Now that I can reveal exactly who and what Terry and I are working on “The Clockwork Occultist” for, we thought it was high time that we introduced the man himself.

So, without further ado …

Terry Cooper was born nearly 40 years ago in an ambulance in North London. He moves to Wales in 1980 and did whatever he could to get through his schooling alive.

He had a short but fruitful career in the 1990s as a member of the rap group, ‘Best Shot’, touring the UK with East 17.

Nowadays, he is a full-time artist and illustrator, producing everything from storyboards, cartoon characters and company logos to book and CD
covers. In addition, he is a published novelist with the book, ‘KANGAZANG!’ and is currently writing the sequel. He also writes a fortnightly column for the local press.

If that wasn’t enough, he also runs a computer animation studio, Strangetown Animation, and provides voice-overs and narration for advertisements, films and cartoons. Terry has two children, but is single (ladies!) and lives in Pontypridd.

You can find out more about Terry from these links:

art : www.terrycooper.co.uk
animation : www.strangetown.tv
book: www.kangazang.com
deviance: http://rapstertee.deviantart.com
blogging: http://terencecooper.blogspot.com

Accent UK have given me the green light to announce that their 2011 anthology will be entitled “Victoriana”.

I knew this some time back and it was at the front of my mind when I penned the short “The Clockwork Occultist”, which I am delighted to be able to let you know will be included in this anthology. Victoriana is a favourite theme/meme of mine, so I’m pretty chuffed to be the first out of the gate with something for the 2011 Accent book, which will no doubt continue to be a “who’s who” of UK talent.

“The Clockwork Occultist” is a tale of Victorian time travel, steam powered legs, very big guns, a hero, a villian, vampires, and Hitler … steampunk Hitler … being ably illustrated by a new partner in crime Terry Cooper. Terry has kindly sketched out page 1 for us, complete with some dialog to whet the appetite …

So, keep your eyes peeled in 2011!

In the meantime don’t forget that “The Law of Horus”, by Nic Wilkinson and I, will be featuring in the upcoming Accent anthology “Predators” in 2010.

Oh dear oh dear.

I have received some comment spam today that I found so amusingly clumsy that I have decided it deserves something more than my usual “hit the spam button in Wordpress and sigh” response.

Today, we have our inaugural member of the Planet of the Penguins Roll of Shame.

Congratulations www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com

The spam comment was attached to my article “How To Haiku” and ran as follows:

This might be a little off subject, but have you looked at seoclientprospectingrobot dot com? Just wondering if you have any reviews of it, I’m thinking of buying a copy, and wanted to see if anyone had bought a copy yet.

OK, so what’s wrong with this piece of comment spam and why do think it is particularly worthy of ridicule?

1. “It might be a little off subject”

   Yes, it certainly is. About forty thousand leagues away from the actual topic of the post in fact. There is no conceivable link between the post and the comment. This is either lazy spamming or spamming that tried not to be lazy but went very, very wrong when confronted with my post.

   Somewhere between 0 and 5 out of 10 for effort, 0 out of 10 for effectiveness www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com.
   

2. It is using “black hat” SEO techniques to advertise SEO software that may or may not itself be sporting a dark chapeau

   Spamming blogs that allow public comments, like this one, is a common “black hat” SEO practice; designed to inject links into sites and thus increase the page rank and perceived relevance of the target site. Search engine spiders see the link, or mention of the link, from my site to www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com and then count that as a “vote” for that site, improving its search engine position.

   Spam links, therefore, attempt to abuse this very democratic system of links=votes by creating links automatically.
   
   So, I have to say there is a certain irony in finding a spam comment that is trying to improve the search engine position of a web page about software that … improves your search engine position. Irony, and no small amount of annoyance. Nice try www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com

So, not a very good effort overall. Really … quite, quite poor.

I must point out at this point in time that I don’t know if the software available from www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com was used to commit this crime against intelligence, or if perhaps it was the work of someone else. You would have to ask Sophie, via seo4u@live.com, who originally posted the comment. Allegedly.

Best of luck in your next job Sophie.

Chris out.

(And for anyone who knows SEO and is wondering why I keep giving links to the site that has earnt my wrath today … well, wouldn’t it be quite cool if this could become the top rated post when searching for www.seoclientprospectingrobot.com? Don’t delay, trackback, pingback, and comment on this post today!)

Myself and Stu.Art, more commonly known as “Monkeys with Machineguns”, are booked to exhibit at this year’s Bristol Comic Expo.

This year we are exhibiting with a twist however, as all our hard work on The Magpye for Markosia has left us without a brand new issue of our eponymous horror anthology to debut at the show. With the release of the latest MWM being somewhat of a Bristol tradition, at least for Stu and I, were left somewhat stumped this year as to what exactly to do …

Thankfully, the answer is obvious. We would just write and draw a new issue of Monkeys with Machineguns at the Bristol Comic Expo!

Any of you who have attended one of my signings will be familiar with the setup – woefully unable to cede the limelight to artists and jealous of the constant requests they receive for sketches and shows and signings, I have gotten into the habit of writing flash fiction & short stories at shows, often based on random words, phrases, objects etc. thrown at me (figuratively) by whoever is around. It’s a sort of “Whose Line is it Anyway”, but with horror fiction.

So, this year, visitors to the Small Press Expo will be cordially invited to challenge the creativity of the Monkeys with Machineguns team with some random objects, places, people, and points in time from which to create a short story. Once I’ve written the short, Stu will be providing a sketch illustration or two and, after we’ve scanned the result to go into the new book, you will be able to buy the original artwork.

By the end of the day we are hoping to have enough content to complete the upload to our POD publisher of all the stories and artwork, resulting in a brand new issue of Monkeys with Machineguns on sale at the end of the show.

So, if you have ever wondered exactly how we make Monkeys with Machineguns … this is your chance to find out. Or watch us crash and burn horribly, which will probably be equally entertaining.

How to Find Yourself some MWM Goodness

For those who don’t know, the expo this year is a special one off version of the event that will be spread across two venues. The “Bristol International Comic Expo”, which will be held exclusively in the Ramada Plaza hotel this year, and the the “Small Press Expo”, which will be held in the Mercure Hotel. If you have been to the Bristol Expo before then you may well know the Ramada as the hotel that has hosted many of the talks and panels for previous shows, as well as being where most of the comic book fraternity do their socialising after the event.

The Monkeys with Machineguns table will be the Mercure, hopefully with a loud crowd around it and limited screaming from Stu and myself.

Please note that the Small Press Expo is a one day event only. Stu and I will be lurking around in the Ramada based Expo on Sunday, but don’t expect us to write and draw anything unless you come with gifts. Or cash.

I received the finished lettered artwork yesterday for “The Escape Artist”.

Quite simply, it looks fantastic!

Sadly I can’t preview much of the art here without blowing the story, but hopefully my gushing praise for Rick’s work and the small sample we can make available will convince you to seek this story out when it appears in a future issue of Murky Depths.

Rick and I are now talking about partnering up for some new projects in the future, so hopefully I will have the opportunity to wax lyrical about his artwork again soon.

I am very pleased to able to blognounce that Terry Cooper will be putting the images to the words of my new short “The Clockwork Occultist”.

Exactly where this short will be turning up is under wraps at the moment, but if you like time travel, vampires, nazis, steampunk contraptions and villians with clockwork legs, then it is safe to say that this is the story that will deliver for you!

Whilst Terry is working away on the artwork, he’s put together this rather nifty logo as a little teaser for the story. Feel free to pinch it, post it, and link to it.

Had the first pencils yesterday from Gary for “The God Trap”.

The story, and our new friend Bamapana, our both looking great (or terrible, if you take my meaning) and the story is definitely taking shape.

“The God Trap” will be appearing in Insomnia’s “Choices” anthology later this year.

Watch out, trouble's about … call the WatchMEEENNNNN!

This Watchmen trailer is far better than that one with the Smashing Pumpkins soundtrack.

I’m a big fan of portable applications and quick-to-install development environments.

With the range of things that it is possible to do with Drupal, the Acquia Stack Installer aka DAMP is a big step towards a new breed of installable Drupal/Acquia based intranet applications.

Viva!