Category: News

Exciting times ahead – Music, Poetry and Bolton

anthology2014cover
 Live from Worktown was a 2014 festival of poetry and music based around the UK town of Bolton, my home. As well as the best local talents, it also featured sets from international names George Wallace and Anjum Malik. I was involved on the filming side and general gophering.

Tonight I’ve been at a meeting to discuss the forthcoming arts festival Live from Worktown and I’ve come away feeling very excited. There’s much to be done between now and May but already it looks as if our follow up to last year’s inaugeral event will be bigger and bolder. I’ll be posting up specifics about what I will be doing once they are confirmed but in the meantime, if you’ve not taken a look at the official website http://livefromworktown.org/ then please do. There is also a brand new archive site http://livefromworktown14.org.uk/ containing a permanent record of 2014’s events.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

Santa Claus Conquers the Mayans

For the past few years, my friends and I, under the guise of Westlake Films, have made some kind of comedy video to tie in with Christmas. This year’s production, made despite all kinds of problems and completed against the clock by director/editor Kevin Hiley, is Santa Claus Conquers the Mayans. Written by John Isles, it features a Mancunian Santa and his Chief Elf in a race against time to stop a deadly boardgame from destroying the world. A plan that involves robbery and Mexican wrestling.

As well as helping to make the film in general assistant category, I also make a couple of onscreen contributions, playing a dubious Australian TV historian and providing the opening narration.

You can find out more about Westlake Films and our past work at our website: http://www.westlakefilms.co.uk

Merry Christmas everyone!

Arsenic and Old Lace

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I’m shamelessly plugging my upcoming appearance in “Arsenic and Old Lace”, the classic American black comedy by Joseph Kesselring. I’m playing Dr Herman Einstein, the plastic surgeon and cringing henchman of the fiendish Jonathan Brewster. Armed with a comic German accent, I’ve been part of a hard working cast of actors and technicians at Bolton Little Theater and the rehearsals have been busy but rewarding.

The play is on for seven nights between 6th to 13th of December, tickets are £10 and if you are interested in watching then find out more from: http://boltonlittletheatre.co.uk/whats/arsenic-and-old-lace/

Written in 1939, this brilliantly constructed comedy, has impressively stood the test of time. As a writer I love the script, not just for its tightly designed plot and atmosphere of matter of fact madness, but for some jokes about writers which are still bang on target. Take Office O’Hara, the would-be playwright for whom his policeman job is “just a temporary thing”. “How long have you been a policeman?”, asks Mortimer, “Twelve years”, replies O’Hara blithely. Later on, after boring the room senseless with his hours long pitch, the cop protests, “I know the first two acts are a bit long, but I can’t see what we can leave out!”

It’s a play that combines slapstick of hiding dead bodies with some sharp satire on the hypocrisies of the monied establishment. The Brewster sister are hailed for the good works, but they are shown to be rather prejudiced as well as murderers. Their money and position means that the police treat them with rather too much respect. Although we are a British theater troupe, we are playing with American accents, because somehow the comedy just doesn’t work without them. This play is both timeless, yet fixed to a specific place and time.

Expect some production photos in a little while.

On a Cold Martian Night – My first published magazine short fiction

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I’m excited to announced that first commercially published short fiction is now out on the newsstand, inside issue 405 of Starburst – the world’s longest running magazine of cult media.

“On a Cold Martian Night” is a sharp little story of the dangers of future colonisation, especially the danger humans bring along with them. Thanks to Rylan Cavell for his moody artwork.

One of the magazine’s requirements is that submitted stories be no more than 2000 words, and it was quite a challenge to hone my original draft of 3000+ words! However I think the painful editing process created a much stronger piece. If you do read it I’d love to know what you think?

Also in this issue is coverage of The Walking Dead, an interview with George R R Martin, a look at Seventies grindhouse cinema, and plenty more about what is going on in the worlds of cinema, books, television and games.

Starburst #405 is available online from http://www.starburstmagazine.com , and also W H Smith, newsagents and specialist SF shops like Forbidden Planet.

Brand new Mercy Thompson comicbook

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My good friend and fellow writer Rik Hoskin (creator of the Agents of Psyence, whose audio series I produced) has just told me about his latest project. He’s scripting the Mercy Thompson horror comic for Dynamite Publishing, working alongside author/creator Patricia Briggs.  Mercy Thompson is the heroine of a series of popular urban fantasy novels. A young Native American woman who can shapeshift into a coyote, and who’s life inevitably brings her into touch with mysteries and dangers within Washington’s hidden supernatural community

You can view some excellent preview art here:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/07/31/exclusive-first-look-at-patricia-briggs-mercy-thompson-1/

Issue 1 (of 6) can be ordered now and will be out in October.  A full listing of Dynamite’s October titles is here: http://www.dynamite.com/htmlfiles/previews.html

Rik’s been an inspiration to me as a someone who’s made that transition from part-time amateur to full-time professional writer. He’s done it by not only being very good at writing, but by his versatility, working on many children’s comic titles, horror short stories and SF novels, sometimes under pseudonyms.

And someday I will return to the Agents of Pysence audio series. Yes, someday…

Taken my first step

Hello. This is my first post to my first WordPress page. I’ve heard a lot about this site and its been recommend to me by friends. Essentially it is going to be here partly as an online creative CV for my work and partly as a place for new writing and oddments that perhaps wouldn’t fit in my usual online haunts. This page may well alter a bit as I work out how to customise it in the early days.

A little bit about me, for any readers who might find this page out of curiosity, I am a writer and producer who has been responsible for both amateur and professional productions. I have worked in short stories, non-fiction, video and radio.

More on all of that – soon.