Reginald Koettlitz was born in 1860 and died in 1916, making this month the centenary of his death. In his life he travelled on the Discovery to the Antarctic with Captain Scott, journeyed up the Amazon and explored half of Africa. Read more…
I studied art at school and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was never a particularly brilliant artist, but the satisfaction I got from it was similar to the feeling I get when writing. Pencils, charcoal, inks. That’s my bag. I’ve loved drawing ever since I was a child, when I’d create elaborate multi-panel TRANSFORMERS and MASK comics. They were probably indecipherable squiggles but, for me, they were an early form of learning storytelling, before I had the skills to write much in the way of prose.
Then thirteen years passed. Aside from the occasional scribbled storyboard for film projects, I didn’t really do much arty stuff. Then my son was born in 2012 and I picked up a pencil again and started drawing with him. (more…)
My second ebook is out, compiling the chapters for Arc 2 of A Day of Faces. Arc 2 continues the story as Kay finds herself at the bottom of the rabbit hole. If you like science fiction with a somewhat anarchic twist and a sense of humour, check it out. (You can find Arc 1 here, incidentally) (more…)
Last weekend I jumped on a train and headed down to London to check out the Wattpad LondonCon. As with most things Wattpad this year it was an exercise in exploring the unknown and, much like writing A Day of Faces and taking part in the Story Fair, it was a resounding success.
The event was held on the top floor of the Foyles bookshop. Somehow in my 35 years I’d never heard of Foyles, much less visit the place. It’s six floors of book heaven which reminds you of how much we lose if we shop only through Amazon and co. They really seem to have nailed what a large, physical bookstore has to do in order to stay relevant in the 21st century. As a reader and writer, entering Foyles is less like going into a shop and more like stepping into a temple or church. (more…)
I joined Wattpad a couple of years ago – I forget exactly when – and published my first story on July 14th 2014. That story has had 13 ‘reads’. I didn’t start using Wattpad properly until May 2015, when I started writing and publishing A Day of Faces, my on-going weird sci-fi serial.
In September I tentatively took part in something called the Story Fair, run via Facebook by a handful of far more established Wattpad authors (who have tens of thousands of readers between them). That event brought in a whole bunch of extra readers and also unexpectedly got me involved with the upcoming Wattpad Block Party, which is going to happen in February. You can find out about the event here. (more…)
A glance down this blog would lead to the reasonable conclusion that all I’ve been doing this year is writing A Day of Faces. I should probably try to be rather more varied in my blog output.
So, other things.
At work FXHOME just released HitFilm 4 Pro. It’s a great NLE/VFX product and it also has a snazzy new website to accompany it. In terms of copywriting I’m massively proud of the new site and feel like it’s my best work to date. Do check it out over at hitfilm.com. I’ll be writing a full-on copy and design deconstruction blog at some point in the near future. (more…)
Every negative article on the Steam Controller has been from experienced gaming journos, all of whom tend to profess to having used traditional controllers for over a decade. These are people who love Xbox or Playstation controllers and have a ton of muscle memory invested in them. It’s not surprising that they’re finding it difficult to adapt to something very different. Crucially, I think they’ve forgotten the initial learning curve they had with the Playstation and Xbox controllers, because it was decades ago. (more…)
UPDATE: I have, for the moment, removed the A Day of Faces ebooks from sale. It’ll be back at some point, in a revised, expanded and better form. Join my mailing list if you want to know when that happens! Read more…
Over the weekend I worked on a short film for the Colchester 60 Hour Film Festival. It’s called This Day And Age and you can watch it here:
Aside from a single VFX shot I contributed to The Splinter Cell last year (some BTS on that here), this is pretty much the first film project I’ve been part of since my son was born three years ago. Which is fine – I’ve had far too much fun helping him grow into something awesome to dilly-dally with making films. (more…)
Yesterday I took part in The First Annual Story Fair, an event bringing together a bunch of Wattpad writers to promote their works via an online event hosted on Facebook. I had no idea what to expect. Since I started Read more…