Kurse at Christmas

IN the last week or so, I've been able to get back to some serious writing. I gave up on the two short stories I was trying to finish off (sometimes you just have to take it on the chin and admit that half decent ideas don't always translate into fully realised stories) and got down to my next one-shot title - Kurse.

I'm about eight pages into the first draft and am really enjoying it. As ever, it's interesting to see how what actually ends up on the page differs to what you've been carrying around in your head. This caused problems early on as I realised I'd rather underestimated the number of pages I'd need to move the book's main character (the Kurse of our title) from his initial predicament and into the actual guts of the story. After a bit of rejigging, I managed to do it in eight which isn't as few as I'd have liked but certainly makes for an all-action introduction to the character and his world(s).

I'll probably post a couple of pages of script here at some point soon.

* MICK Trimble's been in touch this week to tell me that he's now 25pages into drawing Septic Isle and is aiming to have it all finished by the end of January. Chuck in a couple of weeks for me to letter it and it should be winging its way to Diamond for the end of February. If they opt to solicit it, I probably won't get order numbers until late May meaning it won't be printed in time for the Bristol Expo. As a result, I'll probably have to have some kind of limited edition of 100 knocked out to sell there.

At the moment I'm leaning towards doing a hardback version of the book but that could easily change when I find out how much it's likely to cost (I suspect its extortionate)...

* MIKEY B and I's story for the Accent UK Robots anthology – The Saboteur – missed the deadline so it won't be appearing now. It's entirely my fault as it took me an age to get the script written and then, when I did, Mikey was snowed under with paying work. Not to worry, we're still going to get it finished and will either submit it to another anthology title or give it pride of place on the Moonface Press website. Actually, the latter is quite an appealing idea as I've wanted to do some web-exclusive stuff for quite a while.

* THIS will probably be my final post before the 25th, so to the half-dozen people who take the time to read my aimless witterings, have yourself a merry little Christmas.