I don't know nuffin' about no skellingtons...

After some fifteen months of fluffed parrallel parks and dodgy roundabouts the DVLA finally saw fit to grant me a full driving licence on May 29th, two days before my thirty second birthday. The fact that this occurred just two weeks after my wife defeated her own demons and gained a full licence added fuel to the celebrations.

Strange to think that a month ago I was wondering if I would ever pass my test or if I was rather doomed to only ever know driving as something you did on your day off while paying a man to watch you and chat about rock music. Now I bomb up and down the M4 everyday like Adam West zipping out of the Batcave in his Lincoln. That said I do miss my instructor.

No disasters so far though I've had a couple of scares. I worry that I'll become complacent and make mistakes but I guess everyone does, except them as don't.

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I haven't produced a lot of work in the two weeks since my last entry. I sent my SFX Pulp Idol entry in (called 'Human Experience' and featuring the words 'napalm', 'handkerchief' and 'Shakespeare'). Emma was a stringent editor who questioned every unnecessary sentence. I'm not sure I could have shaved 900 words off it without her help.

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The last three episodes of Doctor Who have probably been the best three episode run in the history of the series. I will cover them in more detail but I find it incredible (and a bit scary) that Steven Moffat is able to produce work of this class and invention with such consistency.

The television version of Human Nature, as expected, is one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time.

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My spare moments in the last two weeks have seen me catching up on Heroes, the excellent NBC show to be screened on BBC2 later this year. With one episode to go I heartily recommend that anyone who reads this makes a point of watching this exciting and ingenious slice of telly at the earliest opportunity. It is excellent.

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Watched Hot Fuzz again last night. It is a very funny film. I still prefer Shaun of the Dead but it's probably because it's a zombie film. I also have the feeling that the internal logic of Shaun makes more sense but surely that's just silly?

Q) How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

I impulse bought Writing Magazine in WH Smiths today. In spite of it's Womans Weekly-ish cover it does have some interesting tit bits. It's always educational to hear the insights and advice of other writers.


More educational were the poor proofing and spelling errors in a magazine about writing. Billy Piper? Another article uses an extract from a Katie Fforde book but can't quite decide how to spell her surname so alternates between a single and double use of the letter 'f'.


I'll stick to the Writers Handbooks from now on I think.

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The Counter is steadily rising down there under the 'Downloading Communism' poster (thank you Keith Topping). This reflects well on my work since I entered the 'blogosphere'.

The sad reality is that I get at least four hits a day from people searching for pictures of Kirsten Dunst (intel by Statcounter). I was thinking of removing the picture but why worry? It's all about footfall in this game. Apparently.

If you have come here looking for Kirsten Dunst she's just a little bit further down!

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Back at work since Monday but still doing my hour a day. An hour doesn't seem a lot but at least I'm making slow progress instead of no progress. Concentrating on a submission for the SFX Pulp Idol competition at the moment. I'm halfway through the draft. It will be finished this week (even at an hour a day!) without any worry.

In other news Emma and I went to the Comics Expo in Bristol on Sunday; despite the best efforts of biblical weather. It really inspired me to have a go at writing a comic script. With that in mind I've had the germ of an idea for a 2000AD Future Shock, the ideas really come thick and fast when you're writing every day.

Also at the Comics Expo I was lucky enough to meet Paul Cornell. They say you should never meet your heroes but I found him to be an enthusiastic and friendly man perfectly willing to indulge a nervous, damp and probably incoherent fan. This was the perfect end to a week of concentrating on my writing. There are people out there doing it every day and he's one of them.

I know I could be too.

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I've discovered a web site called Story War. You can post short fiction or poems on this site and people read and rate them. These ratings are tallied up into a league table of stories. This means you can watch your story get voted up and down the table at the slightest whim of a bored index finger. Sounds horrific doesn't it?

It's blighted by some conflict between users at the moment but I've put a few old stories up there out of curiosity. It's well worth a look.

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A) Practice, practice, practice.