Thursday, June 19, 2008

Quantum Pudding Transfer



This is the cover for Soft Skull's new edition of Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me. I was quite startled when I saw it, and I like it a lot. It should grab people's attention. It comes out in September.

Hmm. Am suddenly feeling old. You can't claim to be that young if you write a book about going to see Led Zeppelin in 1972. Still, as I point out in the book, I was at school at the time. May have to lie more about this in future, and pretend to have been younger than I was.

* Millar saw Led Zeppelin when he was 6 years old *

I realise my email is again piling up. I don't get round to answering something and then weeks and months pass and I still haven't answered it and I feel guilty. So if I never emailed you back, I'm sorry. I always like people emailing me, and always intend to reply, but sometimes I'm just too inefficient to do it.

Look at this fabulous pie on Germaine's blog. I want this pie. I need someone to invent a quantum pudding transfer system. Perhaps they are working on it at the new CERN particle accelerator right now.

12 comments:

  1. Glad you liked it! The new cover looks great. Can't wait to get my hands on it! :D

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  2. Anonymous11:41 pm

    That is a fantastic cover!
    Alice X

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  3. Anonymous2:22 am

    Love the new cover...this would make me want to read the book. Unlike the one with the punk on the cover, which I took a violent dislike to and, when working in the bookshop, would hide away in the shelves. Until a much cooler colleague would fish it out and put it on display. I'm sorry for that now but it proves the old adage of not judging a book by it's cover. Which we do all the time. hope you sell a million of them!

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  4. It's a great pie Germaine

    Hi Alice, I'm glad you like the cover, it is definitely striking.

    Anita, I didn't like that cover either, in fact I hated it, and wasn't pleased with Fourth Estate for coming up with it. Though some years later, I did start to like it a little better.

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  5. Hi Martin, I read your blog regularly and got here because I was looking for information on Brixton to write an article for my blog.
    So, some of your stories happen around Brixton right? I haven´t read any of your books yet. But will do soon!
    Greetings from Argentina!

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  6. Great cover!!!!!

    I never got to see Led Zepplin live, more's the pity, but every guitar player I have ever work with play them with out end. Irish Bars seem to love Led Zepplin over here....

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  7. Absolutely amazing cover and I'm looking forward to the actual contents behind the cover as well.

    We're heading to our summer place now and Lonely Werewolf Girl is on top of the pile of books heading to the beach. No computer access (unless one wants to camp in the library parking lot a mile or two away and use their wifi). Limited TV. Lots and lots of tidal pools, ocean and fresh air.

    Thanks again for the great reading and have a lovely summer.

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  8. I predict that now your books have better covers, you will be more successful.
    This is a good cover. I would think this was an awesome book...which it is!

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  9. It is true one can't judge a book by it's cover, but it is also true that the better cover a book has, the better it seems to do.

    And yours are quite lovely now! Best of luck!

    (people keep writing me telling me how much they love Lonely Werewolf Girl, and I keep telling them "Go tell Martin" but they are WAY to shy for that.)

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  10. Hi Ale, I used to write about Brixton a lot, it features in my first three or four books. Also, my comic was set there. You can read the first two issues of that comic on my website, and there are lots of drawings of Brixton in that. I went round Brixton with the artist, Simon Fraser, and he took pictures, and a lot of the urban backgrounds are authentic renditions of Brixton.

    Amysue, I hope Lonely Werewolf Girl is a good companion at the seaside.

    Lorraine, I like the thought of your guitarists playing endless Led Zeppelin covers! I wish some of these people you know would tell me they like the book. But if they're too shy, it can't be helped.

    Simon, am now heading to type in your blog.

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  11. Dear Martin,

    I didn't realise you had a new book coming out. Don't worry; I must be getting middle-aged too (I'm only 34). I saw Led Zep last year and they made all these skinny jeans chinka-chinka-type bands seem very bad indeed (don't they realise that Wire were doing that in 1977, only better?!!). I'm just writing to say how much I love your books, particularly 'Ruby and the Stone Age Diet'. It was the usual nonsense about Brixton and werewolves, obviously, but I identified with the bewildered, good-natured hero, trying in vain to make sense of a world which doesn't - and will never - make sense anyway! It's probably the most moving of your early novels. I love the contrast of magic realism and harsh reality.

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