Romeo and Juliet was on my to-do list from the start of the year. I resumed writing it in March, was ready to draw it in May, drew it through the summer, and was able to write "all drawn!" on September 30th. At which point I launched the Kickstarter, thinking the colouring bit would be perfunctory and I'd have it published well in time for Thought Bubble in November. 180 pages turn out to take a long time to colour, its arrival coming at the start of December meaning I won't get to foist it on the world until the new year.
Richard The Third was, in fact, one of the things that had held up Romeo and Juliet, because I really felt I had to produce a colour edition. I completed that in March and went on to sell 250 copies through the year. Kids in schools continued to be offered the cheaper black and white version. I have a couple of schools in particular to thank for a lot of those sales: one in Edinburgh took over 50 copies, and one in Bristol took 80. Schools took about a dozen on average, some took more, some took none. But those accounted for the bulk of my sales, along with appearance at cons and a few, a very few, online sales. New year resolution: sell more books online somehow.
The books I created back in 2020, my debut graphic novels, continue to sell pretty well. It's all relative, I know, and me selling about 150 each of my books is piddling compared to many of my contemporaries (this is, after all, the year when Jamie Smart's Bunny vs Monkey passed the 2 million sales mark). But I realise it's actually better than a lot of self-publishers do, so I don't care if feeling proud of my meagre achievements makes me look a little pathetic. Five years ago I had no books to show for myself, and now I have a raft of them that kids actually buy and actually enjoy. I know, cos they tell me. I have repeat customers, would you believe. I'd love to be playing with the big kids, and I do still have an actual genuine agent (I am with United Agents, though I struggle to believe it myself), and it was with their blessing that I self published Romeo and Juliet rather than waiting for a publisher to bite. But I want to approach those publishers again cos, dammit, some of my stuff is actually pretty good!
It was the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's quietest year ever, since their creation about twenty years ago. Once more it seems Edinburgh will remain unaffordable, and though I'd love to, I'm worried my mojo might have gone. They did increasingly big sellout Edinburgh runs and tours from 2007-10, then steady runs and bigger tours from 2012-19, a brilliant burst of lockdown shows in 2020 and 2021, which led to their most recent Edinburgh run in 2022 and tour in 2023. But since 2024's Post Office Scandal The Musical, I've not written or recorded a single new thing for them. The books have taken over my creative space (even though, as I ought to keep reminding myself, I can make more from one sellout Socks' show that from a month's worth of book sales*)
*The devil's in the detail there, but let's just say the Socks show at Chorley Little Theatre in April paid me more than I took in book sales in December.
As I've already detailed, I sold what feels like a lot of books. As I pick over the bones of it now, I'm talking myself out of feeling so triumphant, realising self-publishing books might not be as profitable as other things I do. But I am so proud of my books, and so pleased that kids like them and (via their parents) buy them, that I'm going to continue feeling chuffed. Poor but chuffed. These books, if we were able to scale up their sales, really feel like the best thing I've ever done. (Though I currently have Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet voices in my ear reminding me how much I can earn per hour doing them instead!)
It gets dark around this bit of the page, doesn't it? I saw only my second dead body this year. The first was Mum back in 2018, the second was next door neighbour Kyle, who I helped his landlord with, when she found him. We called the police and went through all the rigmarole. Not the biggest event of the year, but one that's stayed with me. I've also drawn the car breaking down on Christmas Eve, which really does suggest I had an uneventful year. Maybe I did. Hev did a lot of reading and researching which should, I hope, be turning into writing soon. She's also lined up something for next year's Fringe Arts Bath, which should be a welcome return to her artwork. In the first draft of this page I showed her in hospital earlier this month, but she didn't think that was a good representation of her year, and I must say I agree.
And in conclusion there's me and King Lear, who's one of the partly-started books I did 20-odd pages of in 2024 (in order to impress publishers who were duly nonplussed). The others were Romeo and Juliet, obviously completed this year, Twelfth Thing, and a new version of Midsummer Night's Dream. Will one of those get finished in 2026? Your guess is as good as mine.
Here's to a 2026 as unpredictable as all its predecessors. On which subject, if you wondered how I've captured the last fifteen years in cartoon, here's your answer...
My previous years' Comic Strip Reviews:
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