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You can find out anything you might want to know about it on Etsy. So I'll keep this brief. It is basically one of my Moleskines condensed into a little zine. Covers and all. I'll just reveal a few of the nine drawings that feature, the rest will be a surprise for those of you who order one or two or five (!). If you follow this blog, though, all of the drawings will be familiar.

To anyone who has already ordered they'll be shipped over the weekend. I'm so excited to be sending them out around the world. I like to imagine you sitting on buses looking through them. I don't know why buses specifically, it just seems appropriate.

Just a reminder, too, if you order before Christmas Eve will be put into a draw to win THIS DRAWING. Thanks folks.

Buy my Molezine HERE.

Last thing (I can't do brief), any Brits who'd like to buy the Molezine direct from me, email me and I'll tell you how to do that; andreajoseph24 [at] btinternet [dot] com.

Until I actually have my zine printed, assembled and in my grubby little paws I've decided to take some pre orders (just found out you can do that on Etsy), so here's a few things about it. A few things you might want to know.

. This is not only the cover to one of my Moleskines but also the cover to my zine.
. It features a Moo sticker by Blanca Gomez, in the top right hand corner, and some lovely stamps.
. The zine is a small, but cute, A6 (105 x 148 mm).
. It has 9 drawings. All are from my Moleskines.
. Some of which have been my most Faved on Flickr.
. There's a couple of doodley ones.
. This is one of them;

. It comes in a recycled envelope and will be sent to you in a Jiffy bag or box.
. It is a really great stocking filler. Or a Secret Santa gift (slick, ain't I?).
. The word s**t does appear in one of the drawings (as in "no s**t, Sherlock"), just in case you are offended by that. It is very tiny, though.
. You might need a magnifying glass to read some of the writing.
. You can take advantage of a special offer if you pre order.
. This is another of the drawings;

. I don't want to show all of the drawings because I think it'll spoil the surprise.
. I can't think of anything else.
. Except that everybody who orders before Christmas Eve will be entered into a draw to WIN the original drawing from the last post. A little Christmas present for you guys. Order more than one zine and your name will be thrown into the hat that many times.

Last thing to say, I suppose, is that I really hope that this the first of a series. Now get your asses over to ETSY!

So, I've been a little distracted recently. Partly because I've been working on something that I've been wanting to do for ages. I wasn't going to say anything about it quite yet, I don't want to tempt fate, but I'm really rubbish at keeping secrets.

OK, if you insist I'll tell you. Next week I hope to have a little (teeny tiny little) zine for sale. It includes a few of my favourite drawings from my Moleskines. They seemed to be some of your Faves, too.

This drawing is, in a way, a promotional piece for the zine. All of the things in this illo are clues to the drawings that will appear in the zine (does that make ANY sense?). Maybe you can spot some of them amongst THIS LOT.

Or, just come back in a few days time to see some photos of my very first zine. If, of course, I haven't jinxed it, by letting the cat out of the bag, before it's actually been printed. Yikes. WHY did you make me tell you?

Lauren, Publicity Assistant

We were thrilled when Brave New Words won the Hugo Award. And we were overwhelmed with excitement when Jeff Prucher, freelance lexicographer and editor for the Oxford English Dictionary’s science fiction project, revisited the blog with his picks of words that may seem to come from science, but really originate in science fiction. Now that Brave New Words is available in paperback, we’ve asked Jeff to write for us yet again. Below are his picks of mainstream words with fannish pedigrees, as coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.

Previously, I discussed words coined in works of science fiction that one might think came from the sciences instead. This time, I’m going to look at words coined by science fiction (and fantasy) fans which have entered the broader lexicon. Specifically, these are terms that are part of what is sometimes called fanspeak, the lingo of science fiction and fantasy fandom. This is probably not an exhaustive list, since definitions of what constitutes fanspeak, and what “entering the broader lexicon” actually means are open to different interpretations. I present these in no particular order:

1. Fanzine. This is one of the most successful terms coined by SF fans, and has gone from referring specifically to amateur periodicals relating (however vaguely) to science fiction and fantasy, to periodicals for fans of just about anything you care to name. The term has been around since at least 1940 in SF fandom, and since at least the 1960s in general use. (The earliest clear citation I’ve found for a non-SF usage is from 1968, which is almost certainly too late.)

2. Fanmag. This is another (of many) term that SF fans used to describe fanzines. It’s less common (I haven’t seen it in any mainstream dictionaries), but has also been used for non-SF zines.

3. Which leads me to zine, the other big success story. Zine was originally just a synonym of fanzine, but sometime in the late Twentieth Century, it was adopted to describe amateur publications of all sorts, not just those limited to one fandom or another, and an entire subculture has grown up around the publication of these zines. Zine can also be used as a suffix, to denote a particular type of zine (such as newszine, a zine that publishes primarily news, or mimeozine, a zine that is produced with a mimeograph machine). SF fans used the suffix profligately, and most coinages have stayed within fanspeak, but a few of the -zine words have seeped into wider zine culture as well, notably perzine (short for personalzine, a zine published by a single person, and often containing personal, journal-like content) and crudzine (a cruddy zine).

4. Completism. The desire to possess all of a set of something. Someone afflicted with completism is a completist. These originally referred primarily to the collection of books and magazines (which is pretty much what there was available to collect in the early days of SF fandom), and is now applied to comics, music, you name it.

5. -con. Another suffix. This shows up in the names of conventions and conferences. In use in SF fandom since at least 1942, this spread to related fandoms such as comics and role-playing games, and is now reasonably common in the names of other types of conventions, particularly computer and tech-related ones.

6. ish. An issue (of a magazine or fanzine). My own family has used this shortening for years, and we were completely oblivious to the existence of SF fandom when I was growing up, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this has an SFnal origin. What hasn’t made it into the broader lexicon is the use of ish as a combining form, in words like nextish, lastish, even thish (the next, last, and current issues of a magazine or fanzine, respectively).

7. fan fiction. Most people outside of the fanfic community probably think (if they think about it at all) that fan fiction is the exclusive domain of SF and fantasy fans. While this was once true, it’s certainly not true any more, and both the name and some of the associated terminology of fan fiction originated in SF fandom. Some of these associated terms are slash (fiction that depicts a sexual relationship between two characters) and Mary Sue (a character that acts out a blatant wish-fulfillment of the author or a story featuring such a character), both of which originated in Star Trek fandom. Curiously, fan fiction was originally used to refer to amateur fiction written about fans themselves, rather than amateur fiction written using the characters or settings of an existing work.

8. sci-fi. This is probably the most contentious word in the fannish vocabulary. It was coined as a simple shortening of science fiction by Forrest J Ackerman, by analogy to hi-fi, and originally had no particular connotations. The term eventually came to be viewed with opprobrium by many fans, however, probably in large part due to its perceived overuse by outsiders, especially the mainstream media. It can sometimes serve as a shibboleth, as well, and in some contexts will identify the user as an outsider. (Despite this, many fans have always happily used the term sci-fi; as I said, it’s contentious.) The term has also undergone reanalysis in the SF community, and can now be used to refer specifically to bad SF (especially movies and television shows); in this sense it is usually pronounced “skiffy.”