Exeunt Magazine were kind enough to interview me about Howl’s Moving Castle. You can read it here.

Love that photo…

…is the deadline for the first draft of my science fiction feature script.

It’s called RED DRIFT.

The pitch was very well received at a couple of studios on my last trip to LA and now they want more.

Yeah, I know. I tried my best to talk them out of it.

Told you it was gonna be a busy year.

Those of you that have known me long enough may remember a character of mine called Carbon Black. He’s the fictitious troubleshooter of Albert Kahn and my tribute to Indiana Jones, Dredd, Doc Savage and the Judge from Blood Meridian.

Fighting stock and double tough.

Up until now he’s existed mostly in my head, but also on various scraps of paper in written form, has been pitched in Hollywood and the subject of lots of conversations (including a couple with the wonderful people at the Kahn museum in Paris).

Over the years he’s found himself living in quite a complex story world that overlaps a lot of fascinating factual events from around 1900. Story worlds and all that transmedia stuff is pretty hot right now, but you’ve probably noticed that, right?

Both Carbon Black and another project called West (based on The Journey to the West) have always been close to my heart, but have also remained long term projects as they’re a tad complex and often a little bleak. No blue skies here.

So I’m very happy that Carbon Black is now at long last beginning to take shape.

This year I’m working on a number of very cool projects with my old friends Steve Kilpatrick and Dave Kennedy that we’ll get around to talking about in more depth later. Some of this stuff is stupidly ambitious, but I have to say these guys are constantly inspirational to work with and very much at the top of their game. I’m quietly confident we’ll have some cool stuff to throw your way sooner rather than later.

For now here’s the first concept sketch of Mr Black by Dave:

Make with the clicky to embiggen.

And yeah, those are bolts through his wrists.

The ruler of the Universe dozed lightly in his chair. After a while he played with the pencil and the paper again and was delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the one on the other. Various noises continued outside, but he didn’t know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for a week to see how it would react.

Douglas Adams

Got back to London around a week ago. Lots to talk about.

Jess didn’t kill me. Close thing though.

Introduced Stu to the Twinkie. He’s single, girls.

I’m also a week into life with my iPad. Beautiful little thing. Distracted me a lot this week, but now I’m blogging from it. Play time’s over.

Let’s go to work.

My last trip to LA started out as a personal one. Lots of people reached out at the end of last year after the sizzle broke and my email went crazy for a little while. Some of those email conversations lead to some very interesting phone calls and I decided a trip early in 2010 was probably a good idea. January was taken up in Ireland working with Ciaran – something I hope we can get back to later this year – but by February I was in Hollywood with a couple of fun meetings in my diary. Although I take my work seriously I tend to be pretty laid back in general so rather than being phased by some of the people I was in town to see I figured it was best to just jump at the opportunity and make sure I had a good time. As it turned out it went far better than I could have anticipated and if I’d known what some of those meetings would entail I’d probably not have been so confident.

As luck would have it I also managed to take in a few Slingers meetings on the same trip. Toby arrived a few days after me and we doubled up on a couple of things as we make a pretty good double act at this point. It was very cool to talk to so many people who have been in the industry for so long who, after having access to the Slingers bible, wanted to learn more about the world we’d created. Some of the writers on some of my favourite shows are now fans of what we’re trying to do and that’s an incredible confidence boost personally, but also a resounding proof of concept for Slingers.

The trip was also a chance to catch up with some old friends on Leverage and make some new ones. My next trip is probably going to be a lot busier and with a higher alcohol intake. Just working out the dates now for when that will be, but at the end of this month I’m in Portland and San Francisco (and a few places in between – road trip!). So the bottom line is I’ll be popping back to the States on a regular basis this year I think.

The long term plan of moving out there is now just about within reach. Already started getting the flat ship-shape for rental, but there’s a few things to fall into place first. As with the show though things are looking extremely positive.

So about those fun meetings I took…

The upshot of one of them is that I now have management in Los Angeles. Tucker and Evan over at Principato-Young Entertainment took me by surprise by offering to sign me on the spot. I tried my best to talk them out of if, but these guys are not for turning. Once I turned my diary over to them to fill in a few of the gaps my week got very interesting.

For the next few days I found myself pitching to some of the biggest production companies in Hollywood and I’m still coming to terms with how well that went. If I list all the people I saw I’ll come across as more of a name-dropping fuck than I already am, but I’m comfortable in saying that some of my crazier ideas are now sat on some pretty interesting desks. One of those is all ready to jump from the board to first draft so my first feature script should be doing the rounds come April.

The few people I’ve discussed this little whirlwind with have all said the same thing, “You must be overwhelmed…” I’ve actually been too busy with the TV shows and the first feature outline* to reflect on the trip too much. Even on the flight back I was reading a script I’d been asked to give notes on and it’s been non stop since then. The plan is certainly not to get overwhelmed – “Toil, never recoil” as Godefroy used to shout.

And as with everything else there are a few thousand different ways that I can fuck this up so we’ll see how far I get.

I’ll keep you posted.

* I’m writing a horror movie. Weird.

2010 feels like it just got upgraded somehow. Feb’s dead, baby. Feb’s dead.

I just finished putting a new board together for one of several projects I’ve got up on the wall at the moment. Busy year this. I’ll break some of this down and let you know what’s filling my days over the next couple of posts.

Last week over at Sleepydog HQ we had the first development meeting on the project that’s taking shape in the wake of Slingers. No idea how much I can tell you about that at this stage, although we will be blogging from the development room from time to time so stuff is bound to leak a little. I guess it’s safe to say that it’s sci fi (sort of) and police procedural (kinda). But only in the same way that Slingers is a sci fi heist show – we tend to build on those basics pretty fast and as ever are being outrageously ambitious. Hope to introduce you to the show as soon as possible but for now I can’t even tell you where it’s set…

Another meeting on this tomorrow so I’ll tweet when I can. And Toby seems to be in Canada. No idea why…

The UK now has a Hollaback site. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need one? This was sent in by Clare:

I’m 23 and dress pretty conservatively – on Friday at about 9pm I heard ‘Hey’ ‘Hey, look up’ when I was walking home. I did, to a balcony on an upper floor of some block of flats near me. A man in his twenties(?) leant over and did the universal sex sign at me – you know, the one made with two hands that boys do in school. Then he said ‘I want your pussy’.
I walk past these flats everyday.

It’s grim reading, but you should subscribe or follow the site on Twitter. HollabackNYC now lists 19 sister sites around the world.

And to rub a little salt into the wound it’s also Equal Pay Day today:

the average pay gap between men and women is 17.1%, meaning that while men in work will be paid for the full year, women in work are effectively working for free from today until 2010.

Hollaback’s tagline is “If you can’t slap ‘em, snap ‘em“. I’m honestly surprised it’s only cameras they’re pulling on us. I was going to add Hot Topic by Le Tigre here, but then I spotted this live radio performance of I’m So Excited and it made me smile so much it seemed like a better choice to share:

Women hand me my ass on a plate every single day one way or another, always exceeding my (kinda high) expectations and generally putting the guys I know to shame. How they cope with idiots like me is a mystery, but that they have to cope with fucking idiots like the ones described by Clare is criminal.

Update: Forgot to mention that the still is from GUN CRAZY (1950)

Not one for looking backwards. Fuck 2008. It was a great year, but 2009 is an important one. It’s already been a busy year, but here’s how it’s shaping up.

Amplified09 – We’re running a single session on the 21st of this month at the ICA before beginning the roll out for a series of national events. First session is on Future of Online Video/TV/Film/Etc. This will certainly be my focus for the next 6 months. After that it’ll hopefully fly on its own.

Slingers – My TV show is still sat on a desk in L.A. In the meantime we’re working on a few other concepts from the tail end of 08 that aren’t quite as far along. Also just started on something very British so we’ll be pitching that right here. That and Amp09 should keep me more than busy.

But I’m also off to Bletchley Park with @documentally and BBC radio to raise awareness about its decline (post on that to follow).

Hopefully working with Reuters again – also talking to Channel Four.

Visiting the TeachMeet09 event at BETT. Had my interest in education refreshed via Ken Robinson and have a renewed respect for those teaching with the latest tools and ideas. These are the people who shape the future.

Speaking at a Future Lab event later this month. I’m very critical of the one talking to the many, but this (on paper at least) is a much more conversational event and seemed like fun (don’t have all the details yet).

Still undecided about SXSW this year. The pressure for me to go is building, but while it looks like fun I need a little more than that before I get on a plane. Already have other trips to the States and maybe Canada to fit in.

Keeping my hand in with film stuff (interview I did with Michelle Yeoh should be up next week) and started a new blog: Outpost #31. Wanna do some more screenings and maybe a regular film event if I can fit it in.

Keeping abreast of the London scene mostly via The Tuttle Club and Twitter. Super busy Tuttle tomorrow, but I won’t be able to make them every week anymore. We’ve also rejigged CreativeCoffee Club London and we’re hoping to squeeze even more value out of it this year.

Been asked to guest blog in a couple of places – you can see why I can’t agree to anything regular right now, but I’ll be helping out on a few other online projects that I believe in.

This is probably my busiest year yet, but it’s also the first full year when I do nothing but the good stuff.

Interesting times ahead…

The main reason I was busier than expected while out in San Francisco was that I had the great news that my TV show concept had been very well received by the powers that be. There is now every chance well be shooting a pilot in Canada as early as next year. This took a little time to digest. A good single malt helped.

I had to go back and look at exactly when it was I first put the pin into the board on this particular idea and it turned out to be July. So in just over 4 months we went from what was going to be a comic book to an almost fully realised science fiction TV show. I feel another drink coming on just thinking about that.

In that time I sold the concept (my first TV sale) and was taken on board as creative lead – not only for Slingers but several shows for the same company. Speaking to friends who work out in L.A. this isn’t the kind of thing that happens everyday and at least one of them has probably stopped speaking to me.

I’ve been lucky to be working with people who also embrace the JFDI philosophy which is why I think we’re so far ahead in such a small space of time. It’s similar to the way I’ve been working for that last year or so in social media and once again the learning curve has been a lot of fun to navigate. What’s also been interesting is spotting the problems that traditional television production hits and routing around them in the same way I advise old media to do when embracing new media. The results so far speak for themselves. Right now we’ve not only fleshed out the show through 3 projected seasons, but also have two spin off shows conceptualised – I feel we bring a lot to the table and that’s the main reason we’ve got so far. I’ve been complaining about TV and film for so long now that it feels good to finally get a chance to push some of my ideas in the right direction and have them taken seriously.

It also seemed very natural to spend an afternoon sitting in the sunny garden of our apartment in San Francisco working out the details on another show and then working on the pilot script while drinking vodka at 35,000 feet.

So I guess for the next 18 months or so I’m a TV writer.

I’ll keep you posted.