It's been a slow few months at Hall towers. There have been some upheavals here which meant I haven't been working or even getting up to speed with emails for the last few months. From November to January I didn't really come into the office at all and it became some sort of storage/junk room. You couldn't get in through the door even. It was, as they say, a dark time for the rebellion.



Things are happier now. I have a new desktop and a new speedy internet connection and, after a good few weeks of Rocky-style-tidying-montage, a smart clean office (even the dalek has been dusted and polished, which is just as well – there's nothing sadder than a dusty dalek).



So, for anyone who might be interested, here's a list of the things I need to get to now I'm back at my desk and picking up where I left off last autumn:



1) Emails email and emails…

They really mount up, especially when I've been so hit and miss at dealing with them. At the moment I'm trying to organise a trip down to London so I can meet up with the guy producing the Raw Shark film (Hi Pete, sorry for not getting back sooner), my publisher (hi Jamie, sorry for not getting back sooner), my agent (Hi Simon, no that proposal wasn't another joke one from me under a fake name, someone really is trying to sell you THAT book…) and a few guys who write for Doctor Who (both TV and audio – how cool is that?). I'm also trying to persuade my US publishers to include the Atlanta babygotbooks.com reading and now a largeheartedboy.com reading in my US schedule. I'm really excited about these and think some serious email bothering of Canongate/Grove Atlantic might be in order to get them on the list (hi Tad, sorry for getting back to you all the time. Please let me go to Atlanta :). What else? There's myspace messages for me to catch up on – so sorry if I haven't replied to you yet, I will, I promise! And messages on FaceBook too. Hmmm, Facebook. I can't help thinking of it as MySpace crossed with Excel. I guess Facebook's pretty good for photo sharing and letting people know about events. Oh and I get to find out exciting things about what old friends are up to right now, such as - 'simon is washing his hair' or Jenny is eating a cake', but really, unless you want to pretend to be a zombie or do lots of quizzes about the 80s , it's a bit boring and rubbish, isn't it? Myspace is severely broken and half-insane true, but you can blog, play annoying music and set your page and text design to colours which cause any viewer instant migraine if you're so inclined. Brilliant. That's social networking lad, and don't you forget it.




2) New Raw Shark Negatives.

I managed to miss a deadline for some Raw Shark Text extra content last week. I hate missing deadlines. I have this brilliant job as a writer, but it's still a job at the end of the day and it seems stupidly ungrateful to let people down like that (and because wasting whole weeks to bad TV and DVD boxsets is an ever-present threat, especially when you come out of yet another shopping trance and realise you've bought yet another armful of boxsets… and books, so so many books) . Anyway, I'm putting that right this week and then there's also the new fragment for the American tour and something very ambitious which I'm calling the Bottle Project. I've no idea if I'll be able to make it happen, but if it comes off it'll be quite something, I think.




3) More general deck-clearing.


I have books to sign and FedEx back to the US. This is tricky because A) my printer has gone all wonky and B)sorting out FedEx forms is a bit like Kafka the rolepalying game…




4) Doctor Who

I've been given the green light to pitch a couple of Doctor Who episodes to the people who make full cast audio dramas starring the old-school doctors. Needless to say that to me, a who geek of the first magnitude, this is very exciting. It'd be great fun to write an adventure or two which would star one of the doctors I grew up watching as a kid.




And then there's the really important stuff:




5) Book 1.5 -


which at the moment I'm calling Codename Hula-Hoop (for no reason other than I shouldn't reveal titles too early and giving things a codename is sort of fun). The idea would be for this book to appear in 2009. I haven't committed to this yet though, I'm trying to work out whether the timescale is possible given all the other things I am committed to! And speaking of which:




6) Book 2


- which I'm calling Codename Powerball (okay so the codenames are kinda relevant, where would be the fun otherwise?). I'm committed to a delivery date towards the end of next year for this novel. There's A LOT of work to be done, but I'm so excited about it. There are a couple of things I'm aiming for which, I think, haven't ever been done before with a novel. I know that's quite a claim but there's one thing in particular that Canongate have given me the green light to try with this book that I don't think anyone has attempted yet. Exciting times.






Anyway, I've managed to pass the morning writing a blog about all the things I'm not doing! Oops.

More soon…

Regret and hope

Steven

News on the movie would be great!

Also, excellent on the Dr. Who writing. I recently got hooked into Dr. Who about two seasons ago. Eventually I want to start watching all the old seasons as well, but am hesitant because I don't really know how to proceed, and the fact that there are so many and so little funds.

On another note, my lady and I recently went to an aquarium where you walk through a glass tunnel and are surrounded by water, well except the floor. It was a bit crazy seeing sharks swimming over your head at an arm's length away. Seeing those rows of teeth was incredible.

Hey MiaVRO,

New - and hopefully more regular - blogs coming soon!
Yes, there are things to say about the codenames and more to say about something called (at the moment) Destroy All Monsters.

Will report back in full soon

S