I've been and done Dundee, you see

Sunday was Comics Day at the Dundee Literary Festival [and how nice that a literary festival has a comics day - others take note!]. Organiser Chris Murray did a wonderful job pulling everything together, and I got to natter with creators I haven't spoken to for years [Alan Grant, Warren Ellis, Gary Erskine, Colin MacNeil]. Met lots of new people too, like artist Emma Vieceli and graphic novels evangelist Mel Gibson [no, not that one].

I ran a workshop on writing for graphic novels in the morning, before chipping in an afternoon presentation about Alan Moore's treatment of time frames in his 2000 AD work. The rather plush lecture theatre [well, it was a lot nicer than many I've encountered] had a good crowd, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. [You can read more about the day at Helen Caldwell's blog.] It was the second such workshop I'd run lately and they're a lot of fun.

Next month I'm taking my show and tell extravaganza to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I'll be running a Writing Graphic Novels workshop on August 25th. I'd offer more details, but the event's already sold out, so why tease you, right? I was a regular attendee at EdBookFest, until screenwriting turned my head. It'll be odd standing at the front of an EdBookFest event, instead of sitting down and taking reams of notes.

But you never truly stop learning, so this weekend I'd headed down to That Fancy London for The Screenwriter's Career Guide seminar, led by Adrian Mead. I used to be a regular at Adrian's sessions, but lately they've always coincided with my pre-booked holidays. Happily, not this time. I'm stopping overnight on Saturday, so for once I can go to the pub afterwards and savour the banter/networking/drinking [delete as appropriate].

All this coming and going has me feeling like I'm living out of a suitcase. No sooner does it get emptied and the contents washed than it's time to fill the damned thing back up and troop out the door again. But this coming weekend's jaunt is my last excursion for a while. After that it'll be time to knuckle down for some actual - gasp - writing. Just need to decide what it is I'll write next. The possibilities are legion. Onwards!