In February 2007, after a night of drink with close friend and director Mark Corden, we decided to make a short film together.

A year later, in a cold February morning, the crew that Mark and Lee Kemp of Fullrange Media had managed to cobble and blackmail together, crew that had volunteered a weekend free of charge, started a weekend shoot with our three main characters, Robert Temple, Sarah Zebrzuski and Jordan Greenhough. And THE SHOOT was created.

It’s been over two years, two years where each of us have become too busy to do anything with the film – Mark became a director on The Gadget Show and I, well, we’ve seen how insane my worklife has been of late… THE SHOOT sat in a corner and waited.

At Gallifrey 21 this February passed, two years after it was made, we had our first convention ’showing’, and recently after speaking with Mark and Lee, we decided that it was time to put it on line, all 17 minutes of it.

And so, for your viewing pleasure, I give you THE SHOOT. My first ever screenplay, Mark’s first ever ‘drama’ direction. I’d love to know what you thought.

To see this on Vimeo, click HERE.

I know, three in a day… but I have been slack and you all need to know. The third story that came from San Diego was that I’m co-creating a book with Stargate Universe and Smallville star Alaina Huffman called Agent Mom.

I met Alaina and her husband John back in May at the MCM Expo in London – they were dipping their toe into the water about doing a book and the name they kept being told to go speak to was ‘Tony Lee’. Amusingly, we’d already spoken about it earlier that same weekend in the celebrity green room after Tracy’s purse had been stolen, and thus destiny (no, not the ship on the TV show) was forcing this to happen.

Alaina had an idea for a character that she’d had since she was a kid, reading Japanese Manga while living in Tokyo, the idea of a single Mom who fought crime at night, something that was actually an inspiring story rather than a dark ‘Batman-esque‘ vigilante tale, and while casually talking about it, we both discovered that we were on the same wavelength. Over the next month I spoke to Alaina and John over email and we hammered out an idea that was solid, a humorous yet action packed tale of a mother in her thirties who unbeknownst to her family was a covert super-spy, complete with techno suit with a sarcastic AI ‘partner’ and a backup team worthy of any Mission Impossible movie.
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Also at San Diego, news came out that From The Pages Of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’: Harker has been optioned for an undisclosed five figure sum by acclaimed Canadian independent filmmaker and producer Alexander Galant. We’ve been a bit shy on replying to this as pretty much everyone announces that their books been optioned at SDCC, but whereas most of them are for a dollar or suchlike, this is for quite a chunk of cash, a substantial, five-figure option given as proof of commitment to the project.

I’ve known Alexander Galant for a while now, he’s a friend and he was the historian on the Dacre Stoker / Ian Holt  ’official’ sequel to Dracula, Dracula: The Un-Dead and, with them wrote a piece for From The Pages Of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’: Harker on Bram Stoker for us. He’s a damned good, award winning director as well, and feels that this is a perfect opportunity to get out there into the mainstream. The Canadian Film Board are massively behind such endeavours, and he believes (as we do) that the finances will be in place to make this film within a year or so. We even discussed releasing the cast list this time next year.

Personally I’m excited about this, also because this means that I’ll get a chance to have a hands-on involvement in the project. But currently we’re in early days – and I’m sure you’ll hear far more about this as the months go on. But expect news of a multi-million dollar budget and a screenplay loyal to the book as we hit 2011…

I knew that this was coming out at some point, but I didn’t realise that it was so soon – and I was actually shopping in Forbidden Planet in London when I saw that Raven’s Gate, the adaptation of the Anthony Horowitz book of the same name was finally out in Graphic Novel form by Walker Books.

It’s been a long time coming – I actually wrote the script for this in February 2006, and since then have already scripted each of the ‘Power Of Five‘ books that are currently out. This book has gone through three editors and effectively two artists, with original Artist Dom Reardon having to step aside for Lee O’Connor to finish up, but final editor Lizzie Spratt found herself with a baptism of fire for a first project and has succeeded admirably.

Amusingly, the positive response at Walker for my script to this back in 2006 was what got us the gig to write Outlaw: The Legend Of Robin Hood for them, and that’s been out a year.

Raven’s Gate can be found at all good book stores from now.

I did warn you – SDCC becomes mental. And the news of FROM THE PAGES OF BRAM STOKERS DRACULA: HARKER being optioned and the announcement of AGENT MOM with Alaina Huffman have just taken over the weekend.

I will update. I swear!

So it’s Wednesday and already I’m starting to wonder where the week went. San Diego does that to you – you start to lose track of time and space, and sometimes not in a good way.

Tuesday was a good day for me which was interesting considering that this was my ‘quiet’ day. It started with a 10am breakfast with Harry Markos, Martin Fisher, Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo in Horton Plaza and was then followed by a trip to AT&T to get a new sim so my iPad could post on the road. I am such a geek. And then it was a trip to Joey the shoe shine man to have my shoes made shiny and clean for the con, and a passing Liam Sharp and Ben Wolstenholme invited me for a lunchtime drink, so as you see the day started mighty fine.
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So there should be a ‘day one’, even if nothing really happened during it, don’t you think? So here’s my Tuesday, just for you. Most of this day was travelling, so it wasn’t that exciting, but a promise is a promise and I did promise to blog every day…

Well. The main part of today was to travel, and so I did just that. Today’s travel consisted of tubes, planes and taxis, and started at 7.30am when I crawled out of bed, showered and dressed, kissed Tracy goodbye and, with my bags in my hands travelled off to the Underground station. Which of course had serious delays on the Central Line, meaning that I had to wait until the third train before I found one that I could squeeze myself and my suitcase into.
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So every year I do a daily blog on my San Diego travels. Usually they’re posted on my Livejournal, but with the upgrade to the website – and the fact that I barely use the Livejournal account these days – I’ve decided to try to put them all on here. I will of course link to them from my other mediums, but hopefully it’ll all sort itself out okay.

Of course, what usually happens is that I start off well and by the end of Friday I’ve not only forgotten what day it is, but also who I spent the previous one with. That’s the problem with San Diego – it’s a bit of a whirl. But stout hearts and suchlike, for we shall see if we can perform this miracle, and post every day.

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My new poster for my San Diego Signing Schedule is now up.

Please be aware that as yet there is no Del Rey signing for Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The GN – but I will sign copies during the Friday signing at the Imperium Comics booth. Also, I believe that there will be a Convention Exclusive Doctor Who #13 available for me to sign, so get there early!

They say that everyone has a teacher that they remember, be it for good or bad, and in my experience theyre dead on the mark, because I remember a teacher that I had during my school years with great fondness, in fact you could say that she was partly responsible for making me the writer that I am today. And yesterday I was able to give her the thanks that she deserved.

it was over twenty years ago that I was a student at Hayes Manor School in Hayes, now renamed Rosedale College, but in all the years that followed I always remembered my English teacher, Miss Polatajko. She was the first teacher that I ever had who encouraged us to simply let go, see what we could do if we weren’t held back – she told us to reach for the stars without worrying, because if we fell – as we surely would, she would be there to catch us.
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