Reports Of My Blog-Death...

... have been non-existent. Nevertheless, I can't help but notice it's been a while since I blogged. Nothing wrong with that, I'm saying - if you don't have anything you fancy blogging about, don't blog. Good philosophy, no?

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I'm plenty active on there, tweeting like some kind of coked-up chaffinch. There's no doubt that Twitter has dented blogging's alluring, in favour of daily, hourly micro-blogs - and, to a large extent, led much of the blog-based writing community to up-sticks and communicate there instead. I'm not concerned about that - as long as there's a community, and as long as people are also sitting down at actual physical pub tables to talk about the stuff they can't talk about online (or, at least, shouldn't) I'm not too bothered about the online platform.

That said, I do love Twitter. I'd try and persuade the unconvinced, but Lucy Vee has done a perfectly good job of that in her detailed blog-post The Twit's Guide To Twitter. All I will say, is that Twitter is tailor-made for writers working from home. A whole community, live on your screen, ready to offer whatever you want it to offer. Networking, fun, advice, information, friendship, outrage, displacement activities a-go-go. You can also start your own lists of Twitterers. So far, I've made just the one - a list of Scriptwriters, which can be found and followed here. There are 82 scripters on it right now - want to be included? Tweet me.

So. What else have I been doing? Well, Doctor Who returns to our screens on April 3, when fantastic new episode The Eleventh Hour kickstarts the show's first full series in two years. There's a great new Doctor in the shape of Matt Smith (doubters, believe!) and an equally excellent new companion Amy Pond (played by the ludicrously hot Karen Gillan). As a result, I've failed to resist the undoubted allure of more journalistic work than usual, conducting a set-visit for Doctor Who Magazine and several interviews, including two big ones (who could they possibly be with?) for the next issue, out April 1.

That's not to say I've neglected my own fiction. Hell, no. I wrote a new horror feature in two gloriously driven weeks, and look forward to returning to that for a second draft. It's a dark and unpleasant piece of work, but explores a theme which fascinates me. Aside from that, I've mainly been pitching. Storylines, ideas, this 'n' that. One of those has become a commission, which I'm really pleased and excited about... although in the time-honoured blog tradition, I can't talk about it yet.

Over in comedy sketchville, work has continued on the fourth series of Radio 4's Recorded For Training Purposes, which has been, and continues to be, bagloads of fun and a proper learning experience.

Ghost Writer, my 24-minute film shot by the splendid TAPS organisation, is edited and almost ready to be shown to the world via some medium or other - most likely the net. Once that happens, I'll blog about the shoot. Also the edit, because unlike in TV-World, I was given the chance to give my own notes on the first edit, in conjunction with director Guy Slater.

Generally speaking, this year, one new thought keeps coming back to me: what you want to write is more important than the medium for which you write it. Since my Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat novel was published in 2005, I've penned Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield short stories for Big Finish hardback collections, but haven't given much further thought to prose. I'm starting to feel differently now. If you can do both script and prose, then why not do both? I don't think it necessarily means sacrificing focus. Beyond those, as well, I'm starting to turn my attention to comic strips which are another very viable and fun option for a genre-leaning writer like me.

So. Tough times for everyone from the work-hungry writer to the beleaguered BBC itself. Yet plenty of sandpits in which to play. Buckets and spades at the ready? Let's dive in.

Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat

As it's lucky lucky Friday The 13th, and the remake of Friday The 13th hits cinemas today, it's surely a fine excuse for me to gaze wistfully back at my own small contribution to Friday The 13th history. In October 2005, Black Flame published my first novel, Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat, which was a moment of considerable joy. I've always loved the Friday The 13th movies in all their gory glory, so to write a novel officially licensed and sanctioned by New Line was quite literally a dream come true. In fact, I probably still haven't absorbed it today.

The previous year, at an SFX convention, I met the lovely Rebecca 'Bex' Levene for the first time. A fair few Doctor Who fans may recognise her name, as she edited the Virgin Who books for a while. Anyway, Bex tipped me off that Black Flame had acquired the license for various horror franchises, including A Nightmare On Elm Street, Final Destination and... Friday The 13th. I immediately grabbed the poor girl's shoulders and forcefully shook her until she gave me the information I demanded.

Then I made contact with Jay Slater, then senior commissioning editor at Black Flame, who would become a very good friend. He was also a fellow film journalist, so we hit it off nicely. He suggested that I come up with six ideas for a Friday The 13th novel, only amounting to a paragraph each at this stage. So I did that, and came back to him. He picked one, and gave me the go-ahead to write a page outline. After that, I wrote a chapter-by-chapter breakdown (which would later change a fair deal) and a sample chapter. These were then sent to New Line for approval. I sweated for a couple of months before the green light finally flickered on. Hooray. It felt like an achievement for a guy whose only previous published fiction had been the short story Home in Cherry TCK's collection Deadly Strangers, and some other shorts for magazines like Forum, which tended to... uh... focus on people having sex. I was particularly proud, back then, of In Space, No-One Can Hear You Cream.

Ahem. Anyway, the green light. That's when the real work began. The novel had to be 95,000 words. Which sounds a lot. And by God, it is. As much as I absolutely loved writing Hate-Kill-Repeat, I think that three-month process cemented my resolve to focus on scripts. What a slog. Not that scripting's a walk in the park, but at least you can feasibly write the rough first draft of a movie script in a week...

H-K-R's protagonist (or Final Girl, to use slasher movie parlance) was Halo Harlan, a pregnant trailer-trash girl with a no-good boyfriend, who naturally ends up running for her life from Jason Voorhees and going through seven shades of hell. Thrown into the mix were two FBI agents and a pair of serial killers. The latter duo, Norwood and Penelope Thawn, were especially good fun to write, being outwardly charming and cultured, but secretly hardline, hypocritical moral crusaders on a misguided mission to join forces with Jason Voorhees and cleanse the world of sin.

I consciously placed HKR on the existing F13th movie timeline, to please fans, myself included. It took place after my favourite sequel Friday The 13th VII: The New Blood, and rather ignored the fun-but-not-so-great follow-up Friday The 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. The title Hate-Kill-Repeat came from seeing a DVD sleeve for some low-budget monster movie which carried a tagline something like 'Mate. Feed. Destroy'. It was no doubt also influenced by Slipknot's early album Mate Feed Kill Repeat - guess I just started thinking about what Jason's equivalent routine would be. The 'Hate' part was important to me, as I was keen to keep Jason emotional (specifically, shot through with negative emotion), rather than some lumbering zombie. Kane Hodder's portrayal of Jason (from The New Blood to Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday) was for me by far the best, imbuing him with a real sense of livid rage. I haven't seen the new movie yet, but I hope new-guy Derek Mears delivers some of that.

I'm still very proud of HKR. I'm loathe to actually read it now, sadly, because I'm sure I'd notice plenty of clunky prose or scene choices which I'd write differently, even given its pulpy tone. Still, it certainly delivers on rapid-fire pacing, gore and body count (didn't take me long to lose count of the dead), and includes a big twist which I still love, along with a fan-pleasing, continuity-tying climax. Perhaps the biggest reward is that the majority of fans online seemed to really like it. It received generally good reviews on Amazon, and appeared to be thought of as one of the Friday series' better novels. Sadly, and somewhat inexplicably I have to say, the Friday novel line ended after five entries.

When I wrote the novel, I was already obsessed with screenwriting. While it was a great experience, it also cemented my resolve to make it in Scriptsville. Thankfully, the urge to write a novel hasn't returned, especially as my watchword for 2009 is "focus". Much less confusing when you know which medium you want to work in.

Here's hoping that the new Friday The 13th film will jump-start the franchise all over again. Jason Voorhees must not die. And you can't keep a good maniac down.

2005 interview with me about Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat

PDF of Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat's first chapter

Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat on Amazon UK

Friday The 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat on Amazon US

Official site of the Friday The 13th remake

Danny Stack on Friday The 13th superstition

My guide to 10 Great Slasher Movies

My interview with Adam Marcus, director of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday

My interview with Sean Cunningham, director of the original Friday The 13th

My interview with Harry Manfredini, who scored most of the Friday films