WORK IN PROGRESS
Here's a list of some of the things I'm working on at the moment, with all the scripts (which I'm pretty much concentrating on now) in their own little section.
TV/FILM
Top Secret Project!
Two part TV pilot.
Not the proper
title, obviously - but a pilot for a series, written with Keith Topping,
currently in development with an independent producer. I'll say more, once I'm
allowed to...
Phantasmagoria
Children's drama.
Not to be confused with
the (older) project below, this is Scooby Doo meets Blair Witch.
Liked by a well-known animation company - but there was not enough animation in
it, obviously - and subsequently turned down by others, there's the germ of a
good idea in here, somewhere...
Abberline
Two part TV drama.
The life of the man who investigated Jack the Ripper.
Five Pound Monkey
Children's Series.
Now for something completely different - the adventures of (you've guessed it) Five Pound Monkey!
Experiments in Vertical Take-Off
Two part TV drama.
You cannot drop a pebble into a still pool without creating ripples... You cannot take on a new flat mate without everything changing. Three women find their lives turned upside down when they offer their spare room to a secretive young man.
(This is, in part, an expansion of Tom & Jerry, below.)
The Maker
60-minute TV play/pilot.
A doctor flees from a family tragedy to start a new life in the country, but is forced to face the past - if only for the sake of another, whose dark secret threatens to consume him utterly.
(An expanded, altered version of this - Norton's Edge - was briefly looked
at by an ITV company.)
Cold Sweat
30-minute TV drama.
It's the perfect affair. No one will ever suspect. No one must ever find out.
Tom & Jerry
10-minute film.
Can you fall in love with your best friend... And not even realise?
Showcased by the Television Arts Performance Showcase in Cardiff in March 1999.
Death's Dream Kingdom
115-minute film.
In Victorian times, it was an asylum. Now it is a respectable psychiatric hospital. But as the shadows of the past fall over the present, will anyone believe the patients who claim that the ancient dead are stalking the corridors?
No Surprises
30-minute TV drama.
The worst thing about dealing with the suicide of a teenage son... Is going through it all again a year later. Can anything ever make sense of such a tragedy?
Shortlisted in LWT's New Writer's Award, 1998.
BOOKS/OTHER
Death's Dream Kingdom
A novella, emerging at about a page a
month...!
Quicksilver Bees
A short story, submitted to but rejected by an SF anthology in 1998. It's now been rewritten as a Who story, and has appeared in the Perfect Timing 2 charity collection.
For Want of a Better Word
Another short Who piece, which has been printed in Tales of the Solar System, another charity collection.
The Book of Tales
Difficult to describe, though I suppose it does exactly what it says on the tin. Illustrations by my friend, Sarah Horder.
Apollyon’s Hounds
A pre-teen novel that a publisher expressed an interest in some years ago. A boy moves to the countryside from an inner city and becomes fascinated by the local legends involving ghostly dogs and the real-life creature that is making the area notorious. May well still happen, in some form or another. One day.
Experiments in Vertical Take-Off
A non-genre novel (already written as a novella for the first One Day Novel event). It's about love, dreams and suicide (that theme again). I've also used the title (see above) for something else as well.
Phantasmagoria
A BBC Who novel, featuring the fourth Doctor on the most haunted planet in the galaxy. Not commissioned, so I may well try reworking it as something else.
Shockers! (with Steve Bowkett)
A series of teen horror novels.
As Yet Unnamed
A part-finished radio thriller, about a computer game writer who accidentally discover too much information about a top secret aircraft, this briefly became a Bugs outline (!), and might well be turned back into a radio play at some stage.
Setting Suns - The Return of the Waro (with Keith Topping)
Er, as the title says, the Waro return, and the Doctor is waiting for them! (Unfinished proposal that's probably going nowehere...)
The Higher Child
A proposal for a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, involving a Messiah-like alien child who comes to DS9 in a comatose state. After years of waiting - finally rejected in March 1999. Ho hum.
The Cosmic Underground
A Decalog (short story collection) which will never see the light of day. Click here for more (pointless!) information.
STRANGE FRAGMENTS
Many years ago I started on a short story called My Love: it's not SF and was therefore something of a new direction for me. It doesn't really work as a short story, but Experiments in Vertical Take-Off deals with similar themes. Click here if you're interested.
...And here's another (even more odd and even older) story/fragment. Click here to read The Observation.
