The book publicity stuff is starting early…

Six months of work, and suddenly it’s all over.

Six months of reading every James Bond story Ian Fleming wrote, watching every Bond screen appearance, reading well over a hundred Bond comics stories, tracking down and interviewing creators, and collecting art from the USA, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Chile, India, Turkey and a few other places.

Six months of constant research and writing.

And tonight it all came to a stop.

Less than an hour ago I mailed off a package of six CDs to the team at Hermes Press. On those CDs are the text manuscript (about 185 pages in total) and 160 art files, plus accompanying spreadsheet matching image file names to captions. – Phew!!

2 days before deadline too.

JAMES BOND: A history of the illustrated 007, is now out of my hands and will soon be passed into the care of the book designers.

I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Before heading off to work this morning I finished off MAD, Cracked and Silly Bonds, the last section to be written for JAMES BOND: A History of the Illustrated 007.

So the first "Rough Draft" of the book is now complete and came in at 69,898 words – not too far off my initial "gut feel" estimate to the publisher of 70,000.

This evening I’m taking some time off to hit the gym, and take my ever patient, and supportive, wife out to dinner.

Tomorrow I start the real work of starting at Page One and working my way through revising and rewriting as I go. The aim is to spend the next two weeks revising and have it ready by May 31st for editorial review.

Eating breakfast at my hotel in Vancouver this morning when I see tucked away at the bottom of page 6 of this morning’s Globe & Mail (which is, according to it’s masthead, Canada’s National Newspaper) a piece headlined

DND mulls over Iron Man-like uniform for troops.

It then goes on to talk in detail about exoskeleton suits and possible future use by the Canadian Defence Department.

"Alpha Flight" anyone…?!!