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.

Personal Project: The Wasp Factory

I have decided to embark on a personal project, the form of which I have been considering for some time. I am going to test my skills by designing and illustrating a book written by someone else, for my own personal enjoyment, and as a learning experience. At the end, perhaps, I will have a handsome product for my personal library, though, as I have not chosen a book that is out of copyright, I will almost certainly not be able to do anything commercial with the result.

The book I have chosen for this project is Iain Banks' debut novel The Wasp Factory. This is a book that has a lot of personal meaning to me, perhaps more so since Iain Bank's recent untimely death, which affected me quite a bit. Banks has been one of my favourite authors for a long time, since my early teens, when I fell in love with his science fiction novels. Since then, I have read almost everything that he ever wrote, and though I still love the science fiction work (and not just those that deal with the post-human, anarchist Culture) some of his non-genre works are the ones that stick with me. Of these, the one I always keep coming back to is The Wasp Factory.