UPDATE: Wil liked the shirt so much that Rich and I decided to cut him a coupon (that you can use): Type ‘wilw’ at checkout to get 15% off your TOTAL order (that’s anything in the shop, so now’s the time to stock up!)

UPDATE 2: Install the (Happy()Sad) Tumblr Theme, if you wanna.

October was the month my brain completely kicked into OHMYGODINEEDTOMAKETHINGS overdrive.  About a million projects leapt into my brain, fully-formed (except for the formed part), and one of them was this:

And I just had to put it on a T-shirt.  There is no emoticon for those moments that are the intersection of :) and :( — not really.  Oh there’s a :/ face for conflicted or meh, sure, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about those moments when life throws you a THIS IS AWESOME OH GOD IT SUCKS YAY BOO.  And those days?  Well I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of them in my life that I could wear a shirt for them.

I very briefly considered the sort of Product Event that Warren and I would use Cafepress for, but I really wanted to partner with a serious T-shirt vendor for this one — go with a traditional storefront and a 3-color ink process.  This is one of those… well I want it to stick around for a while, you know?

So I went to the smartest T-shirt guy I know, Diesel Sweeties’ Rich Stevens.  And Rich (who’s the smartest T-shirt guy I know) thought it was a winner, so I did all the fancy-schmancy layout and design, and Rich is doing all the fancy-schmancy… well, everything else.

We would really love your help spreading the word about this one.  If you love it and you buy one, then do me a favor and twitter/blog/tell your friends.  Hell, if you love it and you don’t buy one, or even if you kinda hate it, I’d still be thrilled if you help us get the word out.  Like I said, I want this one to stick around for while, and it will as sales merit.  So please help make sales merit:  Go buy one!

I’m not sure how the universe has withstood Rich Stevens (DIESEL SWEETIES) and Ariana Osborne (SHIVERING SANDS, this site, designing various things of mine at Avatar) teaming up to produce a t-shirt, of all things… but this is the result.

Available to order now, ships in 1 - 2 weeks.

Simon Reynolds is one of my favourite writers. It’s funny, really: I agree with what he writes maybe half the time, at best, but he says it so fucking well, and in such a way that I always have to think about the subject again.

He’s now doing notes on the decade at the Guardian, beginning with a piece on "beard rock." I was, I admit, hoping for a clue as to why I find Will Oldham so inexplicably creepy, but, you know, it’s a fun piece anyway:

…beardedness is tantamount to a visual rhetoric, almost a form of authentication, as though the band are wearing their music on their faces…

So, one week later. Copies of SHIVERING SANDS are now starting to arrive with people — I found this on Kat Foisy’s blog this morning:

(If you want to send me a photo of you posing with SHIVERING SANDS? Email it to my dump address at warrenellis [at] gmail dot com, along with your website address or twitter ID or whatever, and I’ll run it and your link here)

A week since launch of the book. We’ve sold, I believe, a little over four hundred copies. Given that the production of the book involved 1) me culling from seven years of jabbering and sticking it all into a couple of RTF files 2) Ariana flowing all that into a single file and spending a couple months’ worth of spare moments fiddling with it 3) Ariana uploading the thing, ordering a proof and spending an hour checking it over… we were well into any definition of profit by the end of day one.

It is, of course, the long game that pays off. It’s interesting to look at the first week, but it’s not defining.

A persistent criticism of my interest in POD has been that only writers at my level of cultural awareness can make any kind of success out of it. And some of them will now be saying, well, even Warren Ellis can only move 400 copies in the first week of a POD project. But, for one thing, it is about the long game. For everybody. The book doesn’t go away. And, for another, if I’m not aware enough of you to order that POD project — whose fault is that, really? Because, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t born with a book deal in one hand and an exclusive comics contract wrapped around my other flipper. Hell, when I was starting out, there wasn’t even an internet.

SHIVERING SANDS is published through Lulu.

• RT @CharlieChu POSTER 4 SALE! LADD Bout poster, $20, hand silkscreened and AWESOME. Twitter, Email, Facebook me! http://tinyurl.com/ye6he8o #
• @laurennmcc Write something on there that you've already done just so that you can scratch it off. in reply to laurennmcc #
• @gigilafemme http://twitpic.com/p2bkb – I have a pair of pink onion goggles for that very same effect! #
• Claude: shut up. #
• @laurennmcc Sure. "Huck: Shut up." #
• @mattfraction Okay. Applejack: Shut up. in reply to mattfraction #
• They're remaking CLASH OF THE TITANS?! Noooooooo!!! #quitrapingmychildhood #enoughwiththeremakes #can'tyoujustmakeanymore #
• HL's earache escalated fast. At Dr's office now. #
• Ear infection. Getting antibiotic now. No school for the little man today. #
• Finally got HL to take his antibiotic by mixing it into yogurt when he wasn't looking. Hope this starts to make him feel better soon. #
• The doc also recommended garlic ear drops but I'm not sure I'm up to that battle just yet. #
• Aaaand %#^%#^%!! It's 1:00 already. #

It just hit me that the only food I know of outside of unprocessed fruit that no one talks smack about is Cheerios.

Please tell me there is no secret, horrible, deadly, Satanic component to Cheerios.

trixiebedlam posted a photo:

trixiebedlam posted a photo:

because seriously, if you're going to go to all the trouble of throwing your big stupid princess party, don't even bother with the formality of putting a dude on the cake. we know it's all about you.

Kelly Sue posted a photo:

Kelly Sue posted a photo:

The Death of Socrates by minifig

People often ask me what comics scripts look like — or, at least, what my comics scripts look like, as there is no industry standard for comics scriptwriting. I have a few scripts up here on the site, and you’re welcome to download them. I write in OpenOffice and save in RTF. Beginning writers may find it instructive to compare the scripts with the published work.

(Please, don’t ask to be shown other scripts instead. These are the ones I have available. Okay?)

MINISTRY OF SPACE #1.

DESOLATION JONES #1.

DESOLATION JONES #7.

(Yes, JONES will be back one day.)

FELL #1.

(And so will FELL.)

Ariana again, on a FAQ: how was the SHIVERING SANDS book built?

At Bleeding Cool. The comic’s out from this Wednesday.

At my shithole today:

* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2024 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Zero

* Whitechapel Radio Is On

* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear

* Warren’s Work FAQ (Revised Nov 2024)

* Eliza Gauger’s SWEATSHOP

• I think I just ate a loaf of bread. That's okay, right? #
• @BRIANMBENDIS Uh oh. Don't tell @mattfraction. in reply to BRIANMBENDIS #
• [Deleted and reposted for spelling] MacClaren stroller recall details: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml10/10033.html #
• RT @antonyjohnston On the anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down… announcing my next book, COLD CITY: http://tinyurl.com/yh3hpmv #
• @terrytyson Oh. Holy. Crap. in reply to terrytyson #
• You're welcome, internets. #
• @danniremender Only $15 for the set! http://bit.ly/WlFoW #NSFW in reply to danniremender #
• Happy Birthday @neilhimself and @granulac! #
• Dammit. Busy as all hell both yesterday and this morning. Open up my list and–somehow–I've got things to add and nothing to check off. #