A long overdue update on various projects that I’ve been involved in over this cold summer.

On the writing front my script, Charcoal, is taking shape. Typing a rough story into an actual script is painstaking; it demands a very different approach technically to writing stories, but the idea is really coming to life now. I’m 25 minutes in to what I’m aiming to be a 90 – 120 minute film. As with story writing, the script will be as long as the tale takes to tell, but it’s useful to have a rough guide. Alongside this I’ve completed the first draft of a new story, The Ladder Acrobat’s Ascendancy To Heaven, a Surrealist fantasy that rather appeared out of the blue. It’s around the 10,000 word mark at the moment, although reading it through, it feels shorter.

I’m delighted to announce that I have a story close to publication. Around a year ago David Mathew, writer and editor at California’s Montag Press, asked me to submit a story for Time and Propinquity: An Anthology of Fiction and Philosophy. It seemed a daunting prospect as I’m no academic – but I had to hand a story, A Visit From Someone Dear, that appeared to fit very well. It was accepted and I checked the proofs this week. Publication date is uncertain but may be before the end of the year.

This year has also seen me returning to music. I’ve been increasingly listening to early punk; the Sex Pistols, the Raincoats, Crisis, Joy Division and Siouxsie & The Banshees and have had an overwhelming urge create more of my own. I stopped playing music in around 1986 or ’87, which feels like more than one lifetime ago. I’m proud of what my band achieved, but I lacked direction and confidence and I think it showed in the music I made, but now I’ve broken down what I love most about the bands listed above; a few chunky riffs, very ‘trebly’ distorted guitar and lots of space. Modern technology makes it possible and affordable to do this as a one person, home-studio project (although this gives me even less reason to be social, which is not necessarily a good thing). In July I bought a very cheap electric 6 string guitar and a practise amp. A reverb pedal completed the exact sound I was looking for and I’ve been writing songs since then. I thought it would be difficult to learn all over again but I’ve actually been amazed at how I’ve taken to it – I’m already a better musician than I was first time around. My original plan was just to mess about a bit, but I’ve quickly realised I can do more than that and am looking to buy a basic drum pad and 6 track recorder. My good friend Andy Martin, of avant-garde band UNIT has been very supportive of this and has asked me to co-write a couple of songs for his new album. We had a few technical issues to deal with – being 300 miles away from each other means sending files rather than rehearsing/recording in the same room – but they’ve now been resolved. I’ve been asked if I’m likely to be gigging, but I’d say the chances are close to zero. I’m a novice who doesn’t want to compromise (the UNIT project will be a one-off). Not a great combination, although two months of playing on cheap equipment before being asked to collaborate on an album is certainly very much a punk ethos.