I don’t generally post a lot of pictures of things, well not my own at any rate. My medium is generally words. The exception to that is when I type set a book, which for complicated reasons to do with timing I have had to do twice in the last week for two very different books…

A Squid on the Shoulder, the third novel of my Hannibal Smyth trilogy, which completes the misadventures set. And the Lexicomicon, which is something else entirely, the collected essays on the complete works of Lovecraft that were originally a blog series, which I have expanded, rewritten and produced as a bluffers guide to Old Tentacle Hugger’s stories.

Typesetting is a somewhat joyful thing as its almost the final stage before I finally let a book out into the world. Besides which when you spend all your time with words it is wonderfully enriching to mould those words into their final form. To turn them into an actual physical thing… This is however the first time I have ever typeset two of my own books back to back… I am rather pleased with the proof copies that have arrived through my door however. They are precious and wonderful, even if I do say so myself…

They are pretty things, the way the art work has worked out in the Lovecraft book and teh chapter heads in squid are a delight. Just got to do all the final proofing now.

With luck, all things been equal I hope to have that final proofing done and the books out by the Id’s of March. Because reasons… In the case of Squid, because it is my birthday and two years since my last novel was release. In the case of Lexicromicon because it is the anniversary of the death of Lovecraft which just happens to be the same day…

Because hey, sometimes the stars are right.