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WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts

9oct26

Published October 9, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Autumn is creeping in step by step. Colder starts to the day, now. The managed retreat begins. Played yesterday with Dirty Little Zine for making tiny photobooks to clip into notebooks. Dropped a frankly absurd amount of money on a shipment of magazines from Magculture.

TODAY:

ACCESSIONS:

Just received this in the post from Mia Wolff:

OPERATIONS: all the things. My to-do list is ridiculous.
STATUS: awaiting a delivery of stationery items and peering unhappily at my bank balance
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).

I saw a straight razor and strop, plus a toothbrush stuck in a half pint of vodka. Stalin brushed his teeth with vodka.

LISTENING: right now, Night Tracks and also episode 22 of podcast Did Somebody Say…Ambient?
PAPERWORK: switched to the Pigma Micron 03 after having two brand new 0.7mm Energels crap out on me in a row with fat lines, skipped strokes, wet inks with bad flow. When did Energels get bad?

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: ai ambient art magazines newsletters podcast war
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morning computer one by one

Published October 9, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I’ve sometimes thought that that’s why I became a painter, because I have all these pictures inside me, yes, so many pictures that they’re a kind of agony, yes, it hurts me when they keep popping up again and again, like visions almost, and in all kinds of contexts, and I can’t do anything about it, the only thing I can do is paint, yes, try to paint away these pictures that are lodged inside me, there’s nothing to do but paint them away, one by one

THE OTHER NAME, Jon Fosse

NOMAS 23

Mars’ oddest cloud: the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. 

Roberta Gentry:

“While the idea of God has received much attention from philosophers and progressive theologians, its counterpart, the dark figure of the Evil One, has been much neglected”. So begins The History of the Devil, wherein this perceived wrong is to be righted by Paul Carus, a self-described “theologian of science”.

Although an unfamiliar name now, at the end the nineteenth century Carus was hailed for his attempts to “conciliate science and religion”. He also played a key role in the introduction of Buddhist thought to the United States, to which he emigrated from his native Germany in the mid-1880s.

THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL AND THE IDEA OF EVIL

Tags: books quote Mars occult COVERS
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8oct26

Published October 8, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Went out to dinner last night. The first autumn menu at our restaurant. Venison three ways, a potato and black pudding terrine, squash puree.

Just a placeholder today.


READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).
DRINK: Pocketful Of Stones Cornish whisky, which I can’t link to because the website’s cookie-permissions panel won’t go away and everything is broken

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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7oct26

Published October 7, 2026 by Warren Ellis

This is the face of a mancub who blames me specifically for the drop in temperature and the loss of the sun.

I have sympathy: it’s dark and rainy, and so is my mood.

THE RUMOURS that emerged sounded like the opening of a thriller. A young woman working in a Siberian research lab supposedly breaks a test tube containing a lethal plague pathogen. She is dead within 48 hours. Authorities race to contain the situation. The questions outnumber the answers, breeding suggestions of conspiracy. The fears may prove unfounded: there may not have been a leak at Russia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute. But the world can be forgiven for its panicked interest.

Not least because that is pretty much how Annie Jacobsen’s BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO begins.

This is my porn now.

STATUS: it’s an offline day – work and housework during day, out tonight
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).

I said, “Have you ever had a hotfoot, Reggie?” Reggie laughed. His sidemen laughed. They went say what? in sync. I poured the bottle of scotch on his shoes. I flicked my lighter and dropped it on his feet. His shoes and socks immolated. His trouser cuffs torched. He screeched. I smelled scorched flesh. He flailed for a water glass. I tossed it out of reach. His trumpet man snatched at a belt piece. I caught his hand and pinned it flat to the table. I grabbed a steak knife and stabbed through flesh and tabletop. The blade severed bones and went in half hilt deep.


LISTENING: KINETIC VOID, various artists (“maximalist ambient”)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: ambient med notebooks war
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6oct26

Published October 6, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Just proofed the complete GHOST DRIVE STATION and I am stunned at what Lordess Foudre has accomplished. The joy of making comics is not in the sales and the release and the grind of getting a piece done – it’s seeing what your collaborator has made of your work, and the transcendent object they have turned it into. That miracle of your thoughts being elevated by an artistic mind never, ever goes away.

OPERATIONS: my to-do list fills an entire index card. Already knocked off the rewritten W8 form I needed to submit to a television network, which took forever. My brain hates forms and my whole body hates Adobe Acrobat. Now I am across two scripts and hope to land one by 5pm,
STATUS: And, yes, I have folded index cards into the daily system.
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).
LISTENING: The Snake, the Frog and the Argument by Dolphins Into The Future
LAST WATCHED: caught some of an old Anita Brookner programme on 100 great paintings. All new tv looks and sounds the same to me now.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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3oct26

Published October 3, 2026 by Warren Ellis

So DIGGER was… interesting. I avoided all reviews before I went, so I was watching the film clean. In case anyone’s reading this who hasn’t seen the film yet, I will simply say that the trailers for the film are not the film.

I think it’s built to be watched twice. The first time, the twists hit you and you grapple with disappointment and your patience is tested. I want to watch it again with more attention to the details, while I’m not fidgeting in my chair, my investment in the first thirty minutes atomised by the first big twist.

I’ll probably right some proper notes on it in a month or two. Right now, I don’t want to break it for anyone reading this who plans to see it. I will say that the film is gorgeously shot and designed, and that in no world was this ever intended as Oscar bait for Tom Cruise. It’s just too odd for that, and he knew it.

And you will have to be quick, because I have the feeling that it is going to make zero dollars and will be accelerated towards PVOD sharpish.

Tags: film
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2oct26

Published October 2, 2026 by Warren Ellis

So hear me out: Handmade smoked cheddar, charcoal crackers, quince paste, organic Transylvanian walnuts, organic figs, and a small glass of Muscat Petits Grains Passerillés is actually the perfect dessert course.

I’m off to see DIGGER in a minute, and have avoided ALL the reviews and takes so that I can go in clean. As previously noted, the trailers have a strong DR STRANGELOVE vibe, and I’m curious to see if that holds. Iñárritu is far from a bad director, Jez Butterworth worked on the story and the cast is strong, including really nice guy Riz Ahmed and the brilliant Jesse Plemons.

Still getting tropical nights here. In October!

PRE-ORDERED: BOOK OF CAROLS, Sarah Davachi

OPERATIONS: just got a script out the door. Done refits on the newsletter template for the stuff that’s coming. Tomorrow is a scriptwriting spurt – there’s a personal job hanging that I think I can finally nail together in a single long session.
STATUS: first week of full reset has been hard, but starting to show benefits slowly.
READING: READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+). I also read 50 pages of FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE  and a little bit of a Jon Fosse book. Been thinking a lot about Fosse this week.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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1oct26

Published October 1, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike has been taken to hospital after an attempt to execute her by two lethal injections failed, her lawyer says.

Her legal team filed an emergency motion to halt the convicted murderer’s execution as it was happening, saying: “Ms Pike has lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat and is audibly snoring.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8r6rjdvlx6o

They killed you twice and you’re snoring.

Yesterday was an utter failure. The deli was closed because I was given the wrong opening times on Monday. So I went to a pub that will go unnamed. And could not obtain a glass of wine because the fortysomething chimp behind the bar appeared to not know what wine was, showed me a bottle of vermouth and asked me if it was wine, looked at a cork in a bottle like it was insurmountable black magic, and then laughed and informed me he didn’t have “one of those things” to open the bottle with.

Get a hobby and let that guide your style choices. Fishing? Gardening? Skateboarding? All of these things have style codes and legacies that you can pull from and use to inform what you wear and how you wear it. Being online is not a hobby, so don’t want to dress like a guy who looks at posts a lot. |

It is now nearly 3pm, and I have spent the last three hours wandering around town, buying cheese and meat, drinking wine and coffee and chatting with people.

OPERATIONS: newsletter is already locked and in the scheduler.
STATUS:


READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+). I also read 50 pages of FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE 

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: crime
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30sep26

Published September 30, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Big sky on Monday night.

I have fresh herbs, so I’m making herb salts this week. I also have a bulb of black garlic so I can knock up a jar of black garlic butter for herself.

Next up, making a jar of cold ginger tea. This is easy: take three or four inches of ginger, chop it up, juice a lemon, throw it all in a jug, pour a pint of boiling water over it, wait fifteen minutes, stir a couple of teaspoons of honey into it, strain, cool and jar.

Right. I’m off to buy cheese. Will do this properly tomorrow.

OPERATIONS: figured out a script step last night, so I’m working that through today while also figuring out the progression on another script, and thinking about how to extend the working days. Just loaded all of COLLIDE 01 into the newsletter for Sunday. Had a weird work-related half-revelation late last night, and am eyeing a couple of new notebooks (including the Roterfaden) hungrily.
STATUS: watching the weather radar so I can leave the house once the next band of rain passes. It is weirdly hot. 20C when I went to bed at midnight last night.
READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+). I also read 70 pages of FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE Monday night, and that book is so insane it may end up being a newsletter entry or several posts here.
LISTENING:

I’ve been low-online long enough that I have missed buying some CDs that I may have wanted, including a new Laura Cannell that went up for pre-order on the 24th and appears to have sold out instantly, which annoyed me.


DRINK: Birds and Bees summer ale, as it’s still warm here!

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: food
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