The comic piece I'm currently working on for Tonia's Pirate anthology is coming along nicely. I feel a bit logjammed on other work, given that I have six pieces now awaiting publication in eight different anthologies.

What I need is a title! I've come up with some pretty corny ideas so far! It's a traditional adventure/romance tale with a bad pirate captain, his heroic offsider and a beautiful girl. Any suggestions welcomed!

I've been searching for appropriate music to play while working on this, and have fallen back on The Turn of a Friendly Card, and Tales of Mystery & Imagination, by The Alan Parsons Project, and Poe: More Tales of M&I, by Eric Woolfson (Parson's main songwriter). Somehow they have a kind of epic, nautical feel that is appropriate - ToaFC contains my favourite instrumental ever, "The Gold Bug," named after Poe's story about pirates!

Tales, of course, contains "The Raven," based on Poe's classic poem. I hadn't thought much about the inspiration for this until the other day, when there was lots of banging on the metal roof and high window of the building I was working in. When I waited a while and watched, there was a large raven, tap, tap, tapping on the window, which he kept up for hours, until it was almost dark. I don't know if it was the bird's reflection that inspired this behaviour, though it seemed keen to pull out the lining around the window as well! It did make what Poe described - in his perfect iambic pentameter - only too clear though.

Here's a link to a piece I wrote called Australian Manga: Moshi Moshi, Xuan Xuan, Oztaku, Generation & Internatinal Manga, which appears in Inkspot, magazine of The Australian Cartoonists' Association, #43. It's on page 26, but careful, this is a pdf file:

http://www.abwac.org.au/downloads/Inkspot43.pdf

Labels: Pirates