An apology to my blog

My dear blog,

I wish to apologise unreservedly for having neglected you for so long. My only excuse is that I don’t have an excuse, other than life being so full. Not only having a new novel coming out as an audiobook later this year but I’ve been teaching creative writing, cutting grass that won’t stop growing, and working on several new writing projects.

For example, my forthcoming series, BAD SEEDS is shaping up to what I hope is sort of a cross between Person of Interest, Breaking Bad and The Avengers. That was my elevator pitch, folks.

And I will be self publishing my formerly anthologised novelette, DEAD BOYFRIENDS, though Amazon Kindle. News on that will follow shortly – I’ll be offering free copies to those of you who are willing to review it on Goodreads, your blog or website, or otherwise tell others about it.

 

Screenwriting heroes 1: Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad)

Breaking Bad Season 3

I’ve been catching up on my favourite TV series, “Breaking Bad”, and have just watched first two episodes of season 3.

Once again, truly wonderful. But, more than anything else, I have to say how staggered I am by the brilliance of Vince Gilligan’s script writing. His characters are very real, his storyline worryingly plausible, and each episode puts my heart in my mouth with stress. “Breaking Bad” also funny, in a blackly comic way. And what’s more, fantastically surreal – I mean what’s with the Mexicans crawling on the ground in episode 1? And what the hell is going on with that toy eye in the swimming pool. Creepy, very, very creepy.

There are so many great things to say about Gilligan’s scripts. First, they sometimes go out of their way to frustrate expectations, or give you a startling image at the start, and fail to explain it until the end of a series (namely, those Mexicans I mentioned, and the toy bear in the pool in season 1). Second, just when you think things can’t get worse for your favourite characters, they get worse. Much, much worse. Third, the juxtaposition of comedy with dark deeds and edge-of-the-seat thrills, works brilliantly well.

If you haven’t get checked out this series, I highly recommend you do. But don’t drop into the middle. You really need to start at the beginning, otherwise you will have even less of a clue than Gilligan plans for you to have in his puzzlebox scripts.