Matthew Hughes’ new web site went live a week or so ago, and since I built it I’m pretty happy to say that it hasn’t blown up since then. Except for a few minutes this morning, anyhow, when I dove in and tinkered with it in an almost non-destructive way.

(I can remember a day about fifteen years ago when I really did say "I wonder what this does…." just before I pushed a button that I really, really should not have pushed.)

But all that aside, I’m an admirer of Hughes’ books – particularly his Archonate stories – and so it was a genuine pleasure to work on his site. If you don’t admire him yet then the best way to change that is to visit the site yourself; there’s a large collection of excerpts from his books there, among other things.

"Other things" will eventually include an online store where you can purchase digital versions of his back list novels. We’re just waiting until the first couple of them are ready before the store goes live on the site.

Also of interest is a series of posts labeled "On Writing" which are just what you’d expect, but better.

This project gave me a chance to get to know a lot of the more recent additions to WordPress and coincidentally gave me a chance to swear like a sailor over a long period. “Coincidentally” doesn’t mean that there’s no connection there, of course.

No, I aten’t dead, even though the past few weeks at the Webomator blog have looked exactly as though I was, with the only updates being the automatic posts about new pages at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. It’s just the sort of postmortem retro-futurism you should expect from me.

But in fact I’ve been spending a lot of time on a web site redesign for somebody else and spending far too little time getting ahead on the next serial for the Thrilling Tales site. That one’s far enough behind schedule that thoughtful observers, who are probably all me, take a good long look at it and go "Hmmmmm."

But anyway there are Giant Robots, as you can see here. So we can hope that all will be well.

Yesterday I mailed out the complete limited edition of The Lair of the Clockwork Book to all of those Kickstarter backers who supported it.

Now that the dust has settled, or, I guess, is settling, I have a small number of unnumbered "open edition" copies for sale.

I’ve added to these to the "Support" page at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual where you will (I hope) find them, adopt them, and find them good and interesting homes.

Really, either one of those would be fine. I know it’s not always easy to be both good and interesting. Honestly, I’m not even sure it’s worth the trouble.

The hardcover edition is a little larger than the paperback, at 8 1/2″ by 10 1/2″, and it’s printed on archival paper between its foil-stamped, linen bound covers, and then wrapped in a handsome dust jacket. It’d sure look swell on those bookshelves of yours.

In a post at the Edtion One blog – that’s where they’re printing and binding the Kickstarter edition of The Lair of the Clockwork Book – the gifted elves at Edition One are showing off the books in what they call a "very meta post", since what they’ve got there is post about a book about a book.

But I can’t let that stand, I tell you! I will now out-meta them by posting a post about a post about a book about a book! Muahahahahaha! Mua! and Ha! and Ha! I say! And Ha!

Of course my excuse for that outburst is that if they were taking photos and posting them last Friday, when the first 110 books were stacked up around my house, then the rest of the print run is likely to get here pretty soon. I’ve got to stamp thirty more books before I’ve got through that first batch. Still, I say, bring ’em on, and, also, Ha!

So here at the Secret Laboratory I have been invaded by books, which is one of my favorite kinds of invasions. What makes this invasion special is that the more-than-100 books you see – crowding me out of my ground floor – are all copies of The Lair of the Clockwork Book. That’s because the Kickstarter books have begun to land!

This is about 2/3 of the whole batch. My UPS driver thought it was all over… but he was so completely and tragically wrong. Well, wrong, anyway, because there will be another four or five boxes on the way soon.

You can see how I’ve spread many of the books with their vulnerable underbellies exposed: that’s so I can stamp them with my nifty custom "Limited Edition" stamp, prior to signing and numbering them. Right after I practice some more – like a mad stamping fiend – all over my proof sheets.

I know… this is as bad as somebody showing you pictures of their grandchildren or their cats, and it’s not over yet, either, boyo.

It takes awhile for the ink to dry after I apply the stamp and I’m so paranoid about having that ink offset on the facing page that I’ll leave each batch to dry for a good long while. That means my house is going to keep looking like this, but I can’t say I mind. Books, books everywhere!

As I mentioned back in December, I’ve produced a series of illustrations for the cover and 32 page booklet of Leslie Fish’s new CD, Avalon is Risen. After quite awhile in production that recording is now available for pre-order from Prometheus Music.

The CD’s priced at $15.97 and includes an MP3 download in addition to the physical CD in its packaging: you can also place an MP3 only order for $9.97. The CD’s are scheduled to ship shortly after June 15, but the MP3s are available immediately, as is the booklet in PDF form. They’re all available right here.

This is a sort of a bookend project for me, since ‘way back in the late 1980’s I illustrated the tape cover and the full sized songbook for Ms. Fish’s Cold Iron. That came very near the end of my days in traditional media and it’s nice to be back, with the set of digital tools I use all these years later. Though I did sneak in two pen and ink illustrations from the1980’s, just because.

So this week marks my return to the new, improved Thrilling Tales schedule. My schedule, I mean: not yours.

This follows my frantic scrambling to set up the current Intermission for the Thrilling Tales site, which in its turn was followed by a couple of weeks of much needed website work, new merchandise design, and, um, house cleaning. Yeah, even in the Secret Laboratory, I’ve got dust. And then data backup and some other important things that have been delayed.

But this week! This week, I’ve returned to Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS in the mornings, while in the afternoons I’m working on a new serial for the site. Which involves writing (quite a lot of it) which is something I can now do on the porch when I feel like it. Which I do.

The TWO BRAINS work has kicked off in an unexpected way. Back in the Summer or Fall I applied my new character system to Gwen, who’s an important character in Part Two; last weekend I did something very similar with Nat Gonella. But when I paged through the illustrations I’ve completed for that story, I decided that I didn’t like everything I’d done with Zeno.

With a few of his scenes remaining to go I decided to redo some of the finished illustrations where Zeno already appears. So I spent a couple of days working on a new head for him which, as we see above, is nicely expressive. I’ve now redone one of his illustrations and I should be able to work through about three others before I get down to something entirely new.

There are some serious questions about how ready the new serial will be when the Intermission concludes. This is a longer form story and it’ll be an unusual amount of work, not to mention the possibility that I’ll need to make many revisions as I go along. I’ve always been reluctant to start publishing one of these stories before the manuscript is really done. Dickens did it, but, you know, he was Dickens. So I may be as surprised as anyone else to see how things work out by Summer’s end.

For now, though, it’s nice to be back!

The universal leisure we enjoy in Retropolis makes it possible for us to join all sorts of book clubs, civic organizations, charities, and secret societies.

One group that manages to be a combination of all of the above is the Retropolis Ladies’ World Domination Society.

You know them: you grew up surrounded by them. They may have invited you to tea. Their motto is Don’t MAKE Me Come Down There.

‘Down There’, of course, refers to anything below, and within range of, their Orbiting Tea Room and Global Obliteration Platform. Armed with lethal, color coordinated ray guns, these determined ladies are an unstoppable force for order, style, and niceness.

Membership is for life, and is by invitation only.

Thats about all I’m comfortable saying on the subject. I spent six years in a camouflaged dome, after that other time.

So here’s the new, improved version of one of my older T-Shirt designs for The Retropolis Transit Authority. I’m gradually working my way through some of those older ones. I started this redo sometime last year, but the Thrilling Tales schedule wouldn’t cooperate and so I’ve just now finished it on, of course, T-shirts, a poster, an archival print, a coffee mug and mousepad, all at Retropolis.

Curiously, the Ladies’ World Domination Society is Inspired by Actual Events.

Science! I’ve just added three somewhat different Faces of Science to my Retropolis shop: each (naturally) involves a certain amount of cackling, while one features Death Rays, one adds Giant Robots, and one, uniquely, offers up some Common Sense. And slide rules. Because slide rules are cool.

They’re all available on T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, greeting cards, and mousepads.