Sorry for my recent intermittent appearances on the board. I'll catch up with the stories as soon as time permits, I promise. I've told myself I'll have some downtime to do that once August comes. Honestly.

Meanwhile I'm setting up some nicely lucrative consultancy work to replenish the coffers after recent legal costs but it's involving massive amounts of travelling. Add in the additional time being a single parent costs AND a deadline to get a book to the publishers (end July) and you'll see why Tom Black #12 has to wait a little while.

Anyhow, this week's publication is ASSEMBLED 2, another look at Marvel Comics' Avengers series, this time focussing on the big three of Cap, Iron Man and Thor. There's an Assembled 3 also in the works which covers the non-big three cast. I've written quite a bit for these volumes although I'm a bit hazy as to what ended up in which. The proceeds of sales go to charity.

If you like the Avengers there's probably something of interest in there for you. This time Tom Brevoort wrote the introduction.

I'm told sales have been brisk, pushing Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective vol 1 down the charts. Grr. Still, that's apparently performed better than expected so vol 2 will be out sooner rather than later. My contributions for that will be "The Problem of the Western Mail" and "The Last Deposit".

I shall return.