Siberia's Shining Stars...

My short story 'The Stars Were Bright Over Siberia' appears in this month's AlienSkin Magazine. 'Stars' is a Lovecraftian tale set in the frozen wasteleands of Russia: the brutal Russian secret police executes a clan of gypsies...unaware that they summoned an ancient evil to avenge them...

Seeing the story published has inspired me to write the longer version I've been putting off for some time: the character of Inspektor Pukov in particular deserves fleshing out, wonderfully vicious and cruel as he is...

Artist Matt Soffe provided the sketches of Pukov (above) and Tlogeth (below).

King of the Kappas...

Poor Jikan. After countless centuries of traveling time and space and countless demons slain in the name of Good, he has finally arrived at his homeland of Japan in the right place and time – and wants nothing more than to lay his head on a pillow and take a nap.

But this day, it is not meant to be.

Find out why in ‘Jikan and the Kappa King’, a light-hearted fairytale presented in a weekly comic strip format (art by Davey Candlish and letters by Jim Campbell) which can be found every Monday on the Paragon Blogspot. Above are all twenty-six episodes and a series advert.

Jikan features in Paragon Comics and (coming later this year) a graphic novel collection. In addition to ‘Kappa King’, I’ve written a pair of Jikan scripts for Paragon, ‘Jikan: Witch Fires’ and ‘Jikan: Cave of Death’.

Red Reviews...

The reviews of 'Red Sands' have started to filter in, and so far they've been on the positive side of things (knock on wood the trend continues)....

If you've got some time to kill, and enjoy reading academic - dissections - of small press works, take a look at Colsmi and the Beak's 'That Reminds Me of This' write-up. Beware, for when I say 'dissect', I really mean 'strips away the flesh and fondles the insides'.

First Comics News was also kind enough to lend the strip a favorable review. I'm humbled when I read the line: '...a wonderful but horrific script by Matthew McLaughlin...'. I can only hope everyone enjoys the tale this much, and that I'll have the opportunity to keep writing it!

Remember, you can view the first episode for free via MyEbooks or Clickwheel.