Happy Monday, everyone! Yes, it’s that time of the week already, where I expound in dry, factual form upon my plans for the forthcoming seven days. Strap in, it’s going to be informative.

I have no gigs this week. I know. But I’m working really hard. It’s just all under-the-bonnet stuff. The latest draft of the novel is nearly finished.

When I finish writing this I’m going to send out my first ever monthly newsletter. I’ve also done the draw to pick 10 winners of my new music and poetry album, Jesus Buys Me Cigarettes. If you signed up for the newsletter, check your inbox – you may have won! If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter, shame on you. Sign up here. It’s only once a month, I’ll be chucking in free poems and mp3s for subscribers, and I promise not to take the piss.

In the meantime, this site updates 5-days-a-week with a whole bunch of interesting stuff:

On Tuesdays it’s Welcome To The Fantasy Zone, my blog on video games. I’m currently working through a history of beat em ups. This week, Final Fight!

On Wednesdays it’s Poem O’ The Week – a new poem, by me, every week. I take requests!

On Thursdays it’s Death Of 1000 Cuts, my fiction blog. Posts for writers, on making your fiction less sucky. Sometimes people send me their first page and I dissect it for the edification of the class.

On Fridays it’s Tim Clare’s Cone O’ Tragedy, a grab bag of opinion pieces, humour, reviews – anything that doesn’t fit within the other four days. Despite the woolly premise, these tend to be my most popular posts.

This Week, I Have Mostly Been Playing

Bayonetta on Xbox 360. Since I’m writing a history of beat em ups I felt like I ought to sample a contemporary instance – Bayonetta is a 3D beat, slash and shoot em up where you play the last in a line of witches, battling angels to satisfy the minions of Hell to whom you’ve sold your soul. I hired it from my wonderful local library.

Err… it’s pretty sexist, my friend. Lots of tedious fanservicey moments. The dialogue and voice acting are atrocious. The actual game is quite good fun – once you get into the dodge-combo rhythm of melees they can be rather absorbing, especially the extended one-on-one battles against humanoid boss characters. There’s a lot of waiting for cut scenes to finish, or stabbing buttons at the right time to trigger a cinematic – mildly diverting, but you can’t help feeling we haven’t progressed far from the days of Dirk the Daring. I want to be in control, dammit!