Season's Greetings!

This friendly polar bear and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, or at least a few happy and cosy days off. :)

My wares + BICS

The above is a picture of my recent wares (complete with some natty new display materials... I love the double postcard stand!). :D Pictured are:

* The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (standard sized book)
* The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (new pocket-sized version!)
* A6 postcard - "Wish"
* A6 postcard - "I eat my greens"
* Off by Heart (on poetry) - a new mini-book (details coming soon)

This past weekend I had the pleasure of selling this humble array of items at Birmingham International Comics Show, on a table with work by other wonderful folks from the Midlands Comics Collective. BICS is a great event, but as quite a bit of what's sold there is superhero/sci-fi related or quite masculine, I always feel a bit like a fish out of water at first!
Nonetheless, I met some great people and got my hands on this amazing concertina by Micah Lidberg (Nobrow Press). <3 <3 I've wanted it since the guys from Nobrow gave a talk at my university earlier this year, so I couldn't resist when I saw it at the Gosh! comics stand with 20% off the price.

Up next is Handmade & Bound, where me and the other girls at Whirlygig will be attending to sell lots of lovely bits and pieces. :) If you're free and can make it to London on the 21st of November, please come along and see us!

I eat my greens

My scanner seems to hate gouache (I keep spending ages trying to get the levels close to the original image!) but I like painting with it. And I love tortoises. =D

Wish

Painted in gouache.

Thinking of making this one into postcards or a print. :)

Silkie - now available to buy!

I've just made up some more copies of The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry, and they're now available to buy online!

Click -->HERE<-- for Folksy listing
Click -->HERE<-- for Etsy listing

I'd recommend Folksy myself, particularly if you're in the UK, but I know more people are on Etsy so that's an option too. :)

While I'm here, maybe I should finally get around to linking to my favourite version of the song? Yes, I think I'll do that.

Poem: Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things)
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of this colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry

Here are a few images from my latest book/zine, The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. it's been a poem that's interested me for a long time, so I enjoyed doing it. :) Thanks to everyone who bought a copy at the zine fair, particularly Fehmida, who gave it a great review on her blog. <3

 I'd encourage you all to read the story, or - better still - listen to it sung as a ballad (it really is beautiful). Or, y'know, you could buy a copy of my book. ;) But maybe that's a topic for another blog entry, eh?