Make my friends rich dept:
My old friend Ian, and his bandmates in Katalina Kicks, have just released a new single called ‘Me’, and it’s available to buy via iTunes, for the very reasonable price of 79p.
Not sure if you want to trust my opinion on it, especially as I tend to write about books and writing as opposed to music? Okay, I understand. Here’s the video:
What’s that? Oh yes, it does rock. Told you so.
I’m pleased to be able to tell you part of the reason why I’ve been so absent from blogging recently, and it’s legitimate and real and relates to actual writing and everything.
I’m one of the four writers on the daily smartphone drama Persona, which is coming from the lovely folks at App-Media in January 2011. There are three other folks contributing words (Phill, Ronnie, and Adam), and between us we’ve written the first ‘season’, which will cover the whole month of January.
It’s been genuinely interesting writing my ‘slice’ of the show (the various strands weave in and out of each other, and new episodes – or, rather Appisodes – will be released on a daily basis. As I understand it, you’ll be able to buy the app from the appropriate online place, and then you’ll automatically get the new show delivered to you. Sounds a lot like the Cracked Reader for the iPhone which I have, and am very happy with.
As you can see from this set of photos, a rehearsal was held on November 27, though I won’t say (or perhaps can’t say?) which cast members are involved in the storyline I wrote. But if you want to see the character breakdown, it’s here, and those of you who’ve followed the blog for a while will probably be able to guess which characters are ones I’ve come up with (clue: look for the usual verbosity)…
Shooting is taking place this week in London, and if you’d like to be an extra, I believe they’re still looking for people to do just that. You will, of course, get to feature in a pretty revolutionary bit of drama, but more than that you’ll get to meet the nice people involved (I can speak from actual ‘IRL’ encounters with them, they’re lovely), plus you’ll receive a credit and get food and travel expenses paid for. If you’re available this week in London and interested, the best ways to get in touch with them seem to be either Twitter or Facebook. Tell them I sent you.
Anyway, it’s been a genuinely interesting (and hopefully for all involved, productive) time writing the scripts for Season One (or ‘January’, as it’s more commonly known), and I’m looking forward to being involved with Season Two – and, of course, seeing how the cast play the lines I’ve written. One thing which it’s certainly reinforced in my mind is the fact that redrafting is vital for me, and as much as I might like to think it’s the case, the first thoughts out of my head onto the page are very rarely the best. Even the brightest jewel, I like to think, needs a bit of polishing to shine (ahem).
I’ll tell you more about how to view the show, and where to buy the app, and the like, as soon as I know more. And, of course, if you are an extra, do drop me a line and let me know how it goes, eh?
Longtime blog readers with appallingly long memories will recall that a friend of mine Ian is a singer by trade, and lookylook, his band’s video is available to view online (ignore the fact that the frozen image below appears to show him doing an impression of the Joker, he’s actually a very presentable chap):
That’s rather good, innit? The single’s out on 5 July, and will be available from iTunes and other places like that. If you like it, please buy it. And even if you don’t like it, please buy it just to please me, for my wrath is great and far-reaching and painful for those who displease me.
As the aforementioned longterm readers will also be well aware of.
Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few days, I’m hurrying to get an entry together for this – why not have a go yourself, if you’re not already doing so?
Anyway, back soon – in the meantime, nano-blogging takes place on my Twitter account, if you’re that keen on seeing what’s inside my head at random stages during the day.
(Which, coincidentally, were the words I texted to friends and family late on Saturday afternoon.)
By way of proving that the claim to be a ‘mountain-climber’ in my profile on the right of this page is true, and also explaining the lack of posting here on’t blog in the last few days, I respectfully offer the following:
That, m’loves, is me at the summit of Ben Nevis on Saturday. So that’s the highest mountain in the UK ticked off my ‘to do’ list.
Not sure what chunk of earth will be next, but the freshness of the air and the scenery has reminded me just how much I enjoy the mountains, so there will be another. Oh yes.
Available for the first time on DVD since it was first shown on BBC TV in 2006, Stephen Fry’s two-part documentary series The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive is released tomorrow…
… but if you click here and buy it today, you can get it for 45% off the release price of £15.99.
If you haven’t seen it – and statistically, I’d imagine that’s fairly likely – it’s a very solid documentary, with Fry and people such as Robbie Williams, Tony Slattery, Carrie Fisher and Richard Dreyfus talking about how their life’s been affected by bipolar disoder.
Very much recommended, and a portion of the profits go to a mental health charity, so I politely suggest you click the above link. Trust me, it’s worth every penny.
I’m pleased to be able to point you towards the latest episode of the BBC7 comedy show Newsjack, which features a joke by little ol’ me.
Here be the link to the show’s page, which also includes the iPlayer link and a credits list (rather charmingly alphabetised by forename). My gag is the one about SuperInjunctions in the Corrections segment about two minutes from the end.
There’ll probably be a link for the podcast in the next couple of days, and my rampant egocentricity means I’m very likely to post that too. (EDIT: Crikey, looks like it’s already available here. That was quick.)
Anyway, as you can probably gather, I’m more than a little bit pleased about this (which is why my usual English reserve has been overwhelmed with the desire to self-promote so shamelessly); my first paid work for the BBC, and not, I hope, the last.
Though, as ever, that’s rather up (or indeed down) to me, innit? Back to the writing…
Over at Dan’s Media Digest the eponymous Dan recently ran a competition to win copies of the film Moon, asking people to say, in 69 words or fewer, what they reckoned the best thing would be about living on the moon.
Well, paint my shins and call me Spangles, I only went and won it. I know, I’m as shocked as you are that my wordsmithing could lead to some kind of material (if not financial) gain.
Anyway, you can see my foolish but nonetheless winning entry here. And my thanks to Dan for selecting me as winner.
See? I don’t put Dan’s site in the link of recommended sites in the right-hand column for no reason – it’s very regularly updated, with well-written reviews of TV shows, and interesting snippets of media-related news. Definitely worth adding to your regular haunts, I’d say – and no, I’m not just saying that because he’s sending me a DVD.
..though it doesn’t exactly put me off.
If you’re of a writerly mind, you may remember the stuff I posted in September about the open call for submissions to the BBC radio sketch show, Recorded For Training Purposes.
Well, just to prove that I don’t idly post these things – and that I wasn’t kidding when I said I didn’t need the competition – I sent a couple of sketches in, and crikey o’riley if I didn’t get an e-mail today saying that I’d made it past the initial sift.
Which made me grin like an idiot, though the e-mail also cautions that there are something like 250 people in my situation, plus all the actual commissioned writers like Senor Arnopp, and they’ll probably be wanting about 100 sketches in total. So I shouldn’t get too excited quite yet, though it’s stoked the fires of my ego to get this far.
Did any of you folks send anything in, and if so, any response? Are you – cripes – one of my rivals for airtime? Do let me know.
You may, of course, rest assured that I’ll let you know when I hear more, be it aye or nay (though the e-mail suggests I shouldn’t necessarily expect to hear before Christmas). I may not know much, but I understand enough about narrative to know that people usually like some kind of closure on things.
But anyway: colour me pleased.
I post about writing often enough, it seems right that I occasionally say something about reading (well, more accurately spelling), wouldn’t you say?
A very old friend of mine (by which I mean she’s been a friend for a long time, not that she’s particularly aged, though knowing me has probably put the appearance of years on her), Rachel, is an experienced teacher, and she and an artist friend have recently put together an item designed to help children learn to spell. It’s called Picture Spell.
I’m not an expert on spelling and/or teaching, but the basic idea behind Picture Spell strikes me as a solid one; it uses pictures to teach children about the way the same sound can be formed by different combinations of letters.
Granted, as a reader of comics, I’m bound to be biased when it comes to items which combine words and pictures, but it seems a pretty sensible way to work on both hemispheres of the brain, and combining images and letters has a long and well-established history when it comes to helping people remember things; as well as the fact that the US Army has long used text and illustrations to teach soldiers how to carry out their duties, there was a little pics’n’words combo called the Bayeux Tapestry.
Anyway, this seems like a good idea, and so if you’ve got children who are about 5 or 6, you might want to think about this as a supplement to their school reading scheme. There are also packs for schools, of course, so if any of you are, or know, teachers, you might want to see if Picture Spell’s suitable for your classroom.
Learning to spell is I think, a very important thing, and anything that makes it easier has to be supported – after all, if you hadn’t learnt about the way words are spelled, the words you’re looking at right now would probably be nothing but meaningless black squiggles on a white background. A scary prospect, I know (though I’m sure some of you might aver I shouldn’t assume that my words have any real meaning, regardless of the reader’s ability to interpret them).
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
