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Interviews with Alex and her co-conspirators:
11.11.05:
Benjamin Ong at top comic news site Newsarama interviews me about my girls' mystery series Kat & Mouse , which debuts in May 2006: "'It's the president of Harvard's fault, you know, saying that us ickle girls' pretty heads weren't suited to science or math,' de Campi exclaimed. 'So I thought, up yours, academic dude who probably hasn't gotten laid since Carter was president, I'm going to write a book that gives girls a science hero. Kat solves mysteries using science, and Mouse chips in on the programming/maths side. But the science stuff isn't done in a preachy way - it's more like, KA-BAM! Cool stuff! Okay, on with our story.'" More, including hot guys, a European princess, and a mysterious school thief - not to mention some serious bitchiness. Um, in the story, not from me. For once.
09.11.05: I discuss the process of writing for comics and film with Tim Leong at ComicFoundry : "The creative life is hard work, and miserable occasionally, because no matter how good you are, there are long periods where no rain falls. What keeps me going through those times (aside from bourbon, anger and a petty lust for revenge) is knowing that I am creating new worlds and new characters that I love - and that are mine. And hopefully, some of them will outlive me." More.
05.05.05: New SMOKE interview up with Igor and myself at PopImage: "You should also remember that I came to full-time fiction writing fairly late - in my early 30s - and as a result of this my attitude to what I do is pretty uncompromising. In 2003, I was having an annus horribilis similar to the one Igor describes below, and I finally just said, that's it, no more effing about. I'm going to write. I don't have a lot of time left. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow - and considering I'm one of these dreadful greenies who bicycles everywhere, that's more likely than you think. I have a day job, so the rent gets paid. The writing I do because I love it. So no, I'm not going to waste time writing things people think I should write, for my "career". And I'm not concerned with bagging scalps by working with certain publishers or on certain characters. I'm just going to write my stories, find people I like to illustrate them, and we're all going to have some fun, and make a little magic." More.
24.03.05: Brian Wood and I add the commentaries to Neil Kleid's latest BIG POND, all about pitching : "Most importantly, your first pitch to an editor is nothing but an opening salvo in a long-term conversation. Often it will take you three or more rejected pitches before you understand what the editor is really looking for. Listen to what the editor says, and learn from it. You must not get all bent out of shape if your masterpiece dream story gets dinged first-off. Chances are, it will. You're a writer. Go out to the pub, complain to your friends about how nobody recognizes your genius, then go the heck home and write something else. Good thing you're only sending these pitches as 200 word springboards, isn't it?"
17.03.05: "For 22-page American comics, the future is the screen. Kids have no problem reading floppies on the computer - or even manga. Look at all the scanslations on the Net. I know so many people who pirate-download scanned comics. Some friends of mine haven't bought a single comic in two years, yet read about 10 floppies a week this way. The fact that DC and Marvel haven't done an iTunes for comics continues to blow my mind. Their loss. " I talk to Kareem Aminu at Komikwerks about SMOKE, Joseph Heller, my Steranko fangirlishness, and the addictive pain of self-publishing.
04.03.05: "The funny thing about writing dystopia is that life always outpaces fiction. There's always something happening that's stranger or more awful than I could ever think up. Bumfights. Replicants. The IKEA riots in Edmonton. The whole 'suicide' of Iraqi arms expert Dr David Kelly. Every week in the newspaper some new horror unfolds, and I sigh and shake my head and say, 'darn, I wish I'd thought of that'". Benjamin Ong interviews me about SMOKE and other things at Newsarama. I had too much caffeine and was saying all sorts of incendiary things. No, I will never learn.
10.02.05: "In some ways, we are Ray Bradbury's Wilderness People, constantly retelling the stories we learned as children, while adding elements which make them our own. Bradbury's discussion with Bernard Berenson about how we would remember stories if we had no written words is, quietly, one of the most interesting explorations of the nature of ideas of the past 50 years. So is Cocteau's film ORPHEE , where the sources of a poet's ideas are presented as crackly radio transmissions, broadcast by the dead, misheard by the living." I guest star on Neil Kleid's BIG POND column, where we talk about where ideas come from.
05.11.04: The Brazilian comics site Revista Kaos debuts, with interviews with myself and John Higgins. In both English and Portuguese. Click on "Entrevistas". Revista Kaos was created by the very talented artist Sam Hart and his friends, and they do great interviews. They ask mad questions like, "what is your favourite crime?" and "who would you bring back from the dead?".
02.11.04: Jonah Weiland, CBR's Insomniac-In-Chief, interviews Igor Kordey and myself about our creator owned series SMOKE, coming out from the fine folks at IDW Publishing starting May 2005. The interview includes extensive preview art. Igor is working full time drawing the series now, and I get pages every couple of days in my inbox. It's like Christmas.
15.10.04: In a recent Waiting For Tommy, Rich Johnston interviews editor Mark Paniccia, who has just left Tokyopop to join Marvel. On the second page of the interview, they talk about how I may be in possession of the Cosmic Cube. Muahaha, etc.
05.07.04: Rich Johnston takes me to a film (THE RETURN - you need to see it. It ties with KONTROLL for best film of the year) and gets me to spill the story of how a little minnow like me ended up doing a creator-owned project with a big fish like Igor Kordey. The short answer is: Guinness. Not just good for you, it can also help you get artists.
19.05.04: The lovely Jen Contino interviews Igor Kordey. They discuss, among other things, SMOKE (Igor and my creator-owned series, coming out in May 2005 from IDW).
09.05.04: Craig Lemon at Silver Bullet does a long interview with me, where we talk about firing things into space, Italo Calvino, tarot cards... oh, and comics. The two projects we talk about, LOWLIVES and JOHN FAUST, are now in slightly different places. House of Ra - who was supposed to be pitching them - disappeared. Len has drawn a story of mine for VARIANCE's second sci-fi anthology, and he is also colouring SMOKE. We still intend to do LOWLIVES, as soon as both of us have a chance to breathe. FAUST is now with IDW, and with a different artist, due to Felipe's university commitments. Oh the joys of getting creator-owned work off the ground.
03.05.04: "What we are seeing with DC and Marvel's much- discussed 'spandexification' is a conscious return to the superhero as Don Quixote, pushing the titles that suggest that our system or national character is weak back to the independent publishers where they are more usually found." My debut column at Ninth Art, and one people still seem to take an inordinate interest in: HAMLET AND DON QUIXOTE IN AMERICA.