The Rocketmen are coming

My first novel – unpublished, indeed unfinished at this point, although the bit remains firmly in my teeth – concerns a rock band, The Rocketmen. I’ll be trickling out some background info before any of the actual text reaches this blog. First up: the cover art for their first album, Pilot.

The inspiration for the design came from lead singer Tommy Smith. The record company originally pushed for a more ornamental cover along the lines of Von Däniken’s ‘Mayan Astronaut’ imagery that was popular around ‘69 but Smith was vehemently against it. A young designer with an interest in aviation offered a shot of a US spyplane under full throttle, which found favour with Smith and the band members. Cropped and appropriately doctored (the word on the tailplane originally read ‘nasa’), they had their first album cover. Love it or loathe it, it stood in stark contrast to mainstream album art of the period.

Pilot (December 1969 – UK, March 1970 – US) full track listing:

1. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (3’45)
2. Can She Forgive You? (4’10)
3. Hitchhiker (3’03)
4. Pilot (4’59)
5. Look Me Up (2’30)
6. Eastern Light (4’07)
7. Girl On The Telephone (3’23)
8. Gone To The Movies (4’12)
9. Gangbusters (4’50)
10. Johnny Lightning (2’10)

Next up…

Working on an opening passage for something that might be a short story or might be the next novel. I’m not permitting myself to actually start novel #2 before I have finished and edited novel #1, so I’m feeling cross at myself. Only a little, though.

I suspect I’ll post the passage in question when it’s in some kind of readable state.

Noted a couple of ideas for the next Zero Sum last night. One is a little too similar to something that happened in real life, something that people of my age would immediately identify. That’d be bad for the story so unless I can develop that idea further I might ditch it. The second idea is downright funny and involves tattoos. Might go for that one.