Year's End

Hello there.

There’s no fiction today. I’m still working on the next prologue, which should be up in the next couple of days all being well. I’m having some issues with the tone of it but we’ll see how it goes. You can tell me what you think.

So, no fiction. I just thought it’d be good to do a post as it’s the last day of 2011. Sort of a round-up and a thank you sort of thing. It’s been an interesting year in which quite a lot didn’t really work out how I hoped it would, but given what I was aiming for, it’s not a massive surprise that they didn’t on the first attempt. There have been good things too, I wouldn't want to give the impression that there hadn't been. Plus I saw two PJ Harvey gigs in two days. And Michael Sheen thanked me for moving out of his way at the first gig. I think I said "No problem" but it may have been "Nyaadyrha" or something similar.

2012, though. I am constructing plans for 2012. Plans and strategies. There’s the novel that will hopefully continue to cooperate as it has been doing. I’m very pleased that you seem to have been enjoying the prologues that I’ve been putting up. At least, if you haven’t been enjoying them, you haven’t told me. So there’s that, which I will keep working on. What I’m really hoping for is that it will have an actual plot which, as I think I’ve discussed on this blog before, is not typical for the things that I’ve written. So far I’ve really enjoyed writing the characters. Wendy and Solveig were both completely new characters for me, as is the upcoming vampire, and I’m having a lot of fun with them. Mathieu, Émilie Étienne, and the monster are characters I’ve written before, but they will grow and change quite a lot. Big fun, basically.

Novel aside (if and when I think of a title, I will tell you), there are other plans afoot. There’s Anna Land Comes Home, which was ever-so-slightly put on hold for a bit. That would be, as you may remember, the script I am writing for Benjamin Sheppard (read his blog Treppenwitz here). A first draft was finished, and when I say first draft, I mean that about three words will not be changed. The rest will be ripped out and gutted and we will never mention them again. I’m looking forward to getting the Parisian Martin Parsons involved as he helped to come up with the idea in the first place, and there’s the fantastic music from Dr. Iain McGibbon that we’ll get to use. Early stages. Early, early stages. But still, something good may come of it.

Other plans are in even earlier stages, involving collaborations and generally aiming for better promotion, and getting things finished. It’s much too early to even consider talking about these, but I’m excited by the idea of them.

There are also non-fiction plans in the offing. I would like to remind you to keep checking out the blog that Mr. Martin Parsons and I write film reviews for: Fohnhouse. Plus there are more academic plans afoot but we'll see how that goes. And if I bump into Michael Sheen again I will calmly tell him how much I admire his work.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank friends of this blog. It’s not widely read, but some very kind people have been helping to get it read a bit more...widely. My good friends Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, Dr. Iain McGibbon, Mr. Nate Barker, Mr. David Hayes (his livejournal thing here) and Ms. Avgi Daferera have been wonderful at spreading the word and telling me what they think, new friends Mr. John Josiah and Mrs. Stacey Siddons (her blog here) have been brilliant at re-tweeting my shambolic self-promotion, as have lovely Twitter friends Mr. Dan Cole (gizmo151183, find him on the Twitter) and SongWarmonger (her blog here). (I don’t know how kosher it is putting @ before twitter names on blogs. Is it kosher? Apologies). I would also like to mention a blog called Sarahcastically as Sarah has kindly put me in her links sidebar, which sounds like I’m saying that sarcastically though I’m not. And how could I forget my friends and fellow writers of horror at Tales from the Red Barn: Mr. Adam Z. Robinson and Mr. Max Dorey.

And thank you for reading this. I hope you’ve been enjoying it, and I'm very glad if so. Hopefully we can keep that going.

I’ll see you in the New Year.

Jonathan

Oh, here's a song!