LiamRSharp
On Detail
A city looks most impressive when you've driven out of the desert to get there...
It has been too long
It has taken a LOOOOOONG time to get back onto the iconic books of my youth. I never thought I would - had kind of given up hope to some extent, after all it had been decades! I thought I was an almost-ran, somewhat a has-been, so my comeback was very unexpected. And what a comeback it turned out to be!
I'm now mid way through issue three of my latest DC series, The Green Lantern, with legendary writer Grant Morrison no less! Still pinching myself, and still grateful for the long-term support of those that never gave up on me, and believed in me. You CAN climb back and beat the odds. I'm living proof!
Very best all. Keep dreaming big and working hard!
Yours,
Liam
PARADISE REX PRESS, INC
My second prose publication after 'God Killers' is finally available - and with an afterword by the great China Miéville!
I'll be honest - I'm really nervous about it, now it's actually out! It's ferociously honest, very much a soul-bearing.
It's angry, it's odd, it's highly experimental, and it's verging on confessional - which perhaps is no surprise to anybody who reads my journals!
I have no doubt that some people will think it is pretentious, impenetrable crap - a one-trick pony.
But - I know it has also found its fans. China Mieville, for example, spent a long afternoon with me in London going through the whole manuscript with his wonderful writers eye. He wrote the afterword for me because he fell in love with it. Though he also had to go to bat for me to convince the publisher it was worth it. As Peter Crowther himself noted, it had polarised the staff at PS Publishing. I suspect it will do the same with the people that buy it.
So yes, I'm nervous.
Nervous about its reception - or lack of.
Scared because I feel very naked indeed now it's out - I believe all artists worth their weight feel this at some time or other.
And also fearful that my literary intentions - the influence of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Dylan Thomas, amongst others - might seem lofty and preposterous. Hubris even.
And the internal debate over what constitutes greatness might seem like I am actually gifting myself that, rather than questioning the nature of it.
I'm fearful of sounding like an arrogant, self-indulgent wannabe.
But I've braved these risks! I've put it out there. I've done it.
The book was finished in 2008, at a time when I was fighting a lot of self-doubt and depression, but still reaching for the skies.
For those interested in the agonies of the creative life it might prove revelatory.
More info here:
www.pspublishing.co.uk/andrew-…
What Are We To Do?
What ARE we to do?
I write to this miniscule bubble of mostly like-minded liberal friends - as like attracts like, and we've all learned the hard way in recent times that we are NOT the consensus.
As we slip into another inevitable age, who survives?
Because we will not change our ways - don't want to, or deny the proof of it - what then?
Do we take up the arms of those we have battled? Do we harden ourselves, cast aside our compassion for all human kind, and look no further than our defensible perimeter?
Do we prepare for the inevitable losses, and stop wasting our time with futile battles against elite institutions so powerful that none of us register to them on any human level?
Because when I look forward now I see a crumbling world economic structure built on imperfect foundations around a barter system that never existed. Bullion - for what it was worth - has been largely sold in the west, and currency is already a virtual concept. And we don't know how we can protect ourselves, while others are already planning how to make fortunes out of global collapse.
I see fast change in weather patterns, and we had better hope that the worst of these predictions is not correct otherwise we are already certainly doomed.
I see anger, poverty, racial tension, paranoia, resentment, inequality, hatred and - worst of all - apathy.
I see a growing anti-science movement. This bullshit that says scientific theory is 'just a theory', while we ride around in cars and planes, our semi-cyborg lives permanently plugged into the inter-web. All running because science IS real, and DOES do what we predict it will do. And when we are wrong, we learn, and we try again until we DO get it right.
I see our collective consciousness steered towards squabbles, and the mean and low-down street battles that are our jobs, our lives, our consumer 'needs' and basic rights. Our lust for money, at any cost. Our new-found ability to bully and hate from the obscure haven of a keyboard. We don't set our aim at the real enemy that orchestrates all this.
I see, in all of it, collapse.
I feel the world creaking under the strain of us.
I see war, and I see terror, and I see death.
And I see and hear those that would embrace it - many of whom call a loving, kindly god who turned his cheek and hated killing and the wealthy, their own. I see those who long for a world where the only thing that matters is might and power. I'll take care of my own, and damn the rest of you.
Because who is REALLY prepared to change?
I see two vast walls facing each other, dark and unmoving. The lines are drawn. The world IS already divided. Our intolerance grows, as does our hatred.
Would you change?
And so I ask again - what do we do?
In the world I see ahead of us I had best be everything I have spent a lifetime opposing, as peaceably as I can, and as rationally.
I had better arm myself. (Remember - a good drone with a gun can protect you from the bad drones.)
I had better stop loving you, my gentle, compassionate friends.
I had better start recruiting 'friends' that are not afraid of what promises to come.
I had better arm, and harden my children. If they are to take a life they had better do it unflinchingly, and ruthlessly. They had better not ever imagine that their assailants are as human as they are.
I had better get a bigger vehicle that can handle rugged terrain for when the roads become unsafe.
I had better start learning to hunt and kill animals, and stockpiling food.
I had better start turning away from the fragile and needy and mentally unstable that mill like Morlocks in our city centers - useless pointless human wastrels that they are.
I had better become the creature I have ironically portrayed in my art for decades - barbarian. Cruel. Fearless. Ruthless. And very very dangerous.
Then I have a chance, while the world broils, at maybe a few more generations of life.
Utopia is foolish.
Idealism is dead.
'The better angels of our nature' are no longer welcome.
I had hoped for better from humanity, but I'm losing faith in our ability to love. To be kind. To listen. To care.
Bring on the fire, and bring on the fury, and good riddance to humankind. We deserve what we get.
Meanwhile - it's almost beer o' clock. Cheers!
NOTE: Dear friends, of COURSE I'm not going to change, but sometimes I need a really good rant!!!
We were not, ever, running away...
I'm in the last few days of a three week trip to the UK and Ireland. I've not been home for two years, and it was becoming increasingly important - urgent even - that I do so, because I'm blessed. Incredibly blessed. I have a close and loving extensive family on both sides, and an extensive and equally loving circle of friends that stretch the length of the nation.
Last Saturday my sister, Kerry, brought a great number of them together for a surprise party for my wife, Christina's, Birthday. The weather held, everybody who possibly could turned up. They camped, they crashed, they secured hotel rooms - whatever it took. They trained it, drove, cycled or walked. But they came.
One of the best nights of recent years was had. And, as I said, it was brought home to us - again - how blessed we are, and what wonderful friends and family we have.
If this sounds too saccharine for your sweetness-tolerance levels I make no apology. It's a rugged enough weave we wend, and this world is wrought in fear and loathing. I need the unfiltered embrace of honest love to keep me upright and moving steadily forward.
Of America - I will say going back this time will be perhaps the hardest ever. I had thought I wanted to stay there forever, that this many-pronged and tiny island had nothing to offer me. I had grown angry at her for not readily supporting the hopes and grander dreams of myself and my hard-working artistic brethren. I had become disillusioned and somewhat bitter.
But a dear friend said on Saturday that myself and my family were a nexus of a wider community across the country around which so much circled. That we touched and touch many lives - and that is hard to ignore, much as it is humbling and hard to grant credibility. It is also, I realize, a responsibility, and one I should not shirk.
I don't think I'm any kind of nexus in the U.S., not really. I'm a face in a huge creative community, but I'm not any kind of linchpin. In the UK I've always been somewhat at the heart of something, if not directly it's progenitor - though sometimes that too. And I am a gregarious and people-loving man.
So, in summary - I'm going to miss everybody terribly, and there are many of you I did not get to see. It will give me much pause for thought, but it will also give me strength - the same strength I needed when we first took the big step to move West. You see, we were not, ever, running away. We were just in need of adventure.
Big love all. X