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...

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...

A Whole Lot Of Rosie

I find myself staring down the barrel of having to take care of some things hanging off the business end of the stick here. That sounds worse than it is actually - it amounts to tuning the DAB radio into Hairband FM and riffling through blog posts of those who are much further ahead in the writing game than I am (or at least when it comes to bodies of work). Disappointingly, I find that Nick Hornby has fallen right off the blog radar. As he points out himself, he is possibly the world's worst blogger (he's not, I know way slacker people with far more than a two year gap since the last post). Mr Hornby is however a great example of something I would pay good money to get behind the paywall of. I wouldn't expect the world from him and he could always divert any funds he made to his Treehouse project if it made him feel better. It will happen one day with somebody that's for sure - the world will go to war over being expected to pay for such things but as a daily blog surfer, I'd be behind such a thing and you can't argue with the Treehouse idea. It's not like you'd be giving things away for free when you haven't posted for two years? Is it?

Mostly, I think that one day, someone with balls of steel will figure out that to make things 'special' again in the world, we're not going to be able to give stuff away for free forever.

Mr H/Penguin - you can have that idea if you like and count me in.

Talking of which - and I hope I don't get bullets flying into my inbox - here's one of Nick's posts from a really long time ago that made me laugh hard and long:

In Borders… I watch with fascination as a local author rearranges the shop in order to optimise his chances of sales. He is not happy with the container that has been clipped to the section of the bookshelf displaying his book; the container holds flyers advertising a related product but it partially obscures the book’s cover, so while nobody is looking (apart from me) the author unclips it and sticks it somewhere else, where it will partially obscure the cover of somebody else’s work. He then spots someone picking up and leafing through a competing hardback, so he grabs his own and thrusts it into the bewildered shopper’s hands. I suppose this is what we have to do during a depression, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it. 

These kind of things really happen. I've seen them with my own eyes and pray to the gods of pride on a daily basis that I never feel a need to act this desperately. Good story though. This all came to the surface because I was researching my books of the year list mentioned a while back. I read both A Long Way Down and Juliet Naked this year (remiss, I know. I learned all I know about falling behind from Hornby himself) and forgot how good they were - or even that I had read them at all because I read them both in a day (separate days - I'm not that fast) and then handed them on to be loved elsewhere as I tend to do with great books.

If you're looking for something short to fill a train ride - you might love Everyone's Reading Bastard. If you don't, all hope may be lost.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

•••

I found out today that the greatest book ever written by  human being - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is headed to TV. This is either the nest news ever or... well, it is the best news ever but how I feel about it afterwards all depends on how it pans out. Part of me says that I should steer well away from anything to do with it but an equal part of me knows I'll be right there, phone off the hook. I picked this golden nugget up from here - who are definitely some people who should know better than to call it a 'fantasy epic'. That's a cheap shot for search engines if ever I saw one. That's like calling Wuthering Heights, Chick Lit.

Sigh.

•••

Something else potentially full of excitement is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who - which might hold this in store for us. Interesting. I'm going to stay away from trailers if I can and hope the BBC give them about £8 to make it with so that the whole project hinges on a story rather than the 'digital smartness' that it seems to be geared at. One raised eyebrow to throw in the ring here is that for a long time, Moffat has continually stated that villain X, villain Y etc, from years gone by have not much of a place in modern Who. But given that very same audience won't give a damn about eight of these Doctors, what then? Hell, the older audience only give a crap about seven of them (you can even insert your own number here - there are some pretty dire years to chew on). It will be interesting that's for sure - and I hope with all my heart that they knock it out of the ballpark.

No pressure then...

•••

Finally, in the continuing import of stuff I had gathered on tumblr, this:

"Jim Tierney - designer par excellence and just starting out by the looks of things. If these and the other samples on his site are anything to go by, I predict very, very excellent things. Check out this pull tab on From The Earth To The Moon. To see the die-cuts on all the titles, click into the site.

•••

Let's wrap this puppy up and put it to bed with the assistance of some of the mighty Blind Melon...

The Wrath of Angels

I did an interview yesterday morning with my "long time no see" friend, Lynne (Minki) Malkin for Recharged Radio where she does a show - and when she's not Recharging, she is the uber-creator of 50ft Woman who I like very much. You should check then out if you get a chance. Once she's figured out what the hell she's going to do with it, I'll link it up here. It's pretty odd being on the other side of the interview table. Not that it was anything heavy (as you'll see) but the second you know that it's not a random conversation and that it will be published somewhere for the world to read, re-post and comment on (or worse still, none of those things), you have to seriously think about that first impression. In this instance, most of her listeners will never have heard of me. This is me walking into their party and trying to be at least cool enough not to find myself in the kitchen at subsequent parties. If I can get some copies of Black Dye White Noise in front of some rock fans and they like it, that will be enough for me - especially if they talk about it - and that's really all you can do whether you're me or Stephen King. You can't force people to buy stuff based on clever trigger words or spinning off a book that tells others how to make a million from publishing because people aren't that stupid. The only game in town is to create to the best of your ability - the product will far outlast any cash in the bank if it's good enough. If you've done it right, that's how you get to be a success.

I need to get off this high horse about people who write spinny-web copy, but to be honest, it's really making the internet a crappy place to check things out these days. I know people are just paying the bills but where did all the good guys go?

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Insanely busy yesterday and today, so aside from going to the dentist - and it not being a fraction as bad as I thought it would be - I've just been flat-out working on the next issue of the mag. Thus, not much has happened in my world. Tomorrow should see it all wrapped up though and then... the weekend. Time for adventures of some description or other. I have a 'business meeting' on Saturday night which will be cool and fruitful but aside from that, let's see what the universe has to throw at me.

While I wrap stuff up though, here's some food for thought that struck a chord with me today: I always kind of assumed that people would thirst for knowledge and understanding. But they don't. They thirst to know things that support what they already believe.

Fact. Anyway, seriously looking forward to Doctor Who at the weekend too:

Asylum of the Daleks

I thought I would wait until the show had sunk in and I'd watched it a couple of times before I made any comment - not that there's an awful lot to comment on really. For the first time in a good few years, I've taken my Saturday night obsession offline and previewed nothing at all. No previews, no trailers (well, maybe just 'who killed all the Daleks'), no gossip or speculation. It got to the point last season that I was getting really pissed at how much the geek brigade could spoil things. Not simply by ranting about how they would do it better and what they'd like to see, but even more at how much they think they have the rights to anything to do with the show because they've been into it for "a long time".

I feel really old - and I'm sure some of you out there will be able to put your x-box controller down for long enough to tell me simply not to look, but once you know the Christmas presents are hidden under the bed, it's very hard not to take a tiny peak...

Anyway, my own thoughts on it are pretty much the same as Mr Moffat. There's a couple of classic enemies that could be resurrected for the good of the show but not many. For the record, some Ice Warriors would be cool and I could also live with a few Sea Devils, but all the time the creative vision is there to come up with far more sophisticated beasts like the Silents, the Angels, that damn fine minotaur and the sweeping melodrama that was Family of Blood or The Doctor Dances, is there really any point to driving in reverse? Seems to me that we've all started taking the Doctor very seriously these days. Can you imagine an episode in which a wheelie bin sucking in one of the main characters is still acceptable?

All of this aside, the premise for Asylum of the Daleks is, quite frankly, genius. The Daleks aren't scary any more - I'm not sure they ever where - but they are a superb part of the pantheon and it's good to see them in action when the plot is woven like this. I've watched 'Asylum' three times now and I'm not getting tired of it and that's the sign of a good 'n' tight script to me. We've come full circle. Just like watching old clips of Nazis on TV is fascinating without the terror, so it is with their fictional counterparts.

As for the prospect of 'that' new assistant - there's a little part of me that hopes she will stay inside the tin can for the remainder of the season. That would crank the dynamic beyond anything I had even thought possible, but I won't be disappointed if that's not the case. This year, like I used to do in seasons past, I'm rolling with the punches to see where we're headed. For me, Asylum of the Daleks is almost up there with Blink, Family of Blood and my other iconic favourite, The Girl in the Fireplace. That's no bad place to be.

And you know what? The new season will be fine because it always is. The internet is good at a lot of things but one thing it's completely useless at is enhancing my enjoyment of the best TV programme ever created.

Besides, not being online and turning your phone off for 50 minutes a week is probably good for your health.

To wrap up, I don't think there are any spoilers to be had here. I believe these posters are an official free for all - and man, they are beautiful - although I have purposely missed one out because I wasn't too keen on it and I like to give y'all something to do in the evenings. Somebody should go back in time and work like a dog on doing one of these for every single episode ever and then release them on a drip feed through er... some place official where they won't get in trouble. Feast thine eyes:

Finally on my Who travels this week, I'm not sure if these come under the heading of cooler or just different, but I love these two graphics. They need crediting - so  if you know who they're by, let me know. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try and find out myself...

Sometimes, an image doesn't need a caption

Books of Magic: 6

Went out for dinner this evening. Fantastic meal. Goats cheese panini and a latte in Costa Coffee. Very tasty indeed. On the way back to the car, dropped into Smiths and found a neat little display of the re-released Doctor Who books (originally published by Arrow I believe) from way back. To be fair to Smiths, who would normally sell your mother to squeeze an extra couple of pence out of you, they have a reasonable offer on. A buy one get one half price. Given that they’re a decent £4.99 each to start with, I thought I might try a couple out.

This first of these, Doctor Who and the Daleks, comes under my Books of Magic banner. My Ma bought it for Christmas for me one year and that was when I fell in love with the Doctor. It’s nice to see you again old friend.

I wasn’t really sure which if the others to pick up to go with it, so I closed by eyes, stuck my hand out and came back with this:

I guess I may as well pick all of the others up too - no doubt if I look on amazon, I can pick them all up for about £5. This is what they look like:

The Doctor Is In...

To take you on a trail of Doctor Who goodies from the new series or not to take you?

Bloody good question - will decide over next few hours.

Rock Me Like A Hurricane

Very disappointed that the storm wasn't the Babylonian wind fest that I had been promised. That said, I can live without a tree on my car - which is precisely what happened to Sarah on the train today. An hour is a long time to sit with strangers when you have somewhere to be. I remember breaking down on a National Express bus once going from Birmingham to Victoria. Imagine my delight at finding I was on the same trip as the National Express mascot "man with six cans of Special Brew". Lovely. For those of you stuck without something to watch these days, I can heavily recommend a sleeper show called Breaking Bad which revolves around a chemistry teacher who discovers he has lung cancer and turns his hand to making and selling the purest cracked cocaine in town in order to provide for his family. It's very dark and shouldn't be funny but when he kills a rival dealer by accident and gets rid of him by melting the body in a bath of acid, you kinda know that one of these writers has to have some British blood in there somewhere.

I've just been chatting with my buddy Seb about magazines and design, and he wrote this which fair warmed my heart: "I remember you saying a while back that you didn't look at other mags when you were working on Burn, you looked at other stuff... I vaguely got it at first, but having worked in an industry totally disassociated from music, I think I get it properly now - every building we do, no matter how small or insignificant, it has to have something special to it - it's gotta rock like a motherfucker, otherwise, why bother? Same for music. Same for writing about music. Everything has to have it's special thing, otherwise, it'll be cock and you'll have to stand by it and look stupid."

Hoofuckingray! We have a winner. Nice to see a hundred pennies drop on the floor all at the same time. I'm not sure that's what we always delivered but it was always the vision - it can be hard though when people are bred these days to accept a genre stereotype - especially when there's money involved. That made my day!

The biggest issue of the day is exactly what to do with this facial hair growth. Currently looking like Rob Zombie, it's time to shape it. If I give it another couple of days, I think it will be long enough to actually be classed as a beard and not a goatee (or similar). I'm not being very successful at the Fu Manchu style, the George Michael is quite appealing but required far too much work on a day to day basis to be of practical value. Thus, it must be my old favourite, the Dr Strange (aka The Master) - who it must be added, probably go for this style for much the same reason as myself. You can't play with demons and look great if your goatee requires too much maintenance. I even have the white bits in the correct place - it's a gift from the Gods as a token of their appreciation.

More later. Must attend to the Monster Club and do rock things like put some washing on.

Where did it all go so wrong...

Clip of the day: The Sun and The Sky | The Violet Burning Bonus clip: The Healer (Live) | Crown of Thorns