First Steps
Welcome to the “soft launch” of my new weekly newsletter in which I’ll be sharing updates about various projects and happenings. And what does Star Wars have to do with the newsletter’s title? Read on
Why Is This A Ramble?
Back in the mists of time we lived in the Forest of Dean on the borders between England and Wales. It’s a magical place, and an ancient Royal Forest, (which you’ve probably seen if you’ve watched virtually any fantasy TV show or movie of the last twenty years that includes a forest setting, Parts of the forest have been used in Robin of Sherwood, Doctor Who, The Chronicles of Narnia, and even the last few Star Wars movies - such as the scene below)
Anyway when we lived in the Forest, my wife Gill and I ran a comics mail-order business under the name “Forest Comics” - original uh? As part of the business, we published a comics news and interview magazine called FCQ (for Forest Comics Quarterly) which often included sections with forest or woodland related puns - See it all fits.
After we moved to the United States, I joined a comics-themed APA (amateur press association - look it up) called Comicopia which I contributed to for around 8 years and used “Ramble Through The Woods” as the title for my magazine section within the APA.
If you scroll far enough back through the blog posts on my website you’ll see that in 2015 and 2016 I took to using the word ‘ramble’ to title my non-too frequent updates. It just seems the perfect word to encompass the fact that invariably have multiple projects covering different subjects and genres on the go at any given point.
So when I started to consider starting a regular newsletter type thing again1 it just seemed natural that it would be the latest in my series of Rambles.
So What Can We Expect?
My plan is that each week the newsletter will have one or more stories or updates inspired by what I’ve been working on, or things that have caught my attention during the week.
They will fall (sometimes loosely) into one or more of the following categories.
Brabazon Bits - updates and side notes while working on the “Bristol Brabazon: Lost Airliner of the Skies” book
Travels with my Laptop - Notes and observations from travel trips
Pages and Screens - Thoughts on things read and watched
Word Slinging - Updates on various writing projects
Podcast Procrastinations - Updates on my adventures in podcasting
Weekly Web Round-up - Summary of stuff I’ve inflicted on the internet over the previous seven days.
Well that’s about it for this first week. Let’s see how things work out, and I look forward to enjoying future rambles with you.
Cheers, see you next week.
Alan
I wrote and produced a weekly Batman themed newsletter, with the imaginative title of GOTHAM WEEKLY NEWS, from 1997 to 2006 - but that’s probably a story for a future date