Oh my. I'm full of terrible thoughts this morning.

(As I've just explained to Walker, I keep a highly subjective clock. Evening is before I go to sleep. Morning is after I wake up. If I approach life in any different way, I'll go mad by realising exactly what I do to myself on a daily basis. I need a structure, and this is it.)

I've just returned from a club out that I didn't mean to go to. I popped to the pub just before closing time to wish happy birthday to Nat, but was bullied by assorted spookybooty friends (Copyright Nick Locking 2004) into going to Moles. And it was a normal night. That is, full of pleasures, random sensations and odd ideas that strike you at an oblique angle, and a few vignettes you'll play over in your mind for the next few days. Saw a few people who I haven't spoke to for literally years. Chatted to assorted drunks. Had thoughts.

And I return, browsing the net, posting idly and thinking the thoughts that are turning gloriously septic.

To book end the fledgling shapes, first here's Herr Ellis' latest thing , which is worth examining if only for the glorious flyer. Why don't magazines have these in anymore?

And this stunt project kicks me into considering a differnet angle for my next Thing. Since Busted Wonder is done, I need to decide what's next on the major writing project front. While I have a couple of short comics to get out of the way, that's only a week or so's fiddling, and I'm not really ever a happy productive human being unless there's a masterplan ticking away.

(I'm really not - in the week or so since I've finished BW, my work routine has fell apart entirely. In terms of my life, the entire period may have well been a week long heroin-binge for all the long-term good it's going to do me)

My rough plan was to actually pitch something commercial. Busted Wonder is entirely credible work. It's pop and playful, but very much the sort of comics writing which someone like Gaiman may do when trying to create literature. So, logically, next thing has to be pulpist and furious - and ideally, fairly grim. Busted Wonder was meshing bits of Charity's sensibility with mine. Whatever's I want to do next is going to be less The Outsider than The Predator. So... pitch something. Find my most commercial idea, and then try and get it in the state when some mad bastard would want to publish it.

Now, as my guts are starting to twitch in that prophetic way they do - the prophecy being "You will spend at least an hour spasming in your bed before sleep claims you" - and the morning light sends the whole room awkward, this has twisted a bit more. I'm now thinking more... wierd.

Not nice cheery odd, but actually warped. Horror, I suppose, but horror coming from the same place that Jim and I tried to harness in our Ludocrats improvised text stuff. In fact, I'm actually seriously thinking about ways to take the Ludocratic ideal and apply it to a visual form. In other words, instead of working on something commerical, taking the commerical sensibility and shoving it past the other side into something gonzoid and bleeding. Incredible rather than credible, to hit the cliche. Which no-one will be interesting in buying, but in the completely the different way.

The fact that I'm still listening to Girl Anachronism probably speaks volumes. Whatever it is, I want it to be typed at the speed and timbre Amanda spits out her words. Returning to the word: Hysteria.

No, this hasn't cemented into anything solid yet, but I'm getting that bad-good feeling that there's something interesting to be done here. I mean, I still feel Busted Wonder was a creative break through for me. But now I want to break a hymen.

No idea where this is going. I'll keep you updated.

And for the other bookend, here's a panel from McKelvie and my latest Save Point.