Editing and commitment issues

I have become fickle in my middle age and seem to have developed commitment issues.
I'm talking about my writing of course. Whilst the film stuff is all chugging along nicely, The Novel has stumbled again. Having taken a little break from my Banshee novel, re-reading it plunged me into despair - so many plot holes, clichéd characters and saggy bits. And I do find it difficult editing my own work at the best of times.
So I am cheating on Banshee with Dorcas Grubb, a former lover I set aside a few years ago when I decided I wanted to write a novel for adults. So with Dorcas I have a story of just under 50000 words for 10-14 year olds that needs a new middle. 
I have also started on a new piece I have been toying with for a while called Three Sisters that is a YA novel set in the village of the title, which blends fairytales and myths with present day village teen life. With family feuds. And Grim Reapers.
My writing routine is improving, and I am hoping to finish the new version of Dorcas by Christmas. I'm sure nothing else will distract me before then...

Films (plural)

Flawless, the short film I co-wrote and mentioned in my previous post is still doing the rounds for various national and international festival submissions so isn't on general release yet. However, if you are based in Puerto Rico, you may have seen it at the end of July at CineFiesta festival. If you are based in the UK, Flawless has been accepted at the Worcestershire Film Festival (16-19 November) and at The Short Cinema Festival in Leicester on 27 August. SO FAR. I think it has been submitted into around 60 festivals worldwide. I will keep you posted.

In the meantime, I've been keeping busy. My second film (or more correctly mine and James Worrad's second film) is called Atonia, and it's a bit out of my comfort zone. It's a horror film about a girl's struggles between dream and reality. That's about as much as I can say at this point. I wasn't able to go and watch the filming for this one (aside from the last scene), and so rather than deprive you of the excitement of it, I'm going to redirect you to Jim's blog where he's written a fab summary about the filming process. Plus: pictures!

Really excited about this one, simply because it involves special effects and that's always cool. The young lead actress Jess O'Brien is amazing, and so I am really looking forward to seeing it once it is all pieced together.

My First Film

So you're probably wondering what I've been up to lately. "Long time no see" and all that. Well, I've been working on a few things, not to mention trying to liaise with my day job to actually try to reclaim something resembling a "work-life balance" in the hope of being able to have time to write something half decent.
Anyway, the project that I'm most excited about, the one that is almost completed, is my first short film Flawless, co-written by the wonderful Jim Worrad and produced by Badshoes Films.
Jim approached me back in January I think it was to see if I'd collaborate with him on a film project pitched by his amazingly brilliant director friend Keith Allott. The project, after much discussion and refining, was to be about a woman genius who tries to prevent her father's death when she was a young girl. It was to be a modern sci-fi fairytale. The script went through a couple of edits, with Jim building on my initial structure and adding his script for the "woman genius" sections to my script for the "young girl" sections and generally doing a bloody good job of blending the two together. And that was our part done really. Just like that.
And then the magic happened.
Keith gathered together a band of nomads and renegades and artists in the form of the production team and actors, and they created something so beautiful and touching it has reduced pretty much everyone who has seen the rough cuts to tears.
I think the current plan is to send the film off to some festivals once it is finally finished, but here is a photo from when I visited the crew on location to whet your appetite.

Keith with the actors on the soon to be famous bench on New Walk