The Murder Club

Vince is well on with the pencils for issue four - he showed me a couple of pages yesterday, which looked rather wonderful, and I took a photo of him working on one of them which I'll put in the next post.

This is obviously Vince's busiest time, battling away on the 20 pages of issue four and keeping to the schedule - though it's also my quietest time, a couple of weeks where there's nothing for me to do on the comic. For me at the moment my work is done - Vince is perfectly capable of working without any further input from me (apart from the occasional words of encouragement when he's looking a little weary) and all I can do is wait patiently for the finished artwork to arrive in a couple of weeks time - at which point I suddenly become active again and start working hard on the script.

So what do I do when I'm twiddling my thumbs, waiting to get started? Well, mostly I put my feet up, but to fill in some of that time, this November (for the fourth year in a row) I'm participating in Nanowrimo - and this year I'm writing a Harker spin-off novel for it! Hurrah!

For those of you not familiar with Nanowrimo (National Novel Writers Month), the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, starting on November 1st, finishing on November 31st. I failed on my first attempt in 2005, crashing and burning at around 10,000 words, though succeeded pretty easily in 2006 (writing a contemporary science fiction novel called 'Loop', about an individual's desire to live forever and his struggle for identity when it all goes horribly wrong), and winning again in 2007 (writing a big, rather epic fantasy vampire novel called 'Gravestowne').

So in a week's time, I submit myself to the torturous daily deadlines for a third year running, and this year I'm better prepared than ever before: I have a complete plot, all of the characters, a beginning, middle and end, and a whole bunch of events along the way - even a sub-plot to keep things interesting. All of this advanced work should help to take a little pain out of the process, though it's fair to say I'm going to look a little baggy eyed by the end of November! Expect me to be whining about it over the next few weeks...

As I mentioned, it's going to be a Harker & Critchley novel, which will be set immediately after the events of the six part story we're currently working on in the comic (it'll slot in neatly between issues 6 and 7). The current working title is 'The Murder Club'. Once complete at the end of November, I'm planning to make it available from the blog in here - and Vince has already said he wants to throw in a few illustrations too. Hooray!

Continuity-wise, as with all of our stories, it'll stand alone (so you won't have to read it, it's just another case for our boys, with no long term continuity ramifications), but I think it'll be fun - and of course, written very much in the same style as the comics. Plot-wise, it's a little too extensive to fit into six issues of the comic (which is why it's perfect as a novel), and all being well, it should be the first of a series of books based on the comic - as I need something to do to keep me busy whilst Vince is scratching away in his studio...

Can't wait to start - I want to start right now! Gaahhh!

Oh, and in other news, I can now confirm that Book Two (issues 7-12) will now take place in Whitby, and on the moors nearby, and is likely to feature murders, mansions, sandcastles, fish and chips, and gloomy goths. Oh no, I've said too much! ;)

Roger