2013 is a big year for me, December 3rd I turn 50, so I’m using that milestone as a target and aiming towards it with my writing projects for the year. I decided late last year that I’d been setting myself some unattainable goals, goals like getting a novel written in a couple of months, working on several projects at the same time. All I was doing was painting myself into a corner, and getting frustrated because nothing was getting finished.
As part of the plan to regiment my projects, I had a splurge in November with an alternative NaNoWriMo. Instead of a novel in 30 days I wrote, edited and submitted four short stories, they are all out and waiting on responses (well one was rejected fairly quick, Lightspeed magazine lives up to its name with a superfast turnaround time, but has since been resubmitted elsewhere). Over the Christmas period I spent a lot of time reading scripts, I was preparing my mindset for the main project of 2013.
About four years ago I wrote a novel, it was for a competition and didn’t get anywhere and has been sitting on my hard drive ever since. What I have decided to do this year is re-read that novel and adapt it into six 60 minute episodes. The idea is I’ll submit it to the BBC Writers Room. I’ve already started on the pilot/1st episode and have a rough first draft laid out. the plan is to get a complete first draft of all six episodes done by June/July. After that I’m leaving it for a couple of months before going back through for the second draft. All being well sometime before my birthday I hope to have all six episodes done, polished and in a submittable state.
Of course the script isn’t the only project. Alongside it I’m plotting for a horror novel that should be ready to start writing May/June time (the plan is to use the couple month downtime after the script first draft to do the bulk of the writing). and I’ll also be doing some short stories and Chuck Wendig’s weekly flash fiction challenges.
All in all I hope 2013 to be a productive one, and hope that one of the seedlings I’m cultivating might take root.
News has broke of the sad passing at the age of 82 of Neil Armstong, the first man to walk on the Moon. As Commander of Apollo 11, he and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin spent nearly three hours on the Lunar surface.
Earlier this month Armstrong underwent surgery for blocked arteries. No news has been released yet as to the cause of death.
For the past few days San Diego Comic-Con has been host to thousands of SF & Fantasy fans eager for the latest news on their top shows and movies. I collated some of the news here for shows and films I’m interested in.
First up…
Marvel – Phase Two
With Marvel Avengers Assemble the studio announced the end of their Phase One releases. Phase Two would contain Iron Man III, Thor II and Captain America II. The plan is the second phase will lead up to the second Avengers film. Over the course of Comic-Con more information has been released.
Thor: The Dark World is the title for the God of Thunder’s second outing and has a release date of November 8th 2013. As yet no further details are known regarding plot and casting, Chris Helmsworth will be reprising the role of Thor.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the title for Steve Rogers second outing and has a release date of April 4th 2014. No further details are known, but in the comics The Winter Soldier storyline was about “Bucky” Barnes who was Steve Rogers sidekick during WWII. It was a Cold War tale with “Bucky” revived without his memory and brainwashed by the Russians as an assassin. I’m not sure if they will use the same storyline or update it maybe with “Bucky” being radicalised.
Ant-Man was announced but no release date yet. He is a superhero who was at one time a member of The Avengers, in the comics various characters have assumed the name, the original was Henry Pym, a brilliant scientist who invented a formula to alter his size.
Iron Man III is filming now, and footage shown confirms that Sir Ben Kingsley is playing The Mandarin, a long time enemy of Tony Stark.
Guardians of the Galaxy are another superhero group like The Avengers, except they are from the far future alternative time-line. Marvel have announced this film as a bridge between the three sequels and Ant-Man film and the second Avengers outing. In the after credits clip of the Avengers we saw the main adversary behind the attacks on Earth, this was a character called Thannos, it is believed both superhero teams maybe involved in battling him.
The Walking Dead S3
The trailer for season 3 of AMC’s The Walking Dead was shown. This series covers events in the town of Woodbury and introduces a character known as the Governor.
Game Of Thrones S3
Season 3 of HBO’s Game Of Thrones began filming last week. Unlike the first two seasons casting announcements have been scarce as it seems the producers have saved them all for Comic-Con. Season 3 will air on March 31st 2013.
A brief breakdown as to who is who.
Mackenzie Crook has been cast as Orell, a wildling who is a close advisor to the King-Beyond-The-Wall Mance Rayder. Crook is probably best known to UK viewers as Gareth from The Office, he also stared as one-eyed Ragetti in the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Paul Kaye has been cast as Thoros of Myr, Thoros is a Red Priest like Melisandre. But unlike her Thoros likes to drink and fight. He is a one-time drinking partner of Robert Baratheon. In the books he went with Lord Benric Dondarrion to bring Ser Gregor Clegane to justice on Ned Stark’s orders (S1). Kaye shot to fame in the UK as “Dennis Pennis” a “shock-interviewer” who insulted celebrities whilst interviewing them. He stared in many shows throughout the early 2000s.
Richard Dormer has been cast as Lord Beric Dondarrion of Blackraven. The character did appear briefly in S1 when he was despatched by Ned Stark to bring Ser Gregor Clegane to justice, the producers decided to recast for S3. Dormer is an actor and playwright.
Clive Russell has been cast as Brynden “the Blackfish” Tully, the uncle of Catelyn , Lysa and Edmure. In the books Brynden was introduced in The Game Of Thrones, but because of the trimming down of the Riverrun/Tully storyline it has been delayed until S3. Russell is a well known actor and has appeared in countless films and TV shows.
Tobias Menzies has been cast as Edmure Tully, he is the younger brother of Catelyn and Lysa, and nephew of Brynden. Edmure is not a great warrior and lacks Catelyn’s political skills. Menzies played Brutus in Rome.
Tara Fitzgerald has been cast as Selyse Baratheon, the wife of Stannis Baratheon. She is a devotee of the Red God had staunch supporter of Melisandre. Fitzgerald is a star of stage, screen and TV, most recently as Dr. Eve Lockhart in BBCs Waking The Dead.
Ellie Kendrick has been cast as Meera Reed.
And Thomas Brodie-Sangster has been cast as Jojen Reed. Meera and Jojen are the children of Lord Howland Reed, a staunch ally of Ned Stark and one of his closest friends. In the books they are sent to Winterfell to pledge allegence to Robb Stark after Ned’s death, they are there when Theon and the Ironborn take the fortress, then they escape North with Bran Stark. Brodie-Sangster is most famous for staring alongside Liam Neeson in Love Actually, Kendrick recently stared in BBCs Upstairs Downstairs.
The Hobbit
With principle photography complete on both Hobbit films, some of the cast and director Peter Jackson were at Comic-Con promoting the first release. During an interview with TheOneRing.net Jackson admitted the posibility that there could be a third film in the offing.
There it is, the title of my current WIP. A short story that became a novella that’s becoming an obsession.
Originally it was just a short story entitled Gypsy’s Kiss, about a down-at-heel PI pounding the mean streets of Bournemouth, hey if you’ve never been there don’t say it ain’t mean. But halfway in the adventures of my hero, Toby Jones, began to take on more and more depth, like the proverbial snowball becoming an avalanche. Into the end third of the short I realized the tale I had to tell would never fit inside the confines of a short story, so off came that hat and on went the novella one, a nice nifty one with a feather and peak.
Once I’d settled on the fact it would be a longer piece other stories began to come to mind, events in Toby’s and his worlds past, present and future. As these little snippets mounted The Ballad Of Toby Jones title came into my head. It felt good, it felt comfortable, it felt right.
All I’m going to say now is it is set in an alternate world, does not involved aliens but does have Gypsy magic.
Been a busy couple of weeks writingwise. First some updates…
My short story Jack has been accepted for the forthcoming last part in the Pill HillPress Monster Hunter anthology. The last instalment is entitled Use Enough Gun and yesterday Miles Boothe posted the final table of contents.
One Less by Steven Gepp Shame of the Huntress by Gregory Casey Viral by Dev Jarrett The Demon and the Manuscript by Marc Sorondo Red December, 1879 by Brian Panowich In the Dark and Quiet by Joshua Reynolds Vermin by Blaise Torrance Jack by Philip Norris The Shape of a Cage by J.W.Whalen Victims by Mike Phillips Blood Devil by Eric Scott de Bie Night of the Wolf by Nathan J.D.L. Rowark Cautionary Tales by Jennifer Barnes The Bear Trap by Daniel Durrant Arrival by Christopher Nadeau The End of Things by T.W. Garland Hell Knight by Angel Propps The Longest Night by Helen Yates Weapon of Choice by Paul Starkey House Hunters by William Wood Second Chances by H.J. Hill Soot by Jireh Smith The Predators of Winter by E. Dagforth Skin and Bone by Jonathan Templar Hell’s Ambush by Derek Anderson Fail and Cry by Miles Boothe
See me near the top. This is not the final line up for publication but the order in which they were accepted.
Next up is something I have known about for a few weeks now but was asked to keep under wraps whilst other writers were contacted. I recently submitted a short script – about 7 minutes – for the Twisted Showcase second season, I’m pleased to announce that my script has been picked up and filming will commence over the summer.
I’m really pleased about this as this is my first attempt at writing a script and has come out well. As yet there is no title, the original title didn’t really fit with the theme so the producers are considering other options.
So this leaves me in a good position, in the coming months I’ll have two short stories in print and a script filmed. Still in hand is the fantasy short I have in with The Fantasy Faction anthology.
As soon as I have publication/release dates for the above I’ll post.
For the past couple of months I’ve been assembling a collection of my short stories and re-reading them. As I’ve gone through I’ve been selecting stories to be included in an anthology I’m planning on self publishing on Kindle. Initially I had a couple of dozen stories, all un-published and some rejected submissions. To date I have whittled that total down to ten and then down to five. I know have the four that I intend to include selected and have been giving each a re-read and edit.
As of last night I have two stories edited, polished and prepared. The anthology will be a mix of genres. I’ve already opened an account on Amazon for the Kindle self-publish, and already registered the title.
I feel now the time is right to begin to get the anthology “out there”. I’ve tweeted about it several times, but as I plan on getting the rest of the stories edited and ready so I can publish early in the summer, I think I should begin now a heavier push to get it noticed. The plan is from now until publication date – I’m looking at June – I’ll post regular blogs about the progress.
For now all I’ll give you is the titles of the first two stories.
Pretty Maids All In A Row – has appeared on GeekPlanetOnline, but I have revised it and added to the overall length. It is a horror story seen through the eyes of a 14yr old boy.
Darkness Falls – was submitted to Pill Hill Press for the first book in their Monster Hunter trilogy. It is a monster horror pitting a local sheriff against an ancient horror.
The final two stories, one is a steampunk and the other an alternative history fantasy, but maybe more of them next time.
Hot on the heels of his Last Words update last week - http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2012/03/13/last-words/ - Joe Abercrombie has posted another, more in-depth, update about the first rough draft of (A) Red Country.
Some interesting insights into how Joe works, and how the whole process is going. Some interesting questions raised as well. In his previous post Joe had the title A Red Country, here he uses Red Country? So I believe there will be two different titles for the UK and US markets, one with the A and one without, perhaps he’s trying both out to see how they feel.
More interesting is one line near the end of the article where he is talking about the characters that have appeared in previous books. - They need to feel consistent and vivid, and as a result I probably need to do a read through of the First Law and Best Served Cold - so he only needs to re-read First Law and Best Served Cold. From that can we assume there will be no characters from The Heroes making a return? Also, we already know that Nicomo Cosca is in the new book – hence the re-read of BSC – but why would he need to re-read First Law, there has been no mention so far of any characters from there?
Or has there?
A lot of speculation has been hinging on a certain character by the name of Lamb, he is the step-father of the central figure in the story. All that Joe has revealed so far about Lamb is that he has a bloody past, bloodier than most. Makes me wonder even more if this is a subtle clue that perhaps Lamb appeared in First Law but under a different name.
I had that email from Pill Hill Press last night regarding my submission to their Steampunk anthology. I had been building my hopes up seeing they’d kept hold of it for so long. But the pain of rejection was softened by some personal feedback from the publisher.
They’d had my story on the shortlist for a while, they were looking for more military/war themed stories to come in, but unfortunately none did meaning my story was on it’s own. Because of this the direction of the anthology veered away from my story resulting in it not making the cut.
They did say that it would fit nicely with a publication called Steampunk Tales - http://www.steampunktales.com/ - which looks like a great place for stories of that genre. But only draw back I can see is their submission policy has a word count of 4,500 and my story is 6,602 words. That’s a hell of a lot to prune off for a short story.
Unsure what I’m going to do yet, I am working on a anthology of my own that I plan to self publish on Kindle, I might put my story in there. But as it is due to other project’s I’ll let my steampunk story sit for a while and take a look at it in a couple of months.
Joe Abercrombie has posted an update to his current WIP (A) Red Country - it might loose the A prior to publication.
Along with the current state of progress he also posts a rough synopsis.
“Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust…”
Already a lot of people – myself included – are latching onto the character Lamb and his bloody past, speculation already rife that he is Logen “The Bloody Nine” Ninefingers, last seen falling from a castle window into a fast flowing river at the end of Last Argument Of Kings.
But even if it is his return, the book features another great character with the return of Nicomo Cosca.
According to Joe’s comments this book is set roughly six years after The Heroes, making it fifteen years since the end of The First Law trilogy.
