Cloud 109 - Episode 23

We're rapidly approaching a self imposed hiatus with "Cloud 109", it's not that we're abandoning work on the opus - far from it, as I type the other Reverso me (living somewhere on Earth 2 in a parallel universe is frantically skimming through Chris Georgenes "How To Cheat in Adobe Flash") as we get our dedicated "Cloud 109" website up and running and suitable for public consumption.

So much to do ... so little time ...

But, I am very aware of this very delicate balancing act that creatives such as Dave Morris and the amazing "Mirabilis" team, Garen Ewing with his wonderful "Rainbow Orchid" (Book 2 out soon and the cover is an absolute knockout too!)and the awesome Tim Perkins over at Wizard's Keep with the epic "World's End" (Tim's just done an interview with BBC Radio Lancashire - well worth a listen - check the link on his site) have been doing and that is flagging up their creations, teasing and tantalising but not giving the whole game away into the bargain, otherwise even allowing for a few people still wanting to add your book to their shelves, there's not going to be a lot of suspense or anticipation left in the process. And believe me suspense and anticipation are a vital part of the selling process. I used to get almost as much enjoyment out of seeing all the covers for the first few editions of Warren's "Creepy" and "Eerie" in those black and white teaser ads in Famous Monsters of Filmland as I did from reading the actual magazines, by the time I finally tracked them down I was ready to part with my life savings, which at the age of fourteen was pretty much what I did.

And this is the stage that we're heading towards with "Cloud 109", we'll soon have posted 25 consecutive pages from the book and as the entire first volume is a mere 60 pages long ( I used to think 60 was kinda epic until I discovered that Dave Morris, Leo Hartas and Nikos Koutsis planned on Making Mirabilis 800 pages long - cheez!!!) I think we are heading towards showing a little too much of our hand.

So what we want to do is move the sample pages to our own Cloud 109 website (c'mon Peter! Type faster so you can get the friggin' website completed!!!), but continue with the blog as it's now become a bit of an institution and a great way of sharing ideas and influences, plus - and this is very important - a blog lives, breathes and gently pulsates in a way that a website doesn't. We can and will continue to update and tantalise with random snippets from the rest of "Cloud 109 - Book 1", not to mention Books 2 and 3, plus other creative projects that we're involved with and the blog is the best game in town as regards all the necessary communication opportunities we require to achieve this.

So here in the meantime is page 23 of Cloud 109 and here also is a glimpse of the teaser book we have produced using Lulu.com. A very few copies of this will be filtering out over the next few weeks as we continue with our efforts to raise the profile of what I regard as the most exciting project I have had the privilege of being involved with over the last thirty mumble, mumble ... years.

Previous episodes can be read here and here: