Back From The Dead

I've returned... ready and raring to go.

I know that it's been close to four months since my last post, but that doesn't mean that I've been avoiding writing. Truth be told, I haven't written a lot of fiction in that time, but I have been doing something semi-productive. Anyone that knows me well enough would know that I love film - I've always wanted to start a film news/review website, and after a chance encounter with an old mate from university who now runs a few of his own websites, he got me interested in taking the plunge.

I present you with www.youseenthat.com!

Okay, it's pretty basic at this stage, but I plan on working on it some more when I can get some time off. Writing a full SQL/PHP driven website from scratch isn't a five minute job. Just don't expect to find your typical, well-structured reviews on YouSeenThat.com - my reviews are very much stream-of-consciousness. Whatever comes into my head as I tap away on the keyboard. I try to adhere to basic review structure where possible, but they tend to go off the rails at times. I guess that's the fun of writing for your own website... I can write whatever the hell I like.

Anyway, enough of the website plug - I've actually put the website on the backburner for the last few weeks. Instead of writing reviews, I've really tried getting back into reading and writing fiction. At the moment I'm slowly getting through Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood', and I must admit that old Clive has really got me excited about writing short fiction again. When I say 'slowly', I like to read a story in one hit, so it's a matter of finding an uninterrupted hour to polish off one of Clive's amazing stories.

I'd kill for even half the talent of a guy like Barker. Well, kill again.

At the moment I've been getting back into the rhythm of 'the craft' with some flash fiction - under 1000 words in length, for the uninitiated. I've mainly been going through my work folder, pouring over the innumerable half-realised plot ideas salvaged from incomplete stories.

One story that eventuated, Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter, was spawned from two simple lines of dialogue that popped into my head about a year ago. I ended-up jotting the lines down and saving them in a Word document on the off chance I'd ever use them.

The two lines of dialogue:

“What happened to your last cameraman?”
“Screw that. What the hell happened to your last host?”

Going under the original title of 'ZMB-TV' (Zombie TV), the story was initially going to be about a fast-talking anti-hero who finds himself followed around by a reality TV crew during a zombie apocalypse. Instead, the story ended-up going in more of a Sci-Fi direction. While the opening lines of dialogue are similar, only more fleshed out, the central character is now an Australian alien hunter who is forced to tolerate a reality TV crew in order to pay off a series of lawsuits after a his chain of intergalactic petting zoos went belly-up after an incident with a kid and a carnivorous midget pony... the only problem is that old Jack has a hard time keeping his TV crews alive long enough to get an episode in the can.

I limited myself to 500 words for 'Jack Austin: Xeno-Hunter', mainly to ease myself back in - plus I suspect that the story would have lost a little of its punch if it were any longer than, say, 1000 words.

And how goes the novel? I finished the second draft before I went away to Europe, and I haven't really looked at it since. If I were to be completely honest, I'm going to keep it locked away in the cupboard for another few months, and then look at doing a third draft - I'd like to concentrate on improving my writing before taking another stab at what is a very lengthy and time intensive process. There's nothing wrong with the story structure, the original screenplay was very tight and a great guide for writing a fast-paced novel, I’m just still working on developing my own writing style. I suspect that more reading and writing is the key.

Anyway, I hope that the later half of 2008 will be a little more productive than the half that preceded it. My aim is to double that Publication List of mine by this time next year.