March Update

Stitching, Crafting & Writing - a busy March

Tapestry

The last few updates have concentrated on the Doctor Who Tapestry. I've been keeping a record of how long the work on the ancient one and the background area for him has taken based upon the playing time of the audio books I have been listening to whilst stitching. 

The previous post had the time at 43 hours 20 minutes. Additional work undertaken since then.

I completed most of the work on the Ancient One whilst listening to the first of the two new Target Novelisation Audio books: The TV Movie & Dalek a total of 9 ¾ hours. Then I moved on to the background. Backgrounds need to be simple, so I’m going for the green gas cloud that was used to kill the Ancient One at the end. This also includes binding the edge of the material. This takes some time. This was started listening to the other new novelisation audio books:  The Crimson Horror and the Witchfinders.

Doctor Who – The TV Movie by Gary Russell

Read by Dan Starkey, BBC Studios (5 hours)

 

Doctor Who – Dalek by Robert Shearman

Read by Nicholas Briggs, BBC Studios (4 ¾ hours)

 

Doctor Who – The Crimson Horror by Mark Gatiss

Read by Catrin Stewart & Dan Starkey, 

BBC Studios (4 ½ Hours)

 

Doctor Who - The Witchfinders by Jay Wilkinson

Read by Sophie Aldred, BBC Studios (4 hours, 10 mins)

 

So here I am, working with 20 shades of green to try and blend the smoke swirling up around the Ancient One. 

After another 8 ½ hours of the latest Big Finish Doctor Who releases.

Doctor Who – Stranded 2 

Doctor Who – The Lost Stories 6.1 Return of the Cybermen

Doctor Who – The Lost Stories 6.2 The Doomsday Contract

Bringing the time spent on this one character to over 61½ hours so far.

 

Next Tapestry Update

Building the Gateway

This has taken a backseat over the last couple of months again, but I have managed to make a little progress as the below photos will show. The left side now has basic wood and Daz clay coverage. I will get the basic coverage done before trying to clean up and add any details.

 Previous update

Writing.

As you will know, I seldom reveal too much about writing projects whilst they are still in development.

All I will say is that work on the new werewolf trilogy is going well, we are proofreading book two and I’m making final edits to the text for book three.

Book three has had some additional writing added to it, so I returned to the original notebooks, pulled out the pencils and got scribbling.

First draft is always handwritten in pencil. This filled the second skull book that was used for book three so I had to take up a new notebook, not having another of the skull books I found this nice little denim covered book in my collection of notebooks to use for the next 20K or so words.

Hopefully, I’ll be revealing more details of this project soon.

 

Gag Reel and Fight Director

Trapped in Karl's dungeon whilst
editing book three

I’m now in full edit mode for book 3 of Karl’s trilogy, which is keeping me from the model table at the moment. There are three parts to the final book, and part one has come back from the read through crew and the proof reader along with a selection of comments. Despite my own initial attack at the printed page with a red pen there have still been some interesting typos that have come to light.

This has got me thinking, maybe on here or on Karl’s Facebook page I might present a book’s equivalent of a Gag Reel that features on the extra’s of many TV boxsets.  It’s amazing just how one missing letter can change the meaning of a sentence and since the word is genuine it would not be picked up by a spell checker.

Just one example of an edit found in book 3, and I’m picking this one since it does not give any spoilers away.

“...whilst the surrounding buildings had been allowed to gather the grim of years.”

Guess what TV series I might have been watching recently?

This is just one; others have raised even my eyebrows when I saw them.

Old way with figures.

The other area of note is the rewrite of the last chapter.  Initial feeling was that the final battle didn't quite give it enough punch.  Reading a fight or battle in a novel is not the same as watching it on screen.  Several blows get traded on the screen quickly and the action moves fast, but different camera angles and fast cuts making each move fresh and exciting. In a book a detailed blow by blow account would become quite monotonous even with the aid of a brilliant thesaurus.  Now in the past I have used some of the models and lead figures to block the movements of characters before committing pen to paper. However in this instance I needed to go further afield and call in the help of an expert.

Yes, in the credits of this book there is now a Fight Director.  

I’m not going into the details of who is fighting who, since that would give much of the story away. But I required a bit more guidance on how the fight could work since I had armed my characters with an eclectic collection of weapons, which did not make the fight technically easy to choreograph so that it would be believable.  However I am now certain that with the help of Andy this finally works and the conclusion to the adventure is far better than it would otherwise have been.

So allow me to introduce my Fight Director, Andrew Ashenden. He has devised fights for tv and stage and taught in several prestigious drama schools, but he had to admit this was the first time he had been asked to help with a fight scene for a novel.  

Notice I said novel and not book, since he has also written two books on the subject of stage combat.