The Private Asylum Detainee Arrives - And Wishes She Hadn't! And Your Chance to Meet me For a Beer in Camden

Hi folks!  Not often you hear from me on a Saturday, but I have a few minutes spare - and I am dying to share with you my latest comic book frame.  I'm rather proud of this one.  There is another picture which fits between this image and the one I posted last time, but it is this one I am really pleased with.  And as I said before; it is not my intention to publish every frame from this series here.  Once again it is based on one of those 3D computer art images Angela Fox created for me inspired by INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 3.  This one actually only uses the centre portion of one of those images, perhaps 25 - 30% of the whole.  The idea is that it is the view through a sort of bulkhead-style (think bulkhead lamps or wall lights) porthole set in a steel door and guarded behind an out-curving cage of rusting steel bars. To the basic Angela Fox image I have added the bars of course (actually three sets superimposed), a hexagonal mosaic patterning effect to represent wire-reinforced glass, a lighting effect to help reinforce that 'glassy impression', an orangy colouring to the bars to give the impression of rust and age and no less than three layers of a fish-eye lens effect; all using the photo manipulation programme 'The Gimp'.  As always; click on the pic to enlarge it.  I hope you like it - let me know!  

By the way:  I shall be in Camden Town this coming Wednesday if anyone fancies a pint or ten - I'll be in the 'Hawely Arms' in Hawley Crescent lunchtime around 1 PM and in the Camden Wetherspoons (strictly speaking a LLoyds No 1 Bar) 'The Ice Wharf' on the canal side before that... Cheers!

To set the scene:  Long, rambling and rarely-trod corridors, twisting and turning - gaunt, forbidding and uninviting – have been negotiated.  All have been of the same severe institutional flaking cream and green paint and lime wash, the same inky stencilled slogans repeated over and over on stark stone ceiling beams extolling the virtues of obedience, discipline and compliance; patients warned against talking, staff against laxity and complacency.  The place is like a tangled interwoven tissue of locked and barred security grilles, blind, blocked-off passages and doors leading nowhere yet kept jealously locked anyway.  On arrival the girl had been delivered to the very centre of this maze secured in a wheelchair with her eyes and ears covered - a self-contained spider web demiworld with no apparent way in or out.  She is none the wiser now.

The Victorians built establishments such as this - ‘places of wholesome restraint’ as someone once said - incorporating these deliberately convoluted passageways to bamboozle would be absconders.  She has just been informed there is such a multiplicity of possibilities that it is doubtful she has ever been taken by the same route twice.  She has also just been informed how the place has been made even more cosy and snug since those Victorians abandoned  ship so to speak, how the original stairwell had been discovered bricked up and filled in and how the establishment’s research foundation trust paid to install an elevator in a newly-dug service shaft in the 1960s to provide access – an elevator now sporting one of those numerically encoded keypads; very, VERY secure!  As they arrive at their destination the nurse's last words are still ringing in her ears:  “And talking of 'trusts' and trust funds...  I seem to remember the doctor saying something about having received a document of some kind  from your guardian.  I believe it requires a signature – perhaps we can deal with that once we've ascertained the whereabouts of this 'diary' of yours.”

The Private Asylum Detainee Moves On

Click to View

The comic strip project based on the images created by my friend and collaborator, Angela Fox, inspired by certain scenes within my third novel trundles on. Over Easter, what with the crap weather and all we have been having here in the UK, and with little else to do, I put to use the time in updating all the frames I have created thus far to include the new style speech bubbles I have been playing with.  I have also been playing around with various other ideas and techniques to wrest the most story-telling potential as possible out of the images I have.  The latest result you can view here; but if you look down to my previous posting you'll see I have taken the opportunity to update the image posted there too (spot the difference - you'll need a good memory or access to an archived / downloaded copy).  I plan this particular set to lead up to a certain culmination point and I plan to then put out the entire short series up to that point on the website and / or Deviant Art, possibly along with the various intermediate stages and the little odds and sods I have created to augment the original images for the sake of added interest.  

The main purpose of all this - besides generating interest in the blog, website and the written work produced by Angela Fox and myself, of course - is to garner opinion, suggestions, criticism and feedback generally to help gauge the viability of continuing the project on to a published venture.  I have spoken with Angela Fox herself who has expressed an interest in creating fresh images.  But there is no particular need for the resulting work to be based around any one book of the three books encompassing the INSTITUTIONALISED series.  One possibility is a simplified rearrangement of the entire story arc into the graphic novel or comic strip idiom.  Another possibility might be to illustrate an entirely different tale, although the basic subject matter would need to inhabit a similar whirl if we are not to waste the effort Angela has already put in to various scene depictions.

With all this in mind, while I don't intend publishing a substantial amount of the resulting comic strip-style stuff here (from the present series onwards) I do intend to paste up the occasional intermediate image as a 'taster', and one possibility (suggested by Angela) is that you, the potential readers, should from time to time suggest where the story should go next at various points (and contribute some fresh ideas of your own - I know there are a lot of fertile imaginations out there!  So let's use 'em!).

More on our Private Asylum Detainee - And a Few New Links

Hi Ya!  I've been hard at work practically non-stop all week, not least on revamping my CV to suit the likes of GNC (a high street food supplement retailer) who apparently are looking to recruit 'advisers' to work in their outlets with knowledge of gym work, fitness, food supplements, vitamins and the like.  Well I have a master's degree in human nutrition, and I practically live in the gym, so we'll see; I'll have to be careful to disguise my true age though.

The other project that has been taking my time is extending and improving the website.  What I need now is some way to make static the header and menu bar so that they stay in place while the main section of the page scrolls down.  I've tried delving into the HTML / CSS but have come up against an impasse.  Anyone out there  know how to do this on a Weebly-hosted website?  

I also have an article out this month published on The Well Red Weekly (the ezine of The spanking Library - link in the right hand sidebar) on nuns in spanking fiction.  This has generated quite a bit of interest and I try to reply to comments where ever possible, although thus far I have only replied to one.

In terms of this blog, I have added a whole mess of Tumblr blogs to my Tumblr blog listing over in the sidebar on the right and generally had a tidy around, although I still have a few dead blogs to weed out and remove - I hate encountering dead links on other people's blogs and sites!  And I still haven''t quite given up on this graphic comic-book thing I have been working on, a project based around my modifying some of the 3D computer generated images Angela Fox created for me a while back inspired by my third novel.  I have been exploring some different speech balloon styles, generating various forms of signage within the images and trying to create something approximating to cane weals... Anyway, here is my latest offering - see what you think.  Personally I think the speech balloons are a great improvement.  How that style of balloon will translate to the frames I have already produced and which are more 'wordy' remains to be seen, and so the next stage will entail recreating one of those using this filled-in-background style.  I'll be posting as I go to my Deviant Art account at http://toyntanen.deviantart.com/art and possibly also to my flikr account, and one or two - if they work out well - to my Tumblr account.

A Private Asylum Detainee

Hi ya!  I'm all cheery today because the sun is out... Wait a minute - it's just gone in again... Damn - here comes a nosedive!  Right, before I suffer one of my famed mental collapses I'm going to share with you what I have been up to of late.  It is probably easier if I show you, but what it comes down to is manipulating, modifying and utilising a series of images my graphics-orientated collaborator Angela Fox (link over in the right hand sidebar) came up with quite some time ago inspired by my third book in the INSTITUTIONALISED series: A Continuum of Discipline.  The idea had originally been for an illustrated version or even graphic novel, though that was before it bloomed into 250,000 words of course!  But in some ways I can blame (if blame is the right word) the artwork for the expansion of the storyline, since each and every picture - though not necessarily perfect in terms of the idea  I was trying to put over at the time (especially if not perfect )- more often than not triggered a whole cascade of new ideas, which in turn at times spawned yet more images.  And the series I have been working on this week is a case in point.  

I do not have enough original Angela Fox material to do a graphic novel justice, and even to fully illustrate certain turning points and key scenes within a story arc requires I be economical with the images and extract as much as possible from each one, which in turn means adding in certain elements, many of which I will have to create myself de novo.  Hence in this (as yet unfinished and incomplete) series three of the four images presented here are clearly derived from the same original.  

 The series starts with all those familiar elements, the straitjacket, the uniformed nurse and the nurse, governess or wardress's thin, whippy punishment cane close to hand.  But in its  modest little way the series seeks to go further - and in attempting that I think it well illustrates something of my approach and the different elements I seek to incorporate within my writing.  In this case the story is caught in the act of developing beyond the usual accepted concept of straitjacket bondage within the context of institutionalised corporal punishment and discipline.  For example, as the scene develops it gradually becomes clear that it is actually the humble window (which has taken me the best part of a day to get right, in its various incarnations incidentally) which is destined to take centre stage, upstaging the straitjacket, the uniformed nurse with her cane, the padded cell per se and the rest.  But, you see, this was not necessarily the case at the outset when the original image was conceived (based on a moment in one of my books) but it is nevertheless the direction towards which the imagery has since propelled me; that was the way it worked, and still works.  I am absolutely knackered and even these few images still need a lot of work - especially when it comes to the speech balloons, which have proved cumbersome, ugly and difficult to work with.

One glaring error can be seen  in the very first frame.  In subsequent frames I have adopted a convention of rendering the nurse's speech in white to help differentiate it, but have neglected to make the appropriate changes in that first frame - damn!

Anyway, Needless to say I'm laying these out to dry here to garner comments, tips, criticisms and ideas.  So don't be shy, get writing / emailing! 

But, hey; I am happy... I think...Hang on though; the sun's gone in again.......... 

A New Cover for Institutionalised Volume 1 - Beyond the Stanford Experiment. And One or Two Other Ventures

Anyone notice a change occurring in the sidebar over the last couple of days?  No? Well, it's a small thing I suppose but I finally got around to redesigning the rather bland, dire, green cover of INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 1 - BEYOND THE STANFORD EXPERIMENT.  And the sidebar image now links to the LULU PDF version (I discovered it went to the print version by default - a little expensive, and few people seem to purchase the print versions of books nowadays).

I have used one of the images my friend and artistic collaborator Angela Fox created for me as the basis; originally created for what was hoped to become an illustrated version of  INSTITUTIONALISED Volume3: A CONTINUUM OF DISCIPLINE it is, I think, just as relevant to certain events which unfold within the first couple of volumes.  The foreground image of the stern nurse or wardress with her trusty punishment cane is of course one of my photo manipulations and helps preserve the 'ToynTanen identity' as well as differentiate it from being one of Angela Fox's own book covers.  To the background computer art I have added a 'no talking' sign, the idea being to help further reinforce the sense of dark, heavy oppression and total domination I was looking for (which is also why I have kept the image rather on the dark and shadowy side - having added a background 'drop shadow' to my nurse and cane figure for that very purpose).

On another tack:  I have today created a Toyntanen Flickr (Google my name on Fickr) account to hold my book cover art as well as various other images from my collections that have inspired and influenced me over the years - and also to link to Angela Fox's work, so helping stitch our two bodies of work together for increased search engine visibility.  I have also added new sections to the new BEYOND THE BARRED WINDOW website, uploading over 300 images to a new section added to 'Women's Workwear' entitled 'Nylon Overalls - General' (although not all are nylon, and there are some duplicates from other sections / pages) and an incredible (and near-unmanageable) 701 images to the 'Nurse's Uniforms' section under the newly-added banner of... you've guessed it...'Nurse's Uniforms - General'.  In addition to all this I am gradually improving the website's pictorial links, upgrading each to open in a new page or browser tab and am nearing the end of that phase of the project, so please let me know of any link (other than the pull-down menus) you encounter which does not open as a new page / tab; ta!  Much obliged!

Finally:  I have begun the work of annotating a few of the more complete / polished images Angela Fox created (some of which I have since modified) for what was planed to have become an illustrated version of A CONTINUUM OF DISCIPLINE.  I am doing this for inclusion on another individual's website (of which more next time, or when the project is complete) as an extension of a few things I have started out creating on Deviant Art.  But it has occurred to me that the result could be very much like a truncated version of how an illustrated or graphic novel version would have appeared, if I put my mind to it and put in a little extra work - and if nothing else it could provide a sort of side-by-side reader's companion, albeit from within the website within which it will be hosted.  Interim sketchy ideas you should be able to view on my website as I go along from time to time.  Whether I use captions, speech bubbles or some combination of both is at present the subject of experiment.

Every Good Book Deserves a Favour (With apologies to The Moody Blues)… And a Channel 5 UK Shocker!

...And in this case that means a cover! .  So I've designed two!  Been up most of the night doing it too; went to bed at nearly 4 AM and was up and about at twenty minutes to eight.  I hope to get a nap during the day, but probably won't get it!  Not that I'm saying it is necessarily that good; but I do try!  The differences are kind of subtle (other than the text colour, which is glaringly different - and the bars of course; but you gotta have bars for goodness sake!).  Now I wonder which bit Amazon et al will reject this time? 

The stained-glass used at the rear and also as shadowing towards the front and right hand side I photographed in a church on the Isle of Wight (I won't say which, because folk can get ,uppity’ about such things).  The cane I created using the software package, 'The Gimp' and the bars are something I created long ago for the very first book.     I always find this stage exciting - and the title is so current right now.  The UK media seems to have been full of stuff and commentary about the infamous Magdalen laundries these last few months, largely (and quite rightly, in the real world) from a standpoint of outrage (which may leave me open to attack – but one has to be brave; how was I to know when I started writing the thing that there’d be all this renewed interest?) but there have been one or two items almost bordering on the voyeuristic. 

Why, even as recent as last night the UK’S Channel Five TV station was showing a drama entitled ‘Jack Taylor: The Magdalen Martyrs’ (see pic, bottom of page) in which the eponymous private investigator “is hired by the daughter of a former inmate of the infamous Magdalen Laundries to find the identity of a former nun [who had been] notorious for taking pleasure in torturing the girls”.  I hadn’t known it was going to be on, I hadn’t heard of it (nor the presumed Jack Taylor series – I don’t know) and the other half was hovering about – and she knows what I write about, so I felt inhibited from watching it for fear of the inevitable uncomfortable sneering and sniping comments.

I did however initially blunder across the aforementioned programme while channel-hopping when the significant other happened to be out of the room and so snatched a few all-too-fleeting moments before briskly toggling back to ‘Time Team’ or whatever it was I had been watching (You see?  Like being hit around the cranium with a baseball bat!  All else has been erased from my memory!).  I have no idea about the rest of the goings-on and happenings, but the scene I blundered into made me go all ‘gooey’ inside (bloody hell, that sounds sooo camp!  Note to self:  And so does saying ‘sooo’ like that!).  There was something terribly familiar about that scene; as if I wrote it myself (and I’m sure I have done something similar – and if not, why not?  I’ll have to check – it’s worrying!).  And I know there’ll be many who will simply shrug and just not get what all the fuss is about – after all, nothing much was happening in those few seconds, action-wise.  It was just a few moments of dialog between a stern-looking and clearly very domineering young nun and a pouting, pretty late-teen girl, while another bedraggled-looking specimen looked on.  But what a piece of dialog – never mind a picture painting a thousand words, this was a few words sketching myriad (that’s 10,000 by the reckoning of the ancients by the way) images!  Basically – from memory, and with shaking hand – the nun was saying something along the lines of: 

“..I suppose you’ll soon be free of this place.  I suppose you’re thinking about meeting someone, getting married, raising a family, being free to do as you chose and that you’ll wipe all this from your memory, forget all about it…”  The nun pauses, tapping the girl on the forehead as she continues:  “…but you see, you’ve let me get in there, let me get inside your head…” 

I don’t know about you but I was just thinking “OMG!”  There’s just so much more ‘mileage’ to be had, and read into, such psychological aspects and insights than can be got from out-and-out corporal punishment-style brutality.  And that one simple scene speaks volumes about just how sadistic the woman really is; far more so than if she had been depicted at that moment dealing out a blood-curdling thrashing with the birch or the cane or what have you.  But I still can’t shake that unsettling sense of Déjà vu, as if I bloody wrote the thing!

A quick update:  I have not only been F-ing around with book covers and Photoshop; I have also done a lot of work on the website, featuring both my own work and that of my artistic collaborator and fellow writer, Angela Fox.  I have done a little work on Flikr (as an alto ego – coz I can’t be bothered to set up a new account) and added quite a lot to my Deviant Art account, featuring yet more artwork by Angela Fox, some adapted and manipulated by yours truly, originally destined for a mooted illustrated version of INSTITUTIONALISED 3, and some stuff of my own (largely book covers – though I have also added some notes to some of the Angela Fox images.. There is some great stuff on Deviant Art by various folk, far more talented in the art department than I, so why not pay it a visit?  I believe Angela Fox herself has now got an account set up on Deviant Art though I’m not sure she has uploaded anything yet, but why not Google her to check anyway?  I'll be installing a link to her Angela Fox's own website in the right hand sidebar in due course, so keep 'em peeled! (eyes)

Alice Under Discipline 2 - Alice And The New Magdalene Laundries - Now Out On LULU!

 Hi folks!  Just a quick note to say that Alice Under Discipline Book 2: Alice and the New Magdalene Laundries, is now officially out on LULU (click to visit).  Unofficially it has been knocking around there for a couple of weeks but I didn't really want to make an announcement until I had had a little more feedback and had time to correct any typos which might have crept past my trusty proof readers.  To be perfectly honest I have subtitled it on the front cover  'Alice and the New Magdalene Laundries' in the unashamed hope of feeding off some of the renewed interest in the British media of late over those infamous establishments.  The slightly longer subtitle which occurs on LULU only of  '...or the tale of a modern lass caned and spanked over the knee of governess, nurse and nun' is all about catching the eye of LULU's search engine.   

Only published as a PDF download at present it has yet to be furnished with a cover or marketing image, but when I have time to do a little Artwork I'll make it available as a paperback and then offer it to my ebook / epub publishers, Andrews UK LTD.  When it comes to cover art I think good ol' Louis Malteste has come up trumps again here.  And as his stuff is out of copyright I might use one of his pieces as a sort of ghostly background image as I did before on the front cover of the original Alice Under Discipline Book One.  Yes, I am well aware that the cover was banned (well, rejected at least) by Amazon or one of the other outlets and  that Andrews UK LTD was therefore forced to employ one of their stock covers for that particular title.  But the problem was never about the Louis Malteste background spanking imagery, nor the stern-looking cane-wielding nurse figure; rather their gripe was over the hand in the foreground and the depiction of proffered pharmaceuticals (the drug capsules in its palm).  A similar consideration applies to this work - right - which is by one Léon Roze.