BenPaddon.co.uk

With ficlets.com seemingly suffering technical woes, I’m unable to actually post what I’ve just written. It was largely inspired by this new story that Andrew shared via Google Reader. I found it difficult not to turn it into some kind of story.

Detective Merope stepped out of the rain into the smoke-filled bar lit by neon signs promoting various brands of beer. He’d never been much of a beer man. Scotch was more his drink. It’d be the death of him one day, if this job didn’t get him first.

Merope saw his man at the bar and hovered towards an empty seat at his side. Time was of the essence.

“Buzz on the street is you know who’s behind the Mallory Road killings,” said the Detective, keeping his gaze fixed on the bar in front. People, he’d found, were intimidated by this.

“Yeah?” said the gaunt man next to him, a beer in his hand and a drunken twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know nuffin.”

“You’re testing my patience and I’m running out of time,” rasped Merope. He pulled his coat back to revel his weapon. “I really don’t wanna have to use this in front of all these nice people.”

“Yer bluffin,” the man smiled. “You gots one shot with that. Two, tops. Then yer dead.”

“You willing to bet your life on that? Because the sweat on your brow says otherwise.”

I’ll post it on Ficlets once they get their act together. I’m considering cross-posting ficlets here from now on as well.

Interesting Sidenote: This is my 100th ficlet. Or it will be, once it appears on the site. In the words of Socrates, “Woo.”

Edit - ficlets.com is now up and running again, so I’ve posted the ficlet there as well.  I’ve had to make some minor tweaks - MSWord originally counted twelve less characters than I’d actually used.

So as much as I would love to go back to Comic-Con today, there’s a chance I might not. I’m absolutely shattered - so very, very tired - and everyone else here is asleep. It’s a bit awkward because I have Dino’s camera and he and Casy still have one of my bags of swag, not to mention the fact that I still have a few interviews to record. It’s… well, it’s awkward. At the very least I’d like to say “Turrah!” to Scott, Kris and the other HalfPixel dudes (although I will be seeing Scott again at PAX). And Mark, obviously.

I’m so tired, though.

Dilemma.

I’m not going to lie to you. I’m excited.

In about an hour and forty-five minutes, I’ll be on a train bound for San Diego. This is probably the largest event I’ve ever been to (if you ignore some of the re-enactment cons I seem to recall my Dad taking me to when i was a youngster), and I’ll be getting the chance to meet some pretty swanky people. It’ll be great to see Michelle and David again, and super-nice of them to let me house-sit for them while they’re in Europe (because looking after someone’s house while they’re on holiday is cheaper than, say, booking a Ridiculously Expensive Hotel during the convention season).

I may record a videoblog. A proper one. I’m still undecided on that one.

Prepwork for the first Jump Leads book is very nearly done. All that’s left to do is to sort out the cover art (JjAR has that base covered), add captions to the concept art and covers at the back of the book (twelve pages of sheer, undiluted brilliance, incidentally) and insert Kris‘ foreword (which hasn’t been written yet). I’m still gutted that we couldn’t include Issue #3 in this book, but with the issue set to be about 40 or so pages there was no way to keep it in the book and sell it at a halfway decent price.

Oh, we’re open to suggestions for the book’s name, by the way.

If you’ve ever wanted a tee-shirt with the word “Derp!” written on it, you’re in luck.

Available now on the Jump Leads store.

On Sunday I completed the design for the business cards I’ll be using at this year’s Comic-Con:

It’s nice and to the point, I think. I’ve ordered 1,000 of them, that being the minimum order for the local company I’m using, and I imagine that realistically I’ll use 100 of them, if that. Still, it’s always nice to have the cards. It makes me feel marginally less unprofessional. Besides, if nothing else I can pop ‘em in as a sort-of “With compliments” card when the first Jump Leads book comes out. Or something.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but the foreword for the book is going to be written by Kris Straub. There’s a lot of crossover between our fanbase… wait, no, let me rephrase: Jump Leads’ fanbase is made up almost entirely of fans of Starslip Crisis, which isn’t a bad thing. He’s been quite vocal about how much he enjoys Jump Leads, so I’m looking forward to what he’ll wind up writing. Kris is a top bloke, and he’s been remarkably tolorant of my presence on these precious Intertubes. Maybe one day he and Tauhid will finally rise up and trample me into the ground.

Someone: “Are you British?”

Me: “A little bit, yes.”

Someone: “I thought so.”

Me: “It’s the hair, isn’t it? It’s a dead giveaway.”

Someone: “It was your accent, really.”

Me: “Really? How surprising.”

Terrifying.