Interview: Starburst

Occasionally I do press interviews. This is the text of one I sent off to Starburst magazine (interviewer Tony Jones) in 2014.

It’s from around the time that Big Finish had released my Blake’s 7 audio play Mirror, but covered lots of stuff about other writing.

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Starburst: Peter, thank you for sparing the time to answer a few questions.

Peter: You’re welcome. Thanks for asking them.

Starting back in the 1990s: your first novel was pitched when you heard that the BBC was re-launching the Doctor Who novels and was accepted. What had you done before that? Had you always written but never been published?

I was involved with fan publications in my teens, and put out a Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 fanzine called “Frontier Worlds.” Through that, I made a lot of friends, including people like Craig Hinton, Paul Cornell, Justin Richards, Gary Russell and Andy Lane.

They all subsequently wrote novels for Virgin Publishing. Indeed, as far as Virgin was concerned, Paul pretty much established the credentials and credibility of writers who came from a background in fandom. I suppose Virgin was an appropriate name for such a group of talented but previously-unpublished authors.

As it happened, in the early 90s, I also worked in the same office as Justin and Craig. I was very admiring of how they and had got their Doctor Who novels published by Virgin. Probably quite jealous, too. When Andy and Justin edited a couple of the Decalog short story anthologies, they asked me to pitch ideas. I wrote “Moving On” for them, and then a non-Who story called “C₉H₁₃NO₃ .”

Kursaal was pitched before you knew that the Eighth Doctor would have a companion called Sam Jones. How hard was it to adapt your pitch and were you happy with the end product?

My original proposal was written for the Eighth Doctor, and used the same approach as the TV Movie in that the Doctor arrived alone and left alone. I knew BBC Books planned to continue Virgin’s approach, which was to publish two novels per month – one Eighth Doctor and one Past Doctor. And I was pitching to them before any of the BBC novels had been announced.

I hoped to write for the Eighth Doctor, though I’d have been happy to have done one of their Past Doctor series instead. To maximise my chance of getting commissioned, I explained that my story would also suit any “Doctor-plus-single-companion” combination.

Mind you, if they’d said “the Doctor’s going to be travelling with three companions and a talking cabbage,” I’d have replied instantly, “You know, I think that would also work brilliantly for my story, and here’s how…”

Anyway, I told them that I could place the story in periods of  the TV series when the Doctor was not accompanied by two or more fellow travelers. I didn’t suggest any feeble excuse that one or more “missing” companion had been unfortunately locked in the TARDIS throughout.

So I suggested:  First Doctor plus Dodo; Second Doctor plus Jamie; Third Doctor plus Jo or Sarah;  Fourth Doctor plus Sarah, Leela, Romana or Adric; Fifth Doctor plus Nyssa or Peri; Sixth Doctor plus Peri or Mel; Seventh Doctor plus Mel or Ace; Eighth Doctor plus any new BBC Books companion.

As well as trying to offer lots of options, I suppose I was showing off a bit to people at BBC Books who I suspected may not have known a lot about Doctor Who. (Little did I know that one of them was Steve Cole. Whatever happened to him, eh?)

I’d therefore already considered how I could adapt my outline to accommodate a completely new companion, and it wasn’t too much of a chore to incorporate Sam Jones. I quite like writing things where I’m asked to incorporate specific things, anyway. It’s a writing challenge.

In your blog, The Red Lines Page [anagram!]…

Yes, there are others. Possibly not suitable to mention in a family magazine!

…the blog has your original query pitch and then various other items such as scene by scene breakdowns, all of which is of interest to any author. Do you put these posts up for posterity, as a monument to your own production process or to help others? Do they reflect the way you still write today?

“Web logs” started to become popular in the late 90s, and I don’t recall there being a lot of them when I started writing. This was the decade before Facebook and Twitter. (Gasps of horror and disbelief from your younger readers. Some of whom probably think Facebook is already a bit old hat.)

Nevertheless, those days weren’t all writing by candlelight on a wax tablet. We had newsgroups in which people like Paul Cornell and Jon Blum and Kate Orman and Steven Moffat would discuss writing. Some people even had their own websites, lovingly hand crafted in HTML. Gary Russell had an interesting site that contained helpful advice and information.

I’d found all that free stuff useful for my writing. And I’m vain enough that I like talking about myself and what I do. So I thought, why not try “paying it forward” and publish stuff about my own experience of writing? If it’s helpful, that’s OK. And if it’s not, well, I enjoyed writing it anyway. Sometimes you write stuff just because it’s fun, and not because you get paid for it. (Who do I invoice for this by the way?)

Anyway, I set up a web site where I published all my original proposals for novels and audios and short stories, plus information about the writing process, and summaries of all the reviews I’d read of my stuff – good, bad, or indifferent, it didn’t matter.  One or two reviewers e-mailed to say they were a bit cross about having rude parts of their reviews quoted, which just made me laugh.

When my web host changed, I decided it was easier to start again on a new blog and move stuff across when I had time. I picked WordPress as the least painful popular free platform. I’ve started to republish some of the web site stuff again at http://anghelides.org  Though I am a lazy blogger, and I don’t do it as much as I used to. Never mind, there are plenty of bright young things doing new and interesting stuff instead of me.

You’ve written a number of books and several short stories for Doctor Who and other ranges, amongst which is Torchwood. How did that come about?

It turns out that “paying it forward” wasn’t just a help to other people, it was a help to me, too! BBC Books needed to find me when they were launching the Torchwood novels to accompany the new TV series, and they found my contact details (like you did!) on my website. I think I have Gary Russell to thank, too, because he was working on the TV series and had suggested a number of plausible candidates to BBC Books for the new novels.

That whole experience was brilliant. I’ve had the great good fortune that people have asked me to do a number of “firsts” in my writing… the first Eighth Doctor audio book for BBC Audio, the first Tenth Doctor audio story read by David Tennant, the first full-cast Blake’s 7 audio…

It’s a privilege, and also very flattering, to be entrusted with such things. How fantastic was that, then – to be writing the first Torchwood novel, and working with Andy Lane and Dan Abnett before Torchwood had even aired on TV? We were writing them as they were making that first series. The novel has been released as an audio book, skilfully adapted by Joe Lidster and read by John Barrowman. And translated into German by Susanne Döpke. There’s even a Hungarian version.

You’ve also written several audio scripts, not just Doctor Who and Torchwood but also Sarah-Jane and Blake’s 7. How do you find writing for audio compared to novels and short stories?

Audio scripts are a lot shorter, for one thing, so it’s possible to draft them faster, then iterate more frequently and extensively if necessary. With a novel or short story you have an editor providing input, whereas audio continues to be a varied collaborative effort all the way through the process – producer, script editor, director, the performances in the studio, and finally the edit with the sound effects and score.

Novel writing is painting pictures in words for your readers, whereas audio scripts are providing the guidance for a performance. And while characters do talk to each other at times in a novel, an audio script is principally dialogue.

Now those are wild generalisations, of course. You can incorporate interior dialogue and narration into an audio, and you can have conventional dialogue sequences in a novel – especially one that is inspired by a TV series.

But the common element of both is having a compelling story, interesting characters, and staying true to the spirit of the franchise without slavishly copying it.

In 2013 Big Finish released Warship which was the first full cast adventure for the original Blake’s 7 cast. If that weren’t enough of a challenge it also plugged a massive gap in the show’s canon. Did you approach this differently from other stories and was this part of the show’s history you always wanted to tackle?

I’ve loved Blake’s 7 since it was first broadcast – round about the same time that I was also a huge, huge fan of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. I watched Blake’s 7 from the opening episode, and celebrated it in that fanzine I mentioned earlier.

When Big Finish asked me to write Warship, I suppose I was a bit conflicted at first. On the one hand,  like any contemporary fan, I always wanted to know what happened at the end of the second series that meant Blake and Jenna were no longer in the third. On the other hand, some of the magic of any series lies within those gaps that fans like to fill for themselves with personal theories they don’t want contradicted.

And on the third, Andromedan hand, how could I possibly resist the opportunity to write the first full-cast audio for the actors I’d loved in the original series?

Even so, despite my geekish continuity credentials as a longstanding fan, I researched the gap by rewatching the entire series. I did a load of research to remind myself and confirm my thoughts. Plus, it was a great excuse to watch those original stories again. I sheepishly confess that I watched several sequences where I could spout the dialogue in synch with the actors.

In the end, I devised an exciting story in the style of the TV series that fits the continuity. Most listeners seemed to agree. Except for those whose pet theories I contradicted, obviously.

(Yes, I know we didn’t see any Blake’s 7 Andromedans with three hands. And they weren’t named as Andromedans, either.)

Of all the ranges you’ve written for so far do you have a favourite and how do you as a writer view their differences?

That’s like asking parent which child they love best!  (If my children are reading this, then obviously I love you best. Yes, you. Don’t tell the other one.)

I have honestly loved writing all of them – whether Doctor Who audios for Big Finish, or Torchwood novels for the BBC, or Sarah Jane Adventures for AudioGo, or original fiction for Virgin. I seize opportunities I’m offered by people who I enjoy working with, to write about characters I love, for people who enjoy those TV series as much as I do.

Without breaking any confidences can you let us know what you’re working on at the moment or at least give us some clues?

It’s bad luck to discuss stuff that hasn’t actually been commissioned, and it’s bad manners to mention anything that has been commissioned but not announced.

I once made the mistake of telling people that I was writing a Big Finish script for the first series of Tom Baker Doctor Who audios – the opening one (another first!) set on Nerva Station. They kindly invited me to pitch. I did several detailed drafts and revisions, including a four-part version and a two-part alternative. But in the end they weren’t happy enough to commission it.

I’d already pitched things for some of the earlier attempts by BBC Audio and Big Finish to bring Tom Baker stories to audio. This time I really thought it was going to happen, and I felt utterly wretched to miss out. Well, “miss out” is probably a bit misleading – nothing is ever a done deal until the contract is signed, and the recording is complete.

That’s why Big Finish – quite rightly – don’t tend to announce anything until the studio work is complete. I’ve had other things turned down, of course – that’s not unusual for writers, and you need to be resilient. But I’ve never felt as devastated as on that occasion.

So I’m not going to tempt fate, or upset anyone, by saying or hinting anything. Sorry!

Is there a show you’d like to write for but haven’t?

Each new incarnation of the Doctor is like a new show, and so I would relish the chance to write something for the Twelfth Doctor. I’d quite fancy writing a novel about a pre-Jack Torchwood. I enjoyed Firefly and a lot of Fringe, so those would have been fun.

I persevered with the recent revamped version of The Tomorrow People, and thought that had potential before they humanely destroyed it after one series. I liked some of its set-up, but kept thinking that I could write better dialogue. Which is a very different motivation to, say, writing for Blake’s 7, where we all aspire to write dialogue as characteristic and compelling as original TV writers Terry Nation and Chris Boucher.

I feel I’ve got it right if I sit in the recording studio chuckling as Michael Keating (Vila) is performing my dialogue. Yes, I’m afraid I do that.

Beyond writing you have a day-job: how do you juggle your time and do you keep the two worlds separate?

Writing is a hobby I get paid for – and one should always make time for the things one loves. But I can’t compromise my day job, because I really enjoy that, too.

In the past, I’ve made time in a variety of ways. It may involve booking holiday from work. Sometimes it’s writing during early mornings and or evenings or weekends. Other occasions I’ve been able to write when on a plane to a business meeting, or in the hotel.

I treat every writing commission with the seriousness of my regular job, of course – because publishers, distributors, directors, directors and so on all rely on a professional text being delivered on time and to specification.

Hmm… that perhaps makes it sound rather dry and dull. Whereas, of course, it is a fabulous and privileged opportunity to add to the franchises that inspired me to write in the first place.

And, finally, if you had the chance to travel on the Liberator or work at Torchwood which would you choose and why?

Both have a pretty high mortality rate, don’t they? I think I’d take a risk on Torchwood, because the adventure tends to come to Cardiff and I could still pop home occasionally on Bank Holidays to see friends and family. Because Weevils obviously like a long weekend as much as anyone.

Peter, thank you again for taking the time to answer a few questions, I really appreciate it.

It has been my pleasure.

Amazon update

I have updated my Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/anghelides

The UK one is the slightly less memorable amazon.co.uk/-/e/B000AP7UBC

Edited to add… hurrah! It looks like there are a variety of international versions:

• UK: amazon.co.uk/Peter-Anghelides/e/B000AP7UBC
• French: amazon.fr/-/e/B000AP7UBC
• German: amazon.de/Peter-Anghelides/e/B000AP7UBC
• Spain: amazon.es/Peter-Anghelides/e/B000AP7UBC
• Italy: amazon.it/Peter-Anghelides/e/B000AP7UBC
• India: amazon.in/Peter-Anghelides/e/B000AP7UBC

Edited again: it’s created an Audible page too: audible.com/author/Peter-Anghelides/B000AP7UBC I think I need a better photo.

Dual career path

On 4^th  January 2018, I will have worked at IBM for 30 years. That’s not something I anticipated when I joined.

It’s been a terrific three decades, during which I feel I’ve been able to make a difference by working in many interesting roles with wonderful people all round the world.

 

Another Life

For a lot of my time at IBM, my colleagues didn’t know I had a parallel career as a writer of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Blake’s 7 tie-in fiction. It’s not the sort of thing I’d typically discuss at work.

Nevertheless, I have been writing that sort of stuff even longer than I’ve been at IBM – certainly since primary school, and then in fanzines at school and university. I’ve been professionally published since 1996 (a mere 21 years) –  so a private joke was to call my first Torchwood novel Another Life.

In later years, my work colleagues became more aware of my “second career” because other IBMers would tell them. Though it rarely works the other way round – people who know me from my books and audios tend to be unaware of my IBM career.

I don’t hide it, as you’ll see in my LinkedIn profile, which lists my fiction writing alongside my IBM intellectual property publications. And my Twitter feed talks about IBM stuff, my writing, and lots of other nonsense besides.

 

Wiki leaks

For a number of years, there was a Wikipedia entry about me, and of course that gratifyingly flattered my ego. Like the entries for all the other Doctor Who novelists, it was written by a fan enthusiast with a completist attitude to documenting the TV show and its spinoffs.

The Wikipedia article described all my fiction writing, with links to my blog, the BBC website, and so on. But it said nothing at all about IBM.

One result of this was being introduced at an event as an invited IBM speaker like this: “I looked him up online, but the only information I could find was about this other Peter Anghelides who writes Doctor Who books, and that obviously can’t be him.” There are so many people called Peter Anghelides that I could understand her confusion

Not that this is a problem any more. Earlier this year, one of the Wikipedia content moderators decided that the article wasn’t well enough written, and it has therefore been deleted. You’re not allowed to write Wikipedia articles about yourself, so at least I can blame someone else for this (while, obviously, sulking in my office).

 

Celebrating in style

IBM recognises employees at various career landmarks. For example, on reaching 25 years you’re enrolled in the Quarter Century Club. I got a nice meal, a certificate from the IBM Chairman, and a pile of gift vouchers.

I was also able to add the Quarter Century Shield to my ID badge, and that’s a nice conversation starter when meeting new colleagues or clients or business partners.

 

The 30 Years Words

For someone like me now reaching 30 years, IBM makes a “personalised congratulatory page” available for a month beforehand. This is the online Recognition Centre, where people are invited to post messages and photos, and see what everyone else has written. The celebrant sees the final thing on the anniversary date.

Messages can be posted by anyone who gets an invitation to do so, IBMers or otherwise. Participation very much depends on whether the IBM internal social media, or the employee’s manager, sends invitations to anyone. And whoever is invited to contribute can themselves invite others to participate.

I suppose it’s like a benign Ponzi scheme, where everyone has a bit of fun and no-one joins Bernie Madoff in jail.

 

Open invitation

But here’s something I didn’t know until last week: the celebrant is also able to invite people.

And because I like to test these things out, I went ahead and invited… myself. So not only can I now add comments, I can already see some of the nice things that people are saying.

This prompted a naughty thought. What if I invited not just people who I know from IBM… what if I invited people I know through my other writing work?

This is not an effort to fish for compliments! What would greatly amuse me, and enliven proceedings, is if my Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Blake’s 7 pals each posted something in the Recognition Centre about their favourite TV story or memory, and I will respond with a corresponding story or anecdote about IBM.

 

Want to play?

If you fancy giving it a go, and you know me from my non-IBM life, contact me at the usual address and I will send you a personal invitation to contribute.

Remember that whatever you write will be visible to all other contributors and associated with your name, because each invitation needs to be unique.

The closing date is Wednesday January 3^rd 2018.

Rainy Days in Cardiff

My Torchwood novel Another Life was translated into Hungarian, and apparently published in 2010. I was pondering why I hadn’t seen a copy. I asked my publisher,  and they’re now puzzling about it, too.

I decided the best way to get a copy (and prove it exists) was to order it. From Hungary, obviously. The price looks a bit steep, until you see that it’s in Hungarian forints, and work out that 2,490 ft converts to about £6.50.

The Hungarian title is Torchwood – Esős napok Cardiffban. That translates back into English as Torchwood – Rainy Days in Cardiff. I hope that will prove to have been such an appealing title that the book has simply flown off the shelves in Csongrád and Bács-Kiskun. And I will not discover that my recent order has merely doubled sales in Eastern Europe.

In related news: John Barrowman, who read the audio version of my novel, has become an MBE. This is splendid news. I’m not suggesting that my audio had any particular effect on his eligibility. Nor that it will unduly influence sales of the novel in Hungary – though anyone analysing the stats this week in Budapest may notice an unexpected uptick in overseas sales to the UK.

 

Hursley FM competition

After months of negotiation with my agent, I agreed terms with http://hursleyfm.com for a podcast interview. Oh, all right then, they e-mailed me at work last Wednesday, and I said yes straight away.

On Friday, I made my way to their studio (spoilers: an office in Hursley D Block) and had a lovely chat with Dr Adrian, Jonny Mac, and Mr Jezzalinko. We discussed technology, my work at IBM, and my various bits of genre writing over the years. And, yes, they really are called that.

Hursley FM is a podcast and community about technology, inspired by the people at the biggest software development laboratory in Europe. By a happy coincidence, it’s somewhere I’ve worked for nearly twenty years.

As you can see from my photo, the studio looks exactly like the podcast illustration.

It’s rare that my various worlds coincide like this. So to acknowledge that, and also encourage people to tune in to the Hursley FM podcasts, here’s a competition. With a modest prize.

The prize is: a copy of the studio script for my audio drama Blake’s 7: Warship, signed by me. And maybe also signed by Dr Adrian, Jonny Mac, and Mr Jezzalinko, too.

The question is: in the podcast, we talk about the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, about how Tom Baker is one of my favourite Doctors, and also about the future of technical writing. What word (that I use in the podcast) connects those three things?

How to enter: e-mail me at the contact address on this website. At the end of this month, I’ll pick a winner from all correct entries. Tie-breaker, in the event I decide one’s needed, is that you complete the following sentence: Mr Jezzalinko could be a Doctor Who villain because…”

I feel like a Newman

Big Finish has a customer survey running at the moment. It solicits opinions about all sorts of things, including which other spinoff series they could make. Participants get the chance to win a prize worth £250.

I like the idea of Torchwood audios, obviously. As I have prior history with that franchise, I would hope to be early in the queue for writing those – alphabetically speaking. Unless Dan Abnett isn’t busy at the time.

Mind you, it’s an outrage that Big Finish aren’t considering a spinoff series for An Adventure in Space and Time. I demand to hear further thrilling stories featuring Verity and Sydney (pictured here from their recent personal appearance at GallifreyOne). Steve Cole even photographed me discussing things with Sydney by the hotel pool.

Everyone should write in to Big Finish! Pop pop pop over to their website immediately.

GallifreyOne update

The GallifreyOne people have kindly asked me to be on a number of discussion sessions at their forthcoming convention.

• On Friday at 3:30 pm I’m doing something called a Kaffeklatsch. I’m not quite sure what that entails, though I imagine it involves having a coffee and a chat. People have to sign up for these things, apparently. My fellow chatter is the lovely and prolific Phil Ford, so perhaps I’ll let him do all the talking while I pour cups of Nescafé Gold Blend.
• Straight after that on Friday at 4:30 pm I’ll be discussing the Doctor Who novels in a panel called “Back to the Pagoda,” accompanied by fellow enthusiasts Simon Guerrier, Robert Smith?, Graeme Burke, and Shaun Homrig. Simon is a colleague among the novelists. Graeme is editing a series of guides with Robert. Robert sports the most famous Doctor Who eroteme since Sylvester McCoy’s jumper. And Shaun is an Associate Attorney, and I am therefore legally unable to say anything more about him. I suspect most people will be at the other sessions during this time — Louise Jameson, Camille Coduri, Yee Jee Tso, and Daphne Ashbrook. But do come and visit us. (Even if it’s only to ask which room the Louise Jameson interview is in.)
• On Sunday at 2:30 pm I will accompany Gary Russell, Phil Ford, Jill Sherwin, Racheline Maltese, and Jennifer Kelley for a panel discussion called “Sarah Jane is My Doctor.” Jill, Racheline, and Jennifer are stalwarts of this and other conventions, as well as writers themselves. Phil Ford will still be recovering from a coffee ovedose on the Friday. Gary Russell is, quite simply, my oldest and dearest  friend in Doctor Who. Oldest because he is 84 years old. And dearest because he’ll be making me pay for that comment all weekend.
• Finally, at 5:30 pm on Sunday, I’m with Jason Haigh-Ellery and fellow story writers Simon Guerrier and Nigel Fairs on a panel about “Blake’s 7 on Audio”.  My CD Counterfeit is released this month, so we’ll be celebrating the launch of the new audio stories. West End Producer Jason is also the Executive Producer at Big Finish. Nigel is an actor, writer, and composer. And Simon is very tall. He’s a tall story writer.
• There will be autograph sessions on the three days as well, at which I shall be scrabbling for the sharpies with  some of the aforementioned writers and producers. Depending on how famous one is, there are Premium Autographs, Sponsored Autographs, or Standard Autographs. I am in a category of my own (Bog-Standard Autographs) and will sign anything that gets within reach.
• I am told by Lee Almodovar that there will be ribbons available, too. Not sure how those work, but a pass phrase or secret handshake may be involved. Check press for details.

If time and technology allow, I may tweet during the event. Hard to believe that the last time I was at GallifreyOne (back in 2009), Twitter was relatively unknown. Now the convention is almost twice the size, and I expect the #gally tag will be busy all weekend.

Ein Anderes Leben

My first Torchwood novel,  Another Life, was published in German this year. It’s available in hardback and in Kindle format. To accompany its publication, I also did an interview with my translator,  Susanne Döpke.

As part of a special Doctor Who day recently, the interview was published on a German sf portal here. And while  Google Translate will do you a nice translation of that back into English, I thought you may also like to see my original replies to Susanne.  What I like about this interview is that, as a translator, Susanne was interested in some of the mechanics of writing.

 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself for the introduction part of this interview?

Over the past decade and and half, I have written dozens of things that tie in to TV series – novels, talking books, audio plays, short stories, even a comic strip. They almost invariably relate to Torchwood or Doctor Who. That’s a TV series I have watched and enjoyed since I was a child.

I used to write amateur short stories and magazine articles even when I was still  at school. So these days, it’s like I am being paid for my hobby! I have a list of what I’ve written on my website http://anghelides.org 

You have been writing a lot of novels based on TV series – what is the difference in writing for established characters as opposed to something completely fictional?

Usually when you write for established characters, you know that they cannot be completely changed by the end of your story. Mostly that’s because the TV series defines who they are, and you’re not supposed to contradict that. You must “return” them to their starting point, because the books are bought by tens of thousands of people whereas the TV series is seen by millions.

As a contrast, Ian Rankin say of his series of novels: “To fully understand and appreciate the growth (and regression) of Rebus (and all the other recurring characters), it is interesting to read the series in the order the books were written.” Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle could have their heroes die when they chose to. But with a TV tie-in, you know your principal cast will survive, and their characters will be the same at the end of your story.

That sounds like a problem for an author, because you really want your heroes and heroines to develop, to be changed by what they experience in your novel. They are the people in the book with whom the reader will identify. If those characters learn nothing, and are unmoved by their experience, the reader will not feel engaged by the story.

One way around that is to create some new characters with whom the reader can identify – but that can’t be at the expense of the regular characters, because those are the reason that the readers bought your book in the first place.

And fortunately, another way around it is that the characters in Torchwood develop, change, even die sometimes on TV. So you can weave some threads in your novel to suggest that the events of your novel contribute to that. There are several actions and events in Another Life like that. Fans of the series recognise it for what it is, and more casual readers just think it’s part of the novel.

How did you get involved with writing novels for Doctor Who and Torchwood?

In 1989, the BBC stopped making Doctor Who for television. Virgin Books began to publish some original Doctor Who novels. Several of my friends wrote for that series, and I also did some short stories for Virgin. When the BBC decided to make a one-off Doctor Who TV Movie in 1996, they also decided to start publishing the books under their own imprint. So I suggested an idea for a novel, and they commissioned it – and after that, they  invited me to write more.

That was a particularly interesting time to write TV tie-in novels. Because the BBC was making no new Doctor Who for television, the people writing the books were able to continue developing the story of Doctor Who without worrying about contradicting the TV series. In that sense, the books were new Doctor Who for the thousands of dedicated fans who wanted fresh stories.

That changed in 2005 when the BBC started making new Doctor Who for TV, and they began to commission a different style of tie-in novel. Then Torchwood was commissioned the following year as an independent programme of its own, using the character of Captain Jack who had first appeared in Doctor Who. So BBC Books had decided from the outset that they would commission tie-in novels to accompany the new series.

I was one of the three authors they commissioned initially, because the publishers and production office thought our previous books were a good track record for the kind of thing they were looking for with these new titles. These new Torchwood books were aimed at an older audience, and were nearly twice as long as their Doctor Who counterparts.

I think BBC Books must have liked  Another Life, because I was the first person they asked to write a second Torchwood novel.

You obviously need to do a lot of research – how did you prepare for writing  Another Life?

I was first approached about writing the novel in April 2006, and it was commissioned the following month. But the first TV series wasn’t broadcast until the end of October 2006. So a lot of my research was to learn about the series concept, the characters, the location, and what was happening in those first 13 episodes without ever having seen the show.

The three novel authors met the script editor, Brian Minchin, who explained all that to us. Brian was terrific – so enthusiastic about the potential of the series, and keen to see the books were properly-researched and well-prepared. The authors also got to see concept artwork for the main set, and some of the props, because that was all still being built at that stage.

 

You have probably rewatched Torchwood for writing the novel – is that another way of watching?

For Another Life, there were no episodes to watch! I wrote the first draft before I’d seen a single broadcast episode. At a late stage, I did get a chance to view the opening episode at a special screening for the BBC productrion and publicity team. My novel was published just before the conclusion of Torchwood series 1’s original TV transmission.

When I wrote my second novel, Pack Animals, that tied in with the second TV series. Things had changed for the characters by that stage, so I was able to read a lot of the series 2 scripts before I wrote my first draft, and even saw some of the episodes before I submitted the book.

Did you get to go on set and, if so, how was that and who did you talk to?

Yes, I went with the other authors to visit the studios in Cardiff, South Wales. The original plan, I think, was to get to a design briefing meeting in June, and subsequently to talk to producer Richard Stokes, his script team, the art department, and the lead publicist. But it wasn’t possible to arrange something at such short notice. The production team were quite understandably almost completely engrossed in the very complex work of creating 13 episodes of a brand new TV series.

We were driven to the studios by a Brand Executive, Matt Nicholls, who gave us some background on various Cardiff locations. And one of the script editors, the marvellous Gary Russell, showed us around the main studio. We saw the sets for some of the regular cast, including the top-floor Victorian flat  where Gwen and Rhys lived, and the Torchwood dungeons where they locked up the alien Weevil. There was a little set for Ianto’s Torchood reception area, too, with tourist brochures in neat piles and newspapers over the windows.

But most exciting of all, we went on the Hub set. It was enormous, and built on two levels right next door to the Doctor Who TARDIS set. The lower level had the Hub’s basin area, full of water. That led up to a level where all the computer work stations stood beside the cog-wheel entrance. Then there was a walkway to the recessed autopsy area, a hexagonal tank with a barred window to one side. We went through Jack’s office with its curved desk and filing cabinets, and then into a small games area before reaching the glass screen doors of the armoury.

From that, a spiral staircase led up to a small landing where we could see Ianto’s coffee machine, and from there into the conference room that dominated the upper level.

Tha balcony around the main hub area had portholes out towards the Bay, and we were told that they would occasionally show fish swimming outside.

I dutifully made notes of things that interested me, things I saw or heard about that gave some insights into the characters – the contents of a noticeboard, the fruit bowls on a desk, one of Rhys’s magazines with the front cover headline saying “get a six-pack stomach in six weeks”, a full-ashtray in Toshiko’s kitchen  (she was originally going to be a chain-smoker who gave up after episode 7).

 

You describe the alien ship very meticulously – do you do sketches of locations for writing?

I’m terrible at drawing. I visualise things, and then write down descriptions in words. For the Torchwood main locations, I had the benefit of seeing them for real. When it’s a hospital or an army camp, I can see those for real or find photos of them. For purley invented things like the alien ship, I work out what I think it will look like so that I can organise the “action” of a scene convincingly.

The location Cardiff itself plays a very important role in Another Life that obviously took a lot of effort – why was that so important to you?
Part of the brief about Torchwood was that Cardiff was central to the series. The Hub is positioned in the heart of the Millennium developments that replaced much of what was Tiger Bay, and the area has beautiful new buildings like the Millennium Centre and the Senedd, right next to the redbrick Pierhead Building that was built a century. And of course there’s the Water Tower, which people now tend to call “the Torchwood tower,”  that allegedly reaches down into the Torchwood Hub. (We had already seen the moss-covered base of the tower in the underground studio set, dripping with water.)

Long before the Water Tower became a tourist attraction for Torchwood fans, we three authors all stood on the flagstone in front of it and had our photo taken.

So with all that in mind, I decided that I was going to make Cardiff one of my „characters“ in the novel, and transform it out of all recognition during the story. Like all the other regular characters, of course, it had to be returned to normal by the end of the book!

Are you from Wales, or do you speak Welsh? 

No, I don’t speak any Welsh at all. Prior to this, the only time I had been to Wales was for family holidays.

 

The novel features rain and rain and rain – is that a normal thing for Cardiff?

It can be! The last time I took my family to Cardiff, it was very rainy indeed. But I’ve also been to Cardiff when the weather has been beautiful – blue skies and warm sun. In fact, that’s exactly how it was when I went there for my set visit. I knew I was writing a story where a storm would drown the city, and yet I was seeing it in bright sunshine!

 

How did you come up with the storyline for Another Life?

Unlike some other science fiction series, the regular characters in Torchwood don’t always get on together. There’s a rivalry and tension between them at various stages in series 1, that builds to the series climax where Owen confronts Jack. That was one starting point – Owen’s aspirations to take charge, to take the initiative and become like Jack.

The other thing I liked was that throughout series 1 Jack, for his own reasons, has kept everyone but Gwen in the dark about his immortality. So what’s the worst thing that could happen to him? To be possessed by a creature that will not leave him until he dies.

My original story outline was reviewed by Gary Russell and Executive Producer Russell T Davies, and after I got their feedback and approval I used that as the basis for writing the novel.

 

The novel features the simulation game “Second Reality” – is that something you yourself are facinated by? There is “Second Life” after all…

I was interested in virtual reality environment like “Second Life” because people have used them for games and social interaction. But I also see that they have potential for things like training or data analysis through physical interaction.

One of the things I learned early on about the fictional world of Torchwood was that they had lots of computing resources, so I thought they would be able to have lots of other realistic interactions in these “virtual presence” environments – and in a way that would make an interesting story.

 

Reading the novel, I was at first puzzled then fascinated by the first person perspective of the new characters. You have probably been laughing up your sleeve while writing this – can you explain why you did that?

I wanted to start the story in an innovative way that made readers react in the manner that viewers would have reacted when they saw the first episode. And because my alien completely controls its human victims, I thought it was a good way of giving the reader that feeling of being possessed by using the second-person narrative:  “You stare at the weapons, and don’t make eye-contact with the soldiers. Your face is impassive. You’ll give them no more clues.”

It’s also the sort of thing you get in some online games. Obviously, in modern games you have the immediate point-of-view of the character you’re playing on-screen. In older, text-based online games, that’s how the narrative was explained: “You open the door to reveal a candle-lit bridge over a dark chasm. A huge grey-skinned troll confronts you.” So that echoed the “Second Reality” part of my story.

 

Wasn’t it very hard to keep that up getting to the end of the story in the scene, when dialogue was involved?

Done throughout the book,  second-person narration would have been too alienating, literally. So I reserved it for those scenes where it was the alien point of view. The rest of the novel is in restricted third-person, and mostly the main characters: “Gwen remembered where she’d seen this kid before. He’d been been selling magazines by the covered market.”

That’s the conventional way of handling point-of-view in a modern novel, and to get your reader to identify with your protagonist. So later in the novel, when a sequence featuring one of the regulars is narrated in second-person, that ratchets up the tension – we know what’s happened before to characters in those scenes.

There aren’t many novels that use the second-person throughout. One of the best-known is Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City. That’s what I’m alluding to in the opening line of my novel.

 

What is the special horror about this kind of taking over a person’s body?

It’s the literal loss of self. But it’s not a zombie possession, where the original person is killed immediately. Their memories and experiences are all still there. We know from quite early on that the only thing you’ll be able to do when the alien releases you is this: you’ll be able to understand you’re about to die.

 

What about the icky starfish creatures?

What about them? It was one way of describing the alien lifecycle, and it gave me a visible monster for a couple of scenes. Plus I like the fact that each time they encounter one, it’s bigger than the last time.

We are learning a little bit about Owen’s background. How do you create a character like Megan?

There were some limits about what history I could invent for Owen. In part, that’s because the BBC prefers the key information to be explained in the TV series. And the other thing was that they had already started to decide what they might reveal about the main characters when they were planning series 2.

I wanted a character who would already have Owen’s trust because of their prior history – otherwise, I’d have spent a lot of the novel with scenes to establish that trust between strangers. In series 1, Owen was more driven by his selfishness, so it was a quick way of exploiting that weakness in his character for the purposes of my story.

 

Is there a favourite alien that you have in Torchwood?

I like the Weevils. I didn’t want to write a “Weevil” story for my novel, but I did work in a scene that featured one.

 

Is there a favourite alien device of yours? Is it possible for you to invent one for the sake of your story or do you keep a list of cool things?

I devised the Bekaran scanner for Another Life. It’s nice to have some novelty in the book. I was able to use that device as part of the story, but also to allow some amusing interaction between Owen and Megan. I discussed it with my fellow authors for the first few novels, so they referenced it in theirs as well. But I was very pleased when Joe Lidster subsequently reused the scanner in his script for a Torchwood radio play. I think it’s in one of the audio books, too.

My favourite gadget in the TV series is the metal glove from the very first episode. It looks like an old-fashioned armoured gauntlet, but it immediately defies expectations when they use it to bring someone back from the dead. Like any of the gadgets in the show, however, it’s not what it does that’s most important – it’s the aftermath of its use, and the effects on the characters.

 

Who is your favourite character on Torchwood?

I like them all, but I especially liked Owen. Not because he’s a particularly likeable person, however – in many ways, he’s quite unpleasant. But he’s a flawed hero, and that made him very interesting character to write for.

 

What would you like this character to experience? Do you have anything in mind you’d like to share?

It’s tricky to do anything for him now that he’s no longer in the series. I was able to find some interesting and different things for him to do in my second Torchwood novel, Pack Animals, that took into account the changes he experienced in series 2.

 

If you could place one of the Doctor Who aliens in a Torchwood novel – what is your pick?

They have already done it in a couple of Doctor Who stories. Daleks and Cybermen invaded Torchwood London in the episode “Doomsday.”  The Daleks also attack Torchwood Cardiff in “The Stolen Earth.” (That second one also has German Daleks! Although they say “Exterminieren,” and I‘m not sure that’s quite correct.)

 

Any ideas for possible crossovers of Doctor Who and Torchwood?

They have quite different audiences, I think. Torchwood is aimed much more clearly at an adult audience – particularly since the bleak but wonderful series 3 aired. Whereas Doctor Who is a programme designed for the whole family.

 

Hearing that there’s going to be a new season of Torchwood with new characters – what is the first thing that comes to the author’s mind?

Haha! The first thing that came to my mind was: “I wonder if they’re going to commission some tie-in novels?” If they do, I’ll let you know.

Four Doctors

The Big Finish news pages have revealed that I have written the Christmas release for their main Doctor Who audios range. I wrote it some time ago, but they’ve only just made the info public.

It features the four main Doctors in the Big Finish range — Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann. I’ve written audios for two of them in the past: I wrote “Bounty” for the  BBC audio book Earth & Beyond, which was Paul McGann’s first new story after the TV Movie; and The Chaos Pool was my conclusion of the Big Finish Key 2 Time trilogy, starring Peter Davison.

It was great fun to script this special set of episodes, which also (hurrah!) gave me a chance to do something exciting with the Daleks, too. The episodes are available exclusively to people who take out a subscription to Big Finish’s splendid monthly series of audio adventures.

I suppose I have now created adventures for eight of the eleven Doctors to date, if you count short story collections (second and third Doctors) and audio (tenth Doctor). If you’re counting on your fingers, you’ll realise that tots up to seven… I haven’t mentioned one of the remaining Doctors, because I only just signed the contract for that, and so an official announcement is still to come.

In other news, my two Torchwood novels are now available for the Kindle. This is very prompt, because I only signed the contract for that very recently.

Check out Another Life and Pack Animals at Amazon’s Kindle Store, from where you can get them “auto delivered wirelessly”. How can you resist?

As Random House (the latest owners of the BBC Books imprint) still have the rights to publish my previous Doctor Who novels, perhaps they will also recognise that they have a back catalogue of material that they could release as eBooks — and not just my novels, either, but lots of others that are either out of print or hard to obtain these days.

I suppose that will depend on whether they not only have the publishing rights but also the original text or print files.

But I think know someone who can help them with that if they really need it.

Thanks PLR

David Bishop’s splendid blog prompted me to check my Public Lending Rights (PLR) account. (David’s blog is itself worth checking, too.)

Authors registered with PLR can get an estimate of how popular their books were in British libraries over the year. To compensate for lost sales, PLR pays about sixpence for each time a book was borrowed.

As the PLR Newsletter reveals, more than 37,000 authors have registered, and 62% of us will get some form of payment this year. To ensure  that people like J K Rowling don’t scoop the entire pot, there’s a maximum payment of £6,600, paid out this year to 250 authors (well below 1% of all registered authors).

In order of popularity, my most read titles were:

1. Torchwood: Another Life

2. Torchwood: Pack Animals

3. Doctor Who: The Ancestor Cell

4. Doctor Who: Kursaal

5. Doctor Who: Frontier Worlds

My Torchwood books are more recent, and so it’s no surprise that they were borrowed much more than my older and out-of-print Doctor Who titles. I have to share my loot with Steve Cole for “The Ancestor Cell”; people still seem to be reading and, indeed, reviewing it. Steve himself lives in a world where dinosaurs fly spaceships and cows use a time machine. Try not to judge him too harshly.

Meanwhile, hurrah for the PLR. And thank you to the thousands of people who have borrowed my books from UK libraries.