This is important to you, potentially, because it’s the last chance you have of being able to read my short story ‘Lonely’, featuring the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann, on the tellybox and radiophone), an Internet chatroom, and the lost and lonely souls who wander in there.  The story was first published in the anthology Short Trips – Transmissions, and this year was reprinted in Big Finish’s final Short Trips book, which gathered the best tales in the range into one massive volume called Short Trips – Re:Collections.

Short Trips – Transmissions is probably the better of the two books.  Twenty-fifth in the Short Trips range, it’s among the best the series produced, thanks to the careful thought editor Richard Salter puts into the theme (communication) and the resultant selection of stories.  It hangs together really well, basically, and contains several stories which stand out as excellent bits of storytelling, in any genre.  At the moment, you can get it on sale direct from Big Finish, for a fiver.

Short Trips – Re:Collections collects the ‘best’ story from each of the previous twenty-eight volumes in the range (as chosen by the editor of each book) in a frankly massive volume.  The stories are individually excellent, as you’d hope, but the book perhaps hangs a little awkwardly together.  You do get a lot for your money though, and will enjoy what you find in there.  At the moment, this one is on sale too, for a tenner.

Last chance.  These books are about to become much harder to find, on the secondary market, where they’ll probably sell for increasingly silly amounts of money when you can find them at all.  Buy them now instead, while they’re cheap.  Get them for your Doctor Who loving loved one.  As I’ve said before, I won’t be able to resell my story ‘Lonely’, because the BBC owns the character, not me.

Last chance.  Buy it now.  Don’t decide you want it in eighteen months time, when you can’t find a copy for love nor sensible amounts of money, and then say I didn’t warn you.  That’s what I’m doing here, you see?

You know what you must do.

It’s May. That means you can grab the hardback anthology Short Trips: Transmissions for half the cover price, £7.50, direct from the publisher. It contains my story ‘Lonely’, and is just about to go out of print – the sale runs for exactly as long as stocks last. Don’t hang about, if you want one.

It won’t be the very last appearance of the story, as it’s been selected to appear in the ‘Best Of’ final volume of the Short Trips range later this month, cover price £20. After that though… well, because I don’t own the rights to Doctor Who, I won’t be able to publish the story anywhere else. Read it in one of these books, or be left forever wondering what I did to the Eighth Doctor in a chatroom…

Go on. You know you want to.

Anyway, a reader (hi Don!) inadvertently reminds me that I have been neglectful of the old website recently, and though I didn’t think so much time has passed, it was indeed more than a month ago that I last posted anything here.  Sorry about that.  I’ll do better from now on.

Today though, I shall make mention of a couple of reviews for Short Trips: Transmissions. Both are rather good, and say nice things about ‘Lonely’ (an indeed, the other stories – the book is going down very well with those who give it a try). The first is online, so you can read it for free over at Sci-Fi Online, and see whether or not ‘Lonely’ is both creepy, and gripping (erm… it is…).

The second is in this month’s Doctor Who Magazine, issue 400 no less, and is similarly favourable, if a little harder to find soundbites in.  It does point out that anthologies are by their nature hit and miss, and that this one hits more often than it misses, so that’s okay.  As an aside to that, you have no idea how weird it is being reviewed in a magazine you used to read when you were a kid.  Very strange, in a good way.

Anyway, go and buy a copy.  Don did, from Amazon, and it turned up the next day. He enjoyed it, quite a lot, and I think you will too.

‘Lonely’ suffered it’s pre-birth gestation during the mid-nineties in, appropriately enough, an internet chatroom. I was at that time new to the Interweb, and when I finally acquired a modem-equipped PC, I scoured the primitive search engines for my own literary addiction, horror. One of the first things I found was a chatroom called Horrornet, and after some procrastination, I tentatively logged in.

The group of writers and readers who greeted me were a bit of a revelation. I had never met another horror writer, actual or aspiring, so the instant community of people interested in exactly that was… well, you can imagine. Many of you will get what I mean immediately. Cast your mind back to the first time you stumbled across Outpost Gallifrey, or somewhere similar, full of like minds. Yes, it felt exactly like that. A bit scary, a bit exciting, and in a strange way, a vast relief. I wasn’t alone, and that’s a splendid thing to know.

As well as the people I met, many of whom I still correspond with today, the things that most intrigued me were the voices. Those tiny lines of text appearing on the screen before me – all formed of the same characters, in the same silent, toneless medium – quickly assumed personalities. I was very quickly able to distinguish Keene from Cooper, Schwartz from Garton, Murphy from Rainy, without having to constantly refer to the name or ‘handle’ next to their words. I recognised the voice without seeing the face, if you like. As a (then) actor, used to reading scripts, I understood personality through language alone – how else have Hamlet, Dysart, and many others remained essentially the same characters through the years, to be expressed so similarly by the actors who have inhabited them? Yet the playwrights who scripted thosevoices edited them over and over, honing every word and phrase to precision. These internet voices were raw, but every bit as unique and expressive.

It wasn’t long afterwards that the idea of writing a short story set in an internet chatroom popped into my head. I like playing with form, and this was, at the time, a new one to explore. Yet there was a problem. I couldn’t figure out how such a story would develop past the point of peril. I could place the characters – ordinary, unsuspecting folk – in the room, expose them to jeopardy, and then I hit a wall. I couldn’t resolve the plot. The nature of the jeopardy was so unique that it wasn’t credible for the characters to extricate themselves from their predicament. I worked it through in my head over and again, with no progress made.

Over a decade passed.

And Richard Salter invited me to pitch to Transmissions. At first I was excited, but stumped. The theme of the anthology offered me a chance to do my favourite thing, toying with form in ways that would hopefully please the reader, but I dried up on ideas. It might have been the self-imposed pressure, because the chance to write a new story for the Doctor really did (and does) excite me. At one early stage I didn’t think I was going to come up with anything suitable.

And then the chatroom idea dragged itself sluggishly from its little cell at the back of my mind. As soon as I introduced the Doctor, injecting him into the tale just as things hit crisis point, the story just worked, as though it had always been a Doctor Who story, and had just been waiting for me to realise it. It wasn’t perfect, not at first, partly due to my choice of Doctor (I went for McCoy at his most world-weary, and he just didn’t fit properly). When Mr Salter asked if I would consider rewriting for McGann…

Well, you know the rest, or if you don’t, you’re a purchase away from finding out. I’d love to hear how you think it worked out, so if you get a chance after reading it, let me know.

With all the recent Doctor Whoity round these parts, it nearly slipped my notice that Beneath the Surface, the paperback from Shroud Publishing featuring my story ‘Secrets, Never Told’, has finally emerged on Amazon.co.uk. British readers rejoice! And while you’re rejoicing, put it in your basket next to a copy of Short Trips – Transmissions!

Good times!

It’s always a good day when contributor copies arrive, and these beauties are particularly satisfying. I mean, for heaven’s sake, that’s the TARDIS on the cover. The bloody TARDIS! It sits in a sea of lovely pink! This is a good thing. Boys like Doctor Who, and so will buy the book. Girls like pink, and so will buy the book. All is good.

It strikes me though, that many of you might be here because you enjoy my horror fiction, and might be struggling for a reason to splash out on a Doctor Who book in these tough financial times. Here are some suggestions.

1. Hey, it’s still me writing, and even though the book’s content has to stay PG-friendly to match the TV show, I think ‘Lonely’ remains a creepy little story that can sit proudly alongside the rest of my fiction. Doctor Who is a show that embraces all sorts of genres, but for me it’s always worked best when there’s horror in the background. I’d even go as far as to say that watching the show as a kid was my introduction to fear in entertainment. ‘Lonely’, hopefully, reflects that aspect of the show.
2. If you collect my writing, it’s worth noting that this is the first time my fiction has ever been seen in hardcover. In the coming year, I hope it will be joined by at least one more, but for now it’s my hardback debut.
3. If, like me, you’re a long time viewer of the show, this book should be a no-brainer. New stories featuring the Doctors you grew up with? I mean, c’mon…
4. If you only know the show’s current incarnation, and have only met the ninth and tenth regenerations of the Doctor, as played by Eccleston and Tennant, then a book like this is a one-stop introduction to what has gone before. It’s the ultimate sampler, seventeen snapshots of the men the Doctor has been. ‘Lonely’, for example, features the eighth Doctor, as played by Paul McGann, the incarnation who would one day regenerate into Christopher Eccleston, and it’s speculated that this incarnation fought in the Time War referenced in the series, losing his life in doing so. If you know the current show, and saw season three’s ‘Human Nature’, you’ve even seen a sketch of the character, as drawn by Dr John Smith in his A Journal of Impossible Things. You really should meet him in person.
5. In it’s own right, this is a good book, featuring some great writers playing with some fantastic ideas. ‘Lonely’, as I’ve mentioned before, is a story that could only exist in written form. It’s absolutely impossible to film (erm, probably).

So what do you think? Want to give it a try?

Big Finish

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

News just in – it appears that Short Trips: Transmissions, the Doctor Who short story anthology from Big Finish Productions containing my story ‘Lonely’, is currently shipping. So far, there’s been confirmation that Big Finish subscribers to the anthologies have received copies by mail, and I’ve been pointed to a couple of message board posts that give both the book and ‘Lonely’ a nice thumbs up.

Which is a tremendous relief. I know the book as a whole is good, with plenty of variety and some nice innovation thanks to Richard Salter’s editorial eye, but the fact the ‘Lonely’ has been read and enjoyed by fans of the show feels fantastic. Of course, I’ve been a fan of the show for years, but that’s a world apart from writing a piece of commercial fiction from the other side of the fence. Of course, there’s plenty of time yet for the majority of readers to loathe and despise the tale, but somebody who spent their cash on the book got a kick out of my story, and that’s good enough for me. I hope I’ve served the character well, and who knows, if people buy and enjoy it, I might get the chance to do the same again.

So, the anxiety reduces. Lordy, writing stories can be a torment of nerves sometimes.

Anyway, go and buy a copy from Big Finish or Amazon.co.uk, or look out for this on the shelves.

In other news, we passed the test, and the potential wedding venue has been provisionally booked, but more on that later…

And now, the long wait. A Christmas special, another couple next year, and then a new series in 2010.

A long, long wait. But it doesn’t have to be an empty one.

Short Trips: Transmissions. Nothing passes the time like a short story, does it? While the future creeps closer, dip into the unseen past…

A new review and an interview, just in…

Issue 31 of the print magazine Dark Realms carries a review of Beneath the Surface which says several nice things, included among them “Beneath the Surface is a first-rate horror anthology that delivers a thoroughly enjoyable collection of fiendishly fun tales.” Don’t take their word for it though. Find out for yourself by grabbing a copy here.

Over at Unreality SF you can check out an interview with Richard Salter, who talks in detail about Short Trips: Transmissions, the Doctor Who anthology I’ll have a story in next month (indeed, he gives you a flavour of that story, among others…). It’s interesting reading, and should fuel your curiosity. With the 2008 series of Doctor Who fast approaching what looks to be a ballistic conclusion, which will no doubt involve a cliffhanger for Tennant’s Doctor number 10 that won’t be resolved until the Xmas special, you’re going to be in the perfect mood to time travel the other way, and distract yourself with previously unseen adventures from his past lives. You can, of course, pre-order the book right now if you choose.

Beneath the Surface

Still no official reviews for this rather splendid recent anthology from Shroud Publishing, which features my story ‘Secrets (Never Told), though customer reviews at Amazon.com have been pretty good. Have you bought it? What do you think?

Short Trips: Transmissions

I heard the other day that the final edits of the stories in the books, including my own ‘Lonely’, have been approved by the BBC, so the book is good to go in July. A huge sigh of relief (the BBC own the character in absolute terms, and would have no hesitation in asking for stories to be removed if they clashed with the ethos or history of the character and the series), and a little thrill inside, as there is nothing to do now but wait for the book, my first hardback as well as, dammit, a Doctor Who book, heads to the printer. Why not pre-order the book from Big Finish, and be among the first to read it?