Summer Holiday

One of the problems with being an author, editor, designer and genius as well as holding down a full time job, and running a publishing company is that you tend to overlook minor things like holidays ... after 5 years therefore without a proper family break, we decided that enough was enough and popped over to Northern France for a fortnight. We stayed in a nice place called Deauville, just along from LeHavre, and enjoyed many days lazing by the pool, on the beach, or wandering the streets of places like Bayeux (where we saw 'the tapestry'), Honfleur (where it rained all day) and Trouville (where I won a rubbish bit of plastic in the casino). Driving in France is an experience in itself. They haven't invented bypasses and so every road takes you into the middle of every town, and in every town I suspect there's a rule that says you can't have any signposts telling you which way to get out again. So we spent a bit of time being hopelessly lost in just about every place we drove through. The writerly side of me never rests, however, and I picked up a couple of books which looked interesting as potential Telos fare, as well as a copy of a French horror magazine called TOXIC - really nice looking mag it is as well, published by the same folks who do L'ECRAN FANTASTIQUE which I didn't even know was still going, and which published, aeons ago, the articles by Jean-Marc Lofficier which eventually became THE DOCTOR WHO PROGRAMME GUIDE. I also enjoyed wandering around Mt Canisy by Deauville which is where one of the German Batteries was based in WWII. Lots of spooky deserted gun emplacements, ruined concrete and underground tunnels and rooms. Lots of scope for stories there, so I took a few pictures of different aspects to act as inspiration if a good idea hits me for something set in this environment. But now it's back to work and back to sorting things out. While we were away, loads more books arrived for Telos, and we've been packing them all up in 80 degrees of heat (or whatever it is). Certainly too hot for working, but we've got to get them all sorted or people start to send me emails wanting to know where their books are ... Thankfully among the new arrivals were the new Telos catalogue so we've finally got something to send to people. As it happens I now have to start work on the *next* catalogue covering Jan - June 2005 ... it seems so long away, and yet we're already late on at least one title for that period. Oh well.