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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.

I’ve been living in America for an entire year.

It feels… well, it feels odd knowing that. One year. 365 days. Just shy of 8,760 hours. I’d write out the number of minutes but then there’d be a dangerous risk of more than one of us bursting into song. Nevertheless, a year is a long time to be doing anything, and even though on the day I arrived in LA I was mostly spaced out from a lack of sleep it still counts.

A lot’s happened in that year. I’ve been working at Disney for 11 of those 12 months. Jump Leads launched a mere two weeks after my emigration and has received critical acclaim from a number of unlikely sources. I’ve made friends, I’ve failed to start learning to drive, and I’ve become the Producer for SoulGeek Media. I’ve been to Disneyland so many times I’m starting to feel guilty about it, considering the number of terminally-ill children who’d love to go but can’t because their parents can’t afford it. I’ve amassed an unhealthily-large collection of Mr Potato Heads (for those of you who want to know, an unhealthily-large collection is basically owning more than two - I presently have nine). I’ve been given free entry to Comic-Con because of Jump Leads, and received $600 from the American government just for existing. I’ve seen parts of California I didn’t even know existed, I’ve been to Houston in Texas, and in two months I’ll be trekking up to Seattle, WA for PAX08.

So what are the plans for the year ahead? Absolutely no ruddy idea. It’s all been very “as it happens,” really. I’m going back to England for two weeks in September, and again in December, and then probably again in March. I’m trying to get fit and lose a little weight (even though absolutely everyone who isn’t my Mum or my friend Westy insists that I don’t need to). I’m hoping to see more of America, to maybe head up to Canada, and to definitely, definitely learn to drive. Fo realz this time.

In the more immediate future I’m hoping to get rid of this ruddy headache.

Living in LA has given me a ton of opportunies and opened up a number of doors for me, and it looks like this next year could be very interesting and very, very busy. Here’s to another Awesome Year, I guess!

On Wednesday night I recorded an interview with the wonderful guys at the GigCast, where we talked about Jump Leads, Ghost Hamster and PodWarp 1999, amongst other things. You can listen to the podcast here, if you’re interested.

In an attempt to make my blog seem as mundane as possible, I’m now going to talk about my posture.

Those of you who listened to Saturday’s edition of The Program with Kris Straub might recall a very brief discussion about how photogenic I’m not. Kris mentioned that he’s seen photos of me and I always seem to be slouching, which is something I’ve been vaguely aware of now for a long time. I’m 6′ 4″ and a lot of stuff - door handles, bathroom sinks, elevator buttons, etc. - seems to have been positioned lower than I require it to be. Plus I like to keep eye contact with the people I talk to, so if I’m walking and talking to them it’s easier to simply lower myself down so that they’re not looking up my nose. That and it’s less intimidating. Also I’m scared of heights.

However, Kris is right and I need to be less slouchy and more upright and awesome. That’s been my goal this week - stand tall, walk proud (I narrowly avoided the urge to write “Walk Hard”), etc. I’ve been pretty successful save for the fact that since I’ve been keeping myself upright my back has begun to ache and, as I mentioned above, everything seems to be just out of reach. It’s annoying, to be sure, but I imagine it’s something I’ll get used to.

In other news, I had lunch with Dino Andrade on Tuesday. For those of you who don’t know, he is (amongst other things) the voice of Skull on PvP: The Series, and the founder of geek dating site SoulGeek. He’s also a good friend and a top bloke, and I’ve been wanting to work with him for a while now. Fortunately for me he wanted to work with me as well, and he’s decided I would be the perfect guy to produce and co-host Radio SoulGeek, the official SoulGeek podcast. So lunch was mostly us talking about what we want out of our respective futures (there appears to be a fair amount of overlap there, which is nice) and planning the format for the podcast. It’s all looking incredibly promising and I don’t want to give away too much but besides the usual stuff - Geek News, Interviews, music, all of which will be delivered in a unique, fun way - there’s some really cool stuff that I don’t want to go into too much now for fear of ruining the surprise. I can promise you that it’ll be available to everyone (not just SoulGeek members) and, assuming we do it properly, it’s going to be a must-hear podcast. Whee!

There’s also some very cool stuff happening with Jump Leads in the near future but I definitely want to keep that one to myself for now.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for the moment. I have work to do!

This could be the most important post-Crystal Skull tee-shirt you buy. Ignore the fact that it’s being sold from the Jump Leads tee-shirt store. Just buy it.

This blog post contains some spoilers for the second issue of Jump Leads, so if you haven’t read it yet I’d suggest not reading on. There are also potential spoilers for parts of the third season of Doctor Who so if you’re not up to speed with that show - no actual text, but some links to episode descriptions. If you don’t want those spoilt for you I’d advise against clicking those particular links - you’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in America again. I owe you stories and you shall get them (I keep saying that, I know), but for now here are three four lovely tidbits:

• I thought Spring would have started in England by now. I was wrong. Leaving my coat in LA will not go down as one of my brightest ideas.
• The Thing was fantastic, and I shall definitely be going again next year.
• I am tired and jetlagged and ill.
• My coworkers did the most incredibly awesome thing while I was on holiday, and I’ll share it with you when I get home.

That is all.

Yes, I know, I still have to talk about the Fetish Ball, and Wicked and the Foo Fighters, but they can wait one more day.

Back when I was still looking for an artist for Jump Leads, Euan suggested re-jiggling the script and recording them as Big Finish style audioplays. I dismissed the idea, because I’m very much a visual person, but listening to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series re-sparked the idea in my head briefly. It fizzled away again until this Saturday just gone when my Dad suggested it. The idea has grabbed hold of my imagination now, and it’s racing around trying to work out exactly what to do, if I do anything at all.

I find myself wondering how (and if) it would work. The obvious idea is to have audio adventures featuring Meaney and Llewellyn, however my Dad’s suggestion is also an interesting one:

Billed as a memorial podcast in memory of Captain Lucas and his astonishing mustache, it is a 5-minute long podcast drama of the “Captain’s Log” variety, consisting of Lucas’ log entries culled from Jump Leads Administration computers. It starts with the traditional “Jump log 5123779…” and a minute or so of the entry, which fades into an enactment of what really happened. At the end it fades back into the log entry, where Lucas is trying to make it all sound like he meant it to go that way.

That could be fun, and it could perhaps serve as a sort-of “pilot” for a series of audioplays. I’m still not sure about whether or not to actually do
it, though. There are a number of potential problems:

• Voices. I can’t do them all. My Dad can’t do them all, and the fact that we have very similar voices probably doesn’t help. I could try to do some casting, but then I’m faced with the dilemma of trying to find appropriate people. If I ever have to cast Meaney and Llewellyn they’d have to be British. There’s no two ways about it.
• Editing. Anyone who’s listened to PodWarp 1999 knows I have absolutely no grasp of the concept of editing. I’m also not very good with introductions, but that’s less of an issue.
• Where would it go? Do I slap it straight up on the Jump Leads website? So I tack it on the end of PodWarp? Do I make it a SoulGeek exclusive? That’s a tricky one, that is…
• Some third thing.

I could do it, and perhaps I should do it, but it’d take some time to put together. More importantly, it’d take some research too. I shall ponder on it further.

We are now one month away from the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing, and I am terribly excited. I’m also ever-so-slightly nervous. Jump Leads‘ first convention. Lawks! Fortunately I won’t be alone - Euan Mumford, formerly of Rooms, will be there; JjAR may well be there depending on how quickly his passport application is processed; and then of course there’s Rowan. He’s a friend of the family’s son, and for some reason he absolutely adores me. I’ll only be in England for a week and a half and I know he wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t see him somehow, so I’ve made arrangements for him to be at the Thing with me as well. Fun, eh?

I was also hoping to be at the San Diego Comic-Con in July, but there are a number of problems there. Firstly, Dino has informed me that the Waiting List for exhibitors at Comic-Con is long. Insanely long. Immensely long. So long, in fact, that Dino had pre-registered SoulGeek as an exhibitor for the ‘08 event at the end of the ‘07 event, and even he is on the Waiting List. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the chances of being able to book a hotel room for San Diego in July are slim. I’d have better odds of winning an Olympic Gold Medal for swimming, and I don’t see that happening in my immediate future.

The word “Bugger” echoes around the city of Los Angeles. Dogs cock their heads. Birds scatter. Babies awaken from their sleep, crying and unsettled.

Something may well change in the immediate future, but for now it looks very much like I won’t be going to Comic-Con at all. Not as a visitor.

JjAR and I are now officially the Webcomics Gurus over at SoulGeek now. Terrifying, I know - especially when you consider that we’ve got a bloody big act to follow - Kristopher Straubligh and Scottford Kurtzington. Silly as it sounds, this is probably the biggest thing to happen to us since we launched the comic.

I’m all nervous and giddy, and I have no idea if that’s justified but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to enjoy it anyway.