Douglas Adams on meth

SUMMER'S over, the kids are back at school and that means I can put my feet up and watch one of the stack of DVDs that have been sat gathering dust under the TV. Oh, except that I can't do that because I have a shit-ton of writing work to catch up on. A shit-ton of writing work I should have been doing over the summer but couldn't because of the kids, or rather the noise they make. All the time. Even when they are supposedly in bed. 

In some ways, the lack of actual writing has been a good thing because I've been able to properly recharge my mental batteries. Which is just as well because I really have to hit the ground running today, right now, this minute.

Work I need to attack includes...

* One last pass through the final third of Defiant! The Legend of Brithnoth. (I say 'one last pass' when there will be several dozen more passes until I am 100 per cent happy with it).

* A lengthy scene-by-scene breakdown for the editor working with me on Nix. Then, eventually, a script.

* A 10-page sample script for Hushers, the project I'm working on with artist pal Manuela.

* Detailed – but punchy – plot synopses for four more projects I'm going to be pitching around towards the end of the year. An international smorgasbord of brilliant artists has been busy producing sample art pages for these. 

* Writing issue #2 of The Good Ship Otzi, the 'Douglas Adams on meth' space opera I'm doing for R-Comics. The artist hasn't started drawing issue #1 yet so I have wriggle room here.

* Web comics, including new Tim Skinner (teaser image on the way very soon), and a bizarro horror thing I'm doing with artist Nick Wright.

That little lot should take me up to Christmas (and probably beyond). I'd better get on with it all then...

Defiant!

I'VE been extremely busy since the turn of the year and don't plan to take my foot off the accelerator any time soon. As any regular readers will know, I've been trying – and mostly failing – to get a number of projects off the ground for the last couple of years. All that hard work, anguish and frustration finally seems to have proved worth it though. I have a lot of stuff on the go at the moment and, for the first time in a long time, a roster of artists I trust to help me pull it all off. 

First up is Defiant! The Legend of Brithnoth, a graphic novel based on the famous(ish) Anglo-Saxon poem The Battle of Maldon. Dan Bell is the artist and it's coming out next year through Steve Tanner's excellent UK indie, Time Bomb Comics. It's been easily the most difficult thing I've ever written and it took me a long time to work out exactly how to adapt the original poem. I've tried to stick to the facts as they are known but have fictionalised and taken liberties a fair bit too. We're going to start publicising Defiant! at the London Super Comic Con next weekend.

Next up is a sci-fi project, called The Good Ship Otzi, which has found a publisher in the Netherlands. R-Comics is a small publisher with big ideas – just the sort of people I like in other words. I'm not sure as yet whether the book will be a mini-series or an ongoing but I'm about halfway through writing the first issue and reckon it would work pretty well as either. You'll hear far more about this in the weeks and months to come. The artist, Mike Harrington, is going to be creating a dedicated website for the project and I'll have more on that soon too.

Beyond these two projects I have five or six more that are at various stages of development. Most of them are with artists and I'm hoping to have stuff to pitch before the end of the year. Like I said busy, busy, busy...