced by its proprietor, Ian Alexander Martin.

As the sky above him filled with flocks of doves and Canada Geese, Mr. Martin publicly confirmed the existence of Atomic Fez, admitting it was “one of the worst-kept secrets in the Small Press Community of late”. No doubt responding to the frequent rumours of his return to the publishing game, he was last heard from following the demise late last year of the UK-based firm Humdrumming, Ltd., which had been under his control since early spring of that year after founding publisher Guy Adams handed him the reins due to his growing number of professional writing commitments.

His new venture, Mr. Martin announced, would be “a Small Press House with Large Press notions of inclusivity.” Pointing out the people are rarely only “readers of only one variety of fiction, and Atomic Fez proposes to make available as many sorts of books as time and the company ledgers permits.” When asked to explain what he was babbling about, he suddenly resembled a sidewalk proselytiser, declaring that he felt that “too often things about books are made QUITE IMPORTANT and VERY SERIOUS INDEED, casting aside anything which might be seen as ‘enjoyable’”, explaining that “the principle driving force behind certain titles being selected is simple: Books Are Fun Again!”

As well as providing books in the traditional format — described by Mr. Martin as “the ‘dead tree’ variety of books using ink, paper, and bits of glue” — Atomic Fez will be also be endeavouring to tap into the latest of modern technology making available all its titles in the ‘electronic book’ format. Explaining this bi-formatted, pincer-movement approach to publishing, he explained that “the concept that either form [of publishing format] is a ‘bad’ way of getting a story into the hands of a reader is anathema to a logical mind. If you hate e-books, we have paper ones for you. If you hate paper ones, we have ‘e-books ‘to tempt you instead. Either way, we want your money. In the future,” he continued, “it is hoped that both forms [of book] can happily exist side-by-side as they have individual strengths for differing sorts of readers. After all, both forms are equally damaged when dropped in a tub full of hot water.”

Sources close to the company — requesting anonymity due to threatened punishment using hi-fidelity recordings of Mrs. Elva Miller and / or Sebastian Cabot — stated that the first title to be released by the Publisher would be a brand-new novel by the noted Welsh writer Rhys Hughes, which would likely be released early in Q3 to coincide with the British Fantasy Society’s FantasyCon 2009 in mid-September. The book’s contents are being edited now, with final text to be established and at the printers by the start of July. While the source was unable to provide an exact price, they did allow that “something reasonable around the twenty-five dollar mark is what we’re looking at.”

Further titles are entirely unconfirmed and the nature of their contents isn’t know, but Mr. Martin is ‘planning something’ for World HorrorCon in South England’s Brighton, and information has leaked out regarding works from three more British authors being launched at that event in March 2010; with possibly more titles expected in the autumn of the same year, this time including writers from the Dominion of Canada.

Law Enforcement Organisations did not respond to requests for comment, saying they were “very busy getting organised to deal with the crowds expected to take to the streets with hazardous materials.”