Currently, as you may be aware because I have mentioned it enough, I am going through ever book I have ever published and redoing the internal pages to ‘add a J.’ and the covers to ‘add a J.’ This is a further involved process because hardback copies need to be done as well as paper backs and every kindle. So in most aces there is upwards of 3 editions, and in one case 7…. Some editions/books are also going to be unpublished at the end of all this. Its a project…

Joyously, while doing the kindle versions I have to strip down the paperback files and remove all the fancy graphics to run them through kindle crate with clean copies. This means going through and typing all the chapter names out, this takes a while. It does however mean I am refamiliarizing myself with all weird and wonderful chapter names that have cropped up over the years, and how many of them are subtle reference to other writers novels and musicians songs. I suspect almost no one would get all the refences, but that doesn’t matter, most of my readers will get a high percentage of them I am sure.

This all has very little to do with this particular blog post, except to say the title of the blog post is a not entirely subtle reference to one of my favourite albums… As well as entirely apt for my state of mind in this moment

But hey now, hey now now , lets not get bogged down with obscure geeky references.

Back in the dim distant past, before that refence was even a reference, there was a bookshop in London I wanted to go to. Why? because it was the coolest bookshop I had ever heard of. Why was it cool, well because it had adds in Starlord, 2000AD, and White Dwarf, and just about every other geeky magazine I bough in those days of yore when the internet didn’t exist out side of a lab in MIT.

The little store on Denmark Street, was a regular haunt of Douglas Adams, Stan Lee would pop in whenever he was in England. Alan Moore would wander in to say hello. The Denmark Street store has even appeared in marvel comics such was its renown. 2000AD writers and artists would do signings there. As would Pratchett, Holt, Rankin and others The odd band would too come to that.

To me, a geeky teenager still finding himself in those years of trauma in the north of England, the Forbidden Planet store was an unachievable paradise forever beyond reach.

In these later days, there are two Forbidden Planet chains in the UK and a shop in NYC. Though they both very much remain the same Geekdom mecca Forbidden Planet has always been and there isn’t a great deal of difference between the two chains. The second having been opened when the original owners split. Now though 48 years after that first shop opened there are 29 shops between the two chains and one is on my doorstep. Yet despite this the mystique remains. Sure they stock a lot of POP figures these days and no quite as many piles of comics, but I still like to pop in when I am in town, even though I seldom go to town.

It is Forbidden Planet after all, and I remember the days when I knew of its exitance but it was an unreachable distant dream haven of a place where the people I thought were cool and looked up to hung out, and you could find obscure books and comics, you would never see in more mundane places.

So anyway, you could say I have a emotional attachment to an idealised dream of The Forbidden Planet book shop.

And you would be right…

Yesterday, on a Facebook group I happen to lurk on as it is a Lovecraft group and I have a degree of interest in the subject as you may be aware, the below was posted (I have removed the name of the poster because it seemed polite to do so.) ..

Quite apart from my delight at seeing one of my books posted on the group, I did what any author probably would and zoomed in on the label to read it… I was curious as to where he bought it and where was stocking the book, because this was purely a one off contract job for which I was paid a set fee. I have nothing to do with marketing and selling the book, beyond the occasional post when it came out… So I was curious and wanted to read that label..

I read the label..

I then went for a lay down, in a darkened room, with a cup of tea, while my inner geek bounced of the walls with an insane glee that has yet to pass…

Yes, it is not one of my novels. It is the book I was paid to write, which while I have plenty of pride in, isn’t a book with its pages soaked in my blood and soul, as my novels are.

But you can buy it in Forbidden Planet…

Forbidden Planet…

This may stay with me a while…