HarperCollins/William Morrow, the publisher of my novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN (out from July 24), have printed up thousands of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN temporary tattoos. They’re lovely little things with the snake on them. These tattoos are going to be given away at the San Diego convention — at my CLV signing, at the HarperCollins booth, and probably at the Avatar booth too.

(I can’t send you the tattoos, so please don’t ask.)

If you’re going, grab one of the tattoos, put it on, and take a photo of yourself wearing it at the convention. Send it to crookedlittlevein@googlemail.com as an attachment by August 7. These photos will be scanned by experts, scientists and perverts from a variety of different disciplines, and the owners of the five favourite photos will each win a signed copy of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN.

(So send it from an email address you actually check, because HarperCollins will contact the winners on the email address you send the photo from to get your details.)

Why August 7? I won’t be checking before then as I’m en route to Arizona immediately after SDCC, to sign comics and boil alive at Atomic Comics in Mesa.

Also, for those attending the show, I should add that the good people at Fox Atomic will be giving away special CROOKED LITTLE VEIN t-shirts to prize-wheel winners at their booth. (I can’t get you the t-shirts either.)

And so it is said.

– W

on the fly here — blog action will be spotty for next few weeks, and mostly mobile. Monstrously pissed off with Flickr’s new failure to strip headers & phone numbers out of MMS picture sends. Let’s see what this does….

Warren Ellis: 1600 pages to be written by Friday a.m.: then off to West Country for mead and 4-poster beds. (then San Diego, ack)

Notes: cigarette breaks are built into all signing times. I do not include sessions with the press in this public schedule, nor my meetings. I’m pretty much working from 9am to 1am every day of the show. These are the times you can catch me in public to have your books mutilated or listen to me slurring into a microphone:

Wednesday
6.00pm – 8.30pm
Avatar Press booth (#2800)

Thursday
11:00am – 1:30pm
4:00pm – 6:30pm
Avatar Press booth (#2800)

Avatar Press party — I’ll appear sometime between 9pm – 2am – no, I can’t get you in there

Friday
10:00am – 12:30pm
Avatar Press booth (#2800)

CROOKED LITTLE VEIN signing
2pm – 4pm
Mysterious Galaxy booth (#1119 – 1123)

Saturday
10:30am to 1:30pm
Avatar Press booth (#2800)

4:15pm-5:15pm
Room 6A
Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider: A GameTap Exclusive Animated Series: the panel will showcase a full episode by Warren Ellis and an exclusive preview of upcoming episodes.

9:00pm-11:00pm
Room 6CDEF
Spotlight on Warren Ellis: two hours of Q&A with the audience.

Sunday
10:00am to 12:30pm
2:00pm to 4:00pm
Avatar Press booth (#2800)

• SF – Body modification – I don’t get it (NSFW) – Page 3 – Style Forum
  “I found this festival in Spain, Guardia Sanframondi, that seems to preserve self-flagellation:”
  (tags: bodymod cult)

Fuck Harry Potter: the first chapter of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN now available for your perusal.

As in direct-to-internet TV, as opposed to D2DVD/direct-to-DVD. In the serial form, the most recent big push in d21 has been SANCTUARY: notable for its visible budget, its fan-friendly casting and its pay model.

The other shoe just dropped at Sci-Fi Channel:

SCI FI Channel will revive its popular original show Farscape as a Web-based series of short films on SCIFI.COM’s SCI FI Pulse broadband network, part of a slate of new original online programming.

SCI FI has ordered 10 webisodes of Farscape, to be produced by Brian Henson and Robert Halmi Jr. and produced by The Jim Henson Co., in association with RHI Entertainment.

The series will expand the Farscape universe, but the network had no announcements on casting or premiere dates.

A near-perfect solution for FARSCAPE, which couldn’t grow its audience on Sci-Fi Channel in season 4 but which does have a massive, active internet fanbase. Including, yes, people who do say “frell” in actual conversation. Now, here’s the trick: do they offer it free to the web and make their money back on the DVD, or do they pay-gate it?

(Also, I saw a trailer for FLASH GORDON, which has, even in this 30-second tease, that unique “made in Vancouver with bits we nicked off the STARGATE sets” feel. And no rocketships.)

Warren Ellis: The earth is weeping, the sky is shaking/the stars split to their core/And every proton and unnamed neutron/is fusing in my bones

“…an ex-girlfriend once gave me a book called something like “Four American Writers Who Drank Until Their Livers Caught Fire And Slid Out Of Their Bumholes Like Meaty Napalm.” “Brilliant!” I said. “That wasn’t quite the reaction I was hoping for,” she said…”

• Bazooka : The free PHP tumblelog engine
  (tags: web blog)

(“A float taking part in a large festival held annually in Fukuoka, Japan.”)

Srebrenica, the 12th Anniversary. “Victims from all over Bosnia are now being interred here, year after year, in solemn ceremonies.”

(071307)

BomberGirl and the Mechanic

“That said, this being Second Life, I’m also entirely prepared to believe that the moment I looked away the six cowboys grew immense squid-shaped Cthulhuoid spermatophores and filled the female avatar with their little tentacled pixel-babies.”

KIERON GILLEN, writer of PHONOGRAM: “Can you tell the difference between this script and the last one?”

JAMIE McKELVIE, artist of PHONOGRAM: “…No.”

KG: “This is what I call a “Nude Kieron” script. Can you guess why?”

JMcK: “I’m never working with you again”.

(link)

Every week — and I mean, every single week — something happens on the face of this planet that I could not reasonably have predicted. Every single week, the planet does not disappoint.

Cervical piercing.

Even more interestingly: the piercee in question is FTM, and the piercing, a personal symbol of the ownership and control he has over his body, has been placed prior to a planned radical hysterectomy.

Photo by “Gin & Jermajesty”

(You are a loon. Woman will never fly.)

(learning by example)