Ghost Drive Station

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So a few years back Lordess Foudre asked me to write a book for her. A few decades in age divide us, but before I knew it we were, by her initiation, talking about Fassbinder’s WORLD ON A WIRE and McGoohan’s THE PRISONER, Steve McQueen and a certain kind of male protagonist. As well as, of course, her art and collage work, which you have all enjoyed here as The News for many years now. A couple of months later, I came up with GHOST DRIVE STATION. And she’s spent the last two years drawing it. 

Here's the full press release from Image Comics:

The New York Times bestselling writer Warren Ellis (Trees, Transmetropolitan, Netflix's Castlevania) teams up with Grammy-nominated artist/designer Lordess Foudre (Soccer Mommy's Color Theory, Trashumanism, Kasablanca) for the upcoming Ghost Drive Station. This all-new graphic novella explores death and the digital age and will hit shelves this November from Image Comics.

On the anniversary of the worst thing that ever happened to him, Ghost Drive Station follows a haunted investigator with no time for the modern world is sent to a research station in the desert to discover why it’s gone offline. What he finds is an experiment in immortality gone horribly wrong, with stakes both global and very, very personal.

A complicated main character that feels plucked from season one of True Detective, but set on a path of cosmic terror not unlike Event Horizon or Backrooms.

Ghost Drive Station (UPC: 70985304934000111) will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, November 18.

Ghost Drive Station will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd’s Everand, Kobo, Overdrive, Hoopla, Sweet app, Comic Plus, and more.

It’s been an immense privilege and pleasure to see the pages coming in, and I can only thank her for asking me to write for her. It’s been amazing, and we can’t wait to show you our book.

It’s at 6x9 size, black and white and 56 pages. A graphic novella.

It gets solicited at the end of the month and is released in November. Lordess and I look forward to showing you a little more of it between now and then.

GHOST DRIVE STATION was previously codename PROJECT LOST SIERRA, for those of you keeping score.

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta.

A few people have asked me about past events in my life. It’s not my place to pick at it in public or speak for others. I will say that I got to apologise directly to a group of people and offer amends, which I remain very grateful for, and I keep that door open. I learned a lot and still am. I fucked up in a number of ways over the years, it doesn’t matter that I never acted with malice in mind, I hurt people, I’m sorry, and I’m trying to do better every day. That’s all I have to say for now.

AND NOW: BEHOLD THE MANCUB IN ALL HIS HEAVENLY GLORY:

It’s crazy hot. And I am bald as a coot. Therefore, the wide-brimmed straw hat has been broken out for my walks into town. A few times a week, I walk up to my favourite deli for lunch and a glass of wine. Thursday, that turned into several glasses of wine while talking with the owner and other customers. Something about the heat remaining constant has changed the way people are living and engaging. On the way back, I stopped at the preferred coffee shop for a bottle of water and a fortifying double espresso. A neighbour walked past, shook my hand, and decided to stop for a coffee with me, and we chatted for another twenty minutes or so before walking home together. It’s like high summer is where we remember we’re European.

Dan is teaching me about sheep cheese. Pretty sure my daughter will ask me if it tasted like licking a sheep. For those who have been reading for a while: want to feel old? My daughter will be 31 this year.

Also picked this up from the deli - a Cornish vermouth, would you believe. (I would: I was at Food Leigh On Sea the other week and they gave me a Cornish whisky called Pocketful Of Stones that played like an Irish single dancing with a Lowlands single.) I get through vermouth, because I make cocktails. Herself’s favourite of mine is the cherry Negroni. Though the rhubarb gin I’ve been infusing for the last couple of years has gone down well, too (I grow my own rhubarb).

Feeling good, doing what you like and taking pleasure in things isn’t a luxury. I’m always working in my head because that’s what being a writer is, and I’m always carrying a notebook because I need my essential tools to hand at all times. So a lot of the time I forget to live.

I know that all the above just lost a lot of you, but here’s the takeaway: live your life like it’s worth living. You’ll feel better. Wear your favourite clothes. Cate Winter, a wiser woman than I will ever be a man, once said to me; don’t save things for that perfect time, because that time will never come and what you’re saving will either go bad or never be used at all, so enjoy them now.

We stood outside and watched the eclipse on Thursday and that was free and it was the best part of the week.

Some rain expected next week, but that’s fine. It’s not going to be cold, just temperate, and we’re a country that dresses for spring, autumn and long winters anyway.

On Friday, everyone in the UK got an emergency text message from the Government telling us not to light fires or the entire country will go up in flames. Nothing quite like everyone’s phones going off like klaxons in a restaurant at 730 on a Friday evening.

Graphic novella GHOST DRIVE STATION by myself and Lordess Foudre is out on November 18.

Graphic novella PROJECT EXPLOITS RIVER has now moved to lettering phase, with an old colleague of mine taking care of that.

THE PLANETARY COMPENDIUM is now out, from DC Comics, and there’s at least one other major reprint project in the works from them that I’m writing a large essay for right now.

OCEAN is being reissued from Image Comics on November 24.

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

Bought a bottle of Fernet Branca. Now googling “how to make Fernet Branca drinkable.”

Artist, writer and educator Rain DeGrey moved to the wilderness after a lifetime in California and this is the record of her discovery of the land and the seasons. This is her newsletter.

Todd Blackwood is the creator of NOSFERATU: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. See more of his art on his IG.

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

Just arrived: INTO THE GREAT by Elliot Blake, another production banger from Lil Factory:

That, I suggest to you, is some proper space fiction. All the details at this link here. These books are so beautiful.

In a still timid ray of March sunshine, Maigret was playing.

I needed a soft week, so I put down all the long and serious books and finally read the 75th and last Maigret book, MAIGRET AND MONSIEUR CHARLES (UK) (US). Which was, of course, lovely.

Currently reading the latest Washington Poe novel by MW Craven, THE KILLER’S MARK, continuing the whole “comfort reading” thing, and I think I probably should have stopped reading this series with the previous novel, which was a fine conclusion.

New Soeur L’Enfer, as provided directly to me from her for you: SUGAR CRASH.

New Laura Cannell: BATTALIA.

This album was recorded four miles away from me and I saw the evening performance but I had to order it from Japan! The shot on the cover is from Leigh-on-Sea, down the road from me.

Bought myself a membership to the BFI. I thought to myself, “I’m gonna go to London and watch lovely obscure films onna big screen"!” Three hours later, the main rail line from here to London buckled in the heat and threw a train off the tracks at Wickford. So I think I’ll wait a while to use it.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder. You can subscribe to the site to get every post by email. The current format is between one and three posts a day. Like a more condensed yet more confused version of this newsletter. You might like it.

MORNING COMPUTER: things to start the day

• morning computer dropping into monday

STATUS: the daily-ish noon-ish roundup post

• “Going Hard”

• brain fixing

• eclipse drunk

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Horns Of Odin was having an overstock sale.

And that’s all I have this week. It’s been an extremely stressful and anxious one. I intend to spend Saturday outside with the mp3 player and a notebook to see what arrives. May your Sunday be peaceful. Thank you for sitting with me.

W