Flavours of the Month: August 2017...

A gobby gun-for-hire, saucy space adventures, and Mr Cooper(s) - just some of what's been flavouring my August 2017...

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So begins the editing process...

After leaving "Murder at the Grindhouse" to 'age in the drawer' for a couple of months I've gone back to it in the last couple of weeks to start the first round of tweaking. Rather than going straight to the computer I've opted to go a bit old school - pen on the page...

Naturally, the majority of the pages now look like an explosion of colour (far more than the above) with new passages written long hand in an accompanying notebook. It's nice to actually apply the changes with a good old fashioned pen, and you get to give your edits their own tweaking - if that makes sense. If you just slap the changes on the document straight away it might be a bit too rushed and you could miss further opportunities to make improvements. Anyway, next up is actually applying those changes to the document itself!

We Should Eat Ice Cream Too (Short Story)

As mentioned in my previous post, "We Should Eat Ice Cream Too" is now available to read HERE. I hope you enjoy it.

Flavours of the Month: July 2017...

Wrestling 80s style, "something weird and strange", southern hostility, and murderous molluscs - just some of what's been flavouring my July 2017...

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The Walking Dead Season 8 Comic-Con Trailer Analysis...

It's that time of year again – San Diego Comic-Con – and, naturally, that means the trailer for the new season of The Walking Dead!

Now, as I've written about before, Season 7 undoubtedly had some problems – however, the show makers have proved in the past that they do listen to fans' concerns and make changes. I've read a few interviews with Scott Gimple (the show runner) where he has stated that not only will the pace of the 8^th Season be ramped up, but the structure of the storytelling will be changed. In other words, aside from the possibility of a flashback episode detailing Negan's back story, the 'isolated episodes showing just one character/story' are out. These stand alone episodes can work in moderation: The Governor's flashback episodes in Season 4, for example, or the episode in which we saw how Morgan came to regain his sanity and find a path to peace, or indeed, 7x02 in which we follow Carol and Morgan as we were introduced to The Kingdom (with a satisfying conclusion at the end, justifying Ezekiel's more outré characteristics).

Season 7's biggest problem was definitely the structure, which made the overall story feel fractured with main characters disappearing for a handful of episodes at a time while the writers played for time in-between the premières and finales, sapping considerable momentum. The low point for all this? Episode 7x06: the Oceanside episode – Tara couldn't carry the weight of introducing the third new community of people inside five episodes after The Kingdom and The Sanctuary. Indeed, the introduction of those scumbag trash pile people (lead by the irritating Jadis) proved problematic for the back-half of the seventh season, too.

Anyway – enough of that, because Season 8 is shaping up to be an exciting thrill ride that will reward viewers' patience. All Out War has been declared and the battles are upon us!

Click “READ MORE” below to see what's what in the Season 8 trailer...