Amnesia Agents #1

DESPITE hearing a thousand-and-one positive things about the show, I've never made it up to Leeds for the city's annual Thought Bubble festival which takes place this week. And, sadly, it's the same this year. The main problem is that it always seems to clash with my eldest son's birthday (he turns nine on Friday). Added to that this year is the fact my mother-in-law has just passed away, and my wife will be spending the next week and a bit in Jamaica arranging the funeral and putting the old girl's house on the market, leaving me at home with the kids. 

Although I can't physically be at Thought Bubble, at least a story I wrote will be. It's a short and simple one-pager called 'Leo'. It's illustrated by Baz Renshaw (who you might know from the magazines Redeye and Multiverse), and you'll find it in issue #1 of Jason Cobley's Amnesia Agents comic. AA #1 - "an anthology about memories or the lack of" - also contains contributions from the very talented likes of Andy Bloor, Vicky Stonebridge, Gary Crutchley, Chris Askham and David Hitchcock. 

Amnesia Agents #1 is £3.50 for 52 pages. For more details, check out Jason's blog: http://writingcobblers.blogspot.co.uk/

* IN other news, I think I've found a publisher for a couple of my projects. I won't say any more now but hope to have more concrete news in the very near future.

Bristol: Reduced circumstances

THIS year's Bristol Expo wasn't the damp squib I was worried it was going to be but neither was it a patch on previous years. For those who aren't aware, the Expo's organisers weren't able to hire the usual big space at the British Empire & Commonwealth Exhibition Hall and had to settle instead for a variety of rooms and corridors at the Ramada Hotel. There was also a separate small press event on the Saturday at a completely different hotel a few minutes up the road.

All in all, this gave the event a very fractured feeling; the buzz you get from a great big room packed with creators, fans and colourful cosplayers sadly missing. They'd also limited tickets to just 500 which meant Expo was already less than a quarter the size it usually is.

Worse still, the indie and small press room at the Ramada was very small and stuck out of the way. There were times when exhibitors far outnumbered customers. Bizarrely, the bloke who played Greedo in Star Wars was also stationed in the room on the Saturday but he gave up and buggered off around 3 o'clock!

The other downside was that a lot of the people I most enjoy spending time with weren't around this year - Dec's beavering away on his 28 Days Later project, Keith Burns has just become a dad (congratulations, mate!) and Mick Trimble was, apparently, on his way down Saturday morning, only to be put off by the extortionate train fare from Birmingham to Bristol!

And while I'm moaning, Saturday got off to the worst possible start when BritForce creator Andrew Radbourne called to say his books hadn't arrived at the Ramada from the printer. Of course, after contacting the printer and generally running around like a headless chicken for an hour, it turned out the books had been at the hotel all along and they just hadn't been to look for them properly.

On the plus side, Moonface sales were pretty good. Not the usual numbers but far from a disaster. Oddly enough, BritForce and Brothers didn't sell particularly well but I knocked out loads of Septic Isle (the weekend's best seller), Hero Killers and Blood Psi. I also sold the last 15 copies of Tim Skinner which means there are none left until I can afford to print some more or put it up online (the latter's quite probable actually).

Having spoken to one of the Expo's organisers, it seems next year's event will again be held across two hotels rather than in the old exhibition hall. The reasoning is that it's simply too risky to put on a "big show" in the current economic climate. It seems a strange direction to take - especially as the Expos in 2007 and 2008 were the most successful yet and the event had become a genuine part of Bristol's cultural calendar. Once the credit crunch eases - next year or in 2011 - the organisers are going to have to graft incredibly hard to re-establish the Bristol Expo all over again. It's a risky strategy - especially with the Birmingham International Comics Show seemingly going from strength to strength and Leeds' Thought Bubble one-dayer garnering rave reviews from all and sundry.

Bristol reservations

THIS year's Bristol Expo is under two weeks away and as ever I'm looking forward to it – although it's going to be a much smaller event than in previous years.

The organisers have also introduced a peculiar admissions policy this year, making tickets only available in advance, something which I imagine is going to have a fairly huge effect on the number of punters coming through the door. In fact, had I known this in advance of booking a table and hotel room, I may well have decided to give the event a miss this year and concentrate on making a big splash at BICS and having a table at Leeds' Thought Bubble one-dayer instead.

Hopefully, my fears of only selling three copies of Brothers, Tim Skinner etc will be unfounded, but I have to say I'm going to Bristol this year in a substantially less optimistic mood than before. I also suspect the size of the event and the strange admissions procedure is going to put off an awful lot of people who I enjoy spending time with there. Worst of all, my collaborator and good friend Declan Shalvey won't be there this year either as he's snowed under with paying work.

I know this year's changes were forced on the organisers in part by the unavailability of the usual venue, so let's hope the event returns to normal in 2010, as it should always be the highlight of the British comics calendar.

* BRITFORCE should be back from the printer this week and Brothers early next. Getting those two projects off my hands means I can return to doing some writing this week - more Blood Psi, another crack at Kurse and something new that I've been tinkering around with in the odd spare moment.