Number one, I've been writing a fair bit recently which means there are things I need to beg you to buy, things to reassure you are in the pipeline and things to darkly hint at that I haven't actually finished yet.
Anyway, there are two Doctor Who spin-offs (in the very loosest sense of those hyphenated words) that I've been involved with out now.
They're both built around female supporting characters from Doctor Who, but when they're at the centre of their own stories they inhabit quite different universes.
The first of these is the Iris collection I mentioned last time edited by Paul Dale Smith.
You can buy that here or go and read Paul talk about it in detail over here. It's a very quirky, British kind of literary fantasy that enjoys messing about with the nature of fiction. It's playful, it's weird, it gets dark now and then and it also gets very silly.
The second is Vienna- Series 3. Vienna's an audio science fiction series about a once ruthless assassin and bounty hunter who's become something a little more morally complex. She's the titular Vienna and is played with great wit and cool by Chase Masterson who some of you may work for her Star Trek appearances.
Vienna is Jonny Morris' baby, but this third series he kindly invited three other writers to work with him as script editor. He came up with a clever series arc and some basic situations and let us fly with them.
One great thing about Vienna for me is how it manages to feels a very natural melding of those great Robert Sheckley and Philip K Dick era literary SF books and the big action SF movies based on them (except Freejack which is the most monstrous wreck you could possibly make out of Sheckley's Immortality Inc.). There's action, satire, spectacle and a willingness to follow through on hard SF concepts. Vienna's always been interesting about identity, and that's something I've wanted to play with in my story, as you will discover if you buy it...
You can do your buying here, or read Jonny mentioning this as one of his many things coming out here.
Pipeline and as yet unwritten projects definitely involve more Doctor Who, submarines, a RiffTrax Presents release recorded last year, some short fiction, the Festival of Britain and a lengthy piece of factual writing. More later...
Number two, I'm running the Hadrian's Wall Half Marathon again this year- but this year I'm going to be faster. Training's going well and my weight's coming down nicely after quite a sedentary period in 2015.
I'm seeking sponsorship again too, for three charities this year.
They are the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and Invest in ME as before, and the Sheffield Hospitals Charity. The first two have supported friends and people in positions like them and the latter is to assist the hospitals who are helping my wife walk again after her severe leg injury in January 2015. There's a lot the hospitals do that isn't covered by core NHS budgets, and I want to support anything that makes that work easier for them.
If you can sponsor any of these causes you'd make me very happy indeed, and probably make me run quicker. There's a sponsorship link here.
Number three, the National Media Museum is under fire again. It is losing vital funding, staff, and collections, and the Science Museum management that should be working to make it stronger seems intent on stripping it of its assets, broad appeal and curatorial expertise, making it a shadow of the organisation it once was. It feels like a closure by stealth to be honest, and it makes me angry.
I worked at the Museum under its previous name and what's being done to do it at present feels like an insult to its audiences and all those people I worked with.
There's some background here, and petitions you might sign if you'd care to here and here, but I'm afraid signing petitions isn't going to win this battle. This is just the beginning of a long hard fight against philistinism in high places.
Right, that's my bits done. Any other business?
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