Carry On Dante: new Nikolai novel out, earns praise

My 14th novel has just been published and it's already gotten a glowing critique from the www.2000adreview.co.uk website. NIKOLAI DANTE: HONOUR BE DAMNED! is an original story based on a series published in Britain's legendary science fiction weekly 2000 AD. For those who don't know Dante already, Nikolai is a brigand and an adventurer from 27th Century Russia. think Flashman in the future, or imagine if Han Solo had gotten the lightsabre instead of Luke Skywalker. I helped develop Dante when the strip was being created for 2000 AD in the mid-1990s and have now written three novels starring the Russian rogue. Honour Be Damned! sends him to future Britain for a right old romp, full of saucy exploits, sexual perversity and scintillating satire. If you want to read the review, past this URL into your browser:
www.2000adreview.co.uk/reviews/ extra/2006/books/dante/honour-be-damned.shtml

Meanwhile, the first of my new Sarah Jane Smith audio drama, Buried Secrets, is attracting plaudits at the influential Outpost Gallifrey website. On the audio forum, 50 people have cast their verdict on the story and thus far 90% have rated it in the top two categories - excellent and good. Only one curmudgeon has decided it was poor and four others think it was average. I think the second of my new SJS audios is due out this week. I still haven't heard Snow Blind yet, so can't wait to get it loaded on to my iPod. Must be more patient, must be more patient...

SFX gives Sarah Jane Smith audios 4 stars

After a rather fraught weekend [don't even ask], I had a lovely surprise when I bought a copy of SFX magazine today. Reviewer Paul Kirkley has given the first two releases of my new Sarah Jane Smith audios four stars out of five. Here's what he had to say about them in his rather glowing review...

'Both Buried Secrets and Snow Blind play like Sarah Jane's greatest hits, with our heroine getting caught up in Italian death cults (a la "The Masque of Mandragora"), stranded in an Antarctic base ("Seeds of Doom") and being temporarily blinded ("The Brain of Morbius"). Hell, she's even paired up with Harry Sullivan's step-bother.

'Fortunately, both pieces work well in their own right as exciting, action-packed Girls' Own adventure tales, with an ongoing - but nicely unobtrusive - Alias-style story arc about Sarah being the subject of an ancient prophesy, which promises plenty of intrigue ahead.

'An endearing mix of Doctor Who, John Buchan and the adventures of Tintin, these would sound perfect hissing out of an old wireless on a cosy Sunday evening. But they're not bad played on your iPod, either.'

Not sure where the comparisons with Tintin come from, but it's a long time since I read any of the Jimmy Sommerville's lookalike's cartoon adventures. Also, I'd forgotten about Sarah being temporarily blinded in Morbius until reading this review! Still, the review makes some perceptive observations and who doesn't love a little praise?

A man of distinction

Well, I've gotten the results of my first trimester as a part-time MA Screenwriting student at Edinburgh's Napier University. For the module Writing and Screen Project Development I was graded as D3 and for the module Business of Screen Project Development I got a D1. The D means a pass with distinction, D5 being the highest and D1 the lowest. So my efforts on the writing module got me a higher grade than on the business module, which suits me fine - I'm aiming to be a screenwriter, not a producer. As for my pieces of assessed work, my Script Report earned a D3 while my Market Analysis only got a P5 (a high pass). Fortunately, I'd done enough elsewhere on the business module to drag my overall grade up into Distinction.

I am now the proud possessor of 30 credits towards the 180 I need, one sixth of the way to a Masters in Screenwriting. This trimester's module are also worth 15 credits each, so if I do okay on them, I'll have accumulated 60 credits by June. The part-timers are effectively at a loose end for the third trimester of Year One, then we return in late September for the start of Year Two and a whole new bunch of fun. But that's the future. For now, I'm laying in the afterglow of being a man of Distinction...

Back to college

Having spent last Thursday in LA, it's back to college time for me today. I was at Napier two Thursdays ago for the opening day of the new trimester, and once in January for the last teaching day of the first trimester. Thanks to quirks of university scheduling and my triip to Gallifrey, I haven't been in to college regularly since mid-December last year. Time to get back in the groove, methinks. We're getting stuck into Writing for Interactive and - for us part-timers - our first script development module. Seems strange to have been on a screenwriting MA course for five months and not actually written one word of script for it yet, but I guess you have to learn the craft before you do the graft. With any luck, I'll get the results of the two major pieces of assessed work from the first pair of modules today. Eager to find our how I did on my script report and market analysis. Both seemed like good efforts, but like many scribes, I'm the world's worst judge of my own work.

Spent yesterday at BBC Scotland's HQ on Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow. Radio producer David Ian Neville gathered together the five writers creating scripts for a week-long slot on Radio 4's Women's Hour. Me, I'm Wednesday. We read through our first draft scripts, talked about ways of interlinking them and getting best use of the different characters. We also got notes on each of our scripts from David and I'll need to start work on rewrites come Monday. I'm giving my subconscious the weekend to digest the notes and I'm off to That Fancy London tomorrow to visit the in-laws. Back late Saturday, then Sunday will be a general life and laundry kind of day.

Got myself online at LinkedIn, a global networking thing. My old flatmate John Freeman invited me, so I've decided to give it a go. I've no idea whether it has any value or will generate any work for me, but what the hell - it's free and might be of value. If you're interested, click the headline above to see more, or else paste this URL into your browser:

https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=tab_h


Last but not least, we're tearing through Season 1 of Grey's Anatomy on DVD, which I bought in LA last week. What a great show? Fun, entertaining and witty, with some great characters. You can't go wrong with wise-cracking curmudgeons in my humble opinion. Also bought Season 1 of Hill Street Blues, Season 3 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and a bunch of other discs, including one of my all-time favourite films, Breaking Away. Who needs regular TV when you've got DVDs, right?

In-Between Days

The last three months have been a blur of writing, deadlines, more writing, more deadlines and a big, steaming pile of stress. No sooner was one project finished than three others were due, all of them requiring many, many, many hours of research, writing and revising. Since mid-November I've written three issues of the Phantom, finished my work on the Sarah Jane Smith audios, supplied several long features to the Judge Dredd Megazine, written the first draft of my first radio play for the BBC, scripted the first two episodes of my Fiends of the Eastern Front in Stalingrad comic strip, written the third volume of my Fiends trilogy of novels and completely revised The Complete Inspector Morse, adding 10,000 words of new material. Keeping all the plates has been more than a fulltime job, but sleep is for tortoises, as a great man once said.

Now, finally, I've reached a momentary pause amid the mayhem. Virtually all my contractural obligations have been fulfilled, something that lifts several large weights off my shoulders. In fact, I think the radio play is the only job I'm currently contracted to do any further work on. I'm contributing to a five-day serial for broadcast as part of Woman's Hour on Radio 4 this summer, along with four other scribes. All five of us are meeting tomorrow at the BBC HQ in Glasgow, along with producer-director David Ian Neville to talk through the scripts and the characters - should be a fascinating experience. I've been fancying the idea of working in a writers' room, so this will give me a first taste of that. I've met two of the other writers before, so it won't be a room full of strangers, making the day slightly less daunting.

Six hours before I set off for LA I finished my work on the second edition of The Complete Inspector Morse. No doubt there'll be some tweaks and revisions requested by publishers Reynolds and Hearn, but hopefully all the hard work's behind me on that project. I didn't ask for a new advance on this edition, preferring to put my trust in the book's abilities to generate ongoing royalties from the first copy sold. After several years of working on material that either didn't offer royalties or didn't earn them, it'd be nice to get sent the occasional cheque for already existing work. As mentioned above, the new edition has an extra 10,000 words - about a third of them devoted to the recent Morse spin-off Lewis - and the text has been rewritten from end to end. I doubt there's a page that hasn't been changed, most of them significantly so. That book really is a labour of love, especially since I won't see any royalties before October at the earliest.

While out in LA I found a copy of my first new Sarah Jane Smith audio in the dealers' room at the Gallifrey convention. I couldn't resist buying it, even though Big Finish will be supplying me with free copies - eventually. I imported the story into iTunes, set the playlist to play continuously and sat back to enjoy the story. Tip for the future: don't try listening to an hour-long audio drama will jetlagged and exhausted. I conked out near the end and woke up to find myself twenty minutes into the beginning again. Despite my exhaustion, it sounded great and I'm proud of the finished results. Now I can't wait to hear the second SJS, Snow Blind, which is due out before the end of the month.

Since this is an in-between day, I've got a chance to contemplate what I want to do next. The MA Screenwriting course is keeping me busy on Thursdays and I'll have new assignments to tackle over the coming three months, along with a shedload of reading for the interactive writing module. I've got a few other irons in various fires that could turn into significant chunks of work, but no other books under contract at present. I'm due to be pitching a project to Big Finish, so I need to come up with a story for that. I've been too busy the past few months to devote any time or creative energy to my long-delayed novel proposal for Warhammer, so that needs some contemplation. There's six more episodes of my Fiends strip to write, so that will need looking at again soon, especially with artist Colin MacNeil getting geared up for the project. And Matt at the Megazine is talking about some more features, with some intriguing ideas getting floated for those slots.

Beyond that? Time to tackle some of those projects I've kept putting off because I was too busy working on paying jobs. Time to stop coming with up reasons - however valid - for not biting the bullet and doing some serious work on spec scripts and proposals. Time to step up to the plate and prove I'm not just a hack writer churning out stories based on other people's characters. It's frightening and it's exciting. As for right now - it's time for lunch.

Fiends of the Eastern Front: The Blood Red Army cover revealed at last!

Black Flame has unveiled the cover for my second FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT novel at last. the 256-page book is published at the end of April and is set against the backdrop of the Siege of Leningrad in 1942. It features the Russian point of view as Rumanian vampyr are unleashed upon the Eastern Front...

Back from LA and boggle-eyed

Just staggered back in the door from LA. Room doing a gentle spiral around me as jetlag does its worst. Has a blast at Gallifrey, but getting back was the usual torture. Our plane was late leaving LA after a drugged up woman in a bad wig was let on board, then ejected, requiring the removal of her luggage as well. Why they let the hirsutely hilarious 'ho on board in the first place was beyond me. As a consequence, I was ten minutes too late for my connecting flight and got shunte don to the next one plane out of Dodge. Or it might have been Heathrow. One of the two.

Gibber.

More tomorrow, when I'm slightly more compost mental.

Tom Baker sings Video Killed the Radio Star

This is pure genius. BT recently hired Tom Baker is record every word in a dictionary and lots of bits of words and sounds, enabling people to send messages of their own choosing by phone, using Tom Baker's voice. Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long for this to get corrupted and mis-used. Now there's a website - http://tombakersays.co.uk/ - where you can hear bizarre messages people have forced Tom Baker's voice to speak. My favourite has to be having the former Doctor Who actor speaking the lyrics of Buggles's early 1980s single, Video Killed The Radio Star - class in a glass.

Standing in a queue with Mickey from Doctor Who

So yesterday was day one of Gallifrey 2006, America's largest Doctor who convention. The new series starring Christopher Eccleston will hit US TV screens in March on the Sci-Fi Channel, so this con is mostly populated by the hardcore fans, rather than the new fan of enthusiasm seen in the UK. Guest of honour from the new show is Noel Clarke, who seems like the nicest guy you can imagine. It seems Mickey is in more than a few episodes of the 2006 series with David Tennant and Billie Piper. Rumours are swirling the convention about a startling new version of the character that will appear in the episodes set on an alternate universe Earth, which also features the Cybermen. I'm doing my best to avoid finding out too much about the new series, but apparently all those times when the Ninth Doctor kept calling the character Ricky will all make sense... What does that mean? I've no idea. Guess we'll find out in April or May.

Friday was day one of the con. I went on the main stage for a panel about writing Doctor Who audios for Big Finish now that Doctor Who is back on TV - the consequences, the advantages and the problems. Then it was an autograph signing session. Alas, the first of my Sarah Jane Smith audios hasn't quite arrived in the US, although I managed to buy a copy in the dealer's room and listened to it last night. So my brilliant masterplan to come here and talk about the SJS mini-series has been slightly blunted. Such is life. At six there was the official opening ceremony, where all the guests are trouped on stage to wave at the audience and say something droll or enthusiastic. There was a right thong of us gathered behind a TARDIS prop, waiting to come on. While the con organisers were getting the audience keyed up, everybody backstage was nattering. Such was th elevel of volume, nobody noticed when the first guest - Noel Clarke - was summoned on stage. Eventually I waggled my eyebrows at him and pointed a thumb towards the stage. He smiled and sprinted on stage to vast acclaim. Ahh, the joys of being beloved.

Today I've got a bunch of panels, another autograph sessions [you'd think the five people who want me to sign something would have exhausted their opportunities yesterday, but apparently not] and a bunch of other stuff. Plus at some point today I must try to remember to eat food. It was always the same when I was attending comics conventions on behalf of 2000 AD. The day would race by and at four o'clock you'd feel a gnawing hole somewhere below the ribcage. Speaking of which, it's time for breakfast...

It's Raining Coffee - thanks for nothing, British Airways

So it's Friday morning and I'm in LA for this year's Gallifrey convention. It's a gathering of science fiction writers, performers and enthusiasts, with the emphasis on Doctor Who. The convention events begin at midday but things really kick into gear tomorrow. This year Gallifrey has relocated from Van Nuys [many miles and at least an hour from LA's international airport] to the LAX Marriott, which is a five-minute shuttle ride from the airport. The hotel seems nicer and more efficient than the Airtel Plaza at Van Nuys, so that's an added bonus.

The short flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow was uneventful and, happily, the onward flight also went from Terminal 1. That saved a stressful trek between terminals at Heathrow, which is never a fun prospect. The flight from Heathrow to LAX was... a little weird. The bulkhead above the area where I was seated started raining coffee - cold, black coffee. We were in a little section of our own. I had a nice window seat, the seat to my left was vacant, everything was looking good. Just before we took off, one of the cabin crew was swabbing the bulkhead above us, joking that somebody on the previous flight must have thrown coffee in the air during turbulence. Then the plane took off and the coffee rain began.

As we ascended a steady stream of brown liquid was running along the bulkhead and dripping down on to several people sat below - me included. Not a huge amount, but still annoying. And wet. And coffee. You know, because that looks so good on so many people. Of course, I'd rather it was coffee than something important to the plane's mechanisms like hydraulic fluid. Once we were up the cabin crew did their best to stem the flow. It settled down as the ploane levelled out, but I shifted to another seat, hoping to get some sleep en route. Except the seatback screen wasn't working where I moved. So I shifted back.

After several hours, I decided to get some sleep. Unsurprisingly, the cafe au dear it's dripping on my head started just as I was drifting off. I got shifted to another seat by the apologetic crew and given a form to fill in that means British Airways will pay for any drycleaning or laundry costs I incur. Sadly, the magical word upgrade was never mentioned. Me, I just wanted to sleep. But the caffeine precipitation incident hasn't made me want to rush back on board a British Airways plane anytime soon. Except Sunday, when I start the long journey back to Scotland. Let's hope they've solved the problem by then...

Stephen Churchett - better than I realised!

When I was writing the first edition of The Complete Inspector Morse, I dreaded watching the final episode of the detective drama. I knew in advance Morse was going to die and I knew I'd end up in tears, all the while trying to analyse the episode's strengths and weaknesses. Maybe my grief for the loss of such a great show got in the way of my judgement, but the review I wrote of the show was scathing of screenwriter Stephen Churchett and what'd he done to adapt Colin Dexter's final Morse novel for TV.

I watched The Remorseful Day again at the weekend, as part of my efforts to finish revising the new, second edition of my Morse tome - and I was pleasantly surprised how good the programme was. Maybe it's the fact four years have passed and I've gotten enough distance to watch more objectively. Maybe it's doing my MA Screenwriting course that's given me a greater appreciation of things like tone and theme. Maybe it's watching the Lewis spin-off, also written by Churchett [from a story by Russell Lewis], that's given me a better opinion of Churchett's work as a wordsmith. Whatever the reason, I've come to the conclusion he's a much better scribe than I gave him credit for.

if he looks familiar to you, that be because Churchett is also an actor. For years he made occasional appearances on the BBC's long runign soap opera EastEnders as Marcus, lawyer to the Mitchell Brothers. But Churchett is also a TV writer, having contributed episodes of Hornblower, the new Miss Marple series and numerous other shows.

Enough of this wittering, back to work for me. It's looking increasingly doubtful I'll get all my Morse tome revisions done before leaving for LA tomorrow morning before dawn - but I'm giving it a bloody good try! Of course, I also need to find time for a bath and I haven't actually packed anything for the trip yet. Details, details...

Sarah Jane Smith: Buried Secrets is out...

...apparently. I say apparently because I haven't seen or heard a copy of it yet, and the Big Finish website hasn't been updated to announce the audio drama's official publication. I suspect all of that is because BFP webmaster and SJS producer/director John Ainsworth is in Australia at the moment. It seems extremely unlikely I'll get to hear the finished story before I head off for LA on Thursday, unless a copy turns up in tomorrow's post. Such is life. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to buy a copy in the dealer's room at Gallifrey. Early response on the Outpost Gallifrey Big Finish forum has been very positive, which is nice. to find out what others think, click the headline on this posting or paste this URL into your browser: http://www.gallifreyone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69017

A thousand minutes of Inspector Morse

I spent the weekend watching ten episodes of Inspector Morse back to back. Since each instalment of the TV series ran to at least 100 minutes [not counting commercial breaks], that means I spent more than 1000 minutes watching Morse over the last two days, or close to 17 hours with the Oxford detective. I'm on the final thrash of revisions for the new, hardback edition of my Morse reference book and have been gradually re-viewing all 33 of the TV tales. But now push is coming to shove, hence the weekend's Morse marathon. The ten episodes I watched were made over an eight year period, so the key cast members were aging in front of my eyes, a somewhat perturbing experience. Now all I've got left to watch is the heart-breakingly sad finale, The Remorseful Day, and the recent Lewis spin-off.

Lewis got ITV's highest ratings for a drama [excluding soaps] in 18 months, all but guaranteeing the spin-off would be re-commissioned. According to Britain's TV industry trade paper, ITV wants four more Lewis stories to be shot this summer for broadcast early in 2007. That'll be the 20th anniversary of Morse's first TV appearance in The Dead of Jericho. Apparently the only sticking point is persuading Kevin Whately to sign up for more of Lewis. If I was his agent, I'd be turning the screws on ITV's negotiators. Whately declined to appear in the penultimate Morse TV tale, The Wench is Dead, in a dispute over how much he was being paid. Now's his chance to extract a little payback - and a large cheque. To my mind, Whately's a stunning actor whose contribution to the success of Morse on TV was consistently overlooked. That's not surprising, when you're appearing alongside a heavyweight thesp like John Thaw, but Whately deserves a big part of the acclaim too.

Once the programme makers have secured Whately for Lewis, they must make sure Laurence Fox returns as Hathaway. By the end of 'Lewis' I was developing a lot of affection for the failed priest; his partnership with the detective inspector was fast becoming a favourite. But please, please, please, can somebody persuade Morse's greatest TV scribe Julian Mitchell to get back behind a keyboard? If there's one thing watching a thousand minutes of Morse in two days teaches you, it's that Mitchell wrote the best scripts for the series. Get him involved with Lewis and quality will result. Few could doubt the production values or quality of the filmwork on Lewis. If there were any quibbles from critics, they most stemmed from the script - and the fact the hacks felt obliged to pick holes in the programme, to prove their credentials at critics.

Today's tasks? Some tweaks on my third Fiends of the Eastern Front novel, Twilight of the Dead; re-viewing The Remorseful Day; and making a start on my moment-by-moment analysis of Lewis. I've got until Wednesday to finish my work on The Complete Inspector Morse: From Page to Screen, because on Thursday I'm off to LA - hurrah! California, here I come...

Why aren't you watching Veronica Mars?

I heart Veronica Mars. If you haven't seen this show or heard of, you should make the effort. It's a crime series, based around a high school - but trust me, this ain't no Nancy Drew. [Always wanted somebody to produce a mystery show called Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys about a lesbian and her gay friends who solve crime while having adventures - but I guess that's not going to happen, right?] Veronica Mars is sassy, smart and shot through with intelligent writing. Americans can make TV shows about teenagers and not have them turn into soapy nonsense. Not all the time, you understand, but even now and then somebody gets it right. If you liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its dialogue, its heart and its wit, you'll love Veronica Mars. If you were put off Buffy because it was about monsters, demons and slaying vampires, you'll love Veronica Mars. No supernatural stuff anywhere, promise.
In all honesty, I've yet to meet anyone under 40 who didn't enjoy Veronica Mars. Don't believe me? Click the headline on this post and you should be transported to the page on amazon.co.uk for the Region 1 DVD release. Want to give Veronica a try? If you live in the US, you're lucky - season two is showing on UPN at the moment. DVD wise, it's only available as Region 1 right now. In the UK the Living channel has been screening it, so if you've got satellite, cable or digital, you're golden. Otherwise, you can always sample some of Ms Mars by visiting this URL http://www.robthomasproductions.com/ and navigating your way to the Veronica Mars download page, then click Movies. That's free, people. Go on, give it a try!

The Back to School Mystery

This week marks the start of trimester 2 at Napier University's MA Screenwriting course. Theoretically, that means we all turn up tomorrow and see what treats the tutors have lined up for us. In reality, I'm not sure where we're meant to be going. That's not a metaphysical statement, by the way. So far, the sole picee of information I've found about our first day back was buried in the online calendar. Apparently we're to meet in room F11 at the Merchiston campus. As to where room F11 might be, well, I guess that's for us to find out. Perhaps it's some covert initiative test. We spent most of last trimester [why can't they just call it term, I'm not having a baby] in a building that was to be gutted once that session was over.

Being only a part-timer on the MA [and yes, part-timer does feel a lot like being a second class citizen at times], I'm only required at college one day a week when we're in session. Two new modules have appeared on my WebCT account, the means by which the university 'facilitates online learning'. [Jargon - don't you just hate it?] Looks like we're tackling Writing for Interactive Entertainment [I guess that means videogames] and the part-timers get their first taste of a Script Development Workshop. The full-timers had their first Script Development Workshop last trimester, which leaves me wondering that'll be made to work - do they segregate us from the full-timers or find some more elegant solution? I guess we'll find out tomorrow, assuming I ever find out where room F11 is...

UPDATE: D'uh! Having read the calendar posting more closely, I realised the message to attend F11 was for the production students, not the screenwriters. According to the office at the School of Design And Media Arts [DAMA], the screenwriters are meant to gather at G29. Obviously, I have no idea where that is either, but I'm sure I'll have fun finding it...

Sports Night: funny, funny and - yes - funny

So we're watching Sports Night on DVD for what must be the sixth time. For those who've never heard of it, Sports Night was a sitcom that ran for two seasons on US TV at the end of the 90s. What makes it more notable is the cast and crew who worked on the show. For a start, it was the first major TV vehicle of Aaron 'The West Wing' Sorkin. He created it and wrote most of the episodes. The show also teamed him up with director Thomas Schlamme, with whom he would envisage The West Wing, and the hilariously named music composer W. Snuffy Walden [not as funny a name as the guy who wrote music for Buffy The Vampire Slayeer, but few people's name is as funny as that of Thomas Wanker].

In front of the camera the show featured Felicity Huffman [now an Oscar-nominated actress for the film Transamerica and star of Desperate Housewives], Peter Krause [who starred in HBO's Six Feet Under], Joshua Malina [he replaced Rob Lowe on The West Wing from season 4] and a whole mess more of great actors. Almost everybody seen in Sports NIght has reappeared since on other shows, and virtually all of them passed through the halls of The West Wing. The sitcom seems to have become some sort of Kevin Bacon-esque portal from which most of the talent on US TV is only a few steps removed. Teri Polo, who plays JImmy Smits' wife on The West Wing? she was in Sports Night. The dead women who narrates Desperate Housewives? Sports Night. The list goes on and on and on...

I love watching Sports Night. For a start, it's bloody funny. The dialogue has that rat-a-tat-tat screwball delivery so beloved of Sorkin's best work on The West Wing. The actors are great, the scripts are damned funny. A lot of the personal plotlines got recycled wholesale for use on The West Wing, as did the walk-and-talk visual style that TWW became so famous for. The worst thing about Sports Night is individual episodes are so short, rarely much more than 20 minutes. They only made 45 episodes and it takes no effort to watch all of them in no time at all. If you enjoy The West Wing for its comedy, you'll love Sports NIght. And no, you don't have to know anything about sports [American or otherwise] to enjoy the show.

Sounds good? Want to give it a try? Sadly, the DVDs are only available in Region 1 format, so they'll only play on US or mutli-region enabled DVD players. Also, the discs in my boxed set are not the world's most stable, although our recent purchased DVD Recorder seems better able to cope with any kinks in the discs than our old multi-region player. Alternatively, readers in the UK can sometimes find Sports NIght on ABC1, a satellite/digital/cable channel in Britain. Elsewhere in the world, you may need to search around to sample the show's delights.

The good news is that Sorkin and Schlamme are developing a new comedy drama TV series. It's set behind the scenes at a weekly satirical TV show. The programme's currently awaiting a new name. Comedy Night, anyone?

Brokeback... to the Future!

Someone somewhere [in summertime?] had far too much time on their hands and started a new trend: remixing the trailers of familiar films to give them a whole new meaning. For example, there's the genius who turn Stanley Kubrick's chill-fest The Shining into a happy-go-lucky family comedy about a daffy author trying to overcome his writer's block. The key moment there was the inclusion of Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill as background music. Now these trailer remixes are spreading like wildfire. Witness the new version of Sleepless in Seattle [ http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1652506/ ] that transforms Meg Ryan's lovelorn thirtysomething character into a crazed, knife-wielding stalker - another classic of the new genre.

But my favourite of the moment has to be Brokeback to the Future, which ruthlessly borrows the style and music from the trailer for gay cowboy Oscar certainty Brokeback Mountain to turn Back to the Future's sci-fi comedy trilogy into something very, very different. Click the headline on this post to see more, or paste this link into your browser: http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1658610/ - obviously I cannot be responsible for anything else you stumble across once your leave this blog! Enjoy...

To Live and Buy in L.A.

Next Thursday [that's Thursday of next week, not the next Thursday that occurs which is this Thursday, but the Thursday after that i.e. next Thursday] I begin the long trek to LA for Gallifrey 2006. This is primarily a Doctor Who convention, but also a rare opportunity for me to catch up with old friends, hopefully make some new ones and do a little light networking. My first Gallifrey was 2004 at glamorous Van Nuys's Airtel Plaza, a hotel notable for being adjacent to Van Nuys airport which sometimes crops in episodes of 24. The hotel was adequate at best and an inordinately long distance from LAX. Happily, the convention has resited itself to the LAX Marriott, meaning the trip between hotel and airport is merely a few minutes in a free shuttle bus - hurrah!

All things being equal, I'll arrive in LA on Thursday afternoon, squeeze in some shopping that night or first thing on Friday, and then fling myself into the madness and mayhem of the convention itself. Should be a blast. The final schedule for the con has been published online and here's what I'm listed as doing during the weekend, should anybody need to know where I am at any given moment of the three days:-

DAVID BISHOP’S GALLIFREY SCHEDULE

Friday, February 17, 2006
• 2pm • Autographing in Autograph area: David Bishop, Arnold Blumberg, Noel Clarke, Nev Fountain, Louise Jameson, Jon Miller, Jill Sherwin, Jim Swallow, Caroline Symcox, Mary Tamm, David Warwick, Scott Woodard
• 3pm • Main Programming Area • Future's Past: Writing Big Finish Audio in the Modern Era • Panellists: Gary Russell, David Bishop, James Swallow, Caroline Symcox, Scott Woodard, Nev Fountain

Saturday, February 18, 2006
• 10am • Big Finish: The Miniseries • Panellists: Jason Haigh-Ellery, Nicholas Briggs, David Bishop, Rob Shearman [Main Programming Area]
• 12noon • The Parting of the Ways: Examining The Critical Success of the New Doctor Who Series • Panellists: Gary Russell, Steve Roberts, Shaun Lyon, David Bishop, Nev Fountain, Roger Anderson, David Howe [Programme Area #2]
• 1pm • Roundtable: Darin Henry, Scott Woodard, David Bishop • Meetpoint Room
• 4:30pm • Autographing in Autograph area: David Bishop, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Ian Hallard, Darin Henry, Jon Miller, Pamela Salem, James Swallow, Caroline Symcox, Mary Tamm, Keith Topping, David Warwick, Scott Woodard
• 5.30pm Four Colors to Silver Screens: From the Comics to Film and TV
Panellists: Arnold T Blumberg, Scott Armstrong, Bill Taylor, Craig Byrne, Arne Starr, David Bishop • Programme Area #2

Sunday, February 19, 2006
• 11am • Searching for Christopher Eccleston • Panellists: David Bishop, Graeme Burk, Karen Baldwin, Nev Fountain, Derek Kompare • Programme Area #2
• 12pm • Autographing in Autograph area: David Bishop, Paul Cornell, Nev Fountain, Darin Henry, Jon Miller, Gary Russell, James Swallow, Caroline Symcox, Scott Woodard
• 1.30pm • The Changing Face of Doctor Who: What The New Series Means For Writers, Fans, and the Classic Show • Panellists: Nicholas Briggs, Paul Cornell, Rob Shearman, Gary Russell, Nev Fountain, Keith Topping, James Swallow, Caroline Symcox, Darin Henry, Jon Miller, David Bishop [Programme Area #2]
• 3.30pm • Television Shows on DVD: Year Four • Panellists: Scott Woodard, Bill Watson, Paul Salamoff, Arne Starr, David Bishop, Keith Topping, Arnold Blumberg [Programme Area #2]

Once all that fun's said and done, it's back to LAX for the 8.45pm flight back to Blighty. That should touch down mid-afternoon local time on Monday February 20, then a much shorter flight back to Edinburgh and a taxi home. With a decent following wind, I should stagger back into the house early in the evening, gibbering like a loon and weighed down by a suitcase laden with new Region 1 DVD boxsets of my favourite TV shows.

Don't say you weren't warned.

So You Want to Write TV drama?

Last term writer-director Adrian Mead and his producer partner Clare Kerr were guest speakers at the MA Screenwriting course I'm dong part-time at Edinburgh's Napier University. Several of the other visitor speakers before them had been downbeat, verging on the depressive, but Adrian and Clare were sparky, energetic and positive - a real breath of fresh air. During the session they announced their company, Mead Kerr, sometimes ran one-day seminars in Edinburgh so I got in touch and aked to be included on the mailing list.

Fast forward to yesterday and at least 40 people gathered in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle for a seminar by Adrian entitled So You Want to Write TV Drama. My base competitive instinct immediately had me inwardly cursing all those around me, until I spotted several people I knew - three others from the MA course, plus crime writer Alanna Knight and Scottish comics institution John McShane. Helping run the day was Andy, a fellow scribe who was on the same radio drama writer's mini-lab in Dundee last summer. Every break was taken up with furious networking, much encouraged by Adrian and Clare. I disocvered a woman two seats along from me was a radio dramatist who was getting established as a writer with River City, so I swapped business cards with her and hope to pick her brains in the near future.

But how was the seminar itself? Well run, entertaining, and packed with industry insights that would take newbies like me forever to discover for ourselves. As a one-day primer about the inner workings of the business, it was like gold dust. The seminar was absolutely not about writing, but about breaking in and surviving as a writer. Adrian covered topics like how to get an agent, hwo to get usual feedback from family and friends, how to get the most out of meetings. Best of all, he imparted a lot of behind the scenes info he'd gleaned by calling round his contacts within the industry. The seminar content was bang up to date, not the ramblings of somebody who used to work in the field five or ten years ago. I had a great time and would cheerfully recommend the Mead Kerr seminars to anyone who's interested in writing TV drama. You can find their website at www.meadkerr.com or by clicking the title at the top of this posting.

Sarah Jane Smith - Snow Blind cover goes online

Big Finish have just uploaded the cover for Snow Blind, the second of my new Sarah Jane Smith audio adventures - and Lee Binding has done me proud again. It's a cracking cover, chock full of subtleties and hidden depths that people will only get once they've listened to the 60-minute drama. Click the headline for this posting and it'll take you to the relevant page on the Big Finish site, where you can hear a trailer for Snow Blind [in Windows Media Viewer, natch]. Buried Secrets is due out any day and Snow Blind is meant to follow by the end of the month, I belive. It's like having all my Christmases coming at once - tee hee.

Sarah Jane Smith and other Forthcoming Attractions

Thought I'd offer a run-down of my forthcoming attractions due to be released during 2006. These have all been contracted and the work already done on most, so I think it's safe to talk about them. Past experience makes me rather gun shy of talking about projects before everything's signed, sealed and delivered. I was once verbally contracted to write a celebrity biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. I then spent a fair wad of cash acquiring the necessary research materials and watching every film the actress had made to that point - all 27 of them. Alas, the verbal contract never turned into a written contract and all that effort was wasted. The publisher was apologetic, but it taught me a valuable lesson - no job's real until the money's in your account or the contracts have been signed, whichever comes first.

SARAH JANE SMITH: Big Finish is now banging the drums for this series of four audio dramas, starring Elisabeth Sladen as the former TARDIS traveller. It's a year since producer/director John Ainsworth first approached me about writing all four of these scripts as an interlinked quartet of adventures. This was before Doctor Who's triumphant return to television and long before it was announced Sarah Jane Smith would be returning to the show for an episode to be broadcast in 2006. The first series of SJS audios were released in 2002, so the second series has been a while. That fact that these new audios coincidence with Sarah's TV comeback is just that - a coincidence. The plots for my scripts had to be approved by the Doctor Who production office in Cardiff [many thanks to script editor Helen Raynor for giving them the nod], but I still have absolutely no knowledge of what happens to Sarah in her new TV appearance. It'll be interesting to see the differences and similarities in how the show handles the character. The first SJS audio, Buried Secrets, is due out in the next week or two, with three more to follow...

NIKOLAI DANTE: Honour Be Damned! is my third novel starring the swashbuckling Russian rogue in the 27th Century. Created by Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser for 2000 AD, Dante made his first appearance nine years ago in the weekly comic and quickly became a readers' favourite. I was lucky enough to be editor of the weekly comic at the time and helped nurture Dante's first few years, although the character had been commissioned by my predecessors at the Command Module, John Tomlinson and Steve MacManus. I've had a blast writing Nikolai's novels for Black Flame, but it looks like Honour Be Damned! will be the last. This one's a saucy romp set in future Britain, complete with caber tossing, tourist traps and palace intrigue. I believe the book's due out by the end of this month in the UK, with a US release in March.

THE COMPLETE INSPECTOR MORSE: Work continues fitfully on revising and updating my reference guide to Colin Dexter's detective. My target is to get the text for this finished by February 15, which will require a barnstorming effort in the next two weeks. The cover image shown is for the first edition, published in 2002. The new version will be bigger, better and in hardback - who could ask for anything more? It's due out in March or April, assuming I get the text finished in time.

FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT: Regular readers must be sick to the back teeth of those five words. They certainly occupied most waking moments for me over the festive period. Anyway, the second book of my Fiends trilogy, The Blood Red Army, is due out in April and the sequence concludes with Twilight of the Dead in August. I'm also working on a Fiends comic serial, with Colin MacNeil attached as artist. Originally it was planned as six episodes of eight pages each, but it's now being reformatted as eight episodes of six pages each. I've cut two pages from each of the first two episodes and they're better as a result - tighter and tauter. Rather than try to stretch four episodes of plot over the remaining six scripts, I'll now be able to include some extra sequences into the narrative. Can you say Panzerkrieg?

THE PHANTOM: I've got scripts in seven issues of Fantomen coming out this year - five of my own invention, and two written from Hans Lindahl plots. The picture shown here is the Phantom in the Temple of the Gods, as depicted by Paul Ryan and Tom Smith. Paul is drawing one of my scripts later this year, an episode from the Temple of the Gods sequence. In fact, that's the script I should be writing right now. Must hurry up and finish this blog entry, so I can do some paying work...

RADIO PLAY: Last but certainly not least, my first radio play is due for broadcast sometime this summer on Radio 4. The first draft has been handed in and later this month all five writers contributing to the week-long collection of stories are meeting in Glasgow for some cross-fertisliation of scripts and characters. Then it's on to the second draft. I'm looking forward to working with producer/director David Ian Neville, finding out how I can improve my script and my writing. Right now every nugget of advice is highly prized and I want more.

Now, time to do some work...

The King is dead, long live the King

As frequent readers of these inane ramblings will know, I love daft cover versions of old favourites. The advent of iTunes means I can happily waste my Copious Spare Time browsing for ever more obscure interpretations of sacred cows. Of course, this means I stumble across things others have known about for years, even decades, but it's new to me and that's all that counts in my Cosy World of Nice [CWoN to you]. Today's find: I've discovered The King.

The King is - apparently - an Irish postman who had a sideline as an Elvis Presley impersonator. So far, so familiar, yes? But The King specialises in Elvis-style cover versions of songs made famous by rock stars who are now dead. The dead cover the cover, so to speak. iTunes features two albums by The King, with a songlist so eclectic that even I find myself saying 'woah!'. The usual suspects are present and correct: the oligatory Nirvana cover [Come As You Are, not yet another stab at Smeels Like Teen Spirit, fortunately]; some Motown [I Heard It Through the Grapevine]; even some John Lennon (Working Class Hero].

But my favourites thus far have to be the surreal aural experience of hearing Elvis Presley tackle Song to the Siren, a song I'm more familiar with from the ethereal cover version by This Mortal Coil, and The Rolling Stones' Sympathy For the Devil. Inspired choicesm pulled off adroitly. Not sure about Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart being done in an Elvis stylee - I'm still recovering from Paul Young's desecration of the song. Neveertheless, The King's choice of cover versions is the perfect high concept kicker - simple yet brilliant. Now, if only somebody could get him to tackle Mel and Kim's [Get Fresh For the Weekend] Showing Out.

The Ghost Who Walks

For the past five years I've been writing scripts for The Phantom, a masked avenger created by Lee Falk that first saw print as a newspaper adventure strip in 1936. This pulp fiction hero - often known as The Ghost Who Walks - has been fighting injustice and tyranny for 70 years and continues to be seen around the world in his strip. But The Phantom has another life, starring in his own fortnightly comic book, originated by an editorial team at Egmont Sweden. Commander of Team Fantomen is Ulf Granberg, a vastly experienced editor and scribe. Five years ago I was looking for more writing work and got put in touch with Ulf by Egmont's comics creation crew in Copenhagen [try saving that five times quickly when drunk!].

Since then I've written nearly two dozen Phantom scripts for the Scandinavian title Fantomen, all but two from my own plots or ideas I've developed with Ulf. The other two scripts were based on plots conceived by regular artist Hans Lindahl. As well as appearing in Sweden, Norway and other Scandinavian territories, these stories are reprinted in Australia by Frew Comics. It's a quirk of circumstance that those reprints are the first time my stories appear in English after they're left my printer. Frew translates the scripts from Swedish into English, after they've already been translated from English to Swedish. As a consequence, I'm lucky if I can recognise a single sentence of my original dialogue in the Frew version - such is life!

This week I'm writing my 23rd and 24th Phantom stories. The first is the concluding chapter of a two-parter called Circe's Island. Unusually, I didn't have both episodes of the story fully plotted before I wrote the opening segment. As a consequence, I'm having to feel my way through the second chapter - but it's coming together nicely now and should be done today. The second Phantom script of the week is based on a Hans Lindahl plot. It features pyramids, mummies and werewolves - oh my! Should be a blast to write, lots of action, lots of mayhem and somebody else has already done the hard work of plotting it all out for me. I simply need to inject characterisation, mood and dialogue. What could be simpler?