Book Two preview

The second Mirabilis book was due to go on sale in May, but we've just learned that the entire print run is currently in Germany. The shipment started off in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the publishers are based, on February 20th, so the books are approaching Britain at a rate of about four miles a day. We're hoping they'll speed up now. If not, expect them in time for Christmas.

In the meantime, here's an online preview of Book 2 courtesy of Myebook, or click on the BookBuzzr widget above. You can still order the gorgeous hardcover edition of Book 1 here and you can pre-order Book 2 here. But, if you can't wait, the paperback edition is available here.

Book Two sneak peek - part 5

Here's the last page of the advance look inside Mirabilis Vol 2, which is on sale from Print Media Productions early in the New Year. You can find it on Amazon UK here and Amazon US here, and on the Book Depository (which is taking pre-orders) here.

If the listing says it's a paperback, ignore that - it's just Amazon playing silly buggers again. The book is in fact a gorgeous, beautifully printed hardcover just like Vol 1. Happy Christmas!

Book Two sneak peek - part 4

Book Two sneak peek - part 3

Book Two sneak peek - part 2

Book Two sneak peek - part 1

Today we begin our own Advent-ure (see what I did there?) as we count down to Christmas with a sneak peek at Mirabilis Volume Two, on sale next year. And if you just can't wait (or if you want to know exactly why Jack is talking to a brain in a jar) you still have time to grab yourself a copy of Volume One from Amazon US, the Book Depository or Amazon UK.

Get Estelle in your stocking this Christmas

Amazon, I don't know. They're ever so convenient and all, but they do do some loopy things - and I can't imagine it'll get any better when they're the only bookstore in the world. The latest oddity is that they have removed the price and pre-ordering details from Mirabilis Volume 2. However, the Book Depository (which Amazon of course bought this summer) are listing the book, which they correctly state will be released in just 12 days. So ample time to order it for Christmas - but only if you live in the UK and go to the Book Depository website.

In an extra-strange wrinkle, Amazon US are listing the correct publication date (December 1st) but still haven't enabled pre-ordering - though perhaps that's just as well, as technically the hardbacks are only supposed to be available in the UK and Eire.

We're not the only title this has happened to. Amazon UK just de-listed Ed Brubaker's Criminal Vol 6: The Last of the Innocent and cancelled my long-standing order, saying, "Our supplier has informed us that this item is no longer available. This item has now been cancelled from your order." Yet there it is on Amazon US with a release date of December 21. Most peculiar, momma.

The UK comics resurgence

Strip Magazine is here! The distribution snafus that bedevilled the scheduled launch last month are now all fixed, and you should be seeing it in your local comics store - and indeed on iTunes. All the details are over on the Print Media blog, but just before you scoot over there, let me mention the luscious mega-sized free Mirabilis poster and, if that's not enough to tempt you, how about awesome strips by P J Holden, John Ridgway, Michael Penick, John McCrea and other stellar names from the comics firmament. This is the kind of comic I loved as a kid - and nowadays too, come to that. Don't miss it.

"A strange dreamlike intrigue"

"Mirabilis the magnificent" - that's what no less an authority than Lew Stringer said on his blog last week. Well, of course you wouldn't expect me and Leo to argue with that. Quite aside from Lew's overall assessment of the strip, he says some very perceptive things in a beautifully written critique that -- but why am I gassing on? You ought to pop over there right now and read it for yourself. Go on, shoo.

Still here? Oh, you want to know about that picture... All I'm saying is that Gus is away with the fairies in Mirabilis #10, on Leo's Wacom tablet for inking right now.

The last Mirabilis daily...

...for the time being, anyway. The first volume of Spring will go on sale in (appropriately) March next year. In the meantime, you can catch up on what happened in Winter with Print Media's gorgeous hardback edition, going for a pretty amazing price on Amazon. It's actually cheaper than the imported US trade paperbacks - and way more collectible - so grab it while the offer lasts:

"Railway lines up Mount Olympus"

Tomorrow: watch out, the Kind Gentleman gets annoyed.

"A hypnogogic border country"

More previews of season two tomorrow.

"The Goblin Market has come to town"

The teeniest of sneak peeks at Mirabilis season two. More tomorrow.

"Everybody settle down"

For the next ten days we'll be bringing you a spoiler-free sneak preview of Mirabilis season two. Dame Belchamy's British Museum lecture here also serves as a pretty good catch-up if you haven't read the story so far.

The first of the season two books is out in the UK next March from Print Media Productions - appropriately, as the action has jumped on a couple of months from the last book, and it's now the spring equinox. What about Jack and Estelle, you may wonder, who were last seen going under the sea at Rocket (sic) speed. Alive? Drowned? Ah, nothing is so clear-cut now the green comet has arrived.

Grab your popcorn and come back for another snippet tomorrow.

People of quality do not queue

As we crack on with the opening installments of Mirabilis season two, here's a look back to "Outside Looking In", the episode that appeared in the last issue of Random House's UK anthology comic, The DFC.

British kids' comics fans will be well aware by now that The DFC is returning - well, kind of - in the form of The Phoenix. But if you missed the earlier issues of Mirabilis, you now have plenty of options for catching up. We've got the trade paperback here, the Graphic.ly multi-platform version here, our new and improved Mirabilis iPad comics reader here, and any day now we'll be launching the whole of season one on iVerse Media's top-selling Comics+ app.

UK readers may want to hang on just another couple of weeks, though, as I'm reliably informed that the hardback edition from Print Media Productions has finally cleared UK customs and should be on sale very soon. And a thing of beauty it is too, so worth waiting for.

Nothing but blue skies

The glorious early summer weather that London is enjoying at the moment provides the perfect excuse for a photo session with the scrumptious new Mirabilis hardback from Print Media Productions. This is the first copy to reach Britain - the rest are even now en route by lorry from the print works in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or possibly resting in a lay-by while the drivers fit in a well-earned cuppa and a sandwich.

I've previously gone on record as saying that the Mirabilis iPad edition looks "better than print", but that was before I saw the quality of colour printing that publisher Ivo Miličević has brought to this project. These books really look amazing - even better than iPad, in fact - and are such a feast for the eye that they almost eclipse the ravishing Dirty White Candy, who took time off from her punishing schedule of blogging, tweeting, script-doctoring and novel-writing to pose for the camera in a Mirabilis t-shirt.

The author's promise to the reader

In the Best.Episode.Ever of The Simpsons, the Comic Book Guy is asked what right he has to complain about Itchy & Scratchy. “As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me,” he says, to which Bart replies: “They’re giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them.”

In most countries outside the UK you don’t have to actually pay for the mere right to have a television in your home. But even if you’re watching The Simpsons for free on Fox, you still get shown a bunch of commercials that aren't exactly an enrichment of your viewing experience. And then you give in and go and buy stuff you don't need and the advertisers give the network some money to thank them for bringing all those bees to the flower. So you did end up paying for that show, whatever the writers at Gracie Films may think. There are no free lunches, and no free TV dinners either.

The contract that exists between writer and audience is more complicated than that between a craftsman and his customer. The reader or viewer or player gives you their money, but on top of that they give you their undivided attention (the ones who keep up a running commentary all the way through a movie, please leave now). They are asking you to make them believe - and not only for the time it takes to watch the movie or read the book, but an enduring belief. That’s why I can’t abide plot holes. A story should bear scrutiny if it has any right to my time.

Neil Gaiman says that the reader’s contract when buying a book is for that book only; it’s not a mandate upon the author to deliver more in the series. The problem I have with that, as an author, is that I know the power of suspense. It’s the best trick I have in my writer’s toolbox to keep you reading. You want to find out what happens next - at least, I hope you do. And after all, I don’t have to promise a ten-book arc with a sweeping plot that hinges on many secrets with which I am enticing your attention. I could just tie up everything in the one book. If I choose not to, it’s because I’m trying to plant a compulsion in you to buy my next book - and in that case I'd feel under an obligation to deliver.

The corollary is that if I do start to weave a story around some far-reaching mystery, I’d better have in mind the real answer to that mystery. At the point when it because clear that Lost’s writers hadn't yet thought about why the polar bear was on the island (much less why it was also in a Green Lantern comic) and they were just going to figure out something later - at that point, the contract is broken. Why continue to pay their wages when you can make up your own ending and it’ll be just as good?

The flipside of all this, and just as undesirable, is when stories are spun out indefinitely. “A beginning, a middle and an end,” is what Aristotle stipulated, not “a beginning and then endless variations on the theme until you finally jump the shark.” Success is the usual culprit, as endings have to be left open enough to leave room for a sequel or a new season. Prison Break is a perfect example of the problem: what would have been a memorably taut, single-season narrative suddenly splurged into the diminishing returns of patched-on plot developments. And, although I realize this is heresy, maybe we could say the same of The Sopranos. I know we got six seasons of the best soap opera on TV, and thank you, David Chase - but what about the pitch-dark Greek (okay, Italian) tragedy that the first season was building up to? The network’s need for more of the same possibly deep-sixed a climax that, had they gone ahead and ended the show there, would be remembered now as the chilling, thrilling apotheosis of TV drama.

Any sense of obligation a writer may feel to his or her readers, beyond delivering the script or book that they actually paid for, is of course self-inflicted. George R R Martin and Neil Gaiman rightly take their own view on this. However, the writer’s duty is to the characters is not up for debate. You brought them to life, so it’s incumbent on you to give them a life. That means a proper story, not leaving them in limbo halfway through or dragging them into an endless and directionless existence where nothing is ever resolved.

Obviously I’m thinking now of Mirabilis. I can certainly promise that the story will not be spun out ad infinitum. Leo and I have one year of narrative, which we currently expect to take about 800 pages across four seasons. Then it’ll be January 1st 1902, the green comet will be gone, and all our loose ends will be tied up, leaving not a rack behind.

The harder promise to make is that the story will reach its conclusion. I would gladly swear to that right here and now, but it’s not just up me. Since the DFC folded, Leo and I have been continuing to finance the work at our own expense. At least in comics it's not too difficult to do that: digital publishing brings in a nicely regular if not (yet) huge revenue stream, and every time we sign to a print edition in a new territory, as with the upcoming Print Media hardcovers in the UK, that pays for a few more issues. Mirabilis #9 through #12 are already fully funded, and by the time we complete #12 we'll be able to say the same for the four issues that will tie up season two. A handful at a time moves the mountain.

That's why I'm glad I'm not doing this for television. Joss Whedon would love to have had enough viewers to make Firefly and Dollhouse viable; same goes for David Milch and Deadwood. My heart skips a beat every time Fringe's ratings are mentioned. Since they announced the season four renewal, the heart in question is looking healthy at the moment, and thank you for asking, but if I had to find $1 million per episode of Mirabilis then I'd be in cardiac arrest in a month.

If Mirabilis continues to build an e-readership as it has been doing since Christmas, and if we keep on picking up print publishers in the US and Europe - in short, if enough people care about Jack and Estelle to want to find out what happens to them - then we promise on bended knee at any altar you like to take this story right through to the end. We’ve planned out an epic with some really big surprises that we think you’re going to enjoy. Hope you can join the ride all the way to the end.

Teamwork

If you saw the unveiling of the hardback front cover on Facebook this week and you're particularly eagle-eyed, you may be wondering why it only has my and Leo's names over the title. Are we doing a Trotsky on our colleagues Nikos and Martin? Have we become airbrush historians? Did power and money go to our heads? (I wish.)

Fact is, the full credits are prominent enough inside the book but there is only so much room on the cover itself, and the house style of our publishers, Print Media Productions, is to put the writer and artist up there above the marquee. No-one is more aware than I am that a comic like ours is a team effort - no preening auteur, I - so although I'm very proud of that cover, and I can't wait to see it on the counter of my local comic store, it does give me a twinge of guilt too.

Well, to redress the balance and share the credit around where it is due, here is one of the alternate issue covers that will accompany Mirabilis's debut on digital platforms Graphic.ly and Comics+. Oh wait, is that news to you? I see another post coming on...

A Frenchwoman in the Royal Navy - and in trousers!

Thanks to Myebook, the flipbook showcase site, here's a tantalizing look inside upcoming graphic novel THE IRON MOON, by Stephen Walsh (writer) and Keith Page (artist). I'll be reviewing this in the next week or so - but you don't have to wait, as Lew Stringer discusses it on his blog. It's the first in a game-changing slate of titles from Print Media Productions, who are also the UK publishers of Mirabilis. If Lew's opinion counts for anything (and it should) you may want to order The Iron Moon on Amazon right now.

The whole world looks so different

There are no prizes (as distinct from No-Prizes) for identifying where this image comes from. It's the very first scene of the whole Mirabilis saga, where Jack is getting ready for his duel in Kew Gardens. The idea of an orchid flowering in the depths of winter came about because I wanted to show something extraordinary but logically explicable before the green comet turned up and logic moved away without leaving a forwarding address. It wasn't just the orchid that filled that role. Those Victorian hothouses are like steampunk starships, lush green alien fronds pressing inquisitively against the cold glass. What better egg from which to hatch the return of the unseelie king?

Inspiration for this scene came from two sources. First a visit to Nymans in West Sussex, where I saw a building that has been left half-derelict as a kind of folly after a fire in 1947. Hot water pipes still ran along the outside of the building, and there an entire ecosystem thrived despite the frost. And that must have stirred memories from when I was about Jack's age of a midwinter trip to Kew Gardens with a girl I'd just met. That's where fiction departs from reality, of course. Jack doesn't get to take the girl to Kew Gardens, he goes to take potshots at his rival instead.

I also wonder now: is that the full story? Because another plausible explanation would be that I was remembering J M Barrie's line that "God gave us memory so that we could have roses in December," and probably thinking that I'd rather that, instead of memory, he'd said imagination. And in another Edwardian fantasy, published just a year after the events of Mirabilis, Peter Pan hung out in Kensington Gardens, from which my mind could easily have flown to Kew. Now I don't think any of that was the way it actually came about, but who knows? They wouldn't call it inspiration if you could be sure of analyzing it.

The reason for digging out the Kew Gardens image this week is that I've been putting the final touches to the proof for Mirabilis: Winter volume one, which British and Irish readers will be able to get their hands on next month, and the very last thing we had to decide was the endpaper design. That drawing of Leo's looks amazing when blown up to several feet across, and it captures the spirit of the first half of the Winter book so perfectly that there was no other contender.