A Literary Life

I never blog as often as I'd like.  This doesn't mean that my life has become a hollow void, no siree, it actually means I'm very busy.  Somehow we've gotten almost to April and it seems like just yesterday it was 2012.  So the world can know what is new in my world, here is where we're at: I've a script with a small film production company, currently in the semi-finals of one of their talent searches.  This is good.  Very good indeed.  Even if it goes no further, I had such great fun writing it, and it has me thinking about writing something else in the genre the script is in. 'Adam Strauss and the Three Sisters', my novel, is currently doing the rounds of literary agents and publishers.  One has come back to me so far, with a rejection, but a rejection letter in which they called me, and I quote, " clearly a talented writer" and had this to say of my abilities, "your narrative style is understated, elegant and very compelling." ...

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can recall.  I wrote my first story aged five, about a battle between lions and tigers in the forests of Borneo.  I even drew pictures. My first proper audience were the kids who came to see the nurse in my boarding school where my worked was pinned to the walls.  I had drawn an epic thirty page ‘graphic novel’ about a man seeking treasure on a desert island whilst being hunted by a stranger.  I was ten.    To the right is how the island looked – and I stretched out a hunt and chase over 30 panels. The viewpoint not once changing.  The nurse told me how often the kids laughed it hurt their sides, following this story.  When I last spoke to a teacher from that school, ten years after I left, those panels were still on the nurse’s wall.  I think I’m probably owned a mass of royalties by now. The scope I have now as a writer is huge.  I can do literally anything in a script – go an...

So my latest screenplay – “Otherworld” – has gotten through to the second stage of the Red Planet Prize.  It is wonderful news, and a real opportunity.  I’ve entered the prize once before, in 2008, with a script that was thrilling, exciting, far too expensive for production on TV budgets, but most importantly, incredibly undercooked.  I’d not thought past episode 1.  I’d certainly not thought of episode 5 or 50 or 500.  With “Otherworld” I see all those episodes, I obsess of those episodes in a way I never have with a TV show before.  Which is why I’m going to be so crushed if I fall at this hurdle – but I suppose why, if I do fall, I’ll take a week, then pick myself up, dust myself down, figure out where I went wrong (and not curse Red Planet for failing to see my obvious genius!) and work on something else.  I already have a few great ideas stewing away. Anyway, I wanted to bring your attention to another wonderful post on Jason Arnopp’s blog –...

Madrid. Just looking at the name on cheap holiday search engines made me tingle with excitement. South European heat, blue skies, sun pouring down onto warm squares. I booked to fly the very next day. I’d never thought of myself as impulsive: I like to consider things through, work out each possible line of attack before I make a move. It’s part of my training as a novelist: you have to be certain that what you are going to do works before you spend time doing it. Are the through-lines of the plot coherent? Would Character X act in such a downright filthy manner? So to book a flight leaving the very next morning to a city in a country I’d never visited: outrageous! (Okay, it was only Madrid, not Montevideo or Mogadishu, and okay Madrid is probably very safe and familiar to someone familiar with any other European city, but the point still holds, the act was impulsive, somewhat rash and possibly foolhardy.) Madrid though. I landed late. The flig...