Showing posts with label celebrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celebrity. Show all posts

Thursday, 2 January 2014

A New Year, a New Book.

I have completed my latest book under my real name, Speak of the Devil. It is available for purchase via lulu.com here. If you simply wish to peruse the book in PDF form, you can do so here. The images can be seen in an imgur album here.

So, a new year begins. 2013 has been a mixed year for me. I completed my MA studies at the Arts University Bournemouth, but after that I feel like I have been in something of a doldrums for the latter half of the year. Commissions, sales and other work have been slow, inspiration has been frequently lacking, job applications have (as is so often the case) been pointless investments of time and emotional effort. I have started a few projects that have not made much headway, and have felt for the most part somewhat lost. However, over the past couple of months, traditionally my period of deepest winter depression, things have started to pick up. I shall learn my lesson from many past cock-ups and not make any predictions, but I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be a very good, productive year for me, and I hope there's going to be a lot of interesting material coming out.

Another recent development is that I have made a new deviantart account (I had one years ago, when I was a teen, but it has long since gone the way of all flesh). You can see it here. It mainly showcases my speculative illustrations, produced as DS Blake, but there are also sections where you can see some of the work I produce under my regular name. The main purpose of this account is to allow people an avenue via which they can easily purchase prints of my work; I plan to research and expand to other services which allow this sort of thing over the next few months, and I have a few other interesting things on the go.

Here's to a good 2014.

Friday, 6 December 2013

Speak of the Devil (essay)

This essay is written in the same 'academic stream of consciousness' style that will be familiar to anyone who's read my previous books (particularly Utopia/Dystopia), and should be read with that in mind. It forms the first section of a small book that has suddenly come to me (and been half-completed) over the last few days. This book is entitled 'Speak of the Devil', and will be on the subject of the relationship between celebrity, mass media, the society of the spectacle and serious crime. The second section, that completes the book, consists of portraits of 23 of the most infamous and iconic criminals in British history.