Today other projects are moving a small step closer to fruition.

This evening is my first attempt at recording a radio play. The play is, naturally, steampunk themed and ties into stories I have already published. It is called Rain, Steam and Speed, after a famous 19th century painting and the names of the main characters. The three characters are Miss Rain, Professor Steam and Inspector Speed; all three appear in Tales from the Asylum, in a short story entitled The Call of the Deep.

The radio play itself is intended as a pilot for a series of six and establishes the start of the trios investigative career together. I wrote the plot synopsis over a year ago as a TV/Radio pitch. However, Steampunk at the time was considered as non-commercial as Science Fiction and it wasn’t put forward by my contact. I can’t put pitches forward myself because I don’t have an agent. I don’t have an agent because I don’t have a track record of script writing. I don’t have a track record for script writing because I can’t put a pitch forward… It’s a good job I don’t take no for an answer!

However, back to the plot, I was encouraged by members of the wider Steampunk community to keep the idea going. With input from other interested parties around the world (A big thank you to Vela and JohnSix) the first episode was written.

The writing process for a script is slightly different from a short story, particularly in the planning stage. You are essentially relying on the characters dialogue to set the scene, describe the action and so on. However, it can become a little contrived if you’re not careful and I spent some time trying to get a natural flow going. In the end, reluctantly and after strong representations on line, I added a narrator to move the action from one scene to another. I’m happy with the result; it comes out at 20 pages, which is about 20mins of dialogue. With sound effects and music added it should run to about half an hour.

Who knows, if tonight is a success, I might even write episode two.

In other areas, I am bringing my current short story to a climax. I have already written the conclusion and the first half has already been accepted by the publisher, so it’s something of a relief to have nearly finished it. It is connected to the above, as it covers the same characters as the radio play, but some three to four years previous. All that remains is to write one last story about Miss Rain and I will be ready to publish my first solo compilation.

Conversations with contributors to Tales… at the weekend shows that there definite support for an audio book, so come the new year I will start making plans for recording that, possibly using some of the cast from Rain Steam and Speed.

I also have a couple of Magic Lantern show scripts kicking about that I want to get made into something. If only there were more hours in the day, or work would stop getting in the way….