Have you been out today?

Have I mentioned before that I'm supposed to be writing a piratical comic strip script to be drawn by Mark Stafford? Mark is the most criminally underemployed cartoonist in the country, as scarily talented as he is ludicrously neglected by art editors. He's also a fellow Sentence/Listen contributor and one of the collaborators on last year's wall comic at the ICA's Comica event. Anyway, my hope is that I can cynically piggyback on his genius by writing some half-assed story that everyone fails to notice is sub-par because they're too gobsmacked by Mark's gorgeous artwork. This is, I feel, a good plan. Finding time to knock the story into shape is proving something of a problem but I finally made a tiny start last week and knocked out a rough draft of an introductory chapter. Should be able to rewrite and send it on to Mark at some point next week. All very much a long term and speculative endeavour that may well lead nowhere but I'm still fond of the basic story idea (which I won't go into here) which has been kicking around my brain for some years now. I originally intended to draw it myself but couldn't face all that bloody rigging.

Oh, and the working title is "Arr!" Any better suggestions do please get in touch.