It’s Friday, so I must blog (as Stan Lee never said). It seems that synchronicity and coincidence, my fairweather friends, are haunting me again this week. Just about everyone I saw on my walk into town for Friday lunch with Nik then congregated at Maidstone railway station at 4 o’clock. It was weird. It was as if my life was a film and I got to see all the extras heading home after work.

Also, four black cats crossed my path. I think that’s supposed to be lucky. I think that thinking that makes me a slightly strange person. At least I didn’t run any of them over (although the first one, the very fluffy one, came awfully close to my bumper).

OK, the main points of this week. Roy Scheider died. As Nik remarked, that was ‘one of those slightly unsettling things’. As far as I’m concerned, Roy was a screen god and a bastion of 70s cinema. Roy Scheider, by his own estimation, made three great films: Jaws, The French Connection and All That Jazz. I, however, will always remember him as Dustin Hoffman’s big brother in Marathon Man. He was 75, but I can’t believe he’s dead.

Steve Gerber also died this week. A mainstay of Marvel in the 70s and the mind behind Howard the Duck, Gerber was a genius. Pure and simple. The comic industry has lost a genuine talent.

In other news, Raquel Welch is 67. She looks f**king fantastic. So, there you go.

Now on to this weeks responses.

Jack - Cosmo will be being in the new Guardians of the Galaxy comic. Woof!

Big - Yes it was a mega-blog. You can tell me about the fistycuffs when I see you in Cambridge.

Rory - I haven’t yet written Spiderman, but it’s probably on the horizon.

Xhalax - You’re a trooper. How much Daur was there in OiD? How much? Lots of Daur!

Brandon - Happy Birthday! Everyone wish Brandon a Happy Birthday.

Big Will - I’d really like to write a book called ‘Ven’. How cool would that be?

Ianifiel - New Zealand sounds very New Zealandish. Just find somebody to invite me.

Sam - Chin up. Every thing’s all right.

Packmaster and Xhalax - Nathun Inshabel on Elvira Cardinal. Tough job. I’m working on it.

Sredni - The map’s been published, Mr Vashtar. I worked long and hard on it.

Rob - You’re spot on, but it’s an ursid, not a bear. The riff should have gone, ‘The ursid exploded through the undergrowth, snapping at everything in sight. Ven eviscerated it with his silver dagger. He was nine years old. The nalwoods closed around him. In the time it took for the ursid to die, Ven had wiped his knife, cleaned and dressed the kill and carried it home on a split log.’ That’s the way we do it in Ghost country.

Steve - Are you suggesting that all BL novels are pulp? Or are you proposing that you’d rather have decent RPGs instead of the novels that BL publishes, which might be considered pulpish? Either way, I’m probably offended. Any company needs to make money and you can double that if it’s a publicly owned company. If I didn’t write for a living, I’d write anyway. Thankfully, BL pays my mortgage, so I don’t have to do two jobs. If you want to discuss this stuff, you’re probably talking to the wrong man.

Mista25 (Patrick) - Greetings to Denmark. Sorry you didn’t like Armour of Contempt. Maybe I will try to get Gaunt that promotion you’re talking about.

Patrick (2) - I had honestly forgotten about the smoking thing in Only in Death, but I feel that Sredni’s explanation is spot on. Who the feth would smoke when it was that dry?

Big Steve - Three shredded wheat?!

Rob - Skulls = ashtrays. Good solution.

Nemesis 749 - Hello to you too. You’re welcome to join in with us.

Rob - ‘Stranger than Fiction’ is a damned good movie, but it’s not half as good as... that one about the orchid thief... you know, the one with Meryl Streep... it’s really late and my brain won’t work.

Thank you for making this another hundred post blog.

Rob - ‘Adaptation’ Gaaah! That was the movie. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s worth renting.