Doctor Who: Earworm Part Two

Here's Part Two of my four-part Doctor Who Adventures comic story, Earworm.  See yesterday's blogpost, here, for Part One.  See you same time tomorrow, for Part Three!

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

Alan Moore On Storytelling

Hello Satan! I've been reading Watchmen/V For Vendetta creator Alan Moore's Writing Comics Volume One. It's a slender yet wonderfully informative and refreshing tome culled from articles he wrote in the 80s (there has yet to be a Volume Two!) Wanted to read this bit to you, as it applies to storytelling across the board, regardless of media. You ready? Then I'll begin:

"As I see it, a story of almost any kind should be like hypnosis. You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them in further with your second sentence and have them in a mild trance by the third. Then, being careful not to wake them, you carry them away up to the back alleys of your narrative and when they are hopelessly lost within the story, having surrendered themselves to it, you do them terrible violence with a softball bat and then lead them whimpering to the exit on the last page. Believe me, they'll thank you for it".

It's worth re-reading this, I'm saying, even if you've already absorbed it a thousand times. Are we doing enough, with our stories, to paralyse the reader and wrap them securely in our webs, allowing us to devour them? We can always do more.

On a similar comic-centric note, I'll be at the Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo this weekend. There are still some tickets left for Sunday and it looks set to be a superb event. If comics are your bag, then maybe I'll see you there!