Hello. This is warren ellis dot com.

(Alasdair Watson)

• ‘The Minister Of Chance’ a new Doctor Who spin-off? – Shadowlocked
  "The Minister of Chance is a new form of entertainment – a radiophonic drama – made using a combination of film and radio techniques and delivered by podcast. It is the first, but we hope not last, of its kind." New form of entertainment my arse.
  (tags:radio )

“Clanking.”

My name’s Warren Ellis. I write comics, graphic novels, journalism and anything else that people pay money for. I live in south-east England.

I’m the writer of the graphic novel RED, the film version of which (starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman & Helen Mirren) came out in October. I’m the writer of the GRAVEL graphic novels, under development for film by Legendary Pictures. I also wrote the novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. I have an Amazon.com page here. (Ignore anything it says about LISTENER, that book was lost and cancelled years ago.)

I write here almost every day. A collection of the writing I’ve done here and elsewhere on the internet, SHIVERING SANDS, was published in 2009.

Quick links: Whitechapel (message board) – Twitter – an Official Warren Ellis Page on that Facebook thing – a store of Things at CafePress.

(I do have a personal page on that Facebook thing, but I only add people I know, really)

You can also find me on Instagram as warrenellis. I have a Tumblr that I pretty much only use for reblogging stuff I find on Tumblr and mirroring my Instagram posts. It’s not very interesting. You don’t want the link.

For people wanting to send me to their sites, wanting to email stuff or tell me about new music or send me tips or whatever, I’ve set up a Gmail account that I check once every day or so: warrenellis@gmail.com. This isn’t, I stress, my main email account, and it’s not for asking me when some comic’s coming out (there’s a FAQ for that). Always interested in new music, new art, new connections, dirty pictures, madness etc.

If you need to contact me about writing for print or web, please contact my agent Lydia Wills using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you need to contact me about anything involving film, tv, games or other things that move, please contact my agent Angela Cheng Caplan using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you (for god knows what reason) wanted to send me something physical… um, well, you can’t, right now. My book agent has gotten flooded with stuff of late, and I feel terrible about drowning them in things like that. So I’m going to sort myself out a PO Box here in the UK in a couple of weeks, I swear…

Related articles

• Which Comics To Read After ‘Red’? Warren Ellis Has Some Recommendations! (splashpage.mtv.com)
• An Interview With Professor Elemental (warrenellis.com)
• Black And White (warrenellis.com)
• Some Days We Just Shouldn’t Be Allowed On Twitter (warrenellis.com)

• Drug overdose from designer pill known as ‘death’
  "The man's death is believed to be related to a lethal hallucinogenic drug, paramethoxymethamphetamine or PMMA, that may have been sold as ecstasy, and may go by the street name "death"."
  (tags:drugs )
• perfect wave magazine vol. 1 – spring/summer 2011 | in theory, a perfect wave driven by perfect winds should, after a certain time, produce a perfect wave field, no matter the initial state. However, in real atmospheres, unstable behavior makes a wave f
  side-scrolling multimedia web magazine
  (tags:webmag )

• downthetubes.net news blog: More Jack Staff issues released for iPhone
  "A quick plug, courtesy of digital comics distributor Comixology, to remind folk here that Paul Grist's wonderful Jack Staff is available on iPhone and more."
  (tags:comics )
• Silicon Roundabout T-shirts and Hoodies | Blog | Really Interesting Group
  "…lots of people seemed to like them, and kept asking us where they could get them. Well, ask no more!"
  (tags:tshirts )
• Found Objects: Landscape and Perception
  "A research project investigating the sonic properties of the rock outcrops at Preseli in SW Wales, source of the original bluestones transported to Stonehenge."
  (tags:history archaeoacoustics geo )
• Navigating The Twitterverse of Apps [Interactive Infographic]
  "Simply click anywhere on the image to get started and a full-size, interactive image will open in a new window"
  (tags:net )

Been busy doing media interviews and slumping in my chair from ridiculous tiredness. Six Red Bulls later, I can at least type again. While I get back to speed for a couple of hours, look at what Siege found:

• Coilhouse » Blog Archive » Moebiuswear By Cyclus
  "When we are wandering the deserted wastelands, on occasion upon the back of a pterosaur, I imagine these will be the bags of choice."
  (tags:fashion crashsite )
• NanoSail-D ejects: NASA seeks amateur radio operators’ aid to listen for beacon signal
  "…engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., confirmed that the NanoSail-D nanosatellite ejected from Fast Affordable Scientific and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT. The ejection event occurred spontaneously and was identified this morning when engineers at the center analyzed onboard FASTSAT telemetry. The ejection of NanoSail-D also has been confirmed by ground-based satellite tracking assets…"
  (tags:space )
• The Atavist – About The Atavist
  "The Atavist is a boutique publishing house producing original nonfiction stories for digital, mobile reading devices. We like to think of Atavist pieces as a new genre of nonfiction, a digital form that lies in the space between long narrative magazine articles and traditional books and e-books. Publishing them digitally and offering them individually — a bit like music singles in iTunes — allows us to present stories longer and in more depth than typical magazines, less expensive and more dynamic than traditional books. Most importantly, it gives us new ways to tell some inventive, captivating, cinematic journalism — and new ways for you to experience it…"
  (tags:ebook magazine journalism app kindle )
• Nasienie – Blackwood EP [wh157] : Nasienie : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
  "Despite its brevity, this trio of ambient compositions seems to expand the experience of time itself." Russia, 2010
  (tags:music )

“Fleshcave,” by Thousand Foot Whale Claw. G’night.

Fleshcave by thousandfootwhaleclaw

When you’re starting a new story how do you decide on what to name the characters?#

That is so complex, for me, as to be almost unanswerable. Weirdly overdeveloped instinct, if you like. Sounds. Character background. That which evokes. While trying not to end up with character names that’d make even Don McGregor throw up in his mouth. (Don McGregor’s a comics writer who did groundbreaking work in the 1970s, and also did some of the most overcooked captionwork and character naming ever.) I do sometimes overdo it.

For instance: I’m working on something right now where I think I’ve nailed the character name finally. Birch. Birch = wood = connotes a degree of strength and basic groundedness. But also birching = flagellation. Also, “John Birch Society,” skeevy and untrustworthy. And it’s a hard, sharp word. There’s a lot about the character that unpacks out of the name. I tend to look for a name, particularly with protagonists, that somehow strikes sparks off elements of the character.

Or not. You can easily reverse that out. Michael Jones, in DESOLATION JONES: as ordinary a name as you can get. Which — at least in my head — indicates that what happened to him could have happened to anyone, given the right chain of rotten luck. (And also, in my head, a good name for a confused detective, because something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?)

(Yeah, I know. These things only have to happen in my head. The flow of notions and themes around a name only have to be visible to me, to give colour and direction to the writing.)

Related articles

• GUEST INFORMANT: Rita J King (warrenellis.com)
• RED 2 Script Commissioned (warrenellis.com)

This and that:

Katie West’s photobook BLACK AND WHITE is back on sale after some weirdness at Lulu.com.

Patton Oswalt is still out on tour with his fine new book ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND which you should all already own.  I mention it mostly as an excuse to post this:

So that’s going well, then.

Spoke to Dean Trippe about a little internet game thing he wants to try, that should be fun for people to watch.

Tomorrow I have to do a few hours’ worth of phone interviews in support of the RED DVD, which hits over here on February 14.  Because it’s romantic.  I guess.

Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. Site. Shop.

What happened to the Comics Journal website? I go to the front page, I get a bunch of fucking comics bloggers (currently talking in multiple posts about “Best Online Comics Criticism,” which looks like an infinitely recursive circle jerk). I click on Print, to find the actual magazine, and get a “Coming Soon” message. That ain’t right.

Another massive tranche of pages from comics creator James Stokoe: there’s a complete comic and a huge chunk of a graphic novel in there for your free reading pleasure. A better way to start the day.

Cartoonist/reporter/writer/monster Chip Zdarsky greets the morning with this:

I am sorry.

• BLDGBLOG: Project Iceworm
  "Camp Century—aka "Project Iceworm"—was a "city under ice," according to the U.S. Army, a "nuclear-powered research center built by the Army Corps of Engineers under the icy surface of Greenland," as Frank J. Leskovitz more specifically explains. A fully-functioning "underground city," Camp Century even had its own mobile nuclear reactor—an "Alco PM-2A"—that kept the whole thing lit up and running during the Cold War…"
  (tags:architecture history )
• Why A Music Social Network Won’t Succeed – Less Fan Interest Than We Imagine [INTERVIEW] – hypebot
  "…shorter fame cycles don't allow for social cohesion to occur around the artist/brand. The nascent interactions around the briefly famous don't coalesce into anything enduring. The potential community member just moves on to the next titillation."
  (tags:culture )
• Review: Nonobject | ICON MAGAZINE ONLINE
  "Nonobject is a collection of fantastical, impossible designs created by former IDEO member Branko Lukic. There are all-bristle toilet brushes, forks bent into right angles and crystal toilet bowls. It’s a fun sort of book – think of an updated Heath Robinson, or perhaps a monograph on industrial design by The Onion."
  (tags:design+fiction )
• Found Objects: The Number Lady
  "Title sequence to never-broadcast TV series. Filmed by Southern TV in 1975, and abandoned for reasons that have never been fully explained (though all sorts of rumours abound). Even the subject of the series is unclear, some claiming it is a straightforward drama about shortwave number stations, and others that it's a supernatural story about a a boy who can communicate with ghosts that have been trapped by pylons in a field near his home…"
  (tags:fake video hauntology )
• Predicting political hotspots: Professors’ global model forecasts civil unrest against governments
  "The model, named the Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism Model of Domestic Political Violence Forecast, is currently five for five in predicting which countries will likely experience an escalation in domestic political violence against their governments within the next five years…"
  (tags:pol war comp )
• The Art & Comics of Romantic Mr. Sheldon Vella
  Nick Lowe at Marvel sent me a bunch of his pages AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME that I'd clicked through to his website from a Brandon Graham link. SPACE GODS REWIRING MY BRAIN
  (tags:comics )
• New reactor paves the way for efficiently producing fuel from sunlight
  "Using a common metal most famously found in self-cleaning ovens, Sossina Haile hopes to change our energy future. The metal is cerium oxide—or ceria—and it is the centerpiece of a promising new technology developed by Haile and her colleagues that concentrates solar energy and uses it to efficiently convert carbon dioxide and water into fuels."
  (tags:sci tech eco energy )
• ancient robots (19 Jan., 2011, at Interconnected)
  "Around 450 BC, the ancient Greek island of Rhodes was so well known for its robots that the poet Pindar wrote…"
  (tags:history tech robots )
• Study claims 100 percent renewable energy possible by 2030
  New research has shown that it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, if there is the political will to strive for this goal.
  (tags:sci eco pol energy )

Joe Casey: “Creators are the ones with the real power… because no one else in the chain can do what we do. No one else can think of the shit we think of on a regular basis, and having some talent never goes out of fashion.”

Because sometimes you want to finish the night with ritualistic apocalyptic neofolk summonings from Madison, Wisconsin.

G’night.

Today I worked extensively on a couple of new things, and possibly accidentally agreed to two business trips to Europe. I also relentlessly mocked new Marvel Comics Senior Editor Nick Lowe, briefly shouted at Adam Greenfield about UFOs, received word from Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer that the other Warren Ellis sends his love, and read an interesting and fun new science fiction comic by Thorsten Sideb0ard, which you too can read at this link here. That is all.