Tag Archives: of rock and earth

Hey, remember those books?

So 2010 turned out to be a bit of a weird one for my writing, with the Arms Race short film rather taking over all my spare creative time. That turned out great but by the time it premiered back in November it was absolutely time to get back to doing what I love the most: writing.

Another It’s A Trap! project was gearing up just as Arms Race was winding down, namely the audio drama The Ravenskil Chronicles. Most easily (an inaccurately) described as a 1920s-set X-Files, it’s from the same people that made Jack Steel such a pulpy success but with a very different remit. The most noticeable change in approach is to have a team of writers, rather than Chris Burdett writing every episode.

As such, I’m penning episode 3 and have thoroughly enjoyed doing so. The first draft was completed just before Christmas and I’ve now completed the second, which is much more trim with a lot of fat removed and dialogue tweaked. There will doubtless be a third draft following some more feedback, and once the other scripts start to come together there will be a process of getting them all in sync.

Meanwhile, I’ve also started work once more on Of Rock And Earth – it’s so nearly finished in first draft form. Once that’s done I can go back to Evinden and – fainlly, at long last – get it into a publishable state.

While other projects will no doubt appear during 2011, I’m determined to keep it as primarily a ‘year of writing’. A few mini-test films wouldn’t go amiss, but major projects are out of bounds until I’ve got these two books finished.

More on all three projects (Ravenskil, Of Rock And Earth and Evinden) as they progress.

Hope you all had a good Christmas. I certainly did. :)

Final stages of VFX on Arms Race

Other than a marvelous week’s holiday to Northumberland in August (which I can actually call research, given that Of Rock And Earth is set in the same region) I’ve had a busy month-or-two.

The main occupation of my time has been my dad’s book, a biography of explorer Dr Reginald Koettlitz, which I have been busy editing. Extensive examination of ~90,000 words takes quite a while, it turns out. Who knew? That rather put everything else on the back hob, so while it was fun I’m pleased to have now completed the work.

Next up is Nigel Clegg’s short film Arms Race, a steamtech war adventure featuring all kinds of nifty props built by the art team. Post has been expectedly sluggish but I’m finally nearing completion on the ~43 VFX shots, which means I can move the film into final sound mix and grading. We hope to have a cast and crew premiere around the end of September, with public distribution of some sort shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, work at FXhome continues at breakneck speed with some truly amazing stuff coming down the pipeline. Next week there’s a new Sales and Marketing Manager starting who I’ll be working directly with, which will be an interesting shift from the dynamic of the last four years-or-so.

After all this, of course, I might actually be able to finish my own books. Woot!

That’s quite enough politics, thank you

Gosh, it’s been a noisy few months. First there was the Digital Economy Bill debacle, swiftly followed by the Digital Economy Act debacle, then the General Election reared its ugly head, with the Paul Chambers Absurdity coming in at the end. All jolly exciting and extremely useful for boosting up my blog’s visitor stats, but not particularly conducive to getting on with anything else.

So for a little while I’m going to attempt to focus a little on the four main projects I currently have on the bubble. Yes, four major projects, all happening at once. Exactly the kind of thing I vowed at the start of the year to avoid. Ah well, such is the inevitable allure of cool creative things. Here’s where I am with them all:

  • My dad’s polar explorer biography is top of the list, seeing as how he already has a publisher waiting for it. I’m editing the book at the moment, which is proving rather fascinating. It’s great to learn about a historical figure while also editing and hopefully improving the text. It’s dad’s first book and other than some structural and attribution errors he’s done a pretty good job, from what I’ve read so far. It should be a really entertaining, informative biography by the time it’s done.
  • Next up is Nigel’s Steamtech short film. This one has been languishing in post-production for a long while now, which is in large part my fault, I’m ashamed to say. On the plus side, things are moving along quite nicely on it now, with effects shots gradually being completed. The first set should hopefully be done in the next week or two, clearing the way for the extremely tricky miniature composites. I don’t know exactly how Nigel plans to release the film yet, but we aim for it to be finished end of July, at which point either the full thing or a teaser trailer may emerge onto the web.
  • The newest addition to the list is an audio drama podcast that is being produced by the Jack Steel boys. After nailing Jack Steel series 2 they’re really ratcheting up the ambition-o-scope with this new project, not least through inviting other writers to contribute episodes. I’ve now seen the series bible and it is a marvelous thing, with just enough detail to fire off the imagination without being too limiting. There’s potential for excellent standalone adventures and mysteries within a slow burning, long form, multi-series narrative. I’m extremely excited about it and think it could run and run if we get it right.
  • Then, of course, there’s Of Rock And Earth, which is still coming along but has inevitably taken a bit of a back seat due to the more pressing projects above. It’s very near to completion, however.

Lots to do (and this is just the major, current projects).

And Red Dead Redemption isn’t helping.

70,743 – heading towards a confrontation

I’m moving swiftly towards the finale of my second novel, Of Rock And Earth. It’s considerably shorter than Evinden, but that’s by design – plus the current word count is a little deceptive as the first third of the book needs some serious bulking up once I start editing. Halfway through I had a slight change of narrative style which benefited the story greatly, so I need to go back and weave that into the opening chapters. Such is the way of things when you start a book for NaNoWriMo with little in the way of planning!

It’s a good job that there’s not long to go before a first draft, as I need to focus on editing my dad’s biography, which is going to be a big job. It’s already got a publishing deal in place, so time is pressing. More on that another time.

Evinden – first feedback

You may remember that when I’m not ranting about the Digital Economy Bill, I like to spend my time writing. Late last year I finished the first draft of my first novel, Evinden, and this weekend I received a response from the first person to read the book in its entirety.

The comments were courtesy of Axel Wilkinson and were largely very positive, which is hugely exciting. It’s only one person and one opinion, of course, but I think my relationship with Axel is of a sort whereby he would feel able to be honest and not sugar coat his thoughts. More importantly he also included a range of suggestions, all of which are superb. They’re mostly small things which have a big impact – such as re-using a prop from earlier in the story in the climax, or extending certain sequences, bridging others…all of which will add up to a major improvement.

I had written more, but this laptop’s internet connection is all over the place, so I will adjourn for today.