My dear breakfasters,

We have returned from our sojourn to the windy Highlands where our digs were in a converted 18th century cell block originally used to house debtors in the historic Inverary Jail. It was a deeply refreshing break despite having to return home early to avoid having to drive the 6 hours home through Storm Eunice. It blew some cobwebs away and we managed to pick up a few nice second hand books on our way up there thanks to an overnight stay in Wigtown (known as Scotland’s Book Town), including a Karl Edward Wagner Kane novel that I didn’t own. Some nice synchronicity there too as only a couple of days earlier I’d been discussing Kane with Dave Wachsman and I’d pulled down the three I do still own from a dusty shelf.

I just need to actually read them now. We may cover a Kane novel at some point soon. Let us know if that’s something you’d like to hear.

In other developments, a couple of weeks ago I was surprised to see the artwork that I commissioned a couple of years ago for the podcast avatar appear on an Instagram post on a mug. I was a bit disappointed at this to be honest as, until that point, the representation of Moorcock was unique to this podcast and its social media presence. So to find that the artist was selling it on mugs from his website took the shine off a little bit. On an extremely positive note though, this prompted me to drop Simon Perrins a line to see if he was up for designing a replacement. Just one short week later he sent me the pic above and blew my mind. So, as of now, the imagery around this website is exclusively down to Simon and he is an integral part of our identity. This makes me very happy as all of his work is glorious AND I get to frame that painting for posterity.

In wider Moorcock flavoured music news, friend of the show Imrryr is closing in on releasing his opus based upon The Black Corridor and that book will be the subject of an upcoming show so watch out for that. I’ve had an advanced listen of that new album and it is immersive, doom-laden and cosmic. I’ll be sure to let you all know when it drops on the Imrryr bandcamp page.

This week the Appendix N Book Club released their latest episode looking at The Jewel in the Skull with our good pard Rob AKA Menion . They made some great observations (as always) on this occasion about Hawkmoon and the implementation of Moorcockian tropes in gaming and AD&D in particular. Rob is a deep thinker and he complemented Jeff and Hoi perfectly. It’s been a while since we’ve talked gaming here at Derry and Toms and Rob was involved in one of those shows himself of course. I am now itching to gas about that stuff again and I may just be making an appearance on Confessions of a Wee Tim’rous Bushi in the near future to do just that.

In book news (and sheer frustration at seeing our pards across the pond showing off their Saga Press editions of the Elric Saga vol 01 yet only having delivery dates over here in Blighty repeatedly pushed back), I’ve picked up three more Millenium editions in hardcover. As I go about this grand replacement project (ie drunken impulse purchases) I’ve been piling up the paperback editions they are replacing and they will go into a draw for patron giveaways in the next couple of months. I have a couple of other bits n bobs for that pile too.

Speaking of the Elric Saga, new Elric novel The Citadel of Forgotten Myths is available for pre-order. It just seems to be inevitable that whenever a new, definitive collection of Elric stories emerges it’s never too long before a new tome emerges from Mike’s pen to disrupt the state-of-the-art, but within a couple of months must set a new record. Fortunately design-wise and stylistically the hardcovers look to match nicely, even though this novel will interrupt the I – III sequence on your shelf. I’m anticipating these volumes with a little bit of trepidation though, as you’ll know from our reaction to the revisions to the 60th anniversary edition of The Dreaming City on the last show.

Right, I think that’s about it for this report. New show will drop in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime take care and stay safe.