I Used To Be A One Hit Wonder (Day 43, 12/02/13)

Serendipity; now there's a word.
"An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident" says the dictionary App that I downloaded.

And here's how it works today. And how it sits with my belief in the interconnectedness of everything and that everything happens in order to get you to where you're supposed to be.

I'm a one hit wonder. With a bit of luck there will be a photo at the top of this page (photos have a tendency to show on my iPad version of my blog but have vanished by the time J opens the link on her laptop, no idea if anybody other than me is seeing them) The photo is of the first page of my one and only published comic work; a story named Waltz that ran in a magazine in Revolver in 1990. August 1990 to be precise, it was published whilst J and I were on honeymoon.

It's a small vignette about a man who dreams that his late wife comes to him in his sleep and asks him for one last dance (although you don't realise it's his late wife at the outset. During that dance they talk about the life they shared and she asks him to go with her. He declines. Obviously the point is; it's not a dream, it happens. They dance.

It was inspired by a dream that my nan told me that her mother had before she was born (details maybe another time, it's pretty damn impressive) and it was something that I'd had bubbling at the back of my mind for a while before using it.

I submitted the script 'on spec' to Revolver, an offshoot of a comic called 'Crisis', itself an offshoot of the long established (even then) 2000AD. They wanted it. They paid me £35 per page for a four page story. £140. I bought an electric typewriter as stardom clearly beckoned. An artist was commissioned by the magazine; a hot young talent named Glenn Fabry, later to make his name with impressive covers for Hellblazer and Preacher (one day they will film the latter and you'll love it). I didn't see the finished story until I held the published comic. Glenn's work was wonderful.

I contacted him to let him know my thoughts and asked if he woud be willing to sell the original artwork; he did, for far less than he could have on the open market.

I submitted more proposals. Some were liked, some not. Crisis wanted to use one story I submitted but had run out of budget for the year. They ran out of budget entirely fairly soon after. Opportunities petered out. Life took over.

And then today I decided that my blog should be about all of the above. I didn't want to photograph the pages, a photo wouldn't do them justice, so I set about searching the Internet for an image of the story. What I actually found was a 'Q&A' on Glenn Fabry's website. From 2006. With my name in it. With a request for help in finding me.

A Director of Photography with an impressive CV ( I know this, he's on bloody IMDB for God's sake) had a producer who wanted him to direct. And he wanted to direct my story. In 2006.

I make no bones about it, I'm a rampant egomaniac. I have googled my name in the past (Jamaican stand up comic apparently). This didn't appear. This has never appeared. Ever. And why not? Because I wasn't ready for it to appear. Now I'm ready. The DoP in question is on LinkedIn. I've finally found a use for the profile that J insisted I create. I've contacted him. I'm here if he wants to use 'Waltz'. And I've got these other couple of ideas that I may just want to pitch as well.

The Internet. It's bloody genius isn't it? Everything is out there, nothing is ever lost and it's never too late.