With volume one of the Danish edition of The Rainbow Orchid currently at the printer's, I thought I'd show you the cover.

Yes, I know it's the same cover that's been on all the editions, but I particularly like the title design here - I gave it a slightly larger 'O', even though it's all one word in Danish, and spent a little more time on shaping it overall than I have on some of the other editions (oh how I'd like to rework the English one!).

The book itself will be published by Tellerup on 28 May, and the launch will be at Copenhagen Comics (June 6-7), at which I will be a guest.

I have drawn a new piece of Rainbow Orchid artwork for a promotional poster, but I'll leave that to be revealed by Tellerup at the festival, so no sneaky peeks just yet! Oh, okay, maybe just a little one ...

Not many this year, but a couple of good events coming up on the horizon to tell you about.

The first is aimed at librarians and will take place at Crawley Library, West Sussex, on 18 May, where I'll be on a panel addressing the issue of reaching reluctant readers (something comics do very well!). My fellow panelists will be Helen Dennis, Mo O'Hara, and Lisa Williamson. You can book tickets here.

On the weekend of 6-7 June I'll be at Copenhagen Comics in Denmark for the launch of the Danish edition of The Rainbow Orchid vol.1 (Jagten Pa Regnbueorkideen, published by Tellerup). Long before a Danish edition was even a possibility I had wanted to visit this festival, largely thanks to the enthusiastic reports brought back by Colin and Dave of Accent UK, who will also be attending this year. I'm very grateful to the festival, Tellerup, and the Danish Arts Foundation for making this trip a reality.

To those still watching, you might be wondering what has happened to Julius Chancer since I boldly declared (last September) that I would be blogging the first three pages of his new adventure.

At the end of November I posted some finished art for the first page and suggested that the next two pages might be available to read in the new year, but since then ... nothing! The main reason has been work, work, work.

During the time I was drawing The Rainbow Orchid I experienced quite a downturn in my regular commercial work, and therefore my income. This was because in order to get the comic finished I had to turn away a fair bit of paying work, a difficult decision to make! Since the book has been completed I've had to build things up again, and the last couple of years have not been hugely fruitful.

This year, so far, has been better - things are looking up, at least for the next three months or so, and I've been saying yes to most of the projects that have come my way (and I'm very lucky to have some really nice assignments at the moment). The obvious result of this is that I'm very busy prioritising my paying clients, and that sadly leaves little to no time for my own stuff.

Ordinarily these two aspects of my work should run along nicely together but I have probably taken on a little too much work right now - possibly in reaction to last year's drought, but also because the urgency to earn money has increased, with my wife (a writer and editor) going freelance and with two small children to care for, and who knows if work will keep coming or dry up again for a bit.

I have been trying to think of solutions ... should I dive into the world of crowd funding (eg. KickStarter) or perhaps a system such as Patreon might be better? I'm not sure I'd be able to raise much this way - because of mainstream distribution with The Rainbow Orchid I'm not connected to the majority of my readers online, so I don't know if there's a good support base out there I can reach.

Either way, Julius Chancer is not dead - I'm too excited about this next story. It is better than The Rainbow Orchid, more original, more exciting, more mysterious, and my art and writing have improved a lot (I think). It will happen and I will try my best to get some new stuff to you as soon as I can.

Thanks, as ever, for staying with me!

Despite looking at the scrapbook spreads for volumes one, two, three and The Complete Rainbow Orchid (see previous entries), I haven't quite finished with scrapbook posts!

In 2003 I self-published part one in black and white, and as part of the extras I included a page of sketches and a scrapbook, which is where the idea started - you can see it below.

If you'd like to look at some of the scrapbook items in more detail then you can have a look at the Julius Chancer Facebook page where there's an album dedicated to them. If you're not already joined up to it, please do! I often publish little bits and bobs there that don't appear anywhere else.

Unlike the scrapbooks for volumes one and two of The Rainbow Orchid I didn't make any new drawings for black and white 'photos' in volume three - the drawings I did do were kept in colour. Here's the volume three scrapbook spread ...

Volumes two and three, however, did include a 'story so far ...' section at the front, and for these I did drawings for the monochrome photographs. Here are the full colour versions ...

Lily, Julius and Nathaniel about to embark for Portsmouth, but somebody else is on this train ...

Nathaniel, Lily and Julius meet the elephant at Cunningham House, Karachi ...

The Complete Rainbow Orchid also had scrapbooks, gathering all three volumes' material into two spreads ...

A couple of days ago I posted some of the original colour images that were then 'antiquated' to become items in the Rainbow Orchid volume one scrapbook.

Volume two had a much smaller single-page spread, and only one full drawing. It shows Nathaniel Crumpole in the Amman desert with his camel and the Breguet 280T and a refuelling truck in the background ...

Here is the vol.2 scrapbook page ...

In each of the volumes of The Rainbow Orchid I put together a scrapbook spread of news clippings, photographs and ephemera. The photographs, being of a 1920s or earlier vintage, were in black and white, but I actually made full colour drawings of these to begin with, and I thought it would be nice to show you some of these.

Here are three from the volume 1 scrapbook: Julius and Chas in Gallipoli ...

Lord Lawrence winning the Fourth Wembley Botanical Competition, with Rudyard Kipling ...

... and Lily Lawrence on set with her friend, Edna Purviance.

This is the full vol. 1 scrapbook spread ...

Digital comics publisher Sequential are currently having a massive winter sale, with 50-80% off a huge range of titles - including The Rainbow Orchid. Their Complete edition includes all my annotations from The Rainbow Orchid Supplement.

You can read more about the Sequential edition of RO here. There's a ton of other really good stuff in the sale too - I've nabbed a couple myself! Fire up those iPads!

Update: the sale ends at midnight tonight (5 Jan)!

I'd like to wish each and every one of you a very happy Christmas and I hope lots of good things come your way in 2015. I'd especially like to say a big and sincere thank you for your support of my work and books over the past year - it's hugely appreciated!

Click image to see bigger

Just when I thought The Rainbow Orchid had encountered all the excitement it possibly could in its unexpectedly long life (much more than I ever anticipated), a bit of news comes along to give the book yet another bounce, and a particularly pleasing one too.

I'm delighted to announce that a Danish edition of The Rainbow Orchid is to be published by Forlaget Tellerup. It will be issued in three separate volumes and will be launched perhaps midway in 2015 - I will confirm the date when it is settled. The Danish title is Jagten på Regnbueorkidéen, and it joins the English, Dutch, Spanish, French and German editions.

My sincere thanks go to Michael E. N. Larsen at Tellerup, Hélène Ferey and Oli Munson at A. M. Heath, and Trine Licht at Licht and Burr. I also suspected I should pass on a nod of recognition to the Danish comic artists (Frank Madsen, Sussi Bech, Ingo Milton, and Tatiana Goldberg) I had a very nice dinner with in Erlangen, Germany, earlier this year, as I thought that getting to know them a little better may have had something to do with my coming to the attention of Tellerup! In fact, Mr. Larsen had discovered RO while browsing Amazon, which just goes to show that putting work out there gets it seen, and you never know what will come of it.