Round up of 2010

Really?

It's the end of the year already? They get faster every year. So fast it's tought to remember what I've done.
So, to round up here's my writing highlights from this year.

1. Murky Depths Commission

After meeting Terry Martin from Murky Depths at Wales Comic Con in April i just had to buy the stunning Issue 7 just for the cover artwork. WOW. After reading the issue I thought I had a story that would fit, it was just unfortunate that it was in the format of a short film screenplay, and a celebrated screenplay at that which had recieved praise from the Welsh Film council and been shortlisted for the Golden Brad Awards, but on both occasions there had been mention that the script was unfilmable, so it came to me that the only way to pull this story off visually was in the format of a comic strip.
Transferring the screenplay into a comic strip script was difficult but also one of the most creativly rewarding things I've ever done, and after it was accepted by Murky Depths you'll be able to see the stunning finished product in Issue 15 of Murky Depths coming out in February.

2. Shortlisted scripts

As mentioned above my short film script Susie Pepper's Teeth got shortlisted for the Golden Brad awards. And in the second half of the year my TV drama script 'The Dole' got shortlisted for the Red Planet Prize. Both of these gave me great confidence in my writing.

3. The Fear of Living

My proudest achievment of the year, a short script I've written being made into a short film. Hopefully it'll show at some festivals next year, particularly Frightfest my personal favourite film festival. Leigh Jones directed this creepy little story to perfection and I hope we'll create some more films together in 2011.
More info on the Fear of Living can be found at the films blog http://www.thefearofliving.blogspot.com/

4. Funny Bones

Most of my paid writing work so far has come from academic writing upon film with articles on The Dark Knight, Superman, Thai horror film Phobia, Michael Haneke's Hidden and this year my favourite piece on my all time favourite film which you should all see, Funny Bones. I've always wanted to write upon the film and last year I got to.

5. Doctor Who

If you know me at all you know that I love Doctor Who, and this year i got to write some stuff for it. An upcoming article in Vworp Vworp meant i had to interview Gareth Roberts, I look forward to seeing that article as the first issue was great so I'm excited to see what my contribution will look like in this stunning magazine. I also had a Ninth Doctor story published in fanzine Blue Box, and have a Second Doctor story appearing in the next issue.

6. My scripts

This year I've realised that I write good scripts. The first draft of the recent feature film script I've wrote is my best first draft yet, bustling with ideas throughout and my first typically genre script as well. The dole is now also finely tuned as a good pilot script. i just need to master a comedy script, which I'm working on.

Going through that, it's been quite a good year, but as always next year can be better.