Workblog for the Week, again.

So! News for the week. Biggest news is undoubtedly that my cupcake novella, Dangerous Jade, has reached release-candidate draft status and is now undergoing proofing. I can tell you about that. What I can’t tell you about, just yet, is that the artist lined up to do the cover and interior illustrations has a name that rhymes with ‘Feesh’. That will also be big news, but only as we get a little closer to release, I imagine.

My novel continues to take shape, and I’ve finished with the majority of making notes, and began the prose proper this week. I still don’t have a worthwhile working title as of yet, but I do have moody stuff, people are dead, someone is close to a psychological breakdown, and I’m only halfway into my first bulletnote for the plot.

… That’s good, right?

In terms of weekly anecdotes for ridiculous setting building hijinks, this week I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time tracking down the origins of the adhesive bandage. See, astoundingly, a form of adhesive tape was used in recovery from amputation in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Royal Navy. And while suturing wounds has been around since the ancient greeks, naturally, this is invasive and tends to jab germs into wounds, but a sticky plaster lain over it to hold it together is not nearly so invasive. (Although it sounds like people have jammed stuff like leaves and whatnot into/onto wounds since time immemorial, which might equate to the same thing in some circumstances.)

Of course this is more like a roll of duct tape than a band-aid, so what I’ve ended up doing is having people with pans of hot glue they soak bandages and ribbons in before sticking them down over wounds. (Accidentally antiseptic!) Of course I’m concerned this seems anachronistic in some fashion, given that it’s flintlocks and plate and buccaneers, but I’ll see how it goes before changing my mind on the matter three or four times.

Finally, between the new pages for Askazi Myths that are cropping up every so often, discussions with various people, and sketches that AmonOmega has been torturing me with, I am definitely getting the urge to try and do something amazing and comic related and new. Maybe a hobby-project for the weekends…

By foozzzball

Malcolm Cross, otherwise known as 'foozzzball', lives in London and enjoys the personal space and privacy that the city is known for. When not misdirecting tourists to nonexistant landmarks and lurking at bus stops, Malcolm enjoys writing science fiction and fantasy with a furry twist.

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