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
on
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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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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WIP
Disruption on the Line
on spec short story, much faffed over last year but never actually written:
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| 651 / 4,000 (16.3%) |
First Footing
on spec fanfic for Kelly's archive:
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| 463 / 3,000 (15.4%) |
Labels: WIP counts, writing
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Posted @
12:39 am
on
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
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Our Rats are Low
Doyle:..our rats are low-
Cordy: Rates! Our rates are low!
Doyle: It says 'rats'.
Sébastian's new kill count:
- Rodents:
Rats - 1
Mice - 22
Voles - 6 - Birds:
Sparrows - 4
Dunnocks - 1
Uncertain - 2 - Other:
Frogs - 1
Unidentifiable remains - 2
Aw, my little boy is all growed up, with his first rat kill. He lost his collar on Friday and I failed to get one fixed onto him on Saturday. He's a big cat and he doesn't like it. On Sunday, I came downstairs and convinced Séba to wear a collar (black velvet with glass studs) by getting him before breakfast. Then I saw something under the coffee table. I thought it was a toy or a shoe at first glance, then realised that that really wasn't an old shoelace.
Clearing away a rat corpse is far more disturbing than the little stuff. There's a weight to the body, and a feel of flesh to it, which smaller animals lack. Also, a bit of your brain is thinking "It's a rat! A rat! Plague!" even as my rational side is reminding me that a) it's a brown rat and only black rats carried the plague and b) I've put on the rubber gloves for this particular task. And washed my hands very very throughly afterwards, as if I wear about to perform surgery.
Then there's the matter of praising the cat. Obviously, one less wild rat snuffling around the rubbish bins is good and I do deliberately try to get cats who might be killers because it's far nicer than putting down crystals to liquify the rats' innards. So whilst a bit of my brain is wondering if I can bear to handle the clean up, my mouth is saying "good boy, well done". Yet I don't want to encourage him too much in case he meets a rat that fights back (and an infected rat bite is not fun to deal with).
Hopefully his new girly collar will ensure the rat kill count does not rise too quickly.
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Meanwhile, over at Shiny Shelf, we're having a shiny advent. My first one is up, a brief review of Brazil. So far, the advent has covered Nightingales (a black sitcom), Brazil (a black movie) and It's a Wonderful Life (where the protagonist is planning to commit suicide over Christmas). Future advent mini-reviews are likely to cover action movies, ghosts and alien invasions. We're a cheerful bunch.
Labels: seba's kill count, shiny, writing
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Posted @
6:14 pm
on
Sunday, December 03, 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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