I think everyone here who knows me will agree that for the last seven or eight years I have straddled the journals section like some sort of colossus, casting a long shadow that can never be equalled.
Right. More like this kind of shadow...
Yeah, well, what can't be argued is that I've written a lot of crap. I mean, a
lot. Some of it was even good. I claim credit for having kicked life back into what was, at the time, a pretty struggling section and revitalising interest in it, for a certain amount of years (the Golden Age of the Journal?) as people who had never considered writing a journal suddenly decided they'd give it a go. It was, you may or may not be interested to know, me who convinced Unknown Soldier to write a journal, which gave us the superlative
Pounding Decibels: A Hard and Heavy History, acknowledged as one of the most authoritative and comprehensive amateur sources available on the subject of hard rock and heavy metal. Though US no longer posts here, his legacy lives on, and I like to think I had a small part in that.
I was also the first, I believe, to attempt more than one journal at a time - leading to the dysfunctional and ever-expanding family I deal with now - the first to look outside music for my inspiration, with my television journal, and now write about everything from movies to history and mythology to comics (yes Batty, I know it was your idea first). In my wake others have followed, creating journals about video games, drugs, travel, beer and a host of other things, and again I like to think I was something of a trailblazer for this explosion of creativity.
But writing so much can be a two-edged sword: quality above quantity is the old adage, and while I wouldn't necessarily consider much if anything I wrote to be of poor quality, some of it is undoubtedly better than others. Having so many journals now, and more to come, it's inevitable that some of the better work may have been missed by some of you.
Well, now it's your chance to miss it all over again in
The Very Best of Trollheart
8 Years A-Journalling
2011 - 2019
I'm sure I don't need to explain what's going on here. I'll be sifting through my journals and choosing the best, funniest, most interesting or weird entries, and reproducing them here. I'll also be reprinting some of the best comments and some of the many knock-down rows that took place within my journals.
There'll be album reviews, features, films, TV shows, gods and demons, exploration, graphic novels and comic reviews, and a whole lot more besides. Hey, with over 25 journals and almost a million views combined, there's a lot to choose from!
So to paraphrase this guy
Come with me, and you'll be in a world of pure Trollheartation.
Or, you know, don't.
But if you miss something good
