Hello all! Sorry to have been quiet for a bit, *gestures at apocalypse*, but also I’ve had a weirdly incredibly busy 2020 with three huge graphic novel projects due at the end of May and then revisions on my second prose novel (Heartbreak Incorporated, out next year from Rebellion / Solaris) to begin straight after that. Plus a new, side financial editing gig that I am extremely grateful for as it means I have a regular, dependable paycheck and I know all my family’s expenses will be covered every month. But it also eats up a lot of time...

The Scottish Boy will be out in shops in the UK on May 28th. I am talking with our US PR right now and I think our launch date in the US will be early June in order to coincide with some Publishers Weekly thing or the other. It’ll be this cover by Emma Rogers (above) for the mass market paperback, vs the hardback Joey Hi-Fi cover you’ll receiive.

You will all by and large get your books BEFORE that. Digital art rewards are coming to me from Maichan and Tsumi on May 15th and I’ll distribute those as soon as I can. 

In terms of reward fulfilment, everything is a little slow due to the pandemic: I should have the signned (and in some cases sketched) bookplates off to Unbound a week today. I’m finalizing the history zine today, theoretically, then I expect I’ll go on some sort of stupid three-day odyssey laying it out and makig it pretty in Adobe Illustrator rather than just letting it exist as a ‘zine in Microsoft Word, but I can’t help the person that I am.  Has design tools, will use design tools. 

All the audio equipment has arrived for me to record the audio edition and that also starts this week. Thinking of doing voiice warm-ups each morning with some out-of-copyright books — perhaps The Green Knight? (I was honestly thinking of Diary of an English Opium-Eater too.)

Anyway, my family’s well here in the strange ghost town of Manhattan, and everything is moving forwards, just... slower than I might otherwise like.