…at the Bath Spa Hotel.

Costumes for trick or treaters:

Sexy CLOWN? Really? Way to cause deep-seated sexual trauma and years of therapy…

(From Fun with Cole)

Yes, it’s a church. Deconsecrated recently. Apparently, the neighbours are not happy. Robert Plant held his album launch here just the other day. Nonetheless, it was a venue with gravitas for such an important milestone for my publisher.

Although, for a company which does very nicely out of Dan Brown, I expected the floor to open up and a quest through the catacombs to find the canapes.

Moviegrrl has let me know about the proposed sale of a collection of rare, signed Harlan Ellison work.

Sounds like a great buy for a collector. Ellison has been a major influence on me, both in terms of writing and philosophy, since I read Deathbird Stories in the back of the car on a long holiday trip when I was 12 or so.

A “spectacular” display of dozens of UFOs has been reported in the skies over the West Midlands.

Santa has left the mothership.

As you can see, my technological incompetence is displayed below, as I’m having great difficulty re-sizing the new cover to fit the dimensions of the blog. But I think you can get the flavour of it.

You can pre-order Destroyer of Worlds in hardback here…

And you can pre-order the trade paperback here.

Edit: Cover below edited to viewable size. Thanks to Lizzy for her help.

I’m now dj-ing at Blip.fm.

I can’t write without music playing. I tend to have pretty eclectic tastes, with a range of different modes to conjure up the right atmosphere. But I’m always on the look-out for something I haven’t heard before.

Send me your music recommendations…

One upside of being pathetically weak and sickly is the ability to put work on one side completely and indulge in all the books, comics and dvds that have been piling up.

Actually, I didn’t get very far on the book front – I’m still wading through House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. ‘Wading’ is perhaps the wrong term – I do love the book – but it is hard-going. It’s a very modern, scary, supernatural story, but written without a hint of familiar genre-isms, and designed to put the reader through as many torments as the characters. In the tale, a tattoo artist inherits the notes of an aged academic investigating a seemingly-famous Amityville-style house with an otherworldly labyrinth – except no one beyond the academic appears to know about it. In that description, you can already see the layered density of the story. Yet the design of the book has been created to mimic the house’s labyrinth, with footnotes sending you back and forth, appendices, upside down and mirror text, hidden codes and more. You wonder if the footnotes are even slightly relevant until you get to, say, number 313 and find buried away a one-line revelation that explains a character’s entire psychology. A great book, particularly for navel-gazers and self-styled intellectuals, but it does take time following that cord through the twists and turns.

Some comics caught my eye over the last few days. House of Mystery, the new release from DC’s Vertigo imprint, written by Matt Sturges and Bill Willingham with art by Luca Rossi, was very enjoyable. I was a fan of this title back in the seventies, when it was a straightforward horror (or ‘mystery’) anthology, with art by such greats as Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Alex Toth and Sergio Aragones. In Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, the house and its caretaker Cain was established as a residence that existed in dreams. In this incarnation, the house has been stolen and re-sited ‘somewhere else’. A group of strange characters are forced to live there telling stories to pay for their board while they attempt to find a way back to the real world. The first issue sets up lots of mysteries, so it comes across a bit like Lost, only creepier.

I also started a collection of the first five issues of The Exterminators, another Vertigo title (now cancelled) about a group of bug and vermin exterminators operating in the more sordid parts of Los Angeles. At first it appears a great slice of life story with strong characterisation, until a hint of fantasy arises like the first sign of one of the infestations – the bugs are becoming stronger? Smarter? Looks like there’s a war brewing. Great writing by Simon Oliver and suitably grimy art by Tony Moore, who made a name for himself on Image’s The Walking Dead. Highly recommended, as those critics like to say.

I also read the first issue of DC’s summer blockbuster Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and J G Jones. It’s early days yet, and there’s a lot of clear set-up for story to come, but again very enjoyable. Grant can do no wrong in my eyes, from Zenith for 2000AD to Doom Patrol, Animal Man and The Invisibles, which is why I name-checked his excellent Seven Soldiers series in The Burning Man.

On the movie front, my tastes have always been eclectic, but I can’t imagine many people reading this enjoying the early 1940s films of British comedians Arthur Askey and George Formby. Kept me happy, though. I also finally got round to seeing SF greats This Island Earth and Invaders From Mars. Ones for fans only, I think, though there’s a pleasantly creepy aspect to the latter.

Lying in bed, suffering from man-flu, which increasingly seems like some hideous virus. Over a week and a half now and counting. Head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton wool, which, I suppose, is a step-up from feeling like it’s in a vice. So apologies to anyone who hasn’t got a response.

Do not play if you have an unnaturally weak stomach.

This happens all the time round where I live.

I’ve been knocking out a few of my likes and dislikes of 2007 for various bloggers here and there. You can find the first one up here.

I’m usually so far behind in my reading that my book of the year was normally published five years ago, but if it’s good it deserves a mention, although I did manage to hit the mark at least once in 2007. Mostly the questions are about books, films and TV so maybe I’ll mention my music top raters here.

A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last night amid evidence they may cause serious cell damage. Research from a British university suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA.

I have been “tagged” by Sarah Pinborough over at www.sarahpinborough.com to reveal five things people are unlikely to know about me. As I have been forced to move my growing collection of skeletons out of the closet and into their own rambling house, I’m not really short of potential topics. But having decided to rule out anything that would alert international law enforcement agencies or stories concerning old acquaintances who may feel obliged to engage the services of My Learned Friends, I opted for the following milder revelations:

1) I used to play bass in the revolutionary and rightly unremembered Midlands band, Symbols of Malice. We split up after I had an affair with the lead singer who was the unrequited object of affection for the guitarist. She went off to be (briefly) a stripper. He went off to be a hairdresser. I went off to believe, yes, rock and roll is indeed the best business in the world.

2) I had a six-month course of anti-rabies injections after being bitten by a wild dog in the South of France. The biggest needle you have ever seen in your life, in the gluteus maximus, once a week. It was the only suspected case ever to happen in my area and the vaccine had to be shipped in specially. And to add insult to my injury, my local paper decided this was worthy of front page coverage so I had to endure six months of people stopping me in the street to ask, ‘How’s your arse?’

3) I have a Harry Potter-esque jagged scar on my forehead and another more severe one on the side of my head. The first came from a fight when an opponent decided to bludgeon me into submission with a rock. The second came when, in a drunken stupor, I attempted to break into a club that had refused me admission. Not big, or clever, but in my defence I was very, very drunk. And young. And stupid. But clearly I do have an extremely thick head.

4) I have saved the life of two people and watched one person die.

5) I was severely beaten up by racist thugs outside Leeds United football ground while leafletting for the Anti-Nazi League. Rather than deter me, it set me up for a lifetime believing that you fight for what you stand for or the other side wins.

The rules of the game say I now have to tag others so James Barclay, Chaz Brenchley and Leah Moore, you are ‘it’. Check out their blogs to see what they have to say.