So Close, And Yet So Far

Those of you who follow the fate and fortunes of the publishing industry may already know that The Friday Project - a small publisher set up in 2005 with the aim of converting the best of the web to proper books - went into liquidation last month.

What you probably won't know is that last December I had quite a jolly meeting with the (entirely lovely and very amiable) folk at The Friday Project, with a view to publishing a proper, fully-fledged Lord Likely book. With pages and a cover, and everything.

The meeting went very well, so this news is doubly sad, as it means the end of what could have been the Greatest Literary Event of All Time. But hey ho, such is life.

I'm making quite a habit of getting tantalisingly close to having my work published or screened. As well as the Lord Likely book, I also managed to get very near to getting an animated series made based around another of my characters, The Carrotty Kid. I got all the way up to the pilot episode stage, before the UK kid's TV market seemed to implode in on itself, and the series never came to pass.

Still, I got a shiny DVD out of it, containing an exciting glimpse of what could have been:

So, I'm still struggling on, and still hoping that one day one of my ridiculous ideas will finally earn me some money.

Now, can anyone spare me a tenner?

- Fanton.

Dreadlock Holiday

Hey! Guess what! No, not that. Or that. No, not that, either. I'll have to tell you - I'm on holiday! Yippee!

Of course, being a 'struggling artist' (read: penniless hobo), I can't afford to go anywhere sunny and nice, but hey - at least I'm not at work. Huzzah!

Instead, I am spending some time with my parents, my sister and their pets, back home in Ringwood. Ringwood is a little market town on the outskirts of the New Forest, in the South of England, and is famous for three things:

1. It has a brewery.
2. It was used for location filming for the BBC sitcom The Brittas Empire.
3. The 1st Duke of Monmouth was held in the town in 1685, before being executed.

There's not a great deal to do in the town, to be honest, but its nice enough to return to once in a while, to escape city life for a bit.

So, in the absence of anything else to do, I have been taking snaps of things with my digital camera.

Therefore, it's now...HOLIDAY PHOTO TIME! (Try not to snore too loudly).

Me and my parents' frankly excellent cat, Sid. Look at his cute face!
And the cat's. Hahahahaha! Oh my!

The family dog, Ringo. The stupidest thing on four legs.

Me in my 'I'm Kind of a Big Deal' t-shirt which I won via Fuel My Blog.
I've been meaning to snap myself in it for a while now,
and finally - FINALLY - I have gotten round to it. Hooray!

That darn dog again.

And there's the cat again. Note his unamused face. He is less of a LolCat, and more of a FuckYouCat.

Ringo, meanwhile, auditions to be a RipDog.

Even when on holiday, I'm still hard at work on The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely. I just never stop - and it's all for YOU.

Finally, big hugs to you all. Awwww. How sweet.
(PS: I have my nob out, just out of shot).

So there you go.

Tomorrow, I might go and take some pictures of some crows or something. Or possibly my ball-bag.

- Fanton.

The Funniest Line in Movie History

It just is. DON'T ARGUE.

Taken from Carry On Cleo (1964).

I'm still alive, too. HUZZAH! More stuff...SOON.

- Fanton.

Getting Back to Business

Hello, chums!

This is another slightly dull inform-o-post, designed to fill your head with facts about my life that you probably didn't wish to know. For that, I apologise in advance.

Actually, no I don't It's my bloody blog, and I'll do as I please. ALRIGHT?

Anyway, having been kept busy lately by various work-related shenanigans, I am happy to say that I finished my last comic strip for the vue Cinema newsletter this morning (at the ungodly hour of half four in the morning), thus freeing up my time once more to do other stuff. HOORAY!

First on my agenda is tossing off a post for the British Speak blog, where Lord Likely will be cuming up with as many different euphemisms for having a wank, purely for educational purposes, of course.

Then, I hope to finally get around to updating my poor, neglected gaup site, and maybe even do a few new RIPdogs and other such nonsense.

Plus, I have plans for my sadly abandoned Carrotty Kid site, which I aim to get around to some time this Millennium. Whew!

Of course, most of this stuff will have to wait until 7pm on Saturday, as between 6.20pm and 7pm I shall be glued to my TV set, like a wide-eyed child, gurgling with glee at the return of one of my all-time favourite television shows, Doctor Who.

I can't help it. I love the time-travelling lunatic.

I'll leave you with the trailer for the fourth series of the BBC's family-friendly sci-fi smash-hit, while I go off and visit some of your blogs that I've been too busy to visit lately. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?



I'll be RIGHT BACK.

Tara!

- Fanton.

I've Got Something Big and Hard in my Hands

When not sitting around in my pants writing the three most hilarious blogs known to mankind, I work in my job which pays me money so that I can buy electricity and more pants for me to sit around in later.

The lovely Claire from A Little Piece of Me enquired as to the nature of my employment in the comments on my last post, so I thought I'd enlighten her and all of you by answering that query right here, with words which I will type in a paragraph below.

I work in one of the many Vue Cinemas dotted throughout this land, as a general till-jockey and dogsbody, selling tickets and popcorn to the film-going masses. (Of course, when anyone asks me, I tell them I work in the film industry. It sounds much more impressive.)

The job doesn't pay a great deal, and the hours can be a bit gruelling at times, but I do get to watch films for the princely sum of no pounds and no pence, and the people I work with are some of the nicest and most demented people I have met. So it's all good.

A couple of months ago, I was told that the in-house company newsletter was looking for creative submissions to enliven the news-sheet, and I was asked whether I might be able to supply a comic-strip for it. I agreed, put on my thinking hat and my doodling trousers, and set to work.

After discarding many lewd and inappropriate attempts, I finally gave them the cartoon wonder you can behold below:

Hahahahaha!

Anyway, despite the bloody and violent nature of the comic, the powers-that-be were delighted with it, and it went into the next issue of the newsletter, ready to delight Vue workers up and down the land.

I was told I would receive a prize for my efforts, but to be honest I wasn't holding much hope for the prize being any good. I imagined it might be a Vue-emblazoned t-shirt, or free popcorn, or something.

Imagine my fully-erect delight when the prize arrived last Saturday, and turned out to be a brand, spanking new Sony PlayStationPortable! I literally peed with joy! (Well, okay, not literally. Although there may have been some seepage).

I was well chuffed, at any rate, and have since been playing the brilliantly barmy Loco Roco pretty much non-stop. It's a ridiculously cute and wholly charming video game, wherein you play a giant, orange blob rolling through surrealistic landscapes eating fruit and avoiding nasties.

It's simple and tons of fun, and thus gets my official seal of approval.

Look, here's my official seal of approval now:

You said it, chum!

So there you go. That's what I do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I'm building a Loco House and I need more parts to make a really awesome playground.

See ya!

- Fanton.