Final thrash for Fiends 3

The final volume of my FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT trilogy is fast approaching its deadline. I talked with Black Flame editor Christian Dunn yesterday, giving him an update on progress. The novel will be finished and delivered by 5pm next Monday, come hell or high water [what a wonderfully evocative expression!], so today, Wednesday and Friday will require some fancy fingerwork on the keyboard. Fortunately, I've got no shortage of plot and less than 20,000 words to go, so it's simply a case of knuckliing down to it. That's why I'm here, typing this blog entry - procrastination, I love it. Once I'm in and writing, everything starts flowing, but every morning is that same feeling of dread, fretting that I've somehow forgotten how to write whilst asleep. These blog entries are a way of getting me sat down, thinking and typing, plus they help empty my brain of extraneous matter. Like Tai Chi or yoga, but with less bending and stretching. And more cups of coffee.

After two weeks of pitiful post the motherlode arrived today. A big box of DVDs from the US - The Shield Season 4, the one and only season of Space Above and Beyond, the Firefly film Serentiy and Sin City - recut, extended and unrated. No shortage of entertainment to be had there. However, all that will have to wait as I've still got 17 episodes of Inspector Morse to watch whilst revising my entires for the new edition of The Complete Inspector Morse. I'm somewhat appalled how many errors crept into the first edition and am determined to put as many right as possible, while adding a wealth of new material. Still waiting for news of when the Lewis spin-off Reputation is going to be broadcast - an entry on Wikipedia from last November suggested this coming Sunday (January 15) as a likely date, but the new Radio Times says otherwise. Ho-hum. Guess that gives me a few more weeks' grace before Reynolds & Hearn will be expecting the new text!

In other news, we had auditions for Sweet Charity at the Biggar Theatre Workshop tonight. We've got the makings of a good cast, though no final decisions have been made on who's playing what yet - further auditions are planned for Thursday, hopefully mopping up any stragglers. Then it's casting time and prepping the script for a firt read-thru next Monday. Performances aren't until May, but I want this show to be slick and professional as possible. With a musical, the only way to do that is give yourself plenty of rehearsal time and be patient. Practise makes perfect, or at least much better.

Fiends 3 is dominting this week, but there's a bunch of other plates I've got to keep spinning. The first draft of my first ever radio play is due in on January 23, so that's next week's big job once Fiends is vanquished. Then I'm switching focus to my MA Screenwriting course, where two 3000+ word assignments are due in January 27th. Plus I suspect I'm due to deliver a new Phantom script to Egmont Sweden soon, but since the editor hasn't chased me for it, that can't be too urgent - yet.

On the to-do list: prep ideas for a Big Finish project I've been asked to pitch; prep and write a synopsis for a proposed Warhammer novel; mroe Phantom scripts, to be written from plots supplied by Hans LIndahl; my perpetually postponed Renaissance murder mystery novel; and grud only knows what else. Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Now, it's time to get back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler is about to top himself. Let the fiendishness begin!