Sunday, May 24, 2009

Happy Birthday, JoshTierney.com. I give you oblivion.

Turns out yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of JoshTierney.com, which is actually why the site is down at the moment. If I don't manage to get it back up by Wednesday then I'll definitely have it back online on June 16th. Sorry about any problems this might have caused!

Date Registered: 05/24/04
Date Modified: 05/24/09
Expiry Date: 05/24/09

Friday, May 22, 2009

Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata

On May 30th I'll be marrying Marisa Williams, who some may know as my editor and the editor of JoshTierney.com. Afterwards we'll be enjoying a two-week honeymoon in Paris, France. As I'll be extremely busy with preparations, starting tomorrow I'll be taking a hiatus from any major internetting until June 16th. There should be more than enough Radar to go around until then.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

A Drawing by Bobby Myers


This is the drawing of Koi and Hana by Bobby Myers, sent to me as a Christmas present, which was used as the basis for Track 7 of Radar. You can read the track here. Bobby's stories can be read at his site. His stories are touchingly personal accounts of modern nerds who experience revelations in the form of obscure myths and selective vulgarity.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Radar The Supernatural

Track 6 of Radar is now online. The album cover is by Louis Roskosch, who I consider to be a Nerd Wave artist. His hyper-stylish art incorporates videogame culture, science fiction, fantasy and superhero comic books. Basically, he does with his art what I have been trying to do with my stories.

This track of Radar is the closest I've come to realising my vision of a Commuter Train Story -- essentially a story that takes place on a commuter train, it is more concerned with what's whipping past the train than what's actually taking place inside it. I also tried this with the eighth episode of the second volume of Hana, Caught Between Trains.

I've started up a little rewrite of a story that Bobby Myers and myself wrote when we were about seventeen. I'll post the original story on this blog at some point.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Looking Back: 2007 Part 4 (of 4)

Respect the Dead

This is my action/zombie/horror/detective story, written for Coco -- I mean, Ramon Sierra -- and featuring one of the greatest pieces I have ever seen from him. This is the story that I wrote for Coco to make up for all of the minor human tragedies that he illustrated. I'm incredibly grateful to know Coco, for his friendship, his kindness and his generosity, and all that he has inspired and brought out in my writings. He is one of the people for which Hana would not have existed without -- someone who has more than welcomed my strangest ideas.

Respect the Dead is one of the stories I'm most proud of. It was one of my first stories to actually have a beginning, a middle and an end, for one thing. It also introduced locations, chains and characters that have become staples of my absurdist universe: places like the Very Convenience Variety Mart and Toothpick Street, and characters such as the Battler.

John Wilkins composed and performed the theme song for the story, which helped inspire the soundtrack concept for Radar.

The Battler

This is the big budget, over-the-top sequel to Respect the Dead, starring one of Coco's favourite characters from that story. This story is just insane fun: it is essentially a collection of fight scenes between the Battler and zombie versions of the various vigilantes. Coco created a series of badass comic book covers for each part. I feel this story was overshadowed by the first volume of Hana, as it was published on the site in the middle of Hana's serialisation. So, everyone, please check it out ! It's the story for the 13-year-old boy in all of us.