Vote! Vote! Vote!

A thing I did is shortlisted as one of the Top 20 Audiobooks of the Year. I am keeping a carefully neutral tone about this. But just so you know, the cat has been eating Tuna Chunks rather than Tuna Flakes all week.

Anyway, you can vote here. There - see, I am running a social networking marketing campaign. Take that Ginny Woolf, I'll get you for this, etc.

House of Dark Shadows

And, thrillingly, my Dark Shadows audio has been announced. For those of you going "Dark Whut?", it's about a vampire sharing a house with a werewolf and a ghost.

Only, this time... the house has stairways through time, there's a mad woman in the attic, the Severed Hand of Count Petofi stalks the corridors, and, while Magda the Gypsy turns over her tarot cards, the troubled daughter of the sinister Reverend Trask has been possessed by the spirit of the mystic showgirl Pansy Faye.

It's addictive stuff. And coming soon is a Tim Burton film.

One last time

My first Doctor Who audiobook comes out on the 4th March. Could this be David Tennant's final perfomance as the Doctor before he's resurrected in 3D-CGI for "The 79 Doctors" in 2150 AD? Nah, probably not. But I'm bloody thrilled with it. The research gave me a chance to re-read Kenny Everett's marvellous autobiography "The Custard Stops At Hatfield", so if there are any factual errors it's either me or the weird things Kenny was taking to try and cure his seasicness.

It is possibly the first Doctor Who text ever to mention The Singing Nun. This pleases me.

You can pre-order it from Play.com now.

Being Human and stuff.

Excitingly my Being Human novel comes out next February, and you can already buy it. It has Mitchell on the cover and features bingo. This is all you need to know. You can also buy the other books by the lovely Simon and Mark, or, naturally, watch the show in January.

In further exciting news, you can apparently pre-order a Doctor Who Audiobook by me from Amazon too.

Or, you can simply get on with wrapping Christmas Presents. Totally up to you.

And, in other work

Very nicely, been asked to do a quick guide to Doctor Who for AOL. Have genuinely tried to make it a bit more fun than those awful "Tom Baker wore a scarf and had a robot dog" filler pieces you get.

The nice side of hypocrisy

Earlier post: Blah blah blah won't read reviews blah blah.

This post: Accidentally find lovely review of new book on Den of Geek. Apparently I am "occasionally touching", which really does describe the last few weeks nicely. Hurrah. Stern principles out of window. Whee.

In other news: Lost Symbol was thunderingly good read (apart from wobble on page 430 when villain's plan is revealed) and my friend Darian took me out in Dalston. Travelling to a gay bar by bus feels just soooper cool. Especially when you're being told "No, not this stop. This is the dangerous stop. We wait till the stop past the Russian mafia bar."

Almost a review

"Possibly interesting" says someone of new book before it comes out. Well, I should certainly hope so. The internet's a funny place where almost anything you've done/are about to do can be instantly commented on. About the only exceptions, mercifully, are Gentleman's Dating Sites. Can you imagine the horror of that? ("Tries very hard but not as good as last time. One for completists only. 2 out of 10").

Mind you, reactions to last book continue polarised. Good: "Awesome. The villains are gods who come to Cardiff to save the gay scene from mullets - WHAT?" to Bad: "Good. But the fanfic out there is better."

It's always going to be the case when you're playing with someone else's toys - as much as they're owned by telly makers, in the spin-off world the characters are very much co-owned by the fans, and it's a bit cheeky to ask them to shell out cash for a book that makes them think "um, no, i'd rather they didn't do that".

I do hope some people like new book. But not everyone will. I'm sure I'll read some of the reviews - naturally I'll tend to look up any kind ones. And any unkind ones? Well, I'll probably look at them eventually, think very hard about what I've done, and either learn from my mistakes or cut-copy-and-paste bad review into next book. Not that I've done that this time. Oh no.

Ah well. Perhaps I can pay Zoe Griffin to review it.

Top of the Pops!

Wonderfully, I am outselling Barack Obama and Stephen Fry in the Waterstone's audiobook chart.


This is marvellous and unexpected and exciting. Like most marvellous, unexpected and exciting things in my life it'll probably last less than a week - and it might only happen in the Edinburgh branch of Waterstone's.

But there we go. toot! toot! I am terribly grateful to a lot of people for a really marvellous year.

And will now have to redress the balance with some stories of appallingly ill-conceived boy wrangling.

Next Book Alert!

I have a new book out in October! Here's the cover! Curiously, although it's being printed in the UK, you can currently only order it from Canadian Amazon, where it is ranked #35,865 in fiction sales. I'm guessing that means aboot 3 copies.

Crude analogy

Reader Erskine-Davidson points out that my radio play made it into Pick of the Week. I am insanely excited by this.

I play the opening of the show to Lee. He looks at me. "Given how much you love Radio 4, this is your nirvana, yes?"

I nod. "It's like you starring in porn."
Lee smiles. "With Adam Baldwin."

Radio! Torchwood!

You can listen to my Indian Torchwood play here

There's a lovely picture, and, to celebrate, the Delhi High Court have decriminalised gaying, which is probably a bit more important.

Meanwhile, I got to hear my name in between The Archers music and the Torchwood theme. That was bang.

Amaze

Er. Squee.



Apparently, on Radio Four sometime in early July. Bendy bus may run me over now. Life complete.

In case you had forgotten

The play I adapted is on again. My co-author (and now internationally acclaimed movie producer) Facebooks me to tell me that it's on in "Penn State". This is, he patiently explains, somewhere in America. It would appear to be sharing the bill with William Shakespeare, Steel Magnolias, and an adaptation of The Goonies. Any words I add after this news are pointless.

Book is real

Well, my book is finally listed on Amazon, which makes it feel more real. It appears to be coming out on the 16th of October. This is also exciting. Mind you, McCoy's now do "Thai Sweet Chicken" flavour crisps, and that's a fact that takes some beating.

My book

I was just thinking "hey, I should start linking from here to my book in a shamelessly promotional way" when I discover that it's suddenly no longer listed on Amazon. I find this needlessly, but consumingly worrying. The book's coming out, but it suddenly seems less real if it doesn't exist on Amazon. Wow. What did neurotics do before the internet?

I keep finding myelf composing emails to Amazon but stop as I realise they all make me sound Completely Mad.

How I accidentally didn't write this week's Torchwood

Just over a year ago, I was one of the writers on the BBC's fictional Torchwood website (along with TV's Helen Raynor and TV's Joseph Lidster), coming up with silly fictional things from Torchwood's history. One of these stories was about how Torchwood kept a man frozen in the cellar. They'd defrost him once a year, give him a day out, and then pop him back in the freezer. No-one knew why he was there, they were just waiting for his time to come.

The script editor of the site was Helen Raynor, who said rather kindly, "That's a good idea, you should do something with that."

A few months later, we're sat in my flat. We're talking mostly about how vodka and cherryade is the best drink ever. Helen isn't convinced, but being a trained script editor, is keeping her face pleasantly neutral as she sips away with barely a shudder. Helen is casting around for ideas for her next Torchwood. I pipe up about the man in the freezer. Helen says something terribly polite, and that she'd like to look into it as an option, if I wouldn't mind, and are there any more onion rings?

I wake up the next morning mostly wishing I'd cleaned my teeth better, as my mouth tastes of cherryade and onions. But there's a vague feeling of excitement.

A few days later I get a curiously legal email from a script editor on Torchwood asking about contracts, rights and contributors on the Torchwood website. I reply formally, adding at the bottom "If this means what I think it does, then yes I did, yes you own it, and I'm delighted".

That afternoon Helen comes thundering down a corridor and takes me outside for a cigarette. There's snow and Derek Jacobi everywhere. She's brutally honest - the idea is loved, it's being changed almost completely, and there's talk of giving me some credit, but that'll go nowhere.

A few weeks later she gives me a script - which is brilliant and moving, and has taken a tiny idea and changed it into a horror-ghosty-romance-drama. Wow. I get to feel immensely proud, but without being able to claim any credit for the achievement. This must be what Take That's aunts feel like.

A few months later, I get to see a rough cut of it, and gush with mildly fraudulent pride - just as Jordan must when she sees one of her books.

So there you go. Helen's done a lovely thing. At the end of the day, I don't get an on screen credit - but I do get to be enormously pleased.

This blog post was written by James Goss
From an original idea by Helen Raynor

Filling a vacancy

So, I go to a job interview. It's next door to a gay sauna.

Yeah.

I phone the recruitment consultant afterwards. "Oooh, is that a bar you're in?" she trills. "It sounds nice."

Yes and no. I immediately get seduced by two beautiful Italian tourists with wonderful bodies but bad breath. One of them is called Mattel. Afterwards, he fetches the guidebook, and we sit, flicking through it.

They melt away, and I'm left feeling oddly listless. I catch myself wondering what I'd do if I got the job. Aside from the whole "can I still do a job?" thing, there's also the closeness to the sauna. Would it be like putting on weight when you work next to a nice cafe? Would I end up in here every night? Or at lunchtimes? Odd.

I met a Polish guy called Tom. He believed in everything but kissing on the lips. I always find that strange. I went home, still thoughtful.

Decorating

It's a bit peachy-beige isn't it? Hopefully, normal service etc, soon!

Signing-on

I'd never work again if it wasn't that I quite like buying spendy drinks and toys. I miss working with fun people, but there's something lovely about every day being Saturday, full of shopping and gym and boys and fags and writing and one last little vodka before bed.

But I have my wobbles. I was signing on the other day. In return for some free money and discount cinema tickets, it's a fun ritual where a nice lady called Shimla asks me if I've progressed from my last job, which was making cartoons about space pirates. I explain that sadly, animated space piracy is a small industry. She nods sympathetically, and suggests I use one of their Job Points to further my job seeking.

As I leave a Customer Satisfaction man asks what I thought of my Job Seeking interview. And then says, "So how long have you been unemployed?"

"Four months," I say.

"Aw," he says. "Baby!"

And that's when I have a wobble.

Recruitment Consultants

How I wish it would go, just once:

"Hi, this is Jocasta calling from OfficeWankers. I've grabbed your cv off a pile, haven't even read it and am calling you about a job that, in about 10 seconds time we're both going to realise you're completely unsuitable for. How does that grab you?"

ME: "Sure. Once you realise it would be like hiring a cat to run the Mouse Zoo, will you keep flogging the job to me anyway?"

JOCASTA: "Oh, absolutely. Without pausing for breath."

ME: "It's based in Slough, isn't it?"

JOCASTA: "Almost certainly. I've not read that far down the job description yet but it's bound to be somewhere ghastly... ah. yup."

ME: "And are you playing with Facebook all the way through this conversation?"

JOCASTA: "But of course! I'm uploading pictures of girls night out in AllBarOne. It was hilarious."

I worked out t'other day when I run out of money. It's February 14th. Which'll be a shit of a day, but luckily it's a looong way away.