Alan Moore is one of the three writers I feel have affected me and my writing the most, at least as an adult – the others being Nick Cave and David Milch. For all three, this is partly through their work, and partly through how they think and speak about their work. Each of these creators has a deliberateness about their work that comes through in interviews and talks, and I’m indebted to all of them for the way I think about my writing.

With Moore, Watchmen, From Hell and Providence are the comics I reread the most, but they’re a small fraction of all of his books that I love. If those three didn’t exist, then Miracleman, Top Ten, Tom Strong, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Halo Jones and Promethea would be enough for a writer to qualify as a favourite. And that’s not even counting Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem, the latter of which is, for my money, one of the best novels of the 21st century thus far.

So you might say I have been waiting quite a long time for Illuminations to be published. Moore’s first prose short story collection – this is an event for me.

Rather than simply barreling through it, I thought I’d read one story at a time (in one day or longer, since some of these go on a bit – there’s a whole mid-length novel stuffed into this), and note down my thoughts as I get done with each one, starting with the first story on the day of release.