Closing Collection with a Question

 I have now completed my Armada Ghost book collection, but with the addition of today's  rejigged cover art reprints has left me with a question to which I can find no answer. 

Everyone who has made it a mission to collect this anthology series of ghost stories soon discovers there are several alternate reprints amongst their number with variant re-imaginings of their cover art. These can be seen in my Collection page here.

That stated, I have also noted that these Series 2 reprints also appear under various imprints. As seen below, these imprint versions are almost identical to their Armada counterparts, with the exception of the deletion of their title's reference to Armada.

 

 

The name of these Armada alternatives appear under a dragon logo:

Until this morning's final Armada Ghost Book delivery, I had been under the impression that when these Dragon version of these books appeared, Armada had already folded and had sold the right to their design to content to this alternate publisher. It was the only explanation I could muster to explain the existence of these non-Armada editions. But now I can only assume that my assumption must be incorrect. Why? Look at the price-tags on the Armada and Dragon versions of the same book. The Armada version is a fair chunk pricier than the Dragon books. Which is, frankly, frustrating as I can't understand why these non-Armada books exist?

Does anyone know?

Paw-lickin' Good

 We got a Maccy D delivered last night. The delivery guy included someone else's order of chicken nuggets. Unable to eat them ourselves, we stuff them out as a wildlife treat. And sure enough, within minutes of putting them out, one of our garden foxes took the lot:

Plant of the Moment...

... is this Lampranthus:

It actually startled me when I opened the back door today!

GNS2 off to the Printer

 Well, work on the second Guy N. Smith zine has been completed and has been sent to the publisher - a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. 😎

Here a is the first look at it full cover, back front and spine - featuring design work by yours truly and art by Al Richardson:

Tightly Packed Toes & Flow Time

Last week left off work to recouperate. I have been a little lazy creatively these past few days. But I managed to get a lot of work done today -on both GNS2 and Avalon2. I even entered that lovely flow state, where you lose your sense of self, as you carry out your activity.

Whilst it's lovely to be free of anxiety during that flow time, you can find that time flies. For example, when I looked up at the time after this morning's writing and design work, thinking only an hour had passed, over 3 hours had registered on the clock!

The Seeing Tree

Nazi Leprechauns!

I spent yesterday evening alone and occupied my time watching youtube videos of pulp horror fiction reviews, personal book collections and paperback fair visits.

These days, you can't look up pulp horror fiction without a ton-load of Paperbacks from Hell dominating the links offered for your perusal. One of these led me to a vlogger who had the interesting idea of presenting a couple of shows evidencing how that much-loved tome has raised the market prices of the books it explored and clearly cherished.

After turning off the TV, I was in the mood to do a little investigation of my own and started searching for that collector's dream of a paperback - the Arrow edition of John Christopher's The Little People.

 I soon discovered that the number one holy grail paperback on everybody's Want list, was selling in the region of the £200 - £380 mark. That was, except for one American seller who just seemed to be selling the contents of their home in a mass clearing. Whilst this particular seller was still asking for a price well over what I am willing to pay for even the rarest of titles, he was open to offers. 🤔 And so I sent off my offer, which took me below my forbidden zone, even taking into account the postage fees from the currently troubled U.S. of A. It was then a waiting game. 🫣

My offer was a fair one, and came in under what  I paid to source my most expensive book thus far - Guy N Smith's even rarer Crabs' Sacrifice a few years back.

My most expensive
book purchase ever

It was a bit of a troubled sleep for me as I waited for the seller's decision on my offer.

Even though it's my 59th birthday next weekend, and I am in possession of a long-idle Paypal credit card to spread the costs, I knew I would not be able to match any higher offer he demanded. And so my sleep was disturbed for a couple hours before I finally received the seller's decision.

😬🫣🤪😃🎉

By the time I awoke this morning, this email was already waiting for me:

I'll write another post on this real gem of a paperback when it crosses the Atlantic and finds a home on my bookshelves. Until then I will be 🕰👀 as I await the arrival of the nazi leprechauns...