2011: How It Was For Me, Darling

Now, then.  Having tidied and sorted my office, which had rather begun to take on a life of its own, I’m in a good position to sit down and sum up my 2011 for you.  If you like.  (Your continued reading of these sentences and paragraphs will be taken to signify interest in this proposition.  Possibly in a court of law.)

Globally, 2011 was clearly an extraordinary year of unrest, whether natural or social.  You'll be relieved to hear I won't be writing an incisive essay about these seismic worldly events: this is purely about my year in the altogether more comforting world of fiction.  And on that front, 2011 was great.  Sure, there was some bad stuff, but there always is - and this year, that stuff was solely confined to utterly tedious business matters which almost certainly won't interest you.

Smug pointing at London's Leicester Squar Empire cinema

STORMHOUSE

My debut feature film, Stormhouse, which I wrote and executive-produced, certainly made the most of 2011.  We threw a BAFTA test-screening, combined with a cast-and-crew screening, which very much taught me the value of test-screenings.  We made some really significant changes to the film, based on our audience's questions afterwards, which improved it tenfold.  Director Dan Turner created a whole new edit and it was good to spend a day with him at Elstree Studios, helping to tweak and overview what we had.  That's another thing I learned: removing even so much as a single frame in a horror movie's 'jump' scene can have a dramatic effect.  It was also a valuable lesson in terms of how much you can cut out of a film without losing the basics you need.

The finished film played festivals around the UK and indeed world.  We couldn’t have had a better world premiere, playing two nights at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.  I'll be forever grateful to Edinburgh's fine organisers for approaching us, having seen a Berlin screening of Stormhouse, to ask whether they could screen the film.  Oh yes, that was a good day. 

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, we played the UK's biggest and best horror festival, the Film4 FrightFest at London's Leicester Square Empire, which was a real honour too.  Amazing stuff.  After that, Stormhouse was screened at the Birmingham Comic Con, the Chichester International Film Festival (as part of a Best Of FrightFest bill - honour upon honour!) and finally Los Angeles' excellent Screamfest - an event which I'd attended twice before, but typically couldn't make this year.

Stormhouse is now scheduled for a Lionsgate DVD release on February 7, 2012.  Very exciting - as is the trailer which Lionsgate cut together, which is definitely one of my favourite things of the year:

A UK release will also happen in 2012 - we're just waiting to hear when the distributor plans to release.  And of course, it will be issued in other territories too.  More news to come.

DOCTOR WHO

Wonderful 'classic DVD' mock-up of The Gemini Contagion

I had great fun in Whosville this year, getting to write for the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) three times.  Firstly, for a Doctor Who Adventures comic story called Earworm (which you can read in its entirety by clicking the Comics tab at the top of this very page), also featuring TV companions Amy and Rory.  I was really happy with how that one turned out and it seemed to be received well.

Next came a BBC audiobook, Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion.  Read by the excellent Meera Syal, The Gemini Contagion was a whole load of fun to write, concerning a futuristic anti-viral handwash which turns out to contain a virus (oh, good lord, the irony!) which overloads the language centres of the brain.  That one also featured Amy, who's obviously great to write for.

My third Eleventh Doctor Thing this year was a piece of fiction for the BBC's Brilliant Book Of Doctor Who 2012.  I had an irresistible brief from editor Clayton Hickman - fill in the blanks between TV episodes The Impossible Astronaut and Day Of The Moon!  Surely you can't ask for more fun than that.  I had a brilliant time, writing an intro from the Doctor, then Amy, Rory and River Song's diary entries as they traipse around a late-'60s USA, feeling the presence of an unseen enemy, while the tally-marks on their limbs mysteriously multiplied...

The Brilliant Book gave me another fun highlight of the year: appearing among the book's various authors, to sign at London's Forbidden Planet venue.  The signing, and drinks after, were as much fun as you'd expect.  And I've noticed recently that an attendee uploaded their brief video of the event to the YouTubes.  Here it is:



I've had a couple of Doctor Who releases via Big Finish in 2011.  My short Fifth Doctor audio story The Lions Of Trafalgar featured on the company's Doctor Who: Short Trips Vol IV collection (a lovely reading by Peter Davison); and my full-cast Eighth Doctor four-parter Doctor Who: Army Of Death was released in December 2011, starring Paul McGann, Julie Cox, David Harewood, Carolyn Pickles, Eva Pope, Mitch Benn... a really nice cast, that.  I received my copies of the Army Of Death CD just before Christmas and haven't had a chance to spin them yet, but I'm hearing good things.

It was also announced this year that 2012 will see the release of Big Finish's Doctor Who - UNIT: Dominion.  This is a four-hour Seventh Doctor mini series which I've written with the splendid Nicholas Briggs - a hoot!

OTHER WORLDS

Among all the Doctor Who and Stormhouse stuff, I was toiling away on projects of my own, or those brought to me by other people.

I script-edited The Man Inside, the film which Dan Turner shot in Newcastle this Summer, starring Ashley 'Bashy' Thomas, Peter Mullan, Michelle Ryan, David Harewood, Jason Maza and other fine thespians.  That one should be out in 2012 and it was nice to be involved with a non-horror feature project.

I was delighted to be invited to quack at the Cambridge School Of Art and the London Screenwriters' Festival 2011 this year.  Felt like those events went well.  I also signed various audiobooks at the Big Finish Day in Barking, where one of my favourite things of the year happened - a guy called Mick handed me a homemade card, which visually gathered together a couple of different things I'd worked on.  You can see the card here, below right.  It was, and remains, so touching - the idea that someone might actually be aware of, or even care about, your work as a whole.  Thanks, Mick - and Happy New Year!

I wrote the short prose story The Screams Next Door for charity flash fiction e-anthology Voices From The Past, which you can still buy here at the mad prices of £0.99 or £2.99.  I also wrote the seven-page comic story Consumed for the zombie anthology Dead Roots (site here), which I'm very much looking forward to seeing brought to life on the page.  Oh, and I published my first non-fiction ebook, How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else, which draws on my journalistic past to tell readers everything I know about interviewing people.

Mick's splendid card

2011 has been my first year with an agent, the excellent Matthew Dench at The Dench Arnold Agency, and we've been building up various specs for film and TV.  One handy thing an agent can do, is 'package' you together with other people under his agency roof.  Matthew did that during 2011 - a welcome move which will hopefully result in a new feature film during 2012/13.  I now have three or four feature scripts in various stages of development now, so will continue to write/push those next year.  Needless to say, I'll also be looking to make my way into TV - things seem to be moving in that department, which is encouraging.

While Twitter continues to be the place where I spend most of my social media time, it feels like I've blogged more during 2011 than I have in the last couple of years.  Why, I even wrote posts across five consecutive days!  The most-read post here, over the last 12 months, was The Magic Of Draft Zero, which seemed to strike some kind of chord, while the one which generated the most comments and discussion, was the recent Eight Ways To Annoy People Whose Help You Want.

While I very much intend to be even more focused on the all-important writing during 2012, I'll try to keep up the bloggery-pokery.  Hope you'll join me!  I also hope you've had a tremendous Christmas and will have a magnificent New Year.

If you're a writer, what is your writing-related resolution for 2012?  Please tell us all in the Comments below.  (My resolution will be stricter time management.  In particular, not checking e-mail every ten minutes and definitely not replying to e-mail straight away.  That way lies distraction and sheer, screeching, wall-eyed madness.)

And now you've told us all about your resolution, why not check out my script-mates' own end-of-year posts, hmmm?  Good DAY to you.

James Moran: 2011 In Words & Pictures

Phill Barron: 2011

Dan Turner: 2011, Review Of The Year

David Bishop: My Report Card For 2011, Part One and Part Two

William Gallagher: So Where Was I?

Ken Armstrong: Happy New Microcosm

Helen Smith: Lovely Things, 2011
                                            
                                                                         ***

My Amazon-acclaimed ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon.de.  You can also get a Triple Pack of files (PDF, ePub, Kindle/mobi) direct from me.  Full details here, you splendid individual.

The Gemini Contagion on 'DVD'

The TARDIS Art blog has smoothly transformed the cover art for my BBC audiobook Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion into the style of a BBC DVD release for the TV series.  Looks great, no?

After a brief spot of release date confusion, The Gemini Contagion is now available to buy (CD or download) in all good online and physical shops.  The best price I've seen for the CD is £4.63 here at Amazon UK.

As you can see, it features Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond in a rip-roaring adventure read by the brilliant Meera Syal.  A rampaging mind-virus, icky flying starfish, shrieking, rapid gunfire, explosions and aerial combat?  How can you refuse, hmmmm?

Pick up the current issue of Doctor Who Magazine - the one with the Comic Relief cover - and you'll find an interview with me about The Gemini Contagion, in which I quack on at some length about how it's about the breakdown of interpersonal communication, etc.  What a right royal treat!

Doctor Who Developments

My first comic strip, Earworm, was published in Doctor Who Adventures magazine on February 11.  Writers don't get to see the artwork ahead of publication, so it was a joy to see the finished article upon returning from holiday a few days back.  Artists John Ross and Alan Craddock did a brilliant job of bringing this story to the page.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and hope to do more comic strippery soon.

In other Eleventh Doctor news, my BBC audiobook Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion now has two release dates: March 1 for download-to-own and March 10 for shiny CD.  My comp copies arrived yesterday and I finally got to hear the finished recording.  I'm blown away by Meera Syal's delivery - she really goes at the material, switching voices and accents with ease.  I feel slightly guilty for two things: making her do a fair bit of guttural bellowing and also including such an international cast of characters.  The voice she's given alien scientist Korn Palloa is particularly applause-worthy.

At the moment, I'm still working hard on two Doctor Who projects for Big Finish.  Enjoying them immensely.  Hope you're splendidly well!  Good day.

Doctor Who Adventures: Earworm

When I was a kid, I'd write and draw Doctor Who comic strips. Loads of them, in endless notebooks. Most of those tales, funnily enough, involved the Doctor running away from Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans, as laser bolts and the like whizzed over his shoulders.

My first Doctor Who comic story as an adult hit UK shelves today. I've written Earworm, in Doctor Who Adventures magazine. Featuring the Eleventh Doctor (or Matt Smith, to most non-fan folk), Amy and Rory, it's about a young boy who keeps hearing weird music. He's persuaded to visit a doctor, who turns out to be... well, I'm sure you can imagine.

As I love both Doctor Who and comic books, this is a significant development for me, and also a deep source of joy.

In further Who news, the next thing of mine to be released is my Doctor Who BBC audiobook The Gemini Contagion. Read by the excellent Meera Syal, it's out in the UK on March 10 as a single CD story - and also as a double-pack with Martin Day's The Jade Pyramid from March 15. Excellent! I was recently interviewed about The Gemini Contagion by a couple of Doctor Who magazines, so those should be out closer to release.

Good day to you, specialface.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Gemini Contagion: Press Release

Here are the words on the press release which AudioGO (formerly BBC Audiobooks) have sent out, about my Eleventh Doctor/Amy Doctor Who audiobook The Gemini Contagion. Pleasingly, the synopsis is pretty much culled from my outline for the story. It's great that Meera Syal (The Kumars, Doctor Who Series Five) is reading it - I haven't heard the recording yet, but I'm sure she'll knock it out of the park, as they say.

"The ice-planet Vinsk, in the year 2112. The all-new anti-viral handwash, Gemini, has been laced with Meme-Spawn: a sentient micro-organism which makes the user fluent in every language in the universe. However, manufacturer Zalnex made one crucial mistake. They didn’t test Gemini on humans, who are seized by the violent urge to communicate but speak every language all at once – with a manic, garbled shriek – and pass on the virus by touch.

The Doctor and Amy arrive on an Earth-bound cargo-ship loaded with Gemini, where a human crew are succumbing to the virus which has nasty second and third phases in store. When the Doctor and Amy are separated, they both know that it’s only a matter of time before Amy is infected.

With the ship locked on course, and no way of curing the sufferers, the Doctor is faced with a terrible decision: does he save Amy, or Earth?

Meera Syal reads this exclusive audio story featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

Written specially for audio by Jason Arnopp, ‘The Gemini Contagion’ is read by Meera Syal, who played Nasreen Chaudhry in the BBC TV episodes ‘The Hungry Earth’ and ‘Cold Blood’."

You can pre-order Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion for a very reasonable £6.29 at Amazon UK here.

The Gemini Contagion's Lovely Cover!

2010: Doctor Who, Stormhouse, Sarah Jane & Other Fun Stuff

Hello tinsel-chops!

Sweet baby Jesus in a Pret A Manger: what a year that was. If ever there was a year in which I did a shedload of work and gained confidence in my ideas-flow, it was 2010.  I wrote my first produced feature film.  I wrote my first scripts for BBC Audiobooks and Big Finish, including one for the current incarnation of the Doctor, as played on TV by Matt Smith.

What follows are the details of pretty much everything I did (professionally, mind - you'll hear nothing of the time I fought a 15-foot clay badger in a quarry) in the last 12 months.  To be honest, writing this stuff is more for my benefit than anything else.  At this time of year, I like to stop and take stock.  So if you'd prefer to return to your New Year Limbo Period booze, I certainly shan't hold it against you.

STORMHOUSE

Somewhere in the year's second quarter, director Dan Turner and I went for a drink.  We'd worked together before on various projects, including freaky, sexy short film Look At Me.  At one point during our beer-fest, Dan oh-so-casually mentioned his idea for a film in which "the military capture a ghost".  I immediately keeled over, picked myself up and became obsessed with the idea.  We spent the rest of the night quacking about it and deciding that this could well make a super-scary horror film.

The idea grew and grew, until suddenly it became Stormhouse, a film shot in August and starring the excellent Katie Flynn, daughter of Jane Seymour.  Yes, Stormhouse really happened that fast - and I'm glad it did. There's nothing like the rush of shooting towards deadlines like an Exocet to induce full creativity in the brain.  Stormhouse was filmed in a military base nestled away in the English countryside, with me as writer and executive producer.  That shoot was unquestionably one of the finest experiences of my life.  Cast and crew alike stayed in the base, which gave the production a real sense of camaraderie.  I slept each night on an airbed in a creepy office off a creepy corridor - both of which were locations by day.   I loved the whole experience - apart from the mad, incessant flies.

Stormhouse is currently in the last stages of post-production: music (Sam Watts!), FX, sound, grading - all with Dan and producer Dean Fisher toiling away at the eye of the storm.  We have a fine sales agent in AV Pictures, who handled the likes of Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers (see their website page for Stormhouse here) and the film will be released in 2011.  Can't wait for you to see it, if supernatural horror is your bag.

FORGIVENESS

The first thing I wrote in 2010, Forgiveness is a horror feature spec script.  It was created while I was in a hateful mood, which I'm convinced can be the best possible mindset with which to approach writing a horror film.  Or at least, it seemed to work with this one.  A rather bleak and harrowing beast, it loosely combines Misery with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as a story about a couple menaced in the middle of nowhere hopefully transforms into something a little different.  Forgiveness is now with a prospective agent.  Hooray.

GHOST WRITER

Somewhere around June, my 24-minute TAPS film Ghost Writer became available for anyone to watch online.  It was shot on Emmerdale's Leeds sets in December 2009, benefiting from a marvellous veteran TV director in Miss Marple's Guy Slater and a lovely cast in Barrie Ryan English, Grownups' Fiona Wass, The Bill's Giles Ford, Waterloo Road's Lisa Brookes and Seamus O'Neill from one of my favourite films, Shane Meadows' Dead Man Shoes.

Especially given the limitations which were imposed by the good folk at TAPS (no more than six characters, no more than 20 scenes, no more than three locations and a four-hour shoot!), I'm very happy with the results.  Ghost Writer was a training ground in every respect, teaching me a lot about the realities and economics of television production.

Sadly, the TAPS organisation folded in 2010, after 17 years of helping new writers up the career ladder.  I'm honoured to have been among their final batch of graduates.  Thankfully, Ghost Writer remains online at the TAPS website, so if you haven't seen it yet, then I'd be delighted if you had a look.

BBC AUDIOBOOKS

God, the amount of time I spent this year, explaining the various different formats of audio-things I was writing!  Audiobooks, audio plays, mimed vignettes on half-inch tape... Well, maybe not that last one.

In October 2009, I hosted a couple of sessions at the Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival - and one of my panelists was Michael Stevens, the Commissioning Editor at BBC Audiobooks.  Afterwards, I shamelessly hustled the poor man, asking if I could pitch an idea for an Eleventh Doctor audiobook.  Being a splendid fellow, he said yes and advised me to submit something to his new range editor John Ainsworth in the New Year.

I was delighted when my two-page storyline, for something called The Language Of Spawn back then, successfully made it through the filtration process guarded by Michael, John, the remarkable Gary Russell (who is the nexus through which everything Doctor Who-related must pass, in order to gain a greenlight from BBC Wales) and supremo Steven Moffat himself.  The title became The Gemini Contagion (oh God, the number of alternative titles that got scribbled into a notepad, before I settled on that one) and I set to work.  Absolutely loved writing for Doctor Eleven and his companion Amy Pond - and I hope that, come the audiobook's March 3 2011 release, Who fans feel at least a fraction of my own enthusiasm!

While working on Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion, I was invited to pitch for one of the BBC's two annual Sarah Jane Adventures audiobooks.  Elisabeth Sladen's performance as Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who is inextricably woven into my childhood memories and it's fantastic that she continues to delight kids and adults alike in Russell T Davies' successful CBBC show. So I pitched a storyline called Deadly Download and was delighted when it once again made it through the filtration process which included Russell himself. I didn't have too long in which to turn this one around, but sheer enthusiasm bustled me along.

One interesting distinction between the writing style required by both audiobooks was the POV.  Doctor Who audiobooks are written in the third-person and enjoy different narrators each time, while the Sarah Janes are necessarily first-person because Elisabeth Sladen will be reading them in character.  As a result in Sarah Jane audios, nothing must be described which Sarah Jane wouldn't be aware of in some believable way.  This makes things a little more challenging, but I like that.  The Sarah Jane Adventures: Deadly Download was released in early November and has since had some nice reviews.  I'm very happy with it indeed.  Elisabeth Sladen does a brilliant job of reading the story and whole-heartedly bringing characters to life, while producer Neil Gardner and Simon Power's soundscaping is exemplary.

BIG FINISH AUDIO PLAYS

Also during the Summer, I pitched a storyline for something called Nightfall to longstanding audio production company Big Finish. This was retitled The Mindkillers and then finally The Demons Of Red Lodge, which ended up as the title-story of the anthology Doctor Who: The Demons Of Red Lodge & Other Stories (see recent blog for full details). The first thing I actually wrote for Big Finish, however, was The Lions Of Trafalgar. 

That one is a short story featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan, which has been read for audio for Peter Davison. It will be published as part of one of 2011's three Doctor Who: Short Trips anthologies for CD/download. The research for this tale happily involved a couple of trips to Trafalgar Square, which is always a pleasure. I was excited to learn about a historic dinner party which took place on top of Nelson's Column, which ended up becoming a big part of the story.

OTHER DELIGHTS

I contributed a fair deal to a fantastic new annual-style Doctor Who book, Doctor Who: The Brilliant Book 2011, which emerged in plenty of time to be snatched up for Christmas. My work on this included a fun piece of short fiction, The Stone Totems, which took the form of a Natural History Museum plaque explaining the Stone Daleks' alleged history.

In February, I was pleased to number among the speakers at Newcastle's Story Engine event - a really friendly and intimate affair, which I'd recommend to any writer.  It's back again in March 2011!

With so much of my work in 2010 being bound for audio and film, it was good to write something for an actual book. That something was The War Of Art, a short story in Big Finish's hardback print anthology Bernice Summerfield: Present Danger. Floating lizard-heads, firey death, enormous art installations and timey-wimey tomfoolery were the names of that particular game.

I was among the judges in The National Student Film Association's inaugural scriptwriting competition.  A fun process, looking through the scripts and enjoying some really nice work.

On a journalistic front, I was delighted when the readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted my Tom Baker and Christopher H Bidmead interviews as their favourites of 2009. Amazing to get that kind of appreciation from a readership which I've numbered among since 1979.

And that reminds me of perhaps my proudest moment of the year. Andrew Smith wrote the 1980 Doctor Who TV story Full Circle, which I watched and enjoyed when I was eight years old. In November this year, Andrew sent me a message on Twitter to say that he'd bought my Deadly Download audio for his eight-year-old daughter's birthday. Wow. Talk about full circle...

2011: WHAT NEXT?

As happy as I am with my progress over the last 12 months, I'll be aiming to achieve more than I did in 2010.  But everyone says that.

As I said in the the last post, I have a couple of irons in the fire with Big Finish - one of which is a rather large iron which should keep me busy for most of January. I also have a couple of TV spec ideas knocking about the brain, two features in development and a non-fiction e-book which I want to write.

I will be writing a short story for an e-book anthology called Voices From The Past. This will be published by H&H Books in April 2011 and features a whole host of fine writers like Paul Cornell, Paul Magrs and Rob Shearman (see the current list here). All proceeds from Voices... will go to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

I fully intend to keep blogging in 2011, although as in 2010, the influence of Twitter will mean that blogposts tend to be reserved for longer pieces which couldn't be adequately conveyed in 140 characters. Incidentally, you may find my various Twitter lists to be of use - I have several, listing directors, scriptwriters, producers and all sorts. If you're wondering who to follow on Twitter, then these lists may be of some use.  I currently follow far too many people and seriously need to cut down on new follows, I'm afraid - but if you follow me, I will at least endeavour to put you on one of my lists in return if you're serious about one of the professions covered by them.

Right, that seems to be everything. I can now stop talking about myself. Phew.

Happy New Year!

Actually, no. That's not good enough.

Amazing New Year!

Doctor Who: The Gemini Contagion

Woo-hoo!  Now that online outlets like Amazon UK have started listing this item with my name attached, I can announce what I've been dying to tell you for a while.  I've written a Doctor Who BBC audiobook, featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

It's called The Gemini Contagion.  The reader has yet to be confirmed. The CD (and presumably download) is not out until March 3, 2011, so I won't be telling you much about the story now, except to say that, as the title suggests, it does centre on some kind of outbreak.

I can definitely tell you that I loved every single second of writing it and that it very much represents me and the kind of stories I like to tell. Hopefully, like my Sarah Jane Adventures: Deadly Download - out now, folks - it's also about something, in addition to being a big old barnstorming adventure in time and space.

Couldn't be more thrilled, I tell you!  Roll on March.