Not so much dark as strangely magical. Just couldn’t resist this treat for you all. Have a pleasant, feathered, parachute pants weekend.

Rob Kelly is a freelance illustrator from New Jersey who contributes to such illustrious clients as Time Out New York and The Grammy Awards. His collection of Monster PSAs are right up our dark alley. No clever quips, please.

…neighbor.

Oh, that we could. While it certainly rained enough over the last few weeks to flood both station and street, we can’t blame Baker Street for sWitch’s late release. For sightly late it will be.

No, the reason for the tardy arrival of Yellow Horse’s second child is the result of a rather protracted labor, something many parents will recall not-so-fondly. Late arrivals are often painful and sWitch is no exception. We failed to anticipate quite how long the Lightning Source application process would take (having thought we’d actually already been through it), nor how much time would need to be spent on their approval of our first release with them. We expect that subsequent births will be quicker and easier, as they tend to be.

OK, enough of the childbirth analogies. Since we can’t yet offer up a bound copy of sWitch to our readers (who are no doubt waiting with bated breath), we are instead very pleased to present our new website. The new Yellow Horse site outlines all our services, provides some examples of our work and, when sWitch is released, will allow you to purchase copies directly from us. We’ll ensure that you’ll get some extra goodies if you buy from us as well, so check back next week when we hope to announce a bouncing baby book…sorry – the release of sWitch, a novel by the very talented Mr Scott Norton.

(PS, the site has been tested on Firefox, Safari and IE7. If you notice anything hinky, don’t hestitate to let us know!)

…is a breeze.

…of sink?

…cover.

It’s been frantic around the Yellow Horse stables yet again. Scott’s been head-down in his adaptation of HorrorCon, Louise has just finished what we hope is a final edit of sWitch and I’ve been galavanting in London-town working on Facebook applications and basically living the life of a celebrity.

Some of this may not be quite true.

Consequently, much of what should have been done by this week isn’t quite and next week isn’t looking to slow down all that much.

As you might know, sWitch is due to be released in August, which means we have until the very last day of the month to meet our deadline. Can we do it? Or will flooding at Baker Street put paid to our cunning plans? Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.

Meanwhile, a reminder of what sWitch has in store on August the 31st.

Since you’re here, a couple of wee snippets of publishing news: heavyweight marketing author Seth Godin is leaving Portfolio Books to self-publish (although we notice that they don’t call it that, but rather “sell direct to his fans”); Barnes & Noble have released a Nook for iPhone; Amazon is stirring up the mainstream UK press with its £109 Kindle; and “a senior publisher” is annoyed at the devaluation of books by nincompoops.

And because we love reading and we love photographs (and we’re around the world), we really must recommend you go off and have a look at Steve McCurry’s images of people around the world reading. Fabulous.

Don’t forget to come back when you’ve finished.

…you’ll go dined. Ingenious marketing idea for the latest demonic possession flick called The Last Exorcism. For those who’ve never heard of it, “chatroulette” is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection. Sometimes, they get lucky…

…or insane?