Mark West's Blog, page 16

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Poster Magazines

Back in the 1970s and 80s, a publication I really enjoyed was the “poster magazine”.  The format was always the same, an A4 glossy colour magazine which folded out into a (large) A1-sized sheet.  One side would be the magazine itself, the covers and articles with plenty of photographs.  The reverse side would be a giant poster and, depending on what you’d bought, the image might be a person, an

The Six Million Dollar Man, at 45

The Six Million Dollar Man was an American TV series that ran (in the US) from March 1973 through to March 1978 over five series and 99 episodes (plus six TV movies) and was shown in over 70 countries.



Steve Austin first appeared in Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg, which was quickly followed by three sequels, Operation Nuke, High Crystal and Cyborg IV.  The first TV movie, based on Cyborg,

Walking With The Black Hand Gang...

Regular readers will know I'm a big fan of The Adventures Of The Black Hand Gang, a childhood favourite I first read in 1978.  Written by H. J. Press, the stories were a combination of text and illustration, originally published in weekly chapters with the solution to the week’s riddle given in the next edition of Sternchen, the children's supplement of German magazine Stern.





1978 Methuen

Ten Favourite Covers: Alfred Hitchcock

In the second entry of my occasional series highlighting ten of my favourite covers (you can read the Childhood Terrors one here), I thought I'd mark the 120th birthday of Sir Alfred Hitchcock by looking at some of his fantastic anthologies.

As before (and perhaps to explain the eclectic choice), the only rule is that the bulk of the covers must come from my
own library.


1960

Edited, as a lot

Choose Life

It was almost five years ago, on the 4th August 2014, when I suffered my heart attack, a life-changing event in a lot of ways.  Although I'd already started to lose weight (as I wrote about here), it focused my attention and I decided my "Fall Guy" summer (which I wrote about here) was a chance to make some changes as I realised what was important to me.


Me & Dude, July 2019

At my heaviest, I

Burn For You, by INXS, at 35

Thirty-five years ago, to promote their new album, INXS released one of my favourites of their songs, the excellent Burn For You.


Burn For You was written by Andrew Farriss & Michael Hutchence and released in Australia and New Zealand on 26th July 1984 (it never saw release in the UK), with Jenny Morris providing backing vocals.  The single had Johnson’s Aeroplane, written by Andrew Farriss, as

Edge-Lit 8, Derby, 13th July 2019

Arriving a bit later than originally planned (entirely my fault), Sue Moorcroft & I made our way across the square and bumped into Pixie Puddin, getting our Pixie-hug’s in much earlier than usual.  After speaking to her, we bumped into Laura & Mr Mauro, who were heading off to sign into their hotel so we hugged and caught up before going into the Quad to sign in.  Alison Littlewood & Fergus came

Compass Wood

I'm pleased to announce that The Woods, the latest PentAnth anthology from Hersham Horror Books, edited by Phil Sloman, is being launched at Edge-Lit this coming weekend.  Among a cracking selection of writers, it contains my short story Compass Wood, a dark tale of a man who takes a shortcut, has someone flag him down on a lonely country road and then gets chased into the titular wood.



The

800th blog post!

Welcome to my 800th blog post, a target I didn't anticipate achieving when I set this up back in 2009.  Carrying on the regular posting schedule (every Monday other than Bank Holidays), I've once again thoroughly enjoyed working on the posts and, as always, I'm surprised at how much I've managed to fit in since the last catch-up!





Since the 700th post (back in August 2017), I've had three 

Moonraker, at 40

Moonraker, the eleventh James Bond film in the official EON series, opened in the UK on June 28th 1979 (following its London premiere on the 26th).  It was directed by Lewis Gilbert (his third and final Bond film), produced by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and written by Christopher Wood.  Ken Adam was the production designer, Derek Meddings supervised the special effects, John Barry wrote the