NOW WE ARE SIX

Six things I'd like to be/do when I grow up:

1. An MI6 agent. International espionage? Clandestine liaisons in smoky bars and coffee shops? Count me in. Umm... MI6, if you happen to call, please don't withhold your number, I tend to ignore them because it's usually Radio 5 wanting something I don't want to give and that would be a real shame.

2. The owner of Ninth Gate Books. An elite bookshop - obviously. Here, you could get coffee but it would be from a jar and a kettle. Ninth Gate Books will not necessarily sell the books you're looking for but it will sell books you will be pleased you bought. Sometimes, there will be author talks at 3am at which we will draw straws for a 'volunteer' to drive to the all night garage for snacks. People like Alan Moore and the ghost of Raymond Carver may stop by unannounced. Neither will be excluded from the snack run.

3. Jacques Cousteau. Man, the things people used to find to do with themselves before TV and smartphones interrupted our lives. A hero worth having and somebody absolutely worth wanting to be. Check out the Cousteau project to plant 1,400,000 trees on Easter Island here.

4. Doctor Who/Gandalf. I don't think this needs any further explanation. Either would be quite acceptable. 

5. TV Talk Show Host. In which people are brought to your attention who are actually great at the things they do as opposed to marketed as such. Ideally, we would be rewinding back to the days when there were only three channels for this scenario to ensure viewing figures of at least twelve million simply because there's nothing else to watch. I can hear what you're saying - why not do it on YouTube? And you would be right but I think I would struggle getting my wishlist co-host of Catherine Zeta-Jones. 

6. The Man Who Really Did Discover The Loch Ness Monster. I would leave her right where I found her and not say a word to anybody. Chances of looking quite annoyingly smug now and again? Quite high. 

Doctor In The House And Other Stories

For the first time since it rebooted itself, I find that I haven't said anything at all about Doctor Who this year. After the first episode, I told everybody that would listen that Peter Capaldi was the best Doctor ever - and then I realised I may have been slightly premature. So I figured I would wait until the season was over before I said it again. Nobody likes egg on their face. 

The good news is, I loved (almost) every moment of the season (I didn't get along with that Robin Hood episode so much), and Clara finally became a character I cared about. So good is Capaldi, that I forgot Matt Smith was once the Doctor. I'm not saying that I have 'script-gold' hidden under my belt here, but next year, it would be pretty cool to see some new writers on board simply because it can handle it. Doctor Who has never been a weak show, not by a long way, but right now, it's in the best place it's been since David Tennant slipped on a suit.

What the hell am I supposed to do on a Saturday evening now?

•••••

I picked up a copy of Molly Ringwald's new book at the weekend - When It Happens to You. It could have been bad, but it's not. It's far from bad. Buying a book by a writer because you love a film they were in thirty years ago is not a good reason, but I'm sure I've had worse ideas over the years. Anyway, if you like to be a little bit challenged with a sequence of fractured stories that really are linked together - regardless of what some foolish reviewers have dropped on amazon - you might dig this. I would even go so far as to say you could secrete it under the banner of dirty realism. There's a (presumably) limited edition hardback lurking in the stores during these early days. Nice work: 

Talking of amazon, The Day The Sky Fell Down turned up across their global network this weekend. It's right here. I guess if you have Prime, you can get it delivered for free too, which oddly, is better than I can do with it. To combat this and still have some integrity, if you buy it direct from me - which you can do right here - every tenth book sold in the Bad Hare store comes with a Starbucks card inside it and all of them are signed too. Every tenth book is a promise but sometimes, if I'm having a good day, I slip them inside anyway.

Right now, I'm working on a long piece called 'Rider On The Storm'. I'm hoping I can have that up and live here before the end of the month. It's a road trip - or Hard Boiled Travel Writing as my buddy Wayne would have it. So far so good on that front. It's a real pleasure to write. I haven't hit that brick wall yet - the one where everything stops and you wonder where to go next and decide everything you've ever done is awful - so I'm running until I do.

•••••

Also on the news front, I've been informally invited to speak at a University. No shit. Not just wander the corridors muttering to myself until security forcibly eject me, but something organised. Details are still falling from the sky on this before it moves to a formal invite but I'm looking forward to whatever may come of it. Granted, as soon as I can nail something down like a time and a date, you'll be the first to know. Which is a great point in the dialogue for me to point you to this link where you can get updates by email as soon as I post anything at all. You know it makes sense.

•••••

More later - I need to get a couple new tyres put on my car - it's currently like driving some kind of weird James Bond car that has skis instead of wheels.

George Michael, A Doctor and A Teacher. No Candlestick Maker Though. Sorry.

Got anything new? Yes, I have thanks for asking. There's a new story - Careless Whisper - over in Dirty Realism. 

Last night, I found myself in a time-hole. Waiting for something to come in, I didn't want to start anything else and get interrupted so I fell back on an old favourite and kicked back to watch The Day Of The Doctor again. Still waiting for lazy and slow people when it had finished, I hit Netflix to watch Human Nature/The Family Of Blood for something like the fiftieth time. For me, this is the pinnacle of writing for the show and my memory was jogged as to how badly I want to write an episode of Doctor Who.

So I dug out the script loosely titled 'The House Of Sipan' that features both new and old creatures that I had put away to 'edit later' and am mostly very pleased with it having not looked at it for at least six months. Editing and tweaking shall take place over the next few evenings and a yellow post-it has appeared to remind myself to take a couple of days off soon to make some kind of sense of the large stacks of paper balanced on the corner of the table - digital and otherwise.

•••

While working through some edits on the my final proof of Family Of Noise, I had the dumb idea to attempt to track down my old English teacher from school and get in touch... for what reason I don't actually know but I found her all the same. It wasn't even hard. There must have been some point to the train of thought - maybe I will email her and simply say thanks for making it great - and she will be curious enough to see what I do here and the universe will turn its wheels in a mysterious way, and I will find only a day or so later that she has emailed me back and tells me that I might be interested to know that her brother has just been announced as the new show-runner for Doctor Who - and it is lovely to hear from me and she remembers me very well. She particularly recalls the story I wrote for her that she had to rip out of my exercise book because it was so incredibly unsuitable, the implications of getting found out would echo in hell.

Unlikely, but it would make a good story.

Good stories happen like that all the time if you let them.

You Know My Name

True Detective might be the best thing on TV right now but it got a good battering here yesterday by Fleming - the biopic of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming (natch). Aside from it being quite excellent TV whether you're a Bond fan or not (and granted that it took no small amount of liberty with the truth), when you're reminded of Fleming's upbringing and the circles he ran in, it's hardly surprising that he pulled that beautiful white rabbit out of the hat. A finer example of writing about what you pretend you know never existed... no matter how much the truth was tweaked. 

I don't mind admitting it, I would really love to be James Bond. Sometimes I think about cutting all my hair off and hooking up with Hugo Boss but I have an inkling that I would just look like a Bond villain no matter how hard I tried.

Today's find on NoiseTrade from No Sinner would be my theme song. It's called Love Is A Madness... lap it up.

Hmm. Would I rather be James Bond or Doctor Who? That's a tough question. Given that my driving is definitely a better skill than my running, I will have to go with Bond - who also regenerates if needs be. Handy skill.

Note to self. Learn how to do that. 

Soon.

•••

A little aside here - I don't normally talk much about the day job but it's always exciting when you find somebody that you really want to tattoo you. Believe me, when you look at hundreds of (sometimes close on a thousand) pieces of work on an average day, those moments don't come quite as often as you would think. However, as soon as I saw these pieces from Hannah Willison, my heart went boom:

I think we need to have a conversation this week...

•••

Currently reading this - and it's highly addictive:

A Note On Doctor Who To A Friend...

Travelling from the north to the south of this olde country (makes it sound like Game of Thrones - and winter is definitely coming around here) with Frank LaNatra a few weeks back, I promised him I would send him a list of Doctor Who episodes that he should watch to get on track with it. Then I forgot until I noticed that yesterday that Mr Gaiman has posted his own 'good places to start' which in turn reminded me that I had forgotten - I kind of like the fact that he and I think more or less the same on this front. So - Frank - this is for you... I'll keep it down to six episodes so that you at least have a chance of making sense of it.

1. Human Nature/Family of Blood (it's a two parter)

My favourite episode of all time and also I think, the best written of them. What's great about it is that there's nothing to dislike about it - ever.

2. Blink

The infamous 'Doctor-light' episode but it's up here at the top simply because it's so well written and pared down to the bone. I miss Sally Sparrow...

3. The Girl In The Fireplace

Great aliens, nice time misplacement/displacement - there's even a horse in it. Everybody loves an episode of Doctor Who with a horse in it, right?

4. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (another two parter)

...because who knew that a shadow could be so cool - and it's our first introduction to River Song.

I also need to add The Impossible Astronaut and Day Of The Moon (also a two parter) because it has those suited up dudes in it which are the best new aliens in something like 30 years.

Damn - I'll stop there because that's eight and I promised six, (nine if you include the fact that I am going to casually mention The God Complex) but let's face it Frank, as I sit and write this, you have 17 days before the big 50th anniversary monster special we've all been waiting for in which to chew up seven seasons - you can do it man - but make sure you watch The Name of the Doctor as well before that or you might come a little unstuck.

This trailer will explain absolutely nothing at all for you but it's very cool and I like having it here:

It's worth noting that every single frame of this, every noise you hear and every word spoken is the entire 50 year history of the show in 60 seconds. My geek-out is now complete.

One day, I'd like to be able to add The House of Sipan to that list - but first I must finish writing it...

Footnote to Frank: I assume you can find this in the USA - the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood ran a five episode long series called Children of Earth a few years back, which in my humble opinion is the finest science fiction writing of all time. For me, it's practically flawless in its delivery.

That should keep you busy - not that you're sitting around looking out of the window right now...