On Writing Stephen King Non-Fiction Hodder & Stoughton 19 July 2012 Audiobook 7h 59m Audible “This is the written equivalent of Delia Smith’s How To Cook. And, like British home cooking, the world of popular fiction will be better off for it.” (The Times) An excellent book that is both a memoir and an excellent outline of the main tools you need in your writer’s...
White noise his only friend a million miles from anywhere ...
The opening of Karl’s petting zoo promises to be the start of a new, brighter chapter in his life, but an unexpected meeting threatens to destroy everything he has worked for.— Logline. This is a follow-on piece to my earlier FTW. FADE IN It was a little after three in the afternoon. Sam, the lead zoologist, was enthralling a group of children with his extensive knowledge of goats...
Carlos is given a life-or-death task by his boss and while pondering the gravity of it, he is distracted by a dog that wanders into a derelict boxing gym. Driven by compassion, he seeks to rescue the dog and confronts his own demons, making a choice between good and evil.— Logline. FADE IN Carlos had been late and Mike was very unhappy. The meeting had gone badly. Carlos had been left alone...
He secretly admired her but they never really clicked. Until one night when she called out-of-the-blue sounding cryptic and urgent and needing him to go to her. He had no idea how his world was about to change.— Logline. FADE IN The freezing mist oozed up the river bank and slowly filled the main street. Echoes from late night revellers lingered in eddies drifting away half heard. He...
The church congregation had just started to head home after the service when three bat-like aberrations descended from the heavens like fallen angels. Wrong time. Wrong place. — Logline. Not wholly human, nor completely vespertilian, their bodies glistened as they came, tumbling through the night sky with abhorrent and deliberate ease. Their wide, empty, white eyes pierced the darkness...
What started out as an intended moonlight encounter ended up as a close encounter.« — Logline. Eerie. Haunting. Secret. Until now. I have to tell. It’s been gnawing at my soul on still evenings; evenings which conjure the memory of that night, that place. Ugh, it makes me nauseous even now. What happened? You really want to know? OK, but it’s really no big thing, it’s just...
They never saw it coming, the finish line ...
The rains have been ...
A better way?
Many (many) years ago, I discovered role-playing and Dungeons and Dragons in one of the after school clubs. It revealed a universe that allowed me to flex my storytelling muscles and enjoy a mixture of fantasy and sci-fi and feed the escapist dreamer inside.
Over time, I played (and story-led - marked with *) many systems including Call of Cthulhu*, Shadowrun, Dungeons & Dragons*, Middle Earth, In Nomine*, Bushido, Chivalry & Sorcery, Chill, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Gammaworld, Hawkmoon, Stormbringer, Immortals*, Marvel Super Heroes, Paranoia, RuneQuest, Vampire: The Masquerade*, and a couple of systems my own devising (Medieval* and Parody*).
I explored live-action role-playing – eventually running my own club and developing my own LARP systems (Fools Gold and Dream Conquest) – and usually found myself in script-writing or game-master duty, writing over 500 individual live adventures over the period (usually weekly), many linked into the world events of the fantasy land we created. I also volunteered for Curious Pastimes and Lorien Trust at their main LARP events (special effects at the Ritual Circle), and did a little script work, cameos and improv for Curious Pastimes. I was also the South East's Editor (UK) for the LARP magazine The Adventurer.
I was also the artistic director for English Heritage for their live Halloween Horrors events at Fort Amherst in Kent from 1998-1999.
The rest, as they say, is history.