Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Well, what better way to round off things on this blog than to post a picture which I don't have the real right to post, but which is, y'know, of me? Seems about right somehow.

Anyway, this blog is not dying, it's moving - or, to be more accurate, I'll be moving my attentions to my 'new blog' and so I doubt I'll be posting here again (techical issues permitting) for the foreseeable future.

The reason for the move is pretty simple, really - for some time, I've been looking into trying to 'streamline' the number of places and locations I occupy online, and so I've revamped and reshaped my website so that it now includes automatic updates on my Twitter messages, and so it only seems logical that I shift the blog updates over there too.

I speak with utter confidence about this move, but of course if the server crashes or my technical ability reaches its limits, I may well be here again, so I won't be deleting this blog. Many of the links which you can see in the right-hand column are on the new site, so you don't have to feel lost and disoriented if you just use his blog as a stepping-stone to other people's pages. I don't mind being the guardian of the crossroads, even if Robert Johnson had his misgivings...

Anyway, I hope you'll come and visit the new blog, and maybe you'll even be so kind as to add John Soanes to your list of bookmarks? Thanks in advance.

Finally, if this is your last time of visiting, many thanks for your time and eyeballs over the last few years. It's much appreciated, and as intermittent as my updates may have been in the last year or so, it's always been reassuring to know that you fine folks were out there reading my nonsense. Seriously, you've been fantastic.

And you know what? So was I.

If I Name This Post 'Sextuple Mumbo Jumbo', That'll Increase Traffic To The Blog, Right?

I think it was the late (and in my estimation rather great) Blake Snyder, author of the screenwriting book Save The Cat who came up with the concept of 'Double Mumbo Jumbo', and it's something I've been thinking about a bit recently.

Double Mumbo Jumbo, put simply, is the idea that "as an audience we can only buy one piece of magic per movie" (or, I'd say, book or play or other medium). Where Blake says 'magic', I like to think this equally means coincidence - for my money, Spider-Man 3 suffers from Double Mumbo Jumbo in the plotlines relating to the Venom symbiote (to non-comic geeks, that's the black costume-thing which bonds first with Peter Parker and then with his rival) when it happens to land first near Peter Parker's moped (if memory serves; I've only seen the film once, and don't plan to watch it again, even if it means verifying details for a blog post) and then it's roaming ownerless again when Peter Parker's workplace rival is out and about in the area.

I think the second story in Pulp Fiction suffers from this sort of coincidence problem as well, though I know a lot of people hold that film in much higher regard than I do.

It's not just a problem which you see in films, either (though the example I'm about to give was, I think, adapted to film): the novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind is very well-respected and was given to me with strong recommendations by a friend, but when I read it I couldn't get past the fact that the main character had no personal scent (which struck me as being biologically unlikely) and also had an extrememly sensitive ability to detect odours.

This felt like a cheat to me, as if the author realised that someone with a truly super-powered nose would be unable to smell anything beyond the scent of their own sweat and clothing. I didn't buy it, and as a result the rest of the book felt hard to swallow, built as it was on a foundation that I didn't find particularly sturdy.

This has been on my mind a bit recently, because in the novel I'm currently writing (due for completion about half an hour before the heat-death of the universe, longtime readers might suspect) I have various 'secret' government agencies and bodies, and I don't want to have too much stuff that looks like a fudge - whilst I'm confident that most readers will accept that there are bodies within government and the military which don't appear in annual reports and budget publications, I don't want to make it look as if I've made them 'secret' just so I haven't got to do the research on Home Office heirarchies and departmental responsibilities and the like.

In a strange - though hopefully understandable - tangent, thinking about the concept of Double Mumbo Jumbo has partly explained to me why I find the following advert irks me more than it probably should:

The advert doesn't really make sense to me on any level - and yes, I know it's meant to be a bit out there and surreal, but consider the things that we're supposed to accept:

• He's so fond of sausage rolls he's cloned a miniature dog to say what he can't
• He carries the miniature dog in a jewellery box in his pocket
• He had it in his pocket, but initially wasn't intending to hand it to her (note how he turns away at first)
• The 'garage lady' accepts what appears to be a gift of jewellery from a customer
• The miniature dog speaks english (with, I think, the voice of Mathew Horne)
• The dog knows which button to press on its (also miniaturised) keyboard to start the music (which is either drum and bass or garage, I think - I'm not bothered about either of those choices really, though I hope it's the latter as it would be appropriate given the setting of the advert)

It just feels like the advert-makers have hit the 'random' button in an almost cynical way, as if throwing diverse stuff together like that immediately equates to something surreal and/or clever. The main problem I think I have with it is that for someone who's "just a bloke", and apparently incapable of expressing himself, he's gone to a lot of trouble (and a weird kind of trouble) to express his gratitude.

In fact, within this universe where we can create speaking miniature animals to perform tasks we humans can't, I'm surprised that there are petrol stations at all, as the normal rules don't seem to apply; surely the pumps dispense some kind of liquid boulders, and the 'garage lady' is in fact the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, wearing a human outfit to disguise the fact that he's come back as an oversized moth (I'm aware that many insects' tracheas don't function once they get above a certain size, so this is an inherently unrealistic proposition, but given that the shruken dog apparently suffers no difficulty breathing despite his size and being enclosed in a small box, it seems all bets are off). Actually, it's strange that this bizarre world they inhabit has sausage rolls and money in it at all really. What are the odds of that?

I can live with the odd quirk or wrinkle to things - and as I understand it, much of the 'magic realism' school of writing is based on the world as we know it reacting to strange and unusual things happening - but it needs to be balanced, I think. The Queen in Alice in Wonderland boasts "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast", but that advert seems, to me, to be a case of Multiple Mumbo Jumbo, and so I can't swallow it (then again, as a vegetarian, I was probably unlikely to swallow anything related to sausage rolls).

Come to think of it, no wonder the chap in the advert accepts the strange world he lives in: it's clearly the early hours, and maybe he needs to believe the six impossible things I list above before he can have the sausage roll - that is, his breakfast.

One Of The Perils Of Getting Older Is That Many Things End Up Reminding You Of Other Things, Which Leads To This Sort Of Post

Over the weekend, I was on a train, and saw two young-ish chaps talking quite excitedly. They were twenty years old at most, and they were chatting as they passed what looked like a glossy magazine back and forth.

If you're thinking it might have been a ... let's say 'gentlemen's leisure interest periodical', then I'm sorry to disappoint you; it was, as I saw when they sat quite close to me, a glossy rulebook or other supplement for a role-playing (or tabletop miniature combat) game, and their excitement and interest seemed to stem from the implications of this on their chosen game - I could hear them saying things like 'magic attacks' and 'stats', which rather reminded me of my teen years.

It probably won't surprise longtime blog readers to know that I was what is now known as 'a nerd', though back in those days you were more likely to be labelled a 'square' or 'boffin'. But we all know what that means - probably wearing glasses, not physically confident, not very good at talking to girls, and so likely to have solitary (or at least indoor) hobbies such as playing Dungeons & Dragons or computer games, or reading books or comics. And of course there were quite a few of us at school, as well as all the others who weren't like that.

Strangely enough - on a mathematical basis if nothing else - my school's equivalent of the cheerleaders and jocks so often shown in American films seems to have been known as 'the popular kids'. I say 'strangely' because the school year I was in had so many 'factions' in it (why, even the secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off refers to "the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads" at Bueller's school), that if you took out my group of friends, the other groups such as the gothic kids and the very studious kids, and the various loners, there were probably only about fifteen of the so-called 'popular kids', and none of us really gave a monkey's about them and what they did, so I have no idea where the presumed 'popularity' came from.

It's not like we ever took a vote on it or anything... though maybe it was an early example of the kind of 'implied consensus' or 'silent majority' that you often come across in later life. Returning to a film that was out at the time (and whilst it may seem lazy to refer to 1980s films, they were the cultural backdrop of the time, and I think we tend to try to find something that mirrors our own experiences in films and other stories), there's a nice exchange in The Breakfast Club which may touch on the truth of this:

THE PRINCESS

Your friends [...] look up to us.

THE GEEK (LAUGHING)

You're so conceited, Claire. You're so conceited.

... I never actually heard the 'school dynamic' verbalised like this, but I hope I would have responded in this fashion, as my circle of friend didn't look up to the 'popular kids'. We were too busy worrying that playing Daley Thompson's Decathlon on our ZX Spectrum computers would, as legend had it, kill the keyboard before its natural expiry date.

Anyway, when I saw the two chaps on the train at the weekend, I looked at them with a mixture of recognition and almost-pity; I say 'almost' because I was genuinely happy with my life in my teen years, even if the things that made me happy were incomprehensible - or risible - to other people: I was more concerned about whether I'd get my D&D character to Level 5 than whether I'd get to home base (no, not the shop) with a girl (and one of those events certainly seemed much more probable than the other during that era of my life). So I can't honestly look back on that period, and the way I led my life, in such a way that I pity those who seem to be treading the same path.

Yes, I could have shouted to the chaps on the train, "for the love of God, shave off the wispy beards and get some contact lenses and spend more money on cool clothes than 20-sided dice, and maybe you'll get to touch a boob this year", but they seemed pleasant and happy enough, and besides it's possible that they were both total hits with the ladies (or gents, I don't want to presuppose too much), and that I'm just projecting.

But after I'd thought about this sort of thing a bit, and both wallowed in nostalgia and cringed at the recollection of the clothes and large aviator-style glasses I wore, it occurred to me that there are often articles in papers and magazines nowadays with headings such as 'The Geeks Inherit The Earth', talking about how the rise of the internet, and the information age, has meant that many of my pasty cohorts have become very successful in their chosen fields, with the financial rewards attached to that. The heads of IT firms, founders of websites, creators of best-selling computer games and apps, and even the directors of films, are shown to have had classically nerdy formative years - and whilst some of them have made their way in the world by appealing to nerds alone, many of them work in fields with wider audiences.

It's intellectually amusing to see large crowds of people getting excited about seeing films like Watchmen and Avengers Assemble, when I was reading the source comics twenty-odd years ago, and whilst there's a slight frisson of 'Hah! I was right all along!', I can't get too triumphant about it - possibly because having that kind of teenagehood doesn't necessarily prepare you for being the victor, and maybe because of that sense of loving something niche that gets a little soured when it breaks through to a larger market (which of us hasn't either been or known someone who talks up a band, but the minute they get big, starts talking about them 'selling out'?). More than anything else, though, I think it's because the stuff I was into back then, like the stuff I'm into now, was a genuine interest, and wasn't on my list of 'Likes' to impress other people: it was stuff I was actually into.

Which, it strikes me, is probably why there are fewer bold claims of triumph from the swots and nerds and squares; whilst the people who were concerned about looking cool as teenagers are keen to claim they were right all along, when offered the chance to write a book, Bill Gates writes about future technology and the like. Whilst the 'popular kids' at school spent a lot of time (and, I'll wager, their parents' money) on their outfits for the '5th year social' (aka what would now probably be called a Prom), I was reading and re-reading Batman Year One, and not bothering about what anyone might think about this.

I think that's why the articles you see about the Rise Of The Nerds will tend to be written in the third person plural - that is, not written by the geeks in question; because they're still out there, doing their thing - coding, writing, rolling dice or whatever. But the chances are it's indoors.

They say the best revenge is living well, but I suspect many of those who were made to feel somehow 'geeky' will be living well albeit unseen by those who may have ostracised them in the past. Except for those of us who decide to post about it on the internet, of course.

Persona Season 3 Starts This Week (And I've Written For It)

The third season of smartphone drama Persona launches this week (the first episode was yesterday, but don't worry, you can catch up), and I'm the writer on one of the stories in it - specifically, this one:


It looks like the cast and crew have done a great job, so I'll be watching eagerly - can I ask you to do the same? Persona is absolutely free of charge for iPhone/iPad and Android users, and you get a new episode every day for no charge too.

Interested? Good-o, here are the relevant links:

On iTunes you can download it here

On Android, you can get it here

Please do give it a look, and let me know what you think. Thanks!

It Doesn't Last That Long, But It Made Me Happy

I'm pleased to be able to report that I've had another joke included in Newsjack, the topical radio comedy on Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC7). I'm included in the credits which you can see here, and if you'd like to hear the jape itself, the show can be listened to or downloaded as a podcast here, and it's probably available via iTunes too (must admit I haven't checked yet).

It's the gag in the opening monologue, at 0'56" to be precise, about the passing of the NHS Bill. I think the show'll be there to listen to or download for another week or so, which is probably about right as the joke itself'll probably make less sense as time passes.

Anyway, this blog post is a shameless brag really, as I'm pretty chuffed to have a second BBC broadcast credit, even if it has been a couple of years since the first. I shall see if I can narrow down the intervening period between the second and third...

The Better Devil, You Know

As long-term readers will know, I'm currently working on a novel - but enough about me, let's talk about M'colleague, who's has finished his book, and guess what? E's only gone and made it available to buy on the Kindle Store, innee? Ee as! Ee really as!

Ahem.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to read a draft of the book, and it was a cracking read, and the author assures me that he's done further polishing on it since, so it's probably even sharper now.

So, get thee to Amazon, and for less than the price of a large coffee (ie: £3.08), you can get yourself a slice of fiction*. What's not to like?

The cover's pictured here, and this is the link to click on: Designer Devil - Stuart Peel

Go on, give yourself a present. You know you want to.

*You don't need a Kindle to be able to read it, there are Kindle 'apps' for mobile phones and PCs and the like. I know, this 'living in the 21st century' lark, it's nifty, isn't it?

Persona Launches Tomorrow!

I'm very excited to be able to announce that Persona goes live tomorrow.

As you may well remember from my recent posts, Persona is the world's first continuing drama created exclusively for smartphones, giving the viewer a daily 2-3 minute drama series, with new episodes every day of the week.

You can buy the Persona App in the iTunes store (search for 'Persona App Media UK') for £1.19, or you can text PERSONA to 87474, which costs £1.50. A year's worth of episodes for less than a Starbucks coffee.

As I've mentioned before, I'm one of the writers for the first season (starting tomorrow, and running for a month), so if you're interested to see what kind of writing I do when I'm not blogging (and it's part of the reason why my blog entries have been so sporadic recently), I'd really appreciate your support - and of course, I'd be interested to hear what you think of the series (and the work I did on Jane's storyline).

By way of a taster, here's the trailer for Persona, which I hope will intrigue you enough to make you want to see more:

Any questions, please don't hesitate to get in contact (unless you're asking about what happens in the storylines; I'm either sworn to secrecy about the stuff I've been involved in, or appropriately ignorant about the other storylines). Thanks!

A Delay, Not A Denial

Just to update you on Persona : there's been a slight delay in the app being approved by Apple (this sentence may hold the blog record for the most uses of the letters 'app'), so the revised start date is currently 15 January 2011.

I will, of course, keep you fully informed.

In the meantime, though, more pictures from Persona - some from Jane's story - are available to view here.

This is likely to be the final post of 2010, so have yourself a cracking start to 2011, and may the year bring you everything you could hope for, and a few surprises (pleasant ones, of course).

If you're out tonight, here's hoping your evening doesn't lead to you looking or feeling like Lucy, the Persona character pictured here.

See you in 2011.

Persona Update: Teaser Trailer Now Available Online

As I mentioned in this post, I'm one of the writers on the smartphone drama Persona, which is coming in January 2011 - and here's the teaser trailer:


It's the first time I've seen anything I've written being performed, and I can't wait to see Jane's storyline brought to life - I'm super-pleased to see Amanda Sterkenburg in the role, as she has exactly the kind of look I was hoping for in the character.

And is it childish that I'm amused that the Youtube 'freeze screen' shows Jane? Very probably... but it's true.

Not So Much A Forgotten Future, More An Overlooked One, I Like To Think

Recently, New Scientist ran a Flash Fiction Writing competition, which invited entrants to speculate about futures which never were, or could have been.

Well, I entered, but as the shortlisted folks have now been contacted and it doesn't appear that I was one of them, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share my entry with you lovely people. Waste not, want not, as they say, and hopefully it'll amuse you...

I Still Dream Of Orgonon

Deciding that Operation Paperclip had been very successful, in the mid-1940s the US government ran another operation collating scientific knowledge, once again targeting foreign nationals resident in the USA.

An admin error put Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich in the same group, but the two had met previously, and got on well. They talked about how Reich had fudged his figures last time, and Einstein candidly admitted that he'd pretty much done the same in introducing the cosmological constant, and they laughed, and set to work.

Within a few months, they announced that Reich had been right about Orgone after all, and whilst the UK set up a Health Service, the USA provided tax incentives for the mass manufacture of Orgone Accumulators. By the early 1960s, there was an accumulator in every home, and the average life expectancy had increased by 23 years.

Other countries followed suit; in 1983, the UK used Reich’s cloudbusting technology to improve their weather, and other countries used the same technology to counteract droughts and turn deserts into meadows.

Global population levels, but most notably those in societies with a strong religious influence, stabilised once it became clear that channelling sexual energy served the common good, and in many countries state-funded single-sex boarding schools for teenagers replaced power plants, boosting power reserves and education levels alike.

Einstein and Reich both lived to be centenarians, though tragically neither saw Project Iapyx, and the launch into space in 1999 of the first Orgone-powered spacecraft towards Barnard’s Star.

Iapyx I is expected to report back in 2012.

Coming Soon To A Phone Near You...

I'm pleased to be able to tell you part of the reason why I've been so absent from blogging recently, and it's legitimate and real and relates to actual writing and everything.

I'm one of the four writers on the daily smartphone drama Persona, which is coming from the lovely folks at App-Media in January 2011. There are three other folks contributing words (Phill, Ronnie, and Adam), and between us we've written the first 'season', which will cover the whole month of January.

It's been genuinely interesting writing my 'slice' of the show (the various strands weave in and out of each other, and new episodes - or, rather Appisodes - will be released on a daily basis. As I understand it, you'll be able to buy the app from the appropriate online place, and then you'll automatically get the new show delivered to you. Sounds a lot like the Cracked Reader for the iPhone which I have, and am very happy with.

As you can see from this set of photos, a rehearsal was held on November 27, though I won't say (or perhaps can't say?) which cast members are involved in the storyline I wrote. But if you want to see the character breakdown, it's here, and those of you who've followed the blog for a while will probably be able to guess which characters are ones I've come up with (clue: look for the usual verbosity)...

Shooting is taking place this week in London, and if you'd like to be an extra, I believe they're still looking for people to do just that. You will, of course, get to feature in a pretty revolutionary bit of drama, but more than that you'll get to meet the nice people involved (I can speak from actual 'IRL' encounters with them, they're lovely), plus you'll receive a credit and get food and travel expenses paid for. If you're available this week in London and interested, the best ways to get in touch with them seem to be either Twitter or Facebook. Tell them I sent you.

Anyway, it's been a genuinely interesting (and hopefully for all involved, productive) time writing the scripts for Season One (or 'January', as it's more commonly known), and I'm looking forward to being involved with Season Two - and, of course, seeing how the cast play the lines I've written. One thing which it's certainly reinforced in my mind is the fact that redrafting is vital for me, and as much as I might like to think it's the case, the first thoughts out of my head onto the page are very rarely the best. Even the brightest jewel, I like to think, needs a bit of polishing to shine (ahem).

I'll tell you more about how to view the show, and where to buy the app, and the like, as soon as I know more. And, of course, if you are an extra, do drop me a line and let me know how it goes, eh?

You've Probably Seen This Already, But If Not... Well, That's What I'm Here For.

Pretty much note-perfect, I'd say.

I Have No Mic, And I Must Speak

Back in the 1980s, my family went to stay with some relatives for New Year's Eve. I don't remember much of the festivities itself, but one thing I do remember - for reasons that will become clear - is that nearby, about five minutes walk away in fact, was a comic shop.

Now, I'd been reading comics for a while, but my 'local' shop in Sheffield wasn't very local at all - it was a couple of bus rides away, and of course that kind of travel ate into the potential spending money (this was after Sheffield's insanely cheap bus fares had been abolished - boo! A flat fare of 2p was a fab thing to a cash-starved kid), so I tended to walk there with my friend Simon. Which took about an hour there and an hour back, so you can see why a shorter walk was so appealing.

This comic shop - I don't think it's there any more - had a pretty decent selection of recent comics, and also, as was often the case back then, also sold a lot of paperbacks (mainly SF, fantasy and horror), which you could then sell back to them for half the price in credit. So, being a bookish child and having a bit of Christmas money, I bought myself a book and a comic: All The Sounds Of Fear by Harlan Ellison, and the Warrior Summer Special (both pictured). Small pressies to myself, as it were.

I think I can, without fear of exaggeration, state that it was the greatest couple of pounds I ever spent, and that the combined effect of the two did strange things to my brain for which I will always be grateful.

The Warrior comic featured some stories by Alan Moore, whose work I was already starting to look out for (from the cover-date of that comic, I guess I was something like 12, and was just learning that certain names recurred on the credits of things I liked), and other writers as well, all of which made it a pretty heady brew, and then when I started to read the Ellison, my noggin was permanently bent out of shape.

If you've never read anything by Harlan Ellison... well, obviously, I think you should, but there's a fair chance you don't recognise the name, especially in the UK; this is pretty odd really, given that he is one of the most-recognised writers ever, but he tends to fly under the radar for a lot of people. Still, have you seen that original Star Trek episode with Joan Collins in? He wrote the screenplay for that? Seen The Terminator? Yeah, he provided (ahem) 'inspiration' for that. What about Babylon 5? He consulted on that, and the new version of The Twilight Zone and heaps of other stuff - and that's just his filmed work, his short stories are allegedly among the most reprinted in the English Language. So yes, I think you should read his stuff - it often has futurist backdrops, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's science fiction. Cos it isn't.

Anyway, I read the collection of stories in All The Sounds Of Fear, and whatever else that new year brought, it certainly opened with me having a new and strange outlook on just what the written word, when combined with imagination, could do. It's probably very much one of the reasons that I started writing - not because I sought to emulate his work, or anything so straightforward, but rather because it suggested there was a place in the world for writing down the more spiky and awkward of ideas, if you could do it. And that's why I cite him as my favourite writer, when asked - it sounds wilfully obscure to most people, but I like to think it's actually the truth.

Jump forward many years (past 1986, incidentally, when The Singing Detective made me realise just how unlimited the medium of TV could be), to last Friday night, on London's Southbank; it was raining, and England were playing a World Cup match, and that's why there was a limited turnout at the screening of Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a film about Harlan Ellison.

There were probably about 30 of us, plus screenwriter and friend of Harlan Ellison James Moran and the film's director, Erik Nelson, but the limited numbers weren't any kind of damper on the event - the film was funny and smart and showed HE in what looks like a fairly balanced light. Yes, there were scenes where he was a bit short-tempered, but there were others where he spoke about writing and literature with a passion, and when he read sections from his stories the talent was painfully evident. So yes, it was a good film.

Afterwards, Messrs Moran and Nelson asked the audience to come nearer the front, as they were going to do a link-up to LA, where they'd ask Harlan some questions. I moved down as requested, and indeed got a front-row seat, which I was pretty pleased about. They linked up okay, and asked him a few questions, and then they asked if anyone in the audience had any questions. There was a pause, and then I realised that my hand was up, and they were nodding towards me.

I'll freely admit I was quite nervous about asking my question, not because I was speaking in front of a small crowd (as anyone who knows me will be aware, I'm a hopeless attention-seeker), but rather because this was probably likely to be my only actual interaction with Harlan Ellison, whose work I've enjoyed for over a quarter of a century. If there's anyone whose work you admire, imagine how you'd feel in a similar situation. Yep, there you go, now you get it.

Anyway, with both the film and my own personal 'history with HE' (recounted above at length - and you probably just thought it was the usual self-indulgent rambling, but hopefully now it reveals itself as the vital backstory it was intended to be) in mind, I asked my question, which came out in a slightly gabbled and nervous way, and sounded something like this:

"We see you in the film speaking to college students, and a couple of people in the film say that your work should be taught in schools - what, do you think, would be the ideal age for people to first read your work? When would you most want to get hold of their fragile minds? Teenagers? Ten? Eight? One?"

As those of you who can read will probably note, this is actually a series of questions, mainly because I was gabbling to fill the gap caused by the satellite delay, and I didn't actually have a microphone, so it was a bit uncertain to me whether Harlan could actually hear any of what I was saying. But he'd heard some of it, it seems, because he asked "Was that a question, or a diatribe?"

Erik then summarised the question, and Harlan answered it, giving a solid and considered answer - but then again, I probably would say that, as he seemed to suggest that the age of 14 or so was about right, thus making me ahead of my time as a child - and I was suitably pleased, on a number of levels.

And as the second - and only other - question was about the long-delayed third volume of Dangerous Visions, which is decades past its due date, and HE tends to get a bit fed up with being asked about (and showed as much on this occasion), I think that I probably did all right, all things considered.

Apologies for length here, but I was really rather chuffed about it, and wanted to record the event in what, I guess, is probably the closest thing I have to a diary. Given that I've met Alan Moore a couple of times, and that Dennis Potter has been dead for a number of years, I guess I've completed my interaction with the people whose work remoulded my thinking in the 1980s, which feels oddly satisfying.

One final point: if you want to see a terrific example of HE's writing, read the short story I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, from which the title of this post derives. The title's remarkable enough, but the story itself... well, to say "it lingers in the mind" is several kinds of understatement.

Future And Past: The Name May Be Its Future Chart Position (1), And The Form In Which It Would Have Been Sold Until A Few Years Ago (45)... Perhaps.

Longtime blog readers with appallingly long memories will recall that a friend of mine Ian is a singer by trade, and lookylook, his band's video is available to view online (ignore the fact that the frozen image below appears to show him doing an impression of the Joker, he's actually a very presentable chap):



That's rather good, innit? The single's out on 5 July, and will be available from iTunes and other places like that. If you like it, please buy it. And even if you don't like it, please buy it just to please me, for my wrath is great and far-reaching and painful for those who displease me.

As the aforementioned longterm readers will also be well aware of.

Abnormal Service Will Be Resumed Soon

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few days, I'm hurrying to get an entry together for this - why not have a go yourself, if you're not already doing so?

Anyway, back soon - in the meantime, nano-blogging takes place on my Twitter account, if you're that keen on seeing what's inside my head at random stages during the day.

Am I Telling You About A Writing Opportunity, Or Just Finding A Way To Justify Using This Picture, Which I Find Aesthetically Pleasing?

The answer is, of course, both.

Anyway, instead of biting your nails with anticipation for the shortlist for the Alibi Crime Writing Competition (you did enter, right?), why not put your fingers to more productive (or, at least, creative) use by entering the Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition, being run by Waterstones, Pan Macmillan and the Arvon Foundation.

Stories can be in any genre as long as they're under 2000 words, though (the opposite to the BBC writing Academy) if you've had fiction professionally published you're not allowed to enter.

The prizes seem pretty good - the winning story'll be published in a forthcoming issue of Books Quarterly, Waterstones's promotional magazine, and you get to go to a lunch with some folks from Pan Macmillan and on a week-long Arvon course (all about writing and the like), as well as winning some Pan Macmillan books. There are a couple of runner-up prizes too.

So, worth a go - nice short wordcount, and with online entry, you don't even have to buy a stamp.

Full details at the link above, or, if you can't be bothered to sweep your mouse up the page a bit, then here it is again, lazybones: tch, you appal me.

EDITED TO ADD: Oops, forgot to say, the closing date is 1 July. I appal me.

Learn From My (Almost) Mistakes

So, on Tuesday night, the external hard-drive thingy attached to my computer died. It's a cute little thing, about the size of a passport and about 300Gb, and thus the ideal place for me to store all my music and video files and the like (not to mention my writing).

But the computer suddenly stopped acknowledging the drive even existed, and so iTunes and other programmes were looking for information that wasn't there. Yeek.

The fortunate timing for me was that this drive-death had happened within hours of me backing everything up onto another, bigger drive, so after buying another portable drive I was able to get things pretty much back to where they'd been. Okay, time and a bit of money wasted, but a small price to pay in comparison with losing all my tunes and videos. As the Young Ones put it, "Phew! That was close!"

Anyway, I'm telling you this not just because I treat this blog like some kind of online confessional/notebook, but also because the moral of my tale is one which has been said many times before, by better folks than I, time and time again: back up your stuff.

They often say you never know when a drive's going to die, but the chances are that it'll be when it's least convenient for you (not in my case, but I've always been a freak), so save your stories, assignments or whatnot in a good location, and then save them again somewhere else.

If you've got a Mac, there's the Time Machine software; if you're signed up to Windows Live, you can use their 'Skydrive' facility to stash stuff online, or there are other services such as Dropbox which offer free online storage and access (and if you use that link, we both get an extra 250Mb free space), or you could just use plug-in external HDs or memory sticks or whatever you prefer.

But I strongly urge you to back stuff up, and get a routine going to do so, so that you can avoid the possibility that, as mine did the other night, your stomach suddenly goes cold as you realise that you may have lost all your funky music and draft writing...

BBC Writers Academy - 2010 Applications Invited

If you're interested in writing for TV, chances are you've already heard about this, but if not...

The BBC Writers Academy application process for this year opens today, and if you get one of the (up to) eight places, you'll get a pretty cracking grounding in writing for TV, particularly Continuing Drama (which covers programmes such as EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty).

You need to have a drama credit - and that means a paid commission for stage, screen or radio - and to submit a sample script as well as the application form etc, by 5 May 2010. There are, as I say, only a handful of places, but it's a terrific opportunity to learn about writing in a professional environment, and that certainly can't hurt.

Full details are available here, and there's a transcipt of the recent BBC Continuing Drama Q&A session here - wherein I spot that an online drama credit, as long as you've been paid by someone else for it, also makes you eligible to apply. Groovy.

Anyway, as I'm not yet in possession of a drama credit, I can't apply, but if you are and you do, please let me know how you get on, eh ?

Basically, I'm Saying "Don't Worry, Daddy Still Loves You Just As Much"

In an example of my usual skill at being ahead of the curve, I've just started to tinker on Twitter (as promised last year, I gave it some time, to see if it was just a pash in the flan) - you can see me here.

Not entirely sure if it'll prove to be a lasting thing, though I'm finding it quite diverting so far.

Anyway, I'll still be blogging - and don't worry, there are actual content-rich posts in the pipeline, not just 'ooh, doesn't that look a bit like that?' ones - so this is not any kind of farewell. You don't get rid of me that easily.

That said, I still think I'd have to sustain some kind of head injury before I'd consider signing up to Facebook.

As The Saviour Of Humanity In The Matrix Put It: "Whoa!"

I've linked before to the ever-amusing Photoshop Disasters blog, wherein they point out under-'shopped bits of advertising and promotional material.

But like any tool, Photoshop itself isn't a bad thing, it's a question of how it's used, and here's something created by Eric Johansson, a craftsman who need not blame his tools:


Clever, innit? You can see more of his work here - prepare to have your ever-lovin' brain bent out of shape (or, at least, for your eyeballs to be tickled).

Enjoy.