East Dragon, West Dragon

When I was a wee tacker growing up in Melbourne, my dad picked up this second hand tome called Myths and Legends, published by Paul Hamlyn way back in 1959.

The illustrators were the insanely cool Alice and Martin Provensen, and it turns out that Martin was also the originator of the first Tony the Tiger character for Kellogg’s - an iconographic '50s feline that decorates my fave coffee mug these days.

About five years ago, I started writing for an American magazine called Geek Monthly and, a few issues in, they showcased a relatively new artist/illustrator named Scott Campbell, alias Scott C.

To me, his images were akin to the Provensens, channelled via Blackadder writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, and then stretched to the point of surreal hilarity by Dr. Seuss.

I was busy hacking together a novel at the time (Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat) and my publishers at Another Sky Press asked if I'd decided yet who I'd like to get to do the cover artwork.

That was now a cinch - all I had to do was track down and ask Campbell if he'd be interested. After some crap detective work, I did so, and he agreed in an instant, very few questions asked, and turned out a way cool couple of goats.

I always wanted to interview Scott in order to find out the buried treasure beneath his easy-going artist facade - and I finally did so this last month, on the back of his fantastic new children's tome East Dragon, West Dragon, which my six-year-old daughter Cocoa loves as much as me, by the way.

So, you can read the interview over @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Tobacco-Stained & Out There

Well, the novel is now out - in fact it has been for a month now - and slowly starting to garner the occasional review like the one at Forces Of Geek.

My publishers are currently putting together the digital versions for iPad and Kindle (stay tuned), but in the meantime the classic old school paperback - sorry, trees! - is up on Amazon UK, Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon Japan, and Alibris.

Even better, you can order direct from my cool cat publishers Another Sky Press, where the price for the paperback is much cheaper ($4.74 plus postage), and you also get bonus glossy bookmarks (see above) featuring the cover artwork on both sides.

If you feel like it, while online @ Another Sky you can contribute more so that the publisher, the cover artist (Scott Campbell) and I actually make some dosh in the long run.

The funky postcard is not yet available except here in Japan, but I'm working on it, and eventually hope to achieve world domination with bumper stickers, a Scout patch and iPad apps... even if I don't have one of those darn tootin' gadgets yet myself.

Bah; humbug.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - 2011

Hey mates,


I'm dead sure there's a separate entry somewhere here in this blog to stick this update, but I'm chilling out with La Familia as the New Year wind-up and beginning is more important in Japan than Christmas (in my case I get to celebrate both!), so in the meantime I'm putting this here in case anyone's at all vaguely interested.

My debut novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat will now definitely be published, through US label Another Sky Press, at the end of January 2011.

It's a bit of a cut-up fusion of genres and cultures (blame 10 years in Tokyo and the rest in Melbourne, aside from six months in London and a little bit of time on the Gold Coast).

My editor (Kristopher Young, who penned Click), when pressed, put it thus:


"The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really - noirish, subtly sci-fi, hard-boiled, futuristic; Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or The Third Man. And a shot of bourbon."

Anyway, though I'd struggle to insert my own work in the same sentence as these cool people (a list that includes Kristopher himself), I like to believe that's what we've at least fractionally achieved...

While we're still in the edit on the book (mostly cleaning up and organizing the cover artwork - front and back both done by the insanely cool Scott Campbell), we have a sneak preview of the original, unedited first two chapters here, plus you can pre-order the beastie if that insane compulsion grabs you - it's retailing at only US$4.50 plus postage.

Cheap is always good.

Plus we've got some great feedback to the tome from magazines, newspapers and blogs like The Age, Vice, Filmink, Forces Of Geek and Impact.


You can find out more plus peruse the better-tuned propaganda and info online at
Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Anyway, I'm obviously over the moon about publication of the bugger in the new year and hope you have the inclination to check it out. If you do find the time to potter over something a little different... read away.

I'd love to know what you think!


Otherwise, two wise last words here: HAPPY NEW YEAR. Oops... them's three, not two.

All the best,
Andrez

Soon to be Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Melbourne (Australia) in the somewhat vaguely not-too-distant future. An alcoholic film-buff detective who smacks of vituperativity while leaning heavily on chemical dependency. An over-boiled world in climatic and moral decline, a mystery, a geisha, kanji clues, goats aplenty, several murders, the obligatory femme fatale, and an array of sweaty red herrings.

The novel I've been hacking away at for an absolute age (with huge thanks to Kristopher Young, Bob Young, and the crew at Another Sky Press in the US, plus insanely cool cover art by Scott Campbell), in the process helping me to shed 12kg over the past few months - an editing diet... nifty! - is about to be published next month.

If you're at all interested you can keep an eye on things on this sista/bruvva blog thingy: TSMG Updates.

In the meantime, if you haven't caught a glimpse of this flick (below) already, it's time you should - chances are it'll put you in solid with me once you do so, even if I'm ne'er the wiser. ;)

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - the novel

Big news for myself this week relates not to hack muzak but hack writing - my novel is finally starting to emerge from its 18-month sub-editing purgatory!

The first 2 chapters are now online as a bit of a freebie teaser HERE; there're
some typos I noticed the other day, but otherwise pretty much tweaked into (final) submission, with huge thanks to Kristopher and Bob - the two best people I could ever imagine helping me to reign in the beast - and gratitude going out to Scott Campbell on cover art chores (the version here is the initial rough sketch Scott ran by me way back at the beginning of the editing process).

So, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat is finally going to be published in 2010... thank god! The people generously running with it are this way cool, semi-punk, ideologically wunderbar publisher in the U.S. called Another Sky Press and I love 'em to death.

Along with Scott, they've become mates and a virtual family over the course of the past 540-odd days of fine-tuning.

So what's the novel all about, anyway? I think my editor, awesome scribe Kristopher Young, put it way better than I ever could in a recent interview with Verbicide:

"We’ve spent... wow, at least a year at this point hammering his novel into shape. It’s a huge undertaking; he’s got this brilliant voice that only he could have, but it needs fine tuning, so that’s what we’re doing. The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really — noir-ish, subtly sci-fi, hard boiled, futuristic. Think Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or better yet, The Third Man. And a shot of some good bourbon."

Anyway, enough blabbering.

If anyone here ever gets time, have a peek, download the PDF, and I hope to hell you dig... No correspondence, however, will probably be entered into as I'm just too goddamned busy finishing this baby and the off-beat travel tome!

Andrezzz