Authors Electric

Where has the time gone since last month? I’m finding that in this year of not being able to do very much, time is actually passing rather quickly. It doesn’t seem like nearly 8 months since we were all told to STAY INDOORS. The spring and summer went past in a blur of inactivity and now we’re in November with the first frost yesterday and the garden a mess of soggy leaves and needles from next door’s hideous tree. So what do I have to show for months of not-going-out? Absolutely nothing apart from a short story which is hiding on my computer and waiting to be submitted to an anthology in early 2021. You’d think I’d have done more, achieved more with all this enforced staying in. But I’m lucky enough to still have a job and still be working. I haven’t really saved on travel time either since my daily commute is only 15 minutes each way and I’ve been in the office 50% of the time anyway. And there’s still housework and other stuff going on in my life. And somehow I have zero inclination...

This is Sheffield on a cold but sunny Saturday in November. Galaxy 4 is a shop specialising in Dr Who merchandise, and those people are queuing to buy a DVD and/or books. I am sitting just inside the window behind a table with a black cloth and a name placard with a pen and ready to sign purchases! Yes, those people are queuing to see me! Well, OK - they are more likely to be queuing to meet Damaris Hayman , tv actress who starred in the early 1970s Dr Who story The Daemons . She's also just starred in White Witch of Devil's End - a follow-on from the original story. Part monologue, part drama, this is a sequence of six short episodes where Olive Hawthorne talks about her life as protector of Devil's End. White Witch launched in November - and I wrote one of the episodes. So I now have my first IMDb credit as a scriptwriter and I get to sign DVD sleeves alongside Damaris and some of the other writers. Plus there is the book too - a novelisation and expansion of ...

Just over a year ago, I was invited to attend a meeting of our local village drama group. Well - a spin-off meeting anyway, of people who might be interested in branching out into other forms of acting as well as/instead of the plays put on a few times a year by the group. I'm not an actor. I had vague dreams as a child - as one does - of being on television, on the stage or in Hollywood. They probably came after my dreams of being a dancer on Top of the Pops (yes, I am that old) and before my dreams of being an astronaut or a show-jumper. Or a famous writer? At least I'm working towards that one... I did make a training video at work many years ago - over two days in a deserted college with a real professional BBC actor who probably thought he'd be working with other real professional BBC actors, but instead got me and my colleague who made it up as we went along! But this meeting in the village was about setting up a group to write, act, record and produce a serie...