Bayou Arcana hits the press!

The festive period brings good cheer! Bayou Arcana, a new project I'm featured in edited by Jimmy Pearson for Markosia, has snatched invaluable column inches in The Guardian today:

Link

As I remarked elsewhere: Boom! Get in!

It's another short story of mine, but this is pretty high profile for me. Even if I'm not actually mentioned in the article itself. Still, I'm in the boook and there it is, and you can't argue with that. Now I'm off to the local Co-op to buy a copy for the old scrapbook.

This was just a quick post to get the link up on the blog - I've been slack on posting for a while, for a variety of reasons, but I'll give my recent activities a proper write up soon after the new year.

[EDIT] Just found out the story's been picked up by MTV as well. Bayou Arcana seems to be gathering steam.

MTV

I have been learning new things.

It's time for me to pick up some new skills! A project that I'm working on at the moment with Jack Tempest is progressing nicely. I haven't mentioned much about this one because, well, we've been moving forward very quickly on it. I say 'we' but what I really mean of course is Jack. Dude works fast, and I've just had to keep up. I'll post more about it once the submission pack is done and sent off.

It's been fun. I've been enjoying working on this project immensely, and seeing the pages of artwork coming in has made me feel like a proper writer again.

But to the new skills - I have decided to have a stab at lettering this project myself. I've never done it before, so I will shoulder the blame if it all cocks up. Lettering seems to be one of those skills that's very easy to do badly and incredibly difficult to do well.

Roland has been kind enough to offer me a few pointers, and I've had tons of fun just mucking about in Illustrator assembling the speech balloons and captions.

So hooray for doing things I've never done before!

Lost a Luchas de Apuestas against myself

Like Samson and Chris Jericho before me, I have had my hair cut and have thus become lessened. On the plus side, for the first time in many years I don't have to worry about what to do with my hair or become infuriated when I feel the damned stuff tickling my ears. Unfortunately I'm currently suffering Phantom Hair, and the back of my head occasionally feels tight, as if I still have my hair tied back. It's most peculiar.

In other news... oh dear, look like there isn't any other news. Sorry. I've been immersed in literature, classic films and comics recently, trying to get back my passion for writing.

I might have a little more to show for it soon - I've just dived headlong into Broken Smile for Accent again, and not before time. I'm again trying something new - I'm just opening a word document and slapping stuff down on the page, regardless of whether it's a cohesive scene or even a definite part of the story. I'm unconcerned with waiting to feel 'ready' to write, or what sort of mood I'm in. The important thing is that I'm getting stuff down. I can dwell on how to turn it into a story at a later date.

I've written about thirty pages of stuff that's probably never going to go anywhere.

It's an exercise, and if it gets me enthusiastic about writing after this extended period away from it, all the better. I don't think I've ever had a less productive time than during the last eight months. It feels strange to be doing something again...

Putting Hitler in the cupboard

OK, now I've fully recovered, write up time - most importantly, Predators is now available, and my short is in there for the world to see. I genuinely forgot that this was coming out, and it was a pleasant surprise to find out when doing my pre-show homework and stopped by the Accent UK blog. It's a gorgeous looking book, so congrats to Colin and Dave for making their books progressively sexier as time goes on.

They even had that lovely new book smell! I stuck my nose in one for a sniff, and quickly realised that it had to become my copy because I'd left a little blob of snot on the edge of the pages. I played it like my usual supercool self though and nobody noticed. However, I did realise when reading it that I'd forgotten to send them an updated Bio, so I should get on that soon.

I met up with a few old faces, and chummed around with some new ones, too. Jon Lock was good enough to let me have a flick through his 'Afterlife, Inc.' file, which looks like jolly good fun and hopefully I'll see it on sale at one of these shows soon. I am currently making the first delicate, tentative steps towards trying to nick one of his artists - with his permission of course. I'm not some sort of artist-stealing slut, you understand.

Refreshed in my mind the need to crack on with my most recent projects - Last night I had a minor revelation of sorts regarding the short for Mike Garley's Dead Roots. So completely did the story take shape in my head that I will be able to bash that out in double quick time, which I shall get onto this week.

Oddly enough, it's another zombie story that deals with loss, grief and emotional anguish. It seems to be a theme I return to again and again. I do so wish I could come up with a cheerful idea one of these days.

I think I am going to become busy again. Hopefully busy enough to forget the quagmire of misery I've been languishing in long enough to get some sodding work done.

Nurfglrr...

Just this minute got back from Birmingham and today's comic show thingy.

I am absolutely shattered. Too tired to write it up yet. I may have lost the ability to think coherent thoughts about four hours ago, so God only knows what I was babbling about when talking to people for the latter part of the day.

Got my copy of Predators from Accent UK - That's four published shorts and counting now. Methinks I shall be getting on with the writings again when my addled brains have properly recovered.

Behaving like a four year old

I have spent today being cheerful for a change, mostly fuelled by my love for goofy looking animals. I have just spent the best part of three hours watching videos of hippos, elephant seals and penguins to name but three as they flop about the place, making the world look untidy.

But the king of all stupid looking animals is easily the manatee. Truly it is the lord of the funny-looking. I can't even look at a picture of one without giggling like an imbecile.

Of slightly lesser entertainment value is its cousin, the dugong, which may be less funny to look at but has the advantage of having a more amusing name. It's a name that is fun to say, and to type.

Dugong.

Duuuuugong.

Try it. It might liven up your day as well.

Clueless

I'm not very knowledgeable about politics, and I'm probably a bit naive about social issues, etc, having lived a relatively snug life in a series of small to medium-sized towns. I guess I'm generally not very aware of what's Really Going On, in title case. But I probably don't need to be to think that the rioting that's been going on has been a bit mental. Scary stuff.

I'm not really equipped to discuss it, and I'm aware of how much of a spazzy blowhard you can sound like if you start talking about things you know little about, especially on the internet. So moving swiftly on...

...not much to report. Still trying to stay away from writing, and succeeding. I think I've needed this. I've gotten so little done these last few months - and it has been eating me up so much - that actually doing nothing on purpose has seemed like a holiday. I shall hopefully be back into it next month with a brain full of new thoughts and ideas, once the show in Birmingham has been and gone.

If it's still coming at all, after this week's ...trouble.

Nothing Important Happened Today

Really, nothing at all. Nothing has happened all week, and I'm keeping it that way.

I'm considering it medicine. I'm spending a little time kicking back and relaxing, doing things I enjoy. For a change, however, I'm not feeling guilty about not doing any writing. Writing can bugger off for the time being.

Roll on the Akira Kurosawa movies and martial arts flicks. I'm spending my weekend eating pizza and watching people get kicked in the face.

The therapy of experience

I am now on the path of recovery. I didn't manage to do anything tonight, but in a peculiar sort of way I think it was good for me.

My new treadmill arrived, so my evening program of exercise can now begin properly starting tomorrow. I also decided to start surrounding myself with things that illuminate and transfix me, to hopefully get my mind working creatively. I read a little - something I don't do anywhere near as much as I should these days - and I avoided my usual time wasting exercises. It occurred to me as I did so how many of my evenings I must have lost in some sort of torpor. How many hours I've wasted on pointless rubbish that led nowhere, night after night. Online gaming, I'm looking at you.

I watched a documentary on the works of Van Gogh and a couple of episodes of Simon Schama's History of Britain. For some reason I was feeling historical. It helped. Hearing stories of how colourful figures from the past lived their lives set something off in the fog behind my eyes. Made me feel awake for the first time in ages.

I was doing something that was engaging my imagination, which almost felt like a new experience in and of itself - I was taken aback by how bright it made everything around me. I guess I've spent so long with my head down and in a funk that I haven't set out to experience anything to stir me to feel anything else. 

That doesn't seem like much, but the last six months have, with few exceptions, been spent miserably sleepwalking from day to day. Tonight felt important and valuable. Even though I didn't do anything but set up a treadmill and watch some telly. I suppose sometimes it doesn't matter whether what you do is new as long as it feels new at the time.

And yes, I'm well aware of how self indulgent this all sounds. And I don't care.

...and I just thought I was a miserable bugger.

Guess what? I'm suffering from depression, or so says my doc. Go me.

Hearing somebody say it actually made me feel bit better. I've been slouching languidly around for a few months now, accomplishing sod all, and I've felt really guilty about it because I thought I was just being listless and lazy. I've been giving myself such a hard time over it, thinking I've been letting myself down. It's been like being stuck in a feedback loop.

But when he said it, I felt a bit less wretched. All those times I've been slumped in my chair, lacking the will to do anything but waste my time and think dismal thoughts; all those times I felt like caving my own head in, hunched over a keyboard, frustrated that I wasn't able to see anything past the tips of my fingers; it fell into focus somewhat. There is Something Wrong With Me, and I need to work on getting better.

I'm not taking anything for it. And shrinks are for assholes, as Jesse Custer once said. So I've listened to some advice and I'm going to try the old self help option. Keeping this blog updated more regularly will probably help. There are a few more things I'll be trying out, too. Hopefully if I can keep to them I'll begin to feel a bit better about myself. Might even have the added bonus of living a slightly healthier life, too.

In any case, it'll be good for me. I think I've been crying out to make some changes to the way I live my life for some time. Perhaps this kick up the arse is one that's sorely overdue.

Ain't got time to bleed

I was a little silly with booze last night, and as I am officially Too Old for that sort of behaviour any more my entire weekend is now a bust. I made a list of all the writing I'm now not going to do because I am so poorly. I'm a dimwit. It was a good night out but now I just want to crawl under my duvet and quietly expire with dignity. Hopefully not covered in sick.

I have, however, learned an important lesson, and that is not to watch films with sad bits in them when hungover. My hangover cure would be, I decided, to order pizza and park myself in front of the TV to watch my new Blu-ray boxset of the extended editions of Lord of the Rings. By the time I got to the end of Fellowship of the Ring I realised that I was blubbering like an infant, face streaked with tears and gasping for breath between deep, guttural sobs.

I'm not sure why. It seems hangovers now make me emotionally sensitive, as well as physically delicate. Who knew that could happen.

I can only hope that tomorrow when I'm feeling better I shall be back to my big, manly self and that this brief flirtation with girly sniffles is just that. I may have to hand in my testicles if it becomes a habit.

I'm sort of afraid to watch Two Towers now. Maybe I'll watch Predator instead and butch up...

I am Writor, fear my pen of doom

The Dead Roots short is chugging away nicely.

I felt it click in my head tonight as I found the proper shape of the story. I gave myself a pat on the back and sat there looking incredibly pleased with myself for at least ten minutes.

Nobody does smug and self-satisfied like a writer who is on a roll.

Is the verb 'to chillax' in the dictionary yet?

...It should be, for that is what I have been doing.

Occasionally I like to reaffirm my right to kick back and do sweet FA, and to that end I have been spending my time sat around eating Doritos, watching TV, playing video games and reading books. Bliss.

I am awash with information. I've been watching lots of BBC documentaries - and nobody does documentaries as well as the BBC - including a classic: Simon Schama's History of Britain, which aside from the unconvincing low-budget recreations it spews forth every now and then is pretty faultless.

Also been trying to get into HBO's Game of Thrones, because Sean Bean is The Man, but I'm not sure I like it very much. Having read up a little on the story arc of the books, I don't think I'll like subsequent seasons any more, either. It seems that the entire series is nothing more than a procession of unnecessarily horrible things befalling House Stark, who are the only likeable characters in a cast of contemptible bastards.

Contemptible bastards seem to be a recurring theme in the fiction I'm subjecting myself to at the moment. I'm currently reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, which features such a shower of repugnant, self-indulgent arseholes I feel like I need a shower after finishing each chapter. I'm not usually a fan of stories where the main characters are such unapologetic cocks, but I'm enjoying it a hell of a lot more than Game of Thrones. I'm guessing it doesn't have the ending I feel it deserves, and that's to have a Predator land in the street, gut everyone and steal their spines.

Maybe that should be the next project for the "Pride & Prejudice & Zombies" gang.

Tonight was the first night this week I opened up OpenOffice and started writing a bit, this time working an a little short for Mike Garley's Dead Roots anthology (http://deadroots.blogspot.com/) before I get cracking on 'Broken Smile' once again. The first draft of this short should be finished by Friday, and it should be ready to go by Monday.

Insert dodgy 'launch pad' pun here.

Comics Launch Pad then, eh? What a cracking day.

I'm still trying to digest everything that went on and work out what should happen next - I suppose the best place to start would be to thank Shane Chebsey and chums for organising the whole thing.

It was a bit different to other shows I've been to, and in a good way - without the big sales hall side that usually accompanies these things there was a much greater sense of it just being a big creative hub for writers and artists to pal around, chat and talk about the future. I spoke to quite a few excellent people I've not met before, so there was much exchanging of cards and such.

I even took in a few talks. Mike Carey's was insightful. It was geared a little more towards people who are just starting to write, but there was still a good chunk of the talk that was useful, and there was a lot for me to bear in mind - oddly enough, some of the stuff he said about how captioning and narration has changed is going to be handy when writing the script for 'Broken Smile', so that was well timed. Joey Cavalieri's talk was also incredibly useful. He said some very helpful things regarding how to go about getting published that I'll be bearing in mind in the future.

So lots to think about, and just as much to follow up on. I'll be spending most of my spare time for the next couple of weeks sending emails to folks and hunching over my keyboard.

But probably not today. Taking in a comics show where one must stay upright and chatty when one is quite poorly does take it out of one. I didn't roll out of bed until this afternoon, and I still feel like crap. I think I shall be remaining horizontal and stationary for the rest of the day.

Fluffy fluffy pillow nice

Got back from the Comics Launch Pad in Birmingham about half a hour ago. I love train delays. Too tired to write it up now - felt like absolute shit all day and have been running on empty since about 4.30pm, so I'll be crashing until at least noon tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll have regained control of my mental faculties to digest all that went on today. If that happens I'll give it a bit of a write up here.

Now, bed beckons. I must surrender to its pillowy embrace.

Cheese!

Finally, I've managed to sit my arse down in front of my PC and start writing again. It feels weird. I've not done much, and what I have done is probably going to change. I've got a feeling that this project is going to be another tough slog. But it has begun, and that's the important thing.

Brevity is the key word this time around, and I'm shooting for 40 pages, so if it does run over slightly it'll still be within the page count. My tendency to gibber in my scripts being what it is, I'm doing a scene at a time, and not moving on from one to the next until it's as concise as possible. I'm getting the protagonists's character established on page 1, and I'm not taking another step forward until that happens.

It's not going to be anywhere near finished in time for the Comics Launchpad in June, but at least I can now say it's officially in progress. I've even managed to find a working title for it amongst my notes. I'm currently calling it "Broken Smile." Smiles and what are behind them is the central theme of its current incarnation as it slumbers in my head.

Time will tell if that's how it ends up.

Settling Down

After a month or two of tension and rigorous house hunting, I'm finally set up in my new pad. It's nice, my new housemates seem like good people, and I'm keen to get stuck into this script for Accent now that things have settled down a bit. I'm hoping that this weekend I can finally get it started after so many delays. I have a nice dramatic opening in mind, and I'm looking forward to writing it.

Looking forward to just writing, really. These last few months I've been letting myself go and feeling increasingly out of the loop regarding the whole comic book thing. I'm missing Bristol (the relocation expenses ate my Bristol money...) but I'm going to the Comics Launchpad next month, which I'm hoping will revitalise me to some extent.

All this time away from writing has given me a good opportunity to take a step back to reflect on my current plans. I'm now a good couple of months behind schedule this year, so I've made the decision to postpone the comic book project with which I was originally planning to follow the current script. Instead, once the Accent script is finished I'm going to hammer straight into my novel. I've been putting off writing it for years, and I figure with two full-length comic scripts I'll have enough to keep myself busy with on that front while I spend my time on that wee beastie.

I'm trying not to think too much about writing it, as I want to give the Accent script all the attention it deserves while I've got that on the go. Also, I'm feeling rather ambivalent about the idea so I'm trying not to dwell on it too much. It's been ages since I wrote anything that wasn't a comic script so the very thought makes me a bit nervous, but on the other hand it really is a bloody good idea and I've been desperate to get stuck into it for years.

So after the current script is done I'm diving in. The comic book stuff will still be going on - I'll still be shilling Hudson Falls to whoever's around, and I might even find time for another few short stories here and there. But mostly, I'll be working sans-artist in the world of text.

I'm quite excited. But one step at a time, eh?

Annoyed

God, I hate idiots.

As it has been such a nice day, I decided to go for a walk a little earlier this afternoon. Sadly, as I was meandering around town minding my own business a pissed up man with greyed hair and an inability to walk in a straight line barges into me. Because, let's face it, I'm not a small chap, he bounced off me like a kid on a trampoline and fell flat on his arse.

I would have hoped that when a passerby approached him to help him up it would have been the end of the story - no. Unfortunately the drunk old fool decided then would be an appropriate time to start yelling, trying to tell anyone within earshot that I'd barged into him on purpose, specifically to knock him down. This guy was so hammered that his memory's revisionist history kicked in the instant the collision occurred.

For my part I just rolled my eyes at the lady walking alongside me, who had seen the entire episode, shook my head at the sozzled geezer and went on my merry way, trying to ignore his slurred ramblings as they faded away behind me.

I wondered how anyone could be that drunk at 2 in the afternoon. It genuinely baffled me until I remembered it was Grand National day and then it all made sense.

People like that really piss me off.

Stuck in Limbo

In more ways than one.

The house hunting continues to go poorly. I still haven't found a new place - I'm looking at house shares now because all the decent solo-occupancy flats in Chester are annoyingly juuuuuust out of my price range - and I promised myself I wasn't going to pick up any writing projects until I got that sorted out. I don't work well when I'm ill at ease in my working space. I'm itching to get started though, so I feel like I'm stuck with the handbrake on, revving the engine. Self-imposed schedules are a right bitch.

In order to take my mind off how pissed off and frustrated I am, I think I may have slightly overspent on goodies this month. I've blown maybe more than I should have on books and video games; and definitely more than is healthy on takeaway food; so about a week out from payday I'm practically skint already. I have not been clever.

On the plus side, I've been distracting myself from living in Limbo by playing Limbo on XBLA, which is a beautiful little platform/puzzle game I can't recommend highly enough. In many ways it's quite similar to Braid but with an added pseudo J-Horror feel to it that makes it one of the most atmospheric games I've played in a while.

I'm also cheerfully chugging through Valkyria Chronicles, an old game plucked off the top of my Pile of Shame, although 'cheerfully' is probably the wrong word to use. It's a confusing game - by turns unremittingly bleak and cloyingly twee, it often seems that by playing it you're volunteering to take part in some experiment on the effects of severe mood whiplash. Either that or I'm suddenly bipolar.

Other than that, water is still wet, the sky is still blue, I'm still wide awake later than I wanted to be and it's too late at night to start doing anything new. As a result, I'm surrounded by things to do, and I'm bored witless.

That's how I spend most of my evenings at the moment, and it's more than a little depressing. God, I need to get into a new place as quickly as possible. I think I'm going slightly round the bend.

Oooh, noir-y

Just been buggering about with the look of the blog, getting rid of the red and making sure the text reads OK.

The new website - when it's done - will be a bit more minimalist. Black, white, and lots of shades of grey, with the odd bit of colour here and there. Figured it would make sense to make the blog a bit more in keeping with the new design. Also, it's helped me figure out what works and what doesn't before I go near a single line of code.

I think it looks quite nice.

Unforeseen Events

Not a great deal of progress is going on at the moment. Regrettably, real life has reared its ugly inconvenient head and thrown a bunch of awkward and time consuming bloody problems my way, which means that I will be temporarily suspending all writing activity.

Long story short, my housemate is selling his house to move in with his missus, so I need to find a new home. On my salary, and where I live, it's easier said than done. My employers were good enough to let me take today off at short notice, so much browsing of letting agencies has been going on today, with some encouraging results. But mostly disappointment and incredulity at the prices round here.

To be honest, I've been thinking about relocating for a while - I've been getting a bit weary of Chester. It's nice but there's not much in the way of activities or venues for people of my admittedly narrow set of interests, and it's only my small circle of friends in town that make the place worthwhile. They're top notch people, but I feel the lure of the south tempting me and I've realised how little there is stopping me maybe for the first time. There's a greater likelihood of chumming around with artsy types down south than where I am currently, which can only be good for progress into professional writerdom, so it seems to me that my impending homelessness might end up being a blessing in disguise.

Not that I've found a job down there or anything, and I'm going nowhere until that changes. So I'm also looking for a new home here. I'm hoping I can get somewhere decent with an open contract, so if the opportunity arises I can sod off down south at the first opportunity, but can happily stick around if that takes a while to come to fruition.

In addition to that, I've begun the slow, steady process of learning Dreamweaver so I can make some changes to the website to get it looking extra-swanky for this year's batch of convention attendings. I figure if I'm a bit more hands on and creating the content myself there will be much more of me online, so when people visit my site they will feel like they are staring STRAIGHT INTO MY BRAINS!

Plus i can finally get rid of the WIP next to it in the links section of the old blog here.

See? Lots of things rattling around in my head, and sadly this current script is going to have to wait until things settle down again. Once I get myself sorted in my new digs I can knuckle down to the big 2011 website redesign/writing extravaganza. I've only got until July to finish this current script and the next one. After that I was hoping to put comic books down for a while and start writing my book, so I'm already pretty badly behind schedule.

Maybe a new home in perhaps a new hometown will be the kick up the arse I sorely need. Creatively speaking.

Sitting still, but still doing stuff

That's me at the moment, that is.

Getting massively hooked on this Sherlock Holmes box set. It's tremendously easy to get totally immersed in the world, and I'm only a fraction of the way through it so far. It's proving to be a source of fine inspiration, and I'm popping back into my notepads and my spreadsheets every episode or two to make some more notes or devise another plot element for my next project. I even think I have a name for the main character.

I'm still trying to get used to the second Watson. The first chap did a fine job and his replacement isn't quite fitting with me yet. Plenty of time though.

In any case, lots of fun is being had, and wonderfully I don't feel bad about idling around for a change! Because after all it's research, isn't it? Research, which is a bit like work, only with less effort! It's certainly a change from how I usually spend my Valentine's Day - cuddled up to my pillow, deep guttural sobs sticking in my throat and choking me, wishing I was dead.

Not really, of course. Although I have got an appointment with my sexy lady dentist first thing tomorrow morning, so I'll spend my day off having a pretty girl cause me enormous pain and suffering.

And when you think about it, isn't that what Valentine's Day is all about?

Next!

I wouldn't say work has begun on the new project yet. I'm officially referring to this as my 'preliminary research' stage, which is to say that as I'm going to be writing something of a twisty-turny-mystery type thing, I'm watching a fat pile of DVDs that run along similar lines.

That Sherlock Holmes box set I bought recently - the version starring the legendary Jeremy Brett - will come in handy, along with a bunch of Christopher Nolan films and the like for inspiration regarding unconventional story structure. Lots of quality stuff, but I guess this means I won't be playing too many video games in the next few weeks.

I've pretty much decided the story is going to begin in medias res, but beyond that I have only the basic story in my head and not a lot else. So far. I should have the full story plotted out - maybe even structured in the correct narrative sequence - by the end of February, to begin the first draft in March.

I'll be keeping the sequence of events very economical - I don't want to run over the page count this time. This should be a much more compact story than Hudson Falls. Good thing too. I don't quite feel up to another 130 page titan just yet.

Finally Fallen

Finally, all my work on Hudson Falls is complete. Character bios, script, everything. I can draw a line under that, stick a fork in it, and rest easy. It's done.

Onto the next project! My posts from now on will detail the growing work on that one, which is so preliminary right now it doesn't have a name.

I tend to come up with the names quite late in the development of a script. Normally they tie in thematically with the content of the story, and as I sometimes don't know exactly what shape that will take when I originally come up with an idea, and writing being a spontaneous, fluid thing that can go in directions you don't expect, it's premature to constrict yourself with a name so early in the development of an idea.

Needless to say, as soon as I have a name for it, it'll be up on the blog.

Done and Done

Just a quick update - this evening I finished the rewrite of Hudson Falls. It's done. Forever. Just got the character bios to do this weekend and it'll be onto the next project.

I usually get a bit weird and slightly depressed after finishing something, so tonight has been a surreal experience. I think because it's been such a big job to write, finally finishing HF has had a much bigger impact on me than I'm used to.

But I shall be strong. Like a lion. Raaaar.

Nearly There

Progress update!

I've now finished the last, final and remaining rewrite of Hudson Falls - on paper. The weekend stretches away in front of me as does the task of typing it all up, but that shouldn't take long. After that and the character bios, I can finally call this particular project done.

And not a moment too soon. It's been a monumental job. Sometimes it's felt like such a tough slog to get through and I'm glad I'm nearing the end of it, but I'm incredibly proud of the end result, and I hope that I have some luck when I start shopping it around to publishers.

So, starting next week (fingers crossed) I'll be making preparations for the next project, which is the 40/50 pager for Accent. That'll be a toughie, too. It's a bit of a detectivey, mystery type story, so the first thing I'm going to have to do is put a spreadsheet together so I can structure the chronology of each character. This should mean the events of the story still make perfect sense when they get broken up and told out of sequence. Should help me flesh out the characters as well.

This is going to be one project where my OCD is going to come in handy.

Horizontal Frolics

As I'm currently incapacitated and stuck in my bedroom as I recover from some minor surgery, I've been trying to remain as active as possible while not actually moving. This has, I'm pleased to report, involved doing a bit of work on the rewrite of Hudson Falls. Thankfully I had the forward thinking to print off a copy of the script a couple of months ago, so I haven't even had to get out of bed while I do it. A perfect activity to occupy someone barely capable of walking to the bathroom and back.

Progress is being slightly laborious, but fulfilling. It's remarkable how many more spelling and grammatical errors you notice when you're reading words on a page rather than on a screen. I'm coming up for three quarters of my way through it now, so not long to go - hopefully later on in the week I will be able to sit at my PC for more than 20 minutes without needing a lie down, and I can type it all up and finally call it done, for real this time. Then I can spend my time thinking about this new idea for Accent and get the ball rolling on that one.

It's good - I feel the cogs turning in my head again. Maybe this means that even though I'm not particularly mobile I'm starting to shake off the Christmas and new year funk and will be feeling like myself again before I know it. I'd certainly like to get this year's activities under way with a flurry of work. Right now it only feels like a light drizzle.

Twitter is odd

I'm now on Twitter.

Apparently it's all modern and stuff. To be honest, I'm currently a bit baffled by it. Nevertheless, it's apparently a legal requirement that we all must have a Twitter account, so there I am. Dunno how it works yet, but you can do a search on DarrenEllisOCD and there I'll be.

Feel free to tweet me, or whatever the terminology is.

If I'm coming across as a bit of a curmudgeon about it, then that's because it's made me grumpy. It's new technology and I'm over 30. Douglas Adams was right. Twitter is against the natural order of things.

The year ahead

Greetings once again! It's been a little longer than I foresaw between blog posts over Christmas, mostly because there's been nothing new to report - I've generally just spent the last month blobbing around like a fat tub of lard, eating choccies, drinking beer and watching telly. It's been bliss, but it's not been particularly noteworthy in a writerly way.

So, onwards, then. I've formulated a schedule of work for the next 12 months, although like most of my self-imposed deadlines, it's pretty loose and is subject to change, depending on what comes up.

Firstly, I'm going through Hudson Falls one final time, just cleaning up a few spelling and grammatical errors. This is turning out to be a slightly bigger job that I had anticipated, and once that's done I'll be putting together some character bios for the new submission pack I'm working on. I could have a bit of good news regarding an artist coming soon, but don't want to count my chickens.

After that, it'll be another script for Accent UK. After they passed on Hudson Falls due to its length I got to thinking about alternative ideas for them, and I have one that's absolutely kick ass and will come in with a much shorter page count. Fingers crossed they like this one when it's done.

After that, I'm going to write another script - no publisher attached, no artist on board, no nothing right now. This is going to be for future investment, as the plan is to have three full length scripts finished and at various stages of production by July.

The rest of the year will be taken up by Empty, my horror novel for younger readers. I'm determined to get at least a partial first draft done by the end of this year - I keep putting this off due to comic book projects, so I really need to stop procrastinating and get stuck in once the other projects are done.

So there we have it. A bit of an ambitious target for a 12-month period, and I'll probably get distracted by umpteen other possibilities along the way and not get it all done, but it's important to have goals, even if you're constantly shifting them.