The game is on
Posted 9 days ago by Scott AndrewsStill up to my neck in writing my Red Planet Prize entry – still negotiating the difficult transition from first act to second. Think I cracked it on the train in this morning. Most of the books I’ve been reading have been research.
Afterblight
The new Abaddon podcast features interviews with m’colleagues Rebecca Levene, Al Ewing and Jon Green and, what’s this? Me too! I’m at the start, wittering on about Children’s Crusade.
I should point out that the interview was recorded at the end of a very long day, in a Soho gutter, and I was high as a kite on pain meds at the time. You can kind of tell…
Highlander
These are all now in the can and being edited and spruced up with magical sound effects and music and other such wizardy. Marcus Testory came and recorded his turn as Caspian, battling manfully with my elaborate script written in no way taking account of the fact that English is his second language. Bad Scott!
I also met the delightful Richard Ridings at the recording. His first words to me were “Oh YOU’RE the bastard who wrote that script! Let me tell you what a full stop is!” We had a good old natter about life the universe and everything, and he laughed at my Peppa Pig/Highlander crossover, whch made my week :-)
Brutal taskmaster that I am, I worked them both hard, but I knew they’d deliver, and they did in spades. Can’t wait for you to hear them.
Books
My one non-research tome this month was Bryant and May Off The Rails, the latest murder mystery from Christopher Fowler.
I can’t recommend his books highly enough – bizarre, complex, funny, clever and peopled with a wonderful cast of ecccentric characters, they’re a delight from start to finish.
This one, his last for a while, is particularly good and contains one fabulous narrative sleight of hand – when he reveals that the first in the series was merely Bryant’s fictionalised account of his first case, and as such was bowdlerised, exagerrated and, crucially, set much earlier than it actually occured.
Thus Fowler neatly sidesteps the increasing unlikeliness of his Detectives remaining out of an old folks’ home by retconning his own books with a playful chapter that made me beam.
Highly recommended.
Film
Last night I watched The Magnificent Seven in HD and it didn’t disappoint. Surprisingly funny, and bracingly violent, it delivered in spades.
The allocation of lines baffled, though. The credits proclaim the seven primary cast members, of whom five are giants: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughan, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Then we get, right across the screen in huge letters, much bigger than any of the others: AND INTRODUCING HORST BUCHHOLZ!
Um… oookay.
Horst gets more lines and screentime than almost the entire other six put together. And he didn’t knock me out. You’ve got Steve McQueen in your film, for God’s sake, one of the most charismatic screen actors ever – the camera loves him, he just drips class and cool. And you give him, what, twenty lines, and keep cutting away to this German kid who’s, y’know, okay I suppose. Baffling.
Plus, the sexual politics are hilarious. Horst manages to pull a gorgeous Mexican girl who throws herself at him over and over again throughout the film. And the reason for her ardor? He didn’t rape her. Simple as that. He found her alone, slapped her about a bit to calm her down, then threw her over his horse like a carpet and carried her back to the village. But because he didn’t rape her, she knows he’s a keeper. He’s not even that interested, he only gives in to her passion because she stalks him until he wearies of struggling.
Now, I’ve spent my entire life not raping women. Every day I get out of bed for another exciting day of not raping any women at all. And yet my life as a single man was primarily distinguished by the total lack of gorgeous honeys flinging themselves at me. Perhaps I lack something Horst had. A horse, perhaps…
Anyway, fine film, with a strong script, well defined characters and great scene after great scene, especially in the first hour. The big surprise for me was Brynner, who, despite all the stories of him being an ego-driven arse, delivered a surprisingly nuanced and enjoyable performance.
Plus: Best. Theme. Ever.
Television
Mostly I am in a permanent state of subdued SQUEE about Sherlock. The more I see of it, the better it looks. I watched a long piece that they distributed to foreign broadcasters – long since taken down – and they’ve got it SO right.
Highlander! Books! Nonsense!
Posted 37 days ago by Scott AndrewsMy recent quietude is mostly due to:
1) exhaustion – the bronchitis got really serious and I ended up a total wreck; better now
2) work – oddly, now that my job is social media (I currently run www.dcms.gov.uk, and since that’s a completely new site since the election you can imagine how busy I’ve been) I find myself having opted out of it almost entirely in my personal life; only temporarily, I’m sure
3) I’ve, perhaps stupidly, dived into a writing project that needs to be finished in the next six weeks and is a hell of a lot of work
The writing thingy is unlike anything I’ve written so far and requires shedloads of historical research. So I’m breaking the habit of a lifetime and scribbling in the margins of lovely new hardback books with my little black pen as I commute each day.
Afterblight
Must confess to a modicum of surprise that Children’s Crusade has not yet garnered a single review. It seems to have sunk pretty much without trace. Heigh ho. If anyone wanted to review it on Amazon, I wouldn’t cry salt tears…
I did, however, do another interview with Jared at pornokitsch on its release. Read my witterings.
Highlander
In other business, the Highlander plays I wrote for Big Finish have now been mostly recorded and are coming out as a box set in January next year. You can pre-order them now for a reduced price of £25 – bargain!
(Warning: may include traces of James Moran or have been produced in a studio where James Moran was present.)
Books
In the last few weeks I read Crocodile Tears, the new Alex Rider from Anthony Horowitz. Predictably, I loved it to bits.
I also worked my way through Kim Stanley Robinson’s dense, quasi-mystical sci-fi rock opera The Memory of Whiteness, which made my head feel funny. It didn’t quite work as well for me as the Orange Coast books, or the Mars trilogy, but it was chock full of great concepts and well drawn characters.
Music
I’ve been listening to Amanda Palmer and Jason Webly’s wacky concept album Evelyn Evelyn. Ostensibly a series of songs by conjoined twins, it features hilarious parodies of musical styles, from folk revival to eighties synth rock via twenties jollity. Dark, funny and brilliant.
I also enjoyed Ryan Adams’ sci-fi metal concept album Orion. Available only as limited edition vinyl from his new self-run record company Pax America, it was a lovely package, with poster, stickers, free single and download code. It serves as something of a dry run for the fully fledged new albums and archive material he’s planning to release soon, and as such it’s a hugely impressive and deeply strokable thing to have. Plus, to my slight surprise, I kind of love the four chord screaming madness of it all – who can’t love an album with a song on it called ‘Gorgon, Master of War!’?
But the cream of the recent crop is Bang Goes the Knighthood from The Divine Comedy. I’m a long time fan but will, if pressed, admit that Neil Hannon can be a bit hit and miss and occasionally too arch for his own good. But this is easily his strongest, most consistent collection of songs to date with only one that doesn’t do it for me (Island Life, since you ask).
Telly
Wifey’s fave new thingy is Castle, an old school detective show with the always watchable Captain Tightpants in it (he once called me a stalker, and contributed hand claps to the Counting Crows single Hanginaround, fact fans!)
I think what I like most about it is that for a show with such a strong male lead, the writers have surrounded him with women, all of whom he gets on with great – he’s a single dad to a teenage daughter; his bonkers mother, who raised him alone, lives with them; and he has a female detective partner; hell, he even gets on well with his ex-wife! And at no point does he come off as threatened or bothered by all these confident, wonderful women in his life, or rely on a male best bud for validation, neither is he portrayed as in any way explicitly or implicitly immasculated by this – the conceit of the character is that everyone thinks he’s a man’s man but secretly he’s most comfortable around women, although he’s completely straight. It’s a subtle but quietly groundbreaking character portrayal and Fillion sells it brilliantly.
Also, it freely throws in gags about Anais Nin and The Scarlet Letter without explaining them, just expecting you get the references. Smart.
It’s a solid hit Stateside and just got picked up for a third season, deservedly so – Fillion really merits a vehicle like this and after the disapointment of Firefly (it still hurts so much!) and the disastrous treatment of Drive, it’s great he finally got a hit.
That’s enough for now. And look at me, I didn’t even rant about the finale of Lost, or rave about Doctor Who. Such discipline!
This is a test post, sorry
Posted 65 days ago by Scott AndrewsPlease excuse the spam, this is a test post so I can, um, test something.
I am still here, mad busy at my 9-5, trying to find time to publicise the book launch, and recovering from a bout of broncitis so severe I was practically consumptive.
Anyway – testing testing 123.
Text sample: 2
Posted 91 days ago by Scott AndrewsThe second of two text samples I did as part of a pitch for a Stargate Atlantis novel. More info here.
Elizabeth Weir was tired, hungry and annoyed, but you’d never have known it to look at her. It took all her concentration to maintain the façade of cool, detached professionalism that she radiated at the negotiating table. Long years of painful experience had taught her that a moment’s visible irritation on her part could spark both parties into a spiral of mutual recrimination.
“You see,” one party would say, noticing a stifled yawn or clenched jaw, “even she thinks you’re lying.”
And that would be that for the day, bar the shouting and door slamming.
So she remained rigid on her seat, despite the ache at the small of her back; she maintained eye contact with whoever was speaking, no matter how stupid or duplicitous their words; she smiled whenever a delegate made a lame attempt at humour; and she never, ever allowed the growing knot of fury and contempt in her stomach to show itself on her face. She was supposed to be the calm voice of impartial reason.
Some days that was harder than others.
“I don’t care,” said an old Wraith man whose name momentarily escaped her. “I just don’t see why we can’t arm ourselves.”
“So you can massacre us in our beds?” Janeel made a contemptuous snorting noise and folded his arms.
“So we can defend ourselves from your mobs!”
“Mobs? Don’t make me laugh.”
“What should I call them then? Vigilantes? Death squads?
“Regrettable as these incidents have been, no one has been killed,” said Elizabeth.
Both Janeel and the old Wraith (Tanas, that was his name, Tanas) said, almost simultaneously: “Yet.”
“Then what we have to focus on is preventing any future deaths. Does anybody here really think that distributing weaponry is the best way to achieve that?”
It was meant to be a rhetorical question.
“Yes I do,” insisted Janeel, with an emphatic thump on the council table.
Elizabeth calmed her breathing, resisting the temptation to sigh. In her experience, when people started answering rhetorical questions it was time for a cooling off period.
“I think perhaps a recess is called for. Half a cycle?”
Her suggestion was met by a succession of weary, grateful nods.
As the councillors filed out of the hall Elizabeth noted that the Lantean delegates left by one door, the Wraith by another. Already they had split into separate camps, avoiding each other between sessions. This was not a good sign. Breakthroughs rarely came at the negotiating table. Far more likely that a quiet chat over a cup of tea – or whatever disgusting nutrient soup they drank here – would result in a calm moment of common sense and mutual understanding. So Elizabeth allowed herself a weary sigh, and rose from her seat.
“Councilman, please, walk with me,” she said as she looped her arm through Janeel’s and steered him in the direction of the Wraith councillors.
Now for the difficult bit.
Notable!
Posted 92 days ago by Scott AndrewsGolly, thanks The Internet! Some kind anonymous person has updated my Wikipedia listing as requested.
This has given me a happy :-)
