January Update

Happy New End of January!
Yes, um, I've been doing other stuff. I hope 2012 is treating you well so far. I've spend most of it in that funny writing and researching dance. You've a deadline but you don't feel entirely ready to fly so you're reading 'round at the same time as you're writing up your thoughts. Slowly, over the process your words get less provisional, the research tells you less and less you didn't already know, the deadline looms up and your confidence grows.

The thing I'm writing now has recently been announced, but it hasn't been announced it's by me, yet. Quite right too, I've only just delivered the first draft there's so much that can happen still down the line. It is however a great and slightly alarming boost to the system to see something you haven't finished yet already up for sale. It was the same when I was writing my book, and cover redesigns kept being emailed me. It all feels a bit unreal, but does encourage you to take care at busy junctions lest a bus suddenly overrules the slightly previous publicity material.
I'm quite pleased with it, though I've already spotted one small change I need to make due to shifting the setting of it a couple of months, but that can wait 'til I get notes back.

So next there's something else completed but unannounced, a couple of projects for me and trying to get an idea together for another possible bit of work.
The trick is going to be fitting everything in and getting a bit of exercise in. I've been a bit of a slug the last 3 or 4 months, it's time to get a bit of light and energy.
Hopefully, I'll have some more to tell you next month.

Counter-Measures

I've not posted anything here for a while because I've found nothing I've wanted to say at length that someone else wasn't saying better (and really who needs another 'blog saying I've put the weight back on I lost after last time I put it on and am trying to lose it again?) and I've been unable to say anything about the things I've been doing that haven't been announced yet.

One of them is announced now, so I'm very happy to say I'm one of the four authors of the Counter-Measures series of audio plays from Big Finish Productions. It's a Doctor Who spin-off using a trio of characters that appeared in the series in 1988, and it's firmly set in 1964.
I'm quite pleased with the way my script came out, it's been a while since I exercised the radio drama writing muscles, and was absolutely delighted by how well the recording attended went.

I won't say too much about it now, but the cast are top drawer. Doctor Who fans will remember Simon Williams', Pamela Salem's and Karen Gledhill's performances from the telly and, if they were quite devoted fans back then, the extra layers given to them in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of the story, and the actors brought both back beautifully and moved the characters on, during my day in studio.
They're bolstered in this new series by the wonderfully witty Hugh Ross, as new regular character Sir Tobias Kinsella, and he fits in effortlessly, establishing an instant chemistry with the team that delighted me.
My episode also features Big Finish regulars John Banks and Helen Goldwyn demonstrating just some of their versatility, and Stephen Greif giving a spot on reading of a character I'd described as a cross between Alan Sugar and Ken Campbell. I'd expected an actor to go with a voice a bit like one or the other with that brief, but he amazingly found the bloke who sounded like both of them at once.

Anyway, all the details that are available at present are here. More will come nearer release date, and I'm sure I'll let you know the minute a trailer goes up online.

"Onwards and upwards!"

August Company

Here we are then, breaking the silence again just 7 months on. What can I report on? Not very much, I've two projects underway that started up in the Spring that I can't say a thing about at the moment, and a bunch of plans for later in the year when they're out of the way. I won't say what they are because you always look an idiot when real life turns out differently.

Most of the 'what I'm doing' and 'what are my half-baked thoughts about things' content that used to fill these pages is now filleted up and smeared over Twitter. You're welcome to type "You're wrong, dull and an idiot." at me there. I 'tweet' as @ianzpotter.

The Faction Paradox book came out to almost universally positive reviews earlier in the year. It's easy enough to google them (apart from the stuff on Gallifreybase you need to sign up to view). There was actually one review that was a bit unkind about several stories, which is probably the most fun to read, even if the reviewer now seems upset that it's been commented on by people who can view but not post on their forum. Disappointingly, even that broadly negative review seemed to regard my work as competent.

Hey ho. On we go.

Tentative Return

Been a while, hope you're all well. I'll try to post here a bit more often next year.
Latest news? I should have a new short story coming up for Obverse Books' Faction Paradox collection in 2011, first draft's just about sorted.
Erm... I revisited Jungle Jeremy, an old script of mine, on Audioboo to get some sound design practice in again. I hadn't done a really big project since 2007 and I miss it. It starts here, It's a period adventure parody in six five minute long pieces and I'm quite pleased with how it worked out for a hobby piece. Each section has a link to the next under it if you make it past the initial set up.
Will write again soon!

Anti-Social Media

Hello.

How much time do you have? It turns out it's a limited amount, and yet somehow everything has to get done in it.

I've noticed I've been posting a lot less on here in the last year or so, and I think that's partly because of Facebook, which started off as a fabulous way for me to keep in touch with people and maintain the illusion of office chit-chat while working in splendid isolation but seems to have slowly turned into a devourer of both work and leisure time. It's dangerously full of instant gratification, distractions, campaigns and really fascinating and funny people in far too many time-zones all conspiring to lure you away from your true course, and, as a bonus, eating up the slack time you'd have spent writing an occasional "weblog" in bite-size status update chunks.

It's got particularly wearying the last few weeks as I've been researching and tentatively writing bits of a play, and have reached the stage where research has become a delaying tactic keeping me from to the main business of actually writing and Facebook has become what I do in the breaks between the delaying activity.

So, as a little experiment I've decided to give Facebook up for a bit and see how the working days shape up without it. Next week will be Facebook free, almost as if my life is some annoying lifestyle article in a quality broadsheet that assumes you live the same media-saturated life as the author. Twitter's going too, it's even more littered with links for the butterfly-brained than Facebook and far less like real conversations.

We'll see how it goes. Who knows, the extra time this e-cold turkey buys me may even allow me time to complete a half finished AudioBoo sitting in pieces on my hard disk or complete this sentence eve

Dramarama

Just returned from the TV Drama Writers Festival in Leeds, a really interesting couple of days (some of which was video recorded and I expect will end up on the BBC Writersroom page fairly soon).

It was really nice to catch up and chat with some writers and producers I'd met before and meet a few people for the first time, among them Dan Tetsell, the script editor of Radio 7's NewsJack who's put some things of mine into the show, even if not all of them made into the transmitted episodes!
I also discovered a heartbreaking missed opportunity relating to last year's Bill Mitchell radio documentary, a very famous actor's daughter had 'phoned up after transmission asking why he hadn't been asked to contribute. If we'd known he was a mate of Bill's we would have gone to him like a shot!

Tributes to Alan Plater were, of course paid and quite right too. I only met him once, quite briefly, and always wanted to meet him again. A very warm, approachable and supremely talented man, he was also wonderfully indiscreet about the film star Ava Gardner within minutes of our meeting. How brilliant is that? Funny, clever and nice. Never take that rare combination for granted.

There were some great sessions across the two days with Toby Whithouse, Tony Jordan, Alice Nutter and Jed Mercurio among those giving some serious food for thought., and you can glean a flavour of them from Twitter where Jason Arnopp in particular has been reported some of the pull out quotes, I found John Yorke's presentation on popular series very interesting this morning and full of farmore really useful practical advice than I'd expected. If it doesn't end up detailed elsewhere or on the BBC pages, I'll write up some of my notes at some point. I've also become fixated on the idea that documentary maker Adam Curtis who spoke at the event is a young Oliver Postgate, they share the same gentle patrician toned narration voice and Curtis even has a slight look of the great man. I now desperately want to see a Curtis film in the cut up collage style of his The Power of Nightmares using only bits of old Small Films shows (The Power of Bagpuss?)

Hats off to all involved. Having given a presentation to young writers recently I can easily imagine just how much more daunting mounting two days of the things to battle-weary veterans would be.
Particularly pleased to have found myself having new drama ideas as a result of being there. Sometimes you only find out what you think when you find you're saying it aloud to someone else...

It's Only A Model! Sshh!

From what I've read, mainly press bumph, Chris Chibnall's Camelot (apparently an extension of abandoned early thoughts for what became the Merlin TV series) seems to be another wrong way to do a King Arthur series, though I could easily be stupidly wrong, as usual.

I should stress that for my money the only two really good King Arthur TV shows were Andrew Davies' Sunday serial The Legend of King Arthur from 1979 and the RSC Morte D'Arthur from 1984, which was essentially a beautifully illustrated monologue with actors as moving pictures behind John Barton's finely judged reading of the end of Malory.

For me, it should be a Precinct Drama with Camelot as the big standing set- lots of writers, big ensemble cast, a new quest of the week every time, and a running back-story at court that comes together at the series end, an anthology drama series with shared secondary characters like Clocking Off.

It should be made like The Bill or Doctors with several episodes in production simultaneously, all using different leads and crews and there really shouldn't be a house style, it could be political, allegorical, gritty, funny or fantastical as each quest required.

I'd like Jimmy McGovern to show-run it as The Table, with an initial run of 8 x 60min, please. Bring it to me for Autumn 2012, ta.