Transmission starts
Doctor Who: Short Trips - Transmissions, which you may vaguely recall me writing about, is available now and contains a story by myself as well as many others. I've had reports of it being in Forbidding Prices Forbidden Planet.
Labels: doctor who, pimpage
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Posted @
1:01 pm
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Sunday, July 13, 2008
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Straying
Strays, a comic strip I wrote for the Girly Comic a few years back, is their featured web comic for the next few weeks. Lee Kennedy did the artwork, and I certainly found writing it a massive learning curve. Page 1 is up today, with the rest to follow. Hope you enjoy.
Labels: comics, pimpage, writing
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Posted @
12:58 pm
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Monday, May 26, 2008
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Benny, the Vampire Slayer
I first started emailing my latte sister Kelly Hale because we both loved Buffy. There were a lot of emails about whether Spike was better than Angel (well, d'oh) and how lovely Willow was, except when she wasn't. We both loved Buffy and Doctor Who: she'd written Grimm Reality, which is one of my favourite characterisations of Anji. And now we, along with the super-smart Phil Pursar-Hallard, are writing a collection of Benny long stories all about vampires: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Vampire Curse.
PPH writes very engaging high concept stuff with an excellent dry wit. Kel writes super-sexy stuff with high emotional intelligence and an eye for the absurdities which makes you laugh out loud. So, no pressure then. The collection of novellas will be out in December this year.
In the meantime, Doctor Who: Transmissions is out next month. Plug plug.
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Posted @
9:17 am
on
Friday, May 23, 2008
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Crank up the cocktail shaker!
The story I proofed the other morning has now been announced: Doctor Who: Short Trips - Transmissions. I've a short piece in it (well, duh, it's a collection of short stories after all) featuring my favourite companion combo of Tegan and Turlough. Technically, I've not returned the contract yet, but I think it's probably not going to be jinxed at this late stage. I mean, it's been approved by the high heid yins now and typeset and stuff.
It's set in Imperial Russia in 1905, starting in Vladivostok. I know: it's such a departure from writing a story about a haunted Russian treasure, or a war in the far East at the turn of the twentieth century. At least this time there's no Russian bloke called Sasha in i...oh. Anyway, I'm starting to see why historical authors end up wedded to a period. After the initial germ of the idea, I immediately knew where to go to find the necessary historical research. I was a bit flummoxed to find the travel section in the local library has been creeping along the shelves, so books on Russia and Siberia weren't quite where I was expecting them. Hopefully I'm not going to end up as the Who equivilant of Jean Plaidy.
I went to see 'The Other Boleyn Girl' a few weeks back with someone who has read all of Jean Plaidy's books. Our opinion, when we stopped laughing hysterically, was that it was worse than Plaidy. The only way I can sum up why not just us but half the audience was cracking up is to mention that it's a film set when Henry VIII's lusts meant he split with Rome, established the Church of England and abolished the monestaries (i.e. the Reformation). And yet they didn't even have a speaking role for Cardinal Wolsey. Now I'll bend the historical truth for the sake of the story (Gudok starts in Vladivostok even though, during the Sino-Russian war, the trans-Siberia railway started in Port Arthur because Vladivostok sounds so wonderfully Russian and Port Arthur doesn't*). However, even I would think twice about cutting out Wolsey entirely in a story about Henry's decision to split with Rome. There was a bloke in red robes who scowled at one point, but that's your lot.
*railway historians may, in fact, find some other inaccuracies in the story. However, I grew up on the railways and rail-geeks do not scare me.
Labels: doctor who, history, pimpage
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Posted @
11:14 pm
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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Losing the Plot
I've just finished code monkeying issue 03 of lost luggage, the Doctor Who fanzine that even non-fanfic lovers enjoy. It was going to come out in November, but we were both too busy running about with other stuff (Kelly with her excellent crafty stuff and Thanskgiving, and me with work and diamonds).
When moosifer 2 fell over forever it took with it the Book, my notes on how to run the archive. Most of it I can redo but I just wasted half an hour because I'd lost the note that said "tick the box marked 'run PHP code?' to enable this function". Still, I got there in the end.
There's a heap of stories about love and/or sex as well as a revamp of an article I first wrote in SKARO in 1996 on why it's OK for the Doctor to snog people. It's surprisingly hard to find stories involving love and/or sex and fit the raison d'etre of the archive - to showcase the best writing out there. But we've some fun ones (Precious Little Dumplings and At Last cause me to giggle and snort with laughter), some surprisingly romantic ones (And Hate the Idle Pleasures... is lovely) and some darker stuff (including the classic Best of Enemies).
Now we have to pick a theme for a future issue...
Labels: doctor who, fanfic, pimpage
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Posted @
11:20 am
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Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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Summer in the City
Everyone else heads away from the city in August. Not me. Just back from two days and nights baking in London and so sleepy-headed that all I'm doing is flagging up the latest edition of Lost Luggage. This issue, it's all about mythology and fairytales, with a bunch of stories to suit most tastes, plus a non-fiction essay by Lance Parkin.
I still have to retcon issue 01, as we've changed the way we head up the stories, but I'm still so grittily sticky from London that I'm going to have a cool bath and an early night.
Labels: doctor who, pimpage
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Posted @
11:28 pm
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Sunday, August 05, 2007
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More web pimpage & music
Lost Luggage's first 24 hours has been pretty hectic, with hundreds of unique visitors, many spending time there and many returning. We've also had various little hiccups with the code which I spent time fixing. I'm pleased, though, that it is doing its job and introducing great new fiction to people.
Meanwhile, Carrie's Years 8 and 9 are reviewing 2007 Carnegie Medal Nominees at the moment, giving anyone who is interested in children's fiction a good idea of what 13 and 14 year olds really want to read.
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Up in town for work, I tagged along with the chap and a friend to see The Concretes at the Luminaire in Kilburn. Although the others swear their album is good, I found them rather generic Swedish pop with songs which fell into two broad categories: long pieces of feedback crescendos or shorter numbers in which a key phrase was repeated often. The support act, however, were the short of band which grabs you by the throat and makes you think you should maybe get to the venue on time. In this case it was a band called Lawrence Arabia who had a certain garage rock feel to them despite/because of their lead singer looking like Julian Rhind-Tutt in The Rotters' Club.
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Posted @
5:15 pm
on
Sunday, June 10, 2007
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Lost Luggage and Lost Souls
Late last night, we finally made Lost Luggage live.
This is the Doctor Who ezine on which I am code monkey. There are still things I need to do (not least as I made a mistake last night and had to rebuild four pages from scratch) but it is available for all to read. If you register, then you can leave comments on the stories and essays. We've started with a lovely intro from Paul Cornell and an issue themed around the certainty of chance.
Labels: doctor who, fanfic, pimpage
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Posted @
4:37 pm
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Saturday, June 09, 2007
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Exeter Goes Pop! / April Dreams England
The next Exeter Goes Pop night is this coming Friday, 13th, from 8pm in the Phoenix cafe bar. It will include live music from The First Division, a band whose members are also in The Pines and The Visitors, who will be playing tracks from their April Dreams England album. Also the usual electic blend of sounds from the international Pop underground, sixties soft pop, girl groups, Northern soul, Swedish tweelectropop...
It's free and in the bar at the Phoenix. So if you're in town and free, pop in. Alternatively, if you are in town and at the Reginald D Hunter gig at the Phoenix, drop by for a drink afterwards.
There's now an Exeter Goes Pop! last.fm group, which means there is also an Exeter Goes Pop! streaming radio station available which plays tracks loved by the group's members. Click here to play it.
If you're on MySpace, you can also find out more from the Exeter Goes Pop! thingy there.
Labels: exeter, exeter goes pop, music, pimpage
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Posted @
1:22 pm
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Monday, April 09, 2007
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Exeter Goes Pop!
Ages ago I made these cushions for the new sofa using some Liberty print wipeable fabric. Today I was giving the bathroom the same sort of minor (and, more importantly, free) revamp that the bedroom got in January. I'd intended just to clean the place thoroughly but ended up putting up some shelves that I'd taken out of the room five years earlier but hadn't got around to putting up elsewhere. They're in a new place, and have new functions but still... I also recovered the bathroom stool:
In amidst the two bins of stuff I cleared out of the room - mainly expired medicines and long forgotten cosmetics - I also found the little booklet which was given out at The Living Room on 11th April 1997.
In the future the Living Room would like to see several things happen. In no particular order these may be:
More nail polish, particularly on male fingers. (Nails obviously, not fingers themselves).
More requests for Country & Western music.
Hats of all descriptions being worn at all times.
The 'Whizz Bang' and the 'California Lemonade' being the drinks of choice.
Belle & Sebastian being warmly embraced in the hearts of all lovers in the world.
The word 'winsome' being used as often as possible.
This manifesto was from Alistair (of Tangents, Plan B etc). I loved the Living Room whilst it ran. We ate little cakes and enjoyed pop of fine quality. Wonderfully, A is back on the decks with a new night in Exeter: Exeter Goes Pop!. I had to miss the first one but the next is on 14th March.
I shall, possibly, wear a winsome hat.
Labels: crafty stuff, home, pimpage
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Posted @
4:08 pm
on
Sunday, February 18, 2007
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It was that or make a cunning jacket out of the receipts
Fanfic or taxes?
Fanfic.
I was assuming I was going to have to pay something for the 05/06 year but it looks like I've made a loss still. Hmmm. Some bit of my brain is thinking "They'll get suspicious! Lose some of the receipts down the back of the sofa! Make some profit or they'll come and inspect you!". My last novel was paid in Yankee Dollar, however, so the pitiful income is at least explicable.
Meanwhile, Kelly's wonderful Holmes book is out and is getting the praise it deserves. Sexy, sassy and deeply disturbing. I was listening to an adaptation of The Sign of Four on BBC7 tonight. There's a moment near the start when Holmes takes a watch and deduces the character of its owner, successfully claiming it to have belonged to Watson's dissolute elder brother.
"My dear doctor," said he kindly, "pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you."
This is one of the things Kel captures: that Holmes is so easily lured into a puzzle that he can forget there are people and feelings and love involved. It's great.
My other writing is stalled in a mire of Too Much Else to do, including those pesky tax returns.
Labels: fanfic, pimpage, writing
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Posted @
11:56 pm
on
Monday, January 29, 2007
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Miscellaneous Pimpage
1. Can't drive, Won't Drive
It's not that I can't drive, more that I can't drive legally. It's not even due to losing my license, more with never actually getting around to gaining it. I've had lessons. I understand the principles. I even quite liked doing 60mph on a dual carriageway. I just reached an impasse where I never seemed to improve and my instructor just kept getting me to book another ten sessions and I started to suspect that I would never actually get to the stage of taking my test.
Maria McCarthy, a writer I know, got over that stage and got her license a little while back. The experience, and the experiences she heard about whilst learning, inspired her new book: The Girls' Guide to Losing Your L-Plates, available now from Pocket Books.
I'm off to raise a cocktail or two at her launch party next weekend. I'll be going by bus.
2. Can Code, Will Code!
I have finally got http://magslhalliday.co.uk up and running. It is identical in every way to the old site, but hosted on a different server, once requires no interaction with Orange to run. I'm still changing links from various places, but if you do link to the old halliday47 site, please change it to the new shiny.
3. Can Blog, Shouldn't Blog?
Shameless hussy and Doctor Who author Mark Michalowski has discovered the joys of blogging: Across the Maps of Heaven. Shouldn't be allowed...;)
Labels: pimpage
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Posted @
6:26 pm
on
Sunday, January 14, 2007
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Handmade Loveliness
Hurrah!
Kelly has created an online shop with Etsy so that she can sell her wares. She sent me a set of the blue brocade booties for my friend's newborn baby and I spent fifteen minutes giggling at how adoreably cute they are. So you can dress your little bundle up like a Manchurian prince. Awww.
You may recall she made me a very lovely shopping bag earlier this year, which is so cool and fun. I'm hoping she starts to make them for the online shop as well.
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Webfeed note: I think blogger are doing one of their periodic moments when publishing a single post causes the last 25 to be resent to the RSS feed, which I know upsets LJ. Sorry. Out of my control.
Labels: clothes, design, pimpage
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Posted @
8:25 am
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Tuesday, December 12, 2006
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Rose, I'm trying to resonate concrete!
Sometimes, fanfic becomes depressing. If you read it, you start getting sulky at the derth of gem-like writing amidst the torrents of pointlessness. Doctor Who fiction is even worse because, you know, some of us old skool Who writers started in fanfic in the old days of printed 'zines. And now there's just mountains of stuff unthinkingly churned out.
So a couple of writers who do fanfic on the side have decided to create a Who fanfic archive where the work will be submitted and approved instead of an open submission portal. A little quality control, that's all. Kelly Hale, my latte sister, has been writing Buffy fanfic when not writing novels* and short fiction and is a fine writer of old and new skool Who fic. Like Tiny Human Heads. She's one of the people involved in the new archive project, and I've promised to write the odd piece for it, under my real writing name not my fanfic pen-name.
But they need to name the archive: go and vote here!
I'm torn between:
Lost Luggage
Ace: Don't you have things you hate?
The Doctor: I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations - terrible places, full of lost luggage and lost souls. And then there's unrequited love, and tyranny, and cruelty.
from Ghost Light
Resonating Concrete
Rose: Doesn't the universe implode or something if you... 'dance'?
The Doctor: Well, I've got the moves, but I wouldn't like to boast.
Rose: You got the moves? Show me your moves.
The Doctor: Rose, I'm... trying to resonate concrete.
Rose: Jack'll get us out. Come on. The world doesn't end if the Doctor dances.
from The Doctor Dances
Space Age Clockwork
The Doctor: Oh, you are beautiful! No, really, you are, you're gorgeous! Look at that! Space-age clockwork, I love it, I've got chills! Listen, seriously, I mean this from the heart - and by the way, count those - it would be a crime, it would be an act of vandalism to disassemble you.
[holds up sonic screwdriver]
But that won't stop me.
from The Girl in the Fireplace
So vote today and watch this space for news of its eventual launch.
*her novel, Erasing Sherlock, is available to pre-order from Mad Norwegian Press (and amazon dot com and amazon dot co dot uk). It has Sherlock Holmes and kissing.
Labels: doctor who, pimpage
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Posted @
9:15 pm
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
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Collected Works now available
Bernice Summerfield: Collected Works, containing my short story Cabinets of Curiosities is now available to buy in all reputable Big Finish stockists, and possibly some disreputable ones as well.
"When I was a little bit of a girl I stepped into the Hall of Mirrors and it changed my life. It inspired me, set me along the path to here and now. That’s what this exhibition, Cabinets of Curiosities, is really about, ladies and gentlemen. It’s about changing lives. From someone working passage stopping over, to the honeymooners taking the Grand Tour of the Galaxies, to the rich and the poor. Cabinets is free to all not just the select invited by the Collection. What is a collection if it does not inspire, intrigue? If is not shared, viewed, enjoyed?"
Hmmm, sounds a bit wordy and worthy out of context, but it quickly turns into ghosts, blood and fun with history and life behind the scenes at a museum. Did I mention the ghosts?
One of the early suggestions writers are given is "write what you know". I don't know about life on a habitable asteroid still recovering from the effects of intergalatic war, but I do know about museums. So in some ways this story draws more closely on my life than my novels have done, since I wanted to use my experiences of walking along miles of corridors, half-glimpsing treasures hidden from public view. It also borrows from an article read ages ago about a hunt for a lost room (link to my del.icio.us tags on it), and there's a smidge of the history of museums in there, hence the title - a play on a Cabinet of Curiosities or Wunderkammer. And ghosts. Mustn't forget the ghosts.
If you're a member of Outpost Gallifrey, you can leave comments on the book as a whole here.
Labels: cabinets of curiosities, fiction, pimpage, writing
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Posted @
7:59 pm
on
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
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Cabinets of Curiosities
I work behind the scenes in museums, but it's far less exciting than people imagine.
me
Cabinets of Curiosities is the short story I wrote for the Bernice Summerfield Collected Works book, and it's about working behind the scenes in a museum. It is exciting, however, involving a hunt for missing treasure, ghosts, a fabulous opening night party and a brief diversion into philosophical issues surrounding the conservation of priceless artefacts. Did I mention ghosts? And blood?
You can pre-order it, either from Big Finish, or from these interweb companies:
buy Collected Works from play dot com
buy Collected Works from amazon dot co dot uk
It also contains stories by some of the usual suspects, all subtly interlinked by connecting material by Nick Wallace and Phil Purser-Hallard. Even if you're not a fan of those chaps or I, there's also new work from Lance Parkin, Kate Orman, Jon Blum, Mark Michalowski, etc. etc.
I'll post the opening line nearer the publication next month but, in true RTD DWM style, the mood words were: mirrors, amber, red and cursed.
PS: Uncertain squee!? Tennant and the new companion. Clothes spoilers.
Labels: cabinets of curiosities, pimpage, writing
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Posted @
5:48 pm
on
Thursday, August 10, 2006
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