Blakes Road, the book I am writing, is the story of a walk I took last year from England’s south coast to London. Specifically from Felpham, near Bognor Regis in West Sussex, to Bunhill Fields, a cemetery in Islington. The distance was something around 70 miles, and it took four days walk, meaning the book is divided into four chapters.
I am halfway through the task of illustrating ‘Blakes Road‘, the book I am currently writing. I’m illustrating the book as it is, in part, a paean to William Blake, and Blake illuminated almost every page of his own books, so I feel I should do the same.
Here are a few of them:
The copywriting I do for DotBrighton is the perfect writing gig for the world of 2011. As it is a voluntary, unpaid, restrictive, and unpublished role this might seem counterintuitive, so I’d like to explain why. It has a number of key things that are unexpectedly right with it.
Vurt. It’s a story based around feathers that create dream fantasies, and it has a character in it called Icarus. Icarus Wing.
I wouldn’t bother.
Believability. That’s what I look for in characters & plots. People are multifaceted, they do contrary things. Within 30 pages of Anna Karenina, I was dreading another 870 pages of the angelic, eponymous character I discovered in the opening pages.
Richard Jefferies was Victorian nature writer & novelist who lived from 1848 to 1887. I feel a great affinity with him, because we have so much in common.
To start with there is the obvious connection of our name. We are both called Richard. Then…
The cover of this book features a photograph of a series of worn posts stretching out across a sandy beach. In the distance the sea and sky, a series of thin, bleached strips running horizontally. A grey landscape worn down by time, and by the sea.
Do me a favour: read this story about Tesco in The Scotsman, and then promise me you’ll never, ever shop there again, no matter how cheap the food is. You can spare a few quid a week to make sure your money does not end up in the hands of assholes.
