Release Schedule For The Rest Of 2010 & Beyond

Hello my little bowl of magic,

I haven't had material in a physical book for a fair while, since the Doctor Who story Christmas Every Day in Big Finish's Winter 2008 collection Short Trips: Christmas Around The World.  So it's nice that two actual-world, papery books have come along at once.  Namely...

THE BRILLIANT BOOK OF DOCTOR WHO 2011

A brand new official BBC tome!  It's like the Doctor Who annual you always wanted, full of fun and proper content for all ages.  I've written a smidgeon of fiction for it, in the shape of The Stone Totems.  This consists of a curator's plaque in The National Museum, attempting to explain what its Stone Dalek exhibits might actually be.  Oh dear lord, that was fun to write.  On top of that, I wrote a few articles about Daleks, Silurians, the TARDIS and all sorts.  Ridiculously exciting to work on a book edited by my former Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman and designed by Doctor Who Adventures' equally super-talented Paul Lang.  Buy it for Christmas, or better still, get someone to buy it for you.

BERNICE SUMMERFIELD: PRESENT DANGER

Bernice, for the uninitiated, is a former Doctor Who companion from various novels and audios.  She was created by that splendid fellow, Paul Cornell, and is a tad like a female Indiana Jones, being a feisty archaeologist.

I previously wrote the short story Prime Five for 2007's Bernice Summerfield: Missing Adventures hardback collection, so it was nice to return to the fold with a war story.  Edited by the excellent Eddie Robson, Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger is a collection of stories which document a one-sided war between mankind and the Deindum, who are a bunch of aggressive, paranoid, floaty lizard-headed bastards from the future.  

Rather than going for a full-blown war epic, out on the frontlines, I wanted to make the conflict more claustrophobic and personal.  So my story, The War Of Art, sees Bernice trapped in a crashed freighter with a bunch of refugees, menaced by a single Deindum.  There's fire, death, revenge, time travel and a 150-foot-high head.  Surely I can't say fairer than that.

THE REST OF 2010

Brilliantly, I seem to have to have something of a release schedule for the rest of the year. (A release schedule!  Loving those apples.) The two books already mentioned are available right now, and then I have one release per month until January.  Here's what's in store for the rest of the year...

TEMPTING FATES

Red Eye Pictures' teen web drama series, which I worked on last year, receives its full launch on November 1.  Three rather beguiling Fates arrive on a university campus, with a demented X Factor style mission to kill various people.  Professor Morgan Node is the poor bastard chosen to chaperone the Fates and make sure they don't misinterpret the various clues provided to them by the gods, and bump off the wrong target.  It's splendid black comedy fun, with some strong performances from the cast and more energy than you can shake a power generator at.  

SARAH JANE ADVENTURES: DEADLY DOWNLOAD

Wooo!  Especially now that The Sarah Jane Adventures' Series Four has kicked off (you can see the concluding part of Joe Lidster's The Nightmare Man story today on CBBC), it feels great to have this original audio story set for release on November 4 through BBC Audio.  Read by Elisabeth Sladen, it sees an alien attack on Earth, via the internet.  And good heavens, it's only £4.49 at Amazon UK!  I have yet to hear the finished recorded product, but can say I had a great time writing it and working with my great editor John Ainsworth, who really pushed for every last drop of value from the story.

DOCTOR WHO: THE DEMONS OF RED LODGE

Christ, what a way to end the year.  The Big Finish release The Demons Of Red Lodge & Other Stories will be issued on December 31!  Rest assured that I shall be partying with added vigour.  This is a release which I'm proud to share with three other writers, the first two of whom are good friends (I haven't had the pleasure of meeting the third): William Gallagher (who writes the story Doing Time), John Dorney (Special Features) and Rick Briggs (The Entropy Composition).  Four stories, starting with my own The Demons Of Red Lodge, and each featuring Peter Davison as The Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.  Yes!

2011: THE PLAN

Next year will see the release of me and Dan Turner's supernatural horror feature film, which was shot in August.  It does now have a title, but not one which we're going to reveal just yet.  Editing and post-production are coming along apace, and I couldn't be more excited about that.  Elsewhere in featuresville, I have two new horror specs written, which need honing before I can lead them to market with bells in their noses.

There's one Doctor Who-related release scheduled for next year, which I've already written but can't announce yet.  Can't bloody wait to do so, mind.  The already-announced Short Trips Big Finish audio-story The Lions Of Trafalgar (read by Peter Davison and starring his Doctor along with Nyssa and Tegan) will be released on one of the Short Trips CD collections, to be decided.  I'm working on at least two more things in that expansive Who universe, with a great deal of work in store between now and Christmas.  Feels like I'm building up the head of steam I've always wanted. 

You can't see this, but I'm doing a celebratory dance.  And thank God you can't see it.  Far too arousing.  Shouldn't have mentioned it at all, really.

Good day to you.

2009, 2010 & The Bare Bones Approach

Hello, you delightful shooting star. 2009, you say? I'd best jot down some thoughts on how it was for me, before it becomes all too tiny in the ol' rear-view mirror. I'll also throw in the most valuable writing lesson I learnt last year...

One of the best things about 2009 was sitting in a room, listening to Tony Jordan telling me I can write. As a writer you ideally have to be able to exist in a vacuum, tough as old hobnail boots, with no need for validation. But Christ Almighty, there's no harm in a bit if someone like Tony's offering. I was sitting in Red Planet Pictures' HQ, as part of a workshop laid on for Red Planet Prize finalists. My relationship with the company - and with a handful of finalists - remains ongoing, as ideas continue to fly. That's a good feeling.

Last year also gave me a nice sense of completion, when it came to my main new TV spec script. On January 1, 2009, I started work on a 30-minute one-off called Letters From Betsy. Truth be told, I poured a great deal of emotion into that script and almost certainly more of me than I'd devoted to a script before - probably with Tony Jordan's words ringing in my ears from the previous Screenwriters' Festival, about writing until your keyboard's covered in tears and snot. Nice.

Letters From Betsy underwent various drafts as the year went on, with untold changes made to direction, emphasis, character... you name it, although the core concept was always there. Indeed, Letters From Betsy's journey would only end when I'd clarified/reminded myself exactly what the core concept was, realising that the rest was mere surplus and should be dispensed with. That's one of the things I really learnt in 2009: bare bones are stronger. Dress 'em up with extra problems for your protagonist and all manner of extraneous tat, and the whole somehow manages to become less than the sum of its parts.

Anyway. Letters From Betsy eventually morphed into Ghost Writer, impressing a few noted industry folk as it did so. It was then chosen by TAPS as one of the four TV dramas which they produce each year. It was filmed in December on Leeds' Emmerdale sets (will write my account of the actual filming ASAP) - and hopefully this month I'll get to see the first edit and give input. But to all intents and purposes, I ended 2009 with a produced film which I started on the year's very first day.


So what else happened in 2009? I had my first commission from a TV production company, Eye Film And TV, to work on four 50-minute episodes of new web series Tempting Fates. That was a really valuable experience, which saw me co-storylining for the first time, thinking in terms of series arcs and generally working as part of a team. Fun fun fun.

At the start of the year, sketches for the show Splendid bubbled away in our collective cauldron. A ticklesome pilot was shot around Spring, with a tremendous June screening, which led to us honing that pilot some more, filming an additional batch of sketchery-pokery. Then another lesson was learnt: creating the pilot is the relatively easy part, compared to persuading industry-folk to watch it. Splendid currently awaits perusal on certain desks, but I remain confident that its irresistible foolishness can't help but charm whichever lucky soul gives it a spin first.

At the beginning of the year, I had some material broadcast on Radio 4's Recorded For Training Purposes, which led to me having material broadcast on that same station's Laurence & Gus: Hearts & Minds, a few months later. I then became a commissioned writer on the Recorded For Training Purposes team, which continues to be huge fun, as the show's next series is pieced together.

What else? I wrote a trial script for the fine BBC One series Waterloo Road, impressing Shed enough to gain a seat on their reserves bench. I associate produced Danny Stack's short film Origin. I became a script-reader for regional agency Screen East and a speaker at the Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival, chairing two Doctor Who sessions with some excellent show luminaries. At the latter event, I started thinking for the first time about finding the right agent and had a few meetings which gave me some good contacts and possible representation in 2010.

Throughout 2009, I continued to shift the balance between screenwriting and the journalism with which I started out in writing. I'm in the really nice position of being able to pick journalistic jobs which I enjoy - and this has never been truer than when I interviewed former Doctor Who Tom Baker for Doctor Who Magazine. As this had been a longheld career ambition, it can only be described as one of the highlights of my life, let alone 2009. This Christmas, the afterglow became all the warmer, when Tom published the two-part interview on his website: you can read them both here.

So, yeah, 2009 was pretty busy and fruitful. There were of course a few projects that I worked up, only for them to creatively fizzle out, or hit dead ends. I wrote half a horror feature, then was forced to shift priorities to something else, and still need to climb back on that saddle. I also spent the entire year tinkering with my previously Hollywood-optioned horror feature Panik, only to realise over the last couple of months that it needs to be stripped right down, then built back up. Sometimes when a project is rooted in work carried out by Less Experienced You, those roots need pulling up altogether and replanting.

2010 will again be about hard work, only more so. I'm going to capitalise on all the opportunities which Ghost Writer's filming - and its planned BAFTA screening for industry types, this April - will bring, aiming to secure my first TV commission by year's end. Various projects will move forward and new ones will be willed into corporeal existence.

My key word for 2010 is 'focus'. It's all too tempting to diversify in terms of the genres you write, but this year I'm going to push for my priority: TV drama. As much as I enjoy sketchery-pokery and straight-up comedy, there'll be less of that from me this year. Focus, focus, focus. I'll still be writing feature scripts as well as TV scripts, but genre-wise, drama will provide my main sandpit - and as we all know, drama is broad enough church in itself.

Talking of focus, here's the most valuable writing lesson I learnt last year. It's the kind of thing we all think we know, but as Adrian Mead is fond of saying, sometimes knowing isn't doing. During TAPS' Continuing Drama weekend in October, we spent a lot of time with Emmerdale's chief writer Bill Lyons. A brutally honest, yet clearly lovely guy, he passed judgement on various scenes which the class had been tasked with writing in 60 minutes, then were acted by a couple of thespians. You could often feel that dialogue had been overwritten, the moment that actors became a tad stilted. The effort they were devoting to saying all those words, rendered them unable to actually act. As Bill said, "If you put too many words in an actor's mouth, you're actually stopping them from doing their job". That's a fine sentence to remember this year when you're writing dialogue - and especially when redrafting it.

2010, then: the year of focus, bare bones, letting actors do their jobs and - lest we forget - having a right old hoot. Bring. It. On.

Handy 2009 Links

Michelle Lipton on Ten Things She Learnt Last Year. If you didn't much care for The Thing That I Learned, this article will make up for it

Piers Beckley on setting controllable goals

Evernote - a handy application which syncs web, portable device and computer, allowing you to easily store ideas, research materials or indeed Bars You Would Like To Visit

Carbonite - the best back-up service I discovered last year. It simply hoovers your files up into the internet, ridding you of all worries. Even if your house burns down, your stuff is safe

My Twitter page: I discovered this social networking site in 2009, and love it to bits. Give it a go, if you haven't already, and follow me if it pleases you

SWF 2009: Prep & The Slow-Burn Networker

The Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival kicks off on Monday morning. For a fair proportion of attendees, of course, it actually starts tomorrow night with some networking. Piers and I threw ourselves a Scribomeet on the night before SWF 2008. This year, the festival itself has organised its own semi-official meet 'n' greet night at The Queens Hotel, so that's where I'll be, along with fellow bloggers Piers, Michelle and Phill, endeavouring to banter with old friends and new.

Traditionally in the run-up to SWF, I write about how to prepare for the event. This year I can't, because I'm too busy preparing myself. This is, in no small part, because I'm a speaker this year, chairing both the Doctor Who Classic Adventures (Andrew Cartmel, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe and Bob Baker) and Further Adventures (Gareth Roberts, James Moran, Michael Stevens, Joe Lidster) panels. They're going to be a lot of fun, but naturally take extra time to research. See you there if you're a Who fan, or even hopefully if you're not.

TwelvePoint.com has published a fine series of articles on how to prepare for the SWF - and if you're a delegate, you should already have picked up a free six-month subscription to the fine screenwriting website, so go soak up all that wisdom.

Here's precisely what you'll get out of the Screenwriters' Festival 2009: whatever you put into it. At the same time, temper your expectations - it's unlikely to change your life overnight, or even in this coming week. It's more of a slow-burn. Case in point: at the 2007 festival, I randomly met a script editor called Sarah Olley as we both made cups of tea. We chatted, got along well and swapped cards. There seemed to be no immediate way in which we could help each other out professionally, but socially things worked well. Eighteen months later, Sarah asked to have a look at a few of my spec scripts. We then met for lunch and she told me about an online drama she was developing for Eye Film & TV, called Tempting Fates, and for which she needed a writer. Cut to the present day, after a lot of work, and Tempting Fates is now online - catch up on the first week of mini-episodes here.

So don't expect to bump into an eccentric millionaire producer with a suitcase full of cash at SWF. But do expect to give it your all, then reap the rewards over time.

Tempting Fates: And They're Off!

Tempting Fates, the online drama which Eye Film & TV hired me to co-storyline and co-write in a real team-effort along with director Frank Prendergast and the splendid Sarah Olley, has now started airing. The first short segment can now be seen at the official website. You can also see it on student TV network Freewire's channel 106 and over at Little House TV.

The whole of this season is 40 segments long, divided into four ten-segment episodes which will run on weeknights over the next eight weeks. There are also a couple of sites which expand and back-up the Tempting Fates universe, such as main character Professor Morgan Node's own video-blog, in which he babbles like a madman about fate, destiny, the universe and everything.

But hey, enough of my yakkin'. Head over to the official site and have a look. It's the beginning of a really fun adventure at an Earth university for the fates' three apprentices - Chloe (spins the thread of life), La (measures how long that thread will be) and Attie (gives it the snip) - with lashings of gallows humour.

More Tempting Fates links:

Join the Facebook group

Follow TF on Twitter

Subscribe to TF on YouTube

Norwich Evening News article on the show

My previous blog-posts re: the show

Tempting Fates: New Teaser & Start Date

The teaser-trailer for Tempting Fates is now online. This is the online comedy/drama series which I worked on in the first half of this year, having been hired by the good people of Eye Film & TV to co-storyline and co-write four 50-minute episodes (which will each go out in five-minute chunks, never fear).

I'm pleased to say the trailer looks great, and it's clear that director and co-writer Frank Prendergast has captured all the fun of the Fates. The four main leads, whose names I have yet to learn, really look right for the roles, too, so I'm very happy.

Tempting Fates starts online on Monday, October 19. I'll naturally be reporting back with more details. In terms of what it's about, the teaser will give you the gist, but it's very fundamentally three hot goddesses killing people on a university campus. Always a pleasure.

So here's that teaser - if you like, then do spread it around, and/or join the Tempting Fates Facebook group. For some reason, the video's screen overlaps into this blog's sidebar, but I've no idea how to remedy this, so we'll all just have to make our peace with it.



So. How you been?

A Thoroughly Splendid Update

Cor blimey, love-a-duck, what a busy time it's been, and continues to be. Life is tremendous, right now. Here's what I've been doing with myself, on a professional level:

SPLENDID!
As you may recall, with your big old brain, there exists a pilot for the Splendid sketch-show, which we screened a few weeks back. Part of the reason we held that screening, was to see how we could strengthen that pilot. As Splendid (with both a big 'S' and a small one) director Dan Turner fully explains on his blog here, we then decided that our preposterous pilot needed a final sprinkle of quick, visual gags, to round it off nicely.

With that in mind, a full day of shooting happened last Friday. While I was unable to attend any of the original, glorious eight-day shoot for the pilot, I was able to go along for the ride on Friday, and help out wherever possible. It was a bruising schedule, to be sure, but so full of fun, stretched out between a greyhound stadium in Essex and Elstree Studios. God, we shot some ridiculous things that day - including a sketch which is arguably the silliest thing we've yet done. It really was a joy to be able to walk up to a monitor, inspect the frame and announce, "That is utterly fucking preposterous"... and for that to be a compliment. What a day. Another highlight was sitting in the back of a car with Splendid man Richard Glover, high on Opal Fruits (known by no-one as Starbursts) and shrieking at each other as the day wore on and hysteria took over.

RADIO!
I'm firing party streamers all over the shop, making it notably harder to tell you about developments in Radioville. I have a sketch on prime-time Radio 4 this very evening, goddammit. At 6.30pm, it's episode four of the excellent comedy series Laurence & Gus: Hearts & Minds. I spent a number of weeks, earlier in the year, bombarding the show with sketches because I love the duo's idiosyncratic style. I was determined to make something stick, and finally, World's Most Placid Man was performed and recorded. Cue cake and bunting.

RED PLANET!
After the excitement of being a finalist in the Red Planet Prize competition and the ensuing workshop with Tony Jordan, I'm now well into the hard graft of developing ideas for new TV malarkey. A fun process, to be sure.

TEMPTATION!
Screeching Satan on a cock-shaped pogostick! Tempting Fates, the online drama series which I've co-written and storylined, is now in its second week of filming. It's being made by the wonderful people at Eye Film & TV, and will be visible and audible via the WWW later in the year. I'm loving what I've seen of the cast, and can't wait to see the results. Essentially a black comedy, Tempting Fates is about three female Fates, who sashay down to Earth in order to murder various human targets. My kinda concept.

JOURNALISM!
The first part of my Doctor Who Magazine interview with Tom Baker seems to have gone down well, which is a relief. The second part will be in the next issue, out August 20. Whereas Part One focused primarily on Tom's memories of Doctor Who, Part Two is much more about him as a person. This issue will also feature my studio report from recording sessions for the new BBC Audio drama Hornets' Nest, which sees Tom reprising his role as the Fourth Doctor. Brilliant. Lately, I've also interviewed Ozzy Obsourne and Spooks' Richard Armitage. Tremendous distractions from open Final Draft files, all.

In case you were wondering, the above photograph of Ozzy and I happened seconds after I asked him to tell me the bat-eating story, one more time.

Tempting Fates: Casting Call

So you can act? Or know someone who can? Then you or they may be interested in a part in Eye Film & TV's online drama Tempting Fates, which I'm writing for and shoots this Summer. Head over to the Facebook group and indeed join it. While the casting-call deadline is listed as being today, as with the majority of casting-calls the deadline has been extended a tad. So when you see 'May 23', think 'May 29'.

Hope you're having a tremendous weekend. Good day to you.

There's No Escaping Fate

Hello, you sumptuous little rose-bud. Seems I no longer have to be secretive - or, at least, not fully secretive - about the online drama I've been working for. It's called Tempting Fates, and it's being made by production company Eye Film & TV, who made Five's The Secret Of Eel Island series, among other shows. Hence my having travelled a great deal between London and Norwich over the last few weeks, with more storylining and brainstorming meetings yet to come.

It's a very exciting project, due later in the year, with a cool central concept which is right up my alley. Can't say any more than that for now, but I'm having lots of fun and learning a great deal in the process (for more, much more, on learning-while-doing, see Moran's mega-FAQ - Christ!) I will also be having fun in half an hour, when I'm out in the rock 'n' roll wilds of Camden Town guzzling Guinness like a gannet. Happy St Patrick's Day, boozers.