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Progress Report August ’23
Time ticks away… The current WGA strike is now well over a hundred days long – longer than the last one – which has of course brought all writing work on any US-based film and tv to a screeching halt. The writers have now been joined on strike by the actors, which really has killed most development progress even on existing scripts, and naturally this includes the film adaptation of Best Served Cold as well as a few other bits and pieces I’ve got going on. Hopefully enthusiasm is undiminished and things will pick straight back up as and when the strikes are over, but people have other commitments that start to back up and push schedules down and inevitably there’ll be casualties. Fingers crossed the AMPTP dip into the bottomless well of their executive bonus pot soon for the thirsty writers and actors who create the wealth in the first place (and I’m not talking about me – the books pay my bills – so much as young guys trying to get a career going).
ANYWAY, I am fortunate to have a day job on the book side. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, and zero progress on other projects means solid progress on The Devils. I’ve now got what I feel is a pretty decent second draft – the right scenes in the right places, the major tweaks, adjustments and improvements done, some steady cutting and fettling. I no longer feel this book will be a career sinking disaster (hey, others may very well disagree when it comes out, but at least I’m getting to like it), which is something I think about pretty much every book as I’m writing it. It’s gone back to editors for a quick read and response, just to see whether they’ve got any concerns with the direction it’s taking for me to bear in mind as work continues.
Then we’re into the more subtle rounds of revision, first of all taking each point of view character in turn, trying to set up and payoff arcs, and also to get as much individual voice into each of them as possible. For that I’ll take things out of order, and look at the chapters from each point of view together, trying to get consistency and distinctiveness into each one. As usual, some of the less frequently used and more intense points of view work pretty well already, but the more ordinary ones that change the most and therefore carry a lot of the weight of the story still need some work. After that round’s done, it’ll be time to look at setting, and maybe to get the detailed line edit out of the way. Still hoping to have a close-to-finished draft by year’s end.
With any luck, the next couple of months shall see a resolution to the strikes. Time will tell…
Progress Report June ’23
The big news over the last couple of months is that there’s a film adaptation of Best Served Cold in the works. Not much more I can say at this stage. It’s in the casting and scouting phase and the script has been revised and rewritten about a million times. Doubtless it will need to […]
Best Served Cold – on Film
Pleased to say news just dropped over at Deadline Hollywood of a potential forthcoming film of Best Served Cold. I’d love to say a lot more about it, but for the time being I can’t say much that’s not in that article. The headlines: It’s set up at Skydance. I wrote the script. Tim Miller […]
Progress Report April ’23
A busy bank holiday weekend followed by a rush to get a contract signed has meant that I’m just a couple o’ days late for my April progress report, so here it is at the very start of May… The good news is I’ve finished a draft of the last part of The Devils and […]
Progress Report February ’23
Finally, I actually produce a progress report when I’m supposed to. We’ll have to see whether that continues… I had a discussion with my UK and US editors about the state of The Devils thus far – three quarters of it, that is, and I think we’re all feeling broadly positive, though there’s a lot of work […]
2022 In Review
Another New Year’s Eve rolls around all too soon, and we all know what that means. Happy birthday to me! 48 today and STILL a fresh new voice in this GODDAMN GENRE. This time last year I was crossing my fingers for better times ahead as the pandemic faded in the rear-view mirror. Hasn’t quite […]
Progress Report November ’22
I blink and it’s been 5 months since I did a progress report, god damn it, so HERE IS ONE. I’ve finally finished part 3 of The Devils, and sent it off to my editors. We shall see how they respond. Hated it while I was writing it, which isn’t entirely unusual, but somehow always […]
Progress Report June ’22
I’m conscious that my progress reports have been few and far between lately. I’ve got a lot going on but not that much that I can actually announce or discuss, which makes progress reports every two months a bit of a pointless exercise… The first draft of my next book The Devils is grinding on, […]
Curious King Limited Editions
Very pleased to announce that UK specialist publisher Curious King has just opened up the preorder book for a high end limited edition of that seminal subversive fantasy classic of the mid 2000s The Blade Itself. I’ve been pretty thoroughly consulted (and made as much of a pain in the arse of myself as you’d expect) on […]
2021 in Review
What’s that you say? It’s New Year’s Eve, I must be 47 goddamn years old today, and ANOTHER year passes under the bridge? Those bastards keep coming, don’t they? And this one has, I think it’s fair to say, been particularly hard work on the whole. I don’t think any of us really imagined a […]
