Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills


Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Checking In

It's been a while since I've written anything for this blog. Mostly, I've been busy. The spring and early summer were not very productive times for me, but over the last month or so, I've been getting a lot more work done.

If you swing by the main Atomic Pulp site, you can catch up on some of the stuff I've got coming out in the next few months. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment - Kolchak, Captain Midnight, Gravedigger, the Femme Noir webcomics collection, a few short stories - but I also hope to get started on a few brand new projects in the fall. I'll tell you more about some of those in a month or two.

I've also been trying to keep the reviews coming over at DVD Late Show and to post regularly to my Space: 1970 blog. Both sites have fairly large regular audiences, and in the case of the sci-fi site, I'm having a lot of fun indulging my childhood nostalgia for old school space operas.

As for this blog, I've got plans to write about some favorite old B-movies that don't quite fit in over at the aforementioned sites, and intend to write more about comics in general. The big challenge is making time to do so.

In addition to the time-consuming work activities mentioned above, I've been trying like hell to carve out more time to read for fun. I've got a small stack of new books to read, and a larger pile of old books that I want to re-read. My 70s sci-fi blogging got me interested in re-reading some old Alan Dean Foster Star Trek and Star Wars books, so I've been reading some of those. I also have a couple of Robert Crais crime novels and the fifth Young Bond novel by Charlie Higson close at hand. It's killing me that I still haven't picked up the second Spillane/Collins Mike Hammer novel, The Big Bang. I can't afford it right now, but I'm dying to read it.

I'm also trying to read more comics - I can't afford new ones, but I've got a huge collection to revisit, and I've been trying to do so. For example, I just re-read Chris Claremont and John Byrne's X-Men "Dark Phoenix Saga," and if modern super-hero comics were still written like that, instead of as boring TV shows - I'd probably make a lot more of an effort to buy and read them. I also got my hands on cheap back-issues of Dark Horse Comics' 80s reprints of the Golden Age Spacehawk comics by Basil Wolverton. Man, what fun!

Let's see -what else have I been doing since I last checked in here?

My wife and I have been watching the 90s adventure series The Pretender on DVDs rented from Netflix. It's a fun show. We also recently watched Judd Apatow's Funny People (okay character study, but too long), The Golden Compass (nice world-building, but the story was kinda "meh" - Brandi says the books are better), Hot Tub Time Machine (fun), and the remake of The Wolfman, which I found disappointing. Between these flicks, we've been renting and watching old Doctor Whos (and I mean old - we just watched the very first three stories with William Hartnell) and some Mystery Science Theater 3000 discs.

The movies I've been enjoying without Brandi have mostly been the ones I've reviewed for the Late Show site - lots of Roger Corman cult films and the like. I'm still really hoping to get out to the theater to see The Expendables...

Anyway, it's almost 5 AM. Time to start thinking about hitting the hay. Thanks for stopping by!

1 comment:

El Vox said...

The last couple of Netflix films I've seen and enjoyed: Big Fish, The Mighty Boosh (have you seen these?), Transsiberian (pretty neat thriller), & Lonely Are the Brave. I enjoyed The Wolfman, it wasn't as good as I had expected either, but it could have been a lot worse, worth the time. Also check out Moon if you haven't already.