How I spent my Thanksgiving vacation

Gobble gobble, turkeys

Hey,

Wanna know what the Pilgrims didn’t do on the first Thanksgiving?

Sail back to England to have dinner with their family.

Cassius Clay here, and if you’re an American, I hope you had a truly fantastic holiday last week.

(And if you’re not, I hope your Thursday rocked.)

As for me, I broke a longstanding tradition of not going anywhere for Thanksgiving and packed up the family for a long car ride to visit relatives in Minnesota.

And you know what? I’m darn glad I did. We had a great time, and we even got to see our first snow of the season.

(But I’m with Lucy. It was a little early for my tastes.)

Sometime between Kansas City and Des Moines, some important news broke courtesy of AMP Comics publisher David Byrne:

I’m thrilled that PRODIGAL SON is batting leadoff for AMP. One of the many things I’m grateful for this year is that David and the crew over there are getting this book wider distribution.

If you backed the Kickstarter a while back, rest assured that your copies have a different trade dress and smaller print run, so they are indeed collectibles.

But if you missed it, you can pre-order using the code below and snag issue #1 when it hits comic shops on February 19!

Anyway, once we reached our destination, I spent my Thanksgiving vacation like most of you: watching football, going to see WICKED, and gorging myself on turkey and stuffing.

I also used the downtime to read some great books:

OK, I didn’t read this whole book, but I tore through the centerpiece, “What We Can Know About Thunderman,” the Magus of Northampton’s brutal takedown of the comic book industry.

The prose can be a bit challenging at times—like a beat generation writer, Mr. Moore sure does love language—but it’s worth sticking it out. Half the fun is trying to figure out the barely-disguised real life identities of the characters and then Googling some of the true stories that inspired it.

And there’s at least one scene towards the end that is so brutal and heartbreaking, I may never stop thinking about how brilliant it is…

So, if I liked it so much, why didn’t I read any of the other stories?

Because I was dying to get back to my new favorite series:

I may have mentioned before how Evie and the Helsings’ Steve Bryant turned me on to this series, which I’ve burned through this year.

Mick Herron is a hell of a storyteller, and what he’s accomplished with the Slough House novels is nothing short of extraordinary. I’d say it’s “James Bond meets The Office,” but I’m not sure that does it justice.

A lot of people I know swear by the show on AppleTV+, and it’s very well done—Gary Oldman is phenomenal as Jackson Lamb—but I much prefer the books.

BAD ACTORS is the latest of the bunch, and it’s gonna be a long wait for the new one next year. I’m hoping Santa Claus brings me the prequel novel THE SECRET HOURS to help pass the time.

(Are you listening Santa?)

Since coming back from break, I’ve:

• learned that NIGHTMARE THEATER 3-D is shipping out to Bloodline HQ soon

• prepped for DREAMQUEST 2 to arrive from the printer

• been hard at work on the next installment of CARMILLA UNBOUND with Devilish David Schrader

Plus: prepping for some first quarter launches for DEADSKINS! and BLAZING BLADE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

2025 is shaping up to be a great year. But first… we all have to survive Christmas Vacation.

At least we’ve got each other?

- Clay