Relatively dull update.

Work continues at a gentle pace. Telling a story with just words is very hard after so long of basically describing pictures and having other people do the storytelling. Fun though. I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now.

Basically, I'm looking at a schedule of a chapter a week. If I can stick to that, by the end of the year I'll have another sixteen chapters done. I'm expecting some will be shorter than others, so maybe more than sixteen. Hopefully that'll be a full book. Draft 1, of course, but just in time to meet the deadline. I can spend next year on, you know, making it good.

In other news, I had a Calippo today. It was nice.

Blimey...

So, August went by quite fast, didn't it? I don't know if it's got anything to do with my computer woes keeping me away from internetty things or what, but it feels like I blinked and I missed an entire month. I do not like it when things like that happen. No blog entries for a month? Tsk, tsk, Darren, you should feel shame for being so naughty.

So then, with four months left of the year, I find myself with an insurmountable obstacle in front of me - to write a novel in that time. It's not going to happen, is it? Still, I shall endeavor to get as much of it done as possible. If I set myself the goal of at least one chapter every week, I can get the best part of the first draft finished by Christmas. Hell, If I'm lucky I might manage to get the whole thing done. If that happens, it's getting entered into the Pratchett competition, even if it's in the form of a ragged-around-the-edges first draft. It'll stand about as much chance of winning as monkeyscribbles in crayon and poo have of winning the Turner Prize, but the important thing is that I'm writing prose again. Maybe that means that sometime during the first half of next year I can call it done and start pitching it.

Which is where I'm rubbish, I have realized. Good at writing, terrible at selling scripts to folks. I seriously need to work on that aspect. I''m not looking forward to having to do that, I can tell you.

On the writing side, things are happening again. Hudson Falls is getting done, slowly, although it'll pick up speed soon enough. The Dead Roots anthology from Mike Garley has begun the countdown to wising fwom its gwabe, and I'm awaiting with baited breath for an imminent update regarding my contribution on that. There's no news on the Murder, Malice & Teeth or Bayou Arcana fronts as yet, although with the winter season of comic book events about to begin shortly, I'm sure there will be things to report in the weeks and months to come.

Oh, and there's also something going on with Harrowing of Hell, but Jack is handling that and it's all very hush hush. So shhhh. You ain't seen me, right?

Anyway, I must get back to Hudson Falls. It's not going to write itself.

Hudson Rises.

My computer appears to be briefly behaving itself, so last night I spent a little time writing Hudson Falls - as a novel. It was just an experiment to see it it'd work more than anything, and as it turns out it feels pretty natural and I think I might give it a try.

I'm playing a little with a semi-epistolary form, staggering newspaper stories and press articles in between chapters, and it seems to give the story a bit of extra body. I've not written much of it so far so there's no major changes to report, but I'm already tinkering with the idea of ramping up the fantasy quotient and having a denouement that resolves the story in a more unreal, anthropomorphic way.

It'll be a while yet before I can get back into it properly, but when I do I think I shall be having a real go at this novel thing. Hell, if it doesn't work out, I can always re-convert it to a comic book. In any case it felt good to be writing again, although I'm woefully out of practice writing prose after so long concentrating on comics.

Rewrites are hard sometimes.

Started the process on Hudson Falls tonight, and it's already apparent that it's going to be a bigger job than I originally thought, or maybe hoped. A lot of it is quite weak, to be honest. My lead is inconsistent in characters and fairly unappealing, some of the supporting cast are a bit thin and thematically it needs to be retooled.

I sat down and worked out a new structure, just roughly for now, but I'll be expertly moulding it into a compelling narrative over the coming days and weeks. A lot of the scenes work when taken individually, but don't really fit together very well, and certainly not in the order in which they currently occur. There's going to be a lot of rejigging of the chronology to make it a bit firmer and more focused. There's now a steady acceleration of urgency in the events until they reach the climax, which is quite different to the original. A bit more open ended and a bit less trite.

All in all, From the feel of the new outline the end result is going to be less sluggish altogether and more of a thriller than an outright drama.

One interesting thing - I'm not 100% convinced it's a comic book any more. Part of me is saying it might work even better as a novel, but that's probably just me getting ahead of myself. Needless to say, I'll be writing it as a comic book first and will see how it comes out.

Ahh, silence.

My computer has stopped making funny noises for the time being. You can all relax, I'm still here for now.

As I was saying, I'm not sure what I'm going to do when reporting on my progress with Hudson Falls. I guess I'll just bomb into the rewrite and do what seems best at the time.

The storming of the brains.

I was thinking today about what to do about my blog posts as I rewrite Hudson Falls. I tried to be a bit more in-depth with the reports of the writing process of Murder Malice & Teeth, but I kind of don't want to do the same thing again. Pretty sure there's only so many ways I can write about how difficult the writing process can be before it starts to sound a bit self-indulgent and whiny.

I was toying with the idea of writing blog entries in character as the protagonist of Hudson Falls, chronicling the events of the story as I write them. "The Secret Diary of Eric Hudson, aged 28 & 3/4" sort of thing. It seemed nicely meta, and I figured it'd be a good idea to get my hand in with prose again before I slog into that elusive novel I keep mentioning.

I dunno. My brain kind of feels like it's stuck in neutral at the moment.

Erk, hang on, my PC has just started making weird noises. I think that means it's time to put it to bed for the night. Will have to cut this week's entry a bit short.

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.

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.

Underwhelmed But Looking Forwards

I thought it was time, after an incredibly long lie in, to document my thoughts on Thought Bubble in Leeds - as the title suggests, I was rather disappointed and came home with feelings of frustration more than anything else.

As it was my first Thought Bubble, I didn't know what to expect, and assumed it would be a similar vibe to BICS last month, which turned out to be a bit wide of the mark - there was a much greater emphasis on the buying and selling at Thought Bubble, and not quite so much on the social aspects of the show. Good for the people with tables, not so good for me, I guess. I managed to have a quick chat with Dave and Colin at the Accent table, and caught up a little with old chums like Jenika, Doug Noble and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, but all in all it had much more of a market feel and I found it hard to wade through the bustle towards other creators. It was something of a shame considering my new quest for artists.

The organization of the event seems to be a little chaotic, too. Any event where those with pre-paid tickets take twice as long to get into the show as those who have just shown up with nothing is a bit uncoordinated, and In this regard, Thought Bubble was a bit of a shambles. It was livened up a little, however, by the troupe of rollerskating zombie chicks in gold hotpants, who were meandering around the entrance for the best part of the day.

So, not very much was done, and a lot still remains to do - Accent passed on the script that I had delivered to them due to its length, but reassured me of its quality, gave their blessings for me to shop it around, and welcomed a different, shorter script, which Roland will be able to fit better into his schedule. I've got a concept that I shall be developing in the next few weeks for them that will be ideal.

This has had the side effect of leaving me with a complete graphic novel script with no home and no attached artist, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because I already have a number of ideas regarding Hudson Falls which I'll be exploring in the next few weeks. That will all hinge on finding an artist to come on board, because as any writer will know, many publishers won't even look at a script unless it's accompanied by at least 10 pages of finished art.

Between that and the Clint submissions, I'm going to have to redouble my efforts and throw myself into my crusade for artists. By the last count, I now need at least three new collaborators for various projects.

In other news, progress continues to be made with Chris and the website - more subtle changes take place as time goes on. I'm hoping that some time in the new year the design will be complete and I can just concern myself with generating additional content to go into it.

Lots to do, and more to think about. This Christmas will be a quiet one, I think.

Done and dusted

This weekend I finally delivered what I'm hoping is the final version of the script for Accent UK I mentioned in a previous entry. It's been a tough slog, this one, and it's taken me the best part of 18 months, on and off, to get to this stage. Numerous false starts and frustrations, too. Now it's finished, and I can happily draw a line under it and move onto something else.

I'm not sure why getting this script finished was giving me so much trouble. I'm putting it down to the fact that this script is one of the weightiest things I've written, and also one of the few that doesn't have anything of the fantastic about it. It's certainly quite unlike anything else I've written before. I'm hoping the publishers like it. Now that it's finished I'm actually quite proud of it.

But things chug along. I'm intending to take a week or two off from writing to doss around and play video games before having another look at the first couple of issues of 'Come and See'. After that, it'll finally be time to get cracking on my kids' book.

Now that's going to be a challenge...