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If you happen to be near Barcelona tomorrow and fancy going to the SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, Not Yet is being screened at the Auditori.

Not yet – 30sec Teaser from Tito Sacchi on Vimeo.

I co-wrote Not Yet with director Tito Sacchi, helping him refine his story and producing several different dialogue tracks, internal monologues for Simon, the character portrayed by Michael Gilroy. From the start I was convinced that the piece needed no such explanations, that it would stand up on the visuals alone. In the end we went with just the haunting, original score, composed by Peter Godfrey, and the strong visual storytelling that Tito is so remarkable at.

It was a great project to be involved with. Ben Mourra, the producer, and Tito assembled a fantastic crew, creating an atmosphere that was passionate, yet laid back, and always professional.

Jim Campbell has joined Larry and I working on the Ionmonger’s Daughter. He will be lettering Larry’s artwork in the coming months. Fingers crossed my dialogue won’t be too much of a pain to work with. You can see Jim Campbell’s lettering samples over at ComicSpace.

I’m still happily hacking away at the typeface, taking the nuggets I find and building them into my scripts.

I’ve just begun work on Sun Moon, I’m about halfway through the second chapter and currently discovering, inventing the characters voices and refining their personalities. I already have a very detailed outline to follow but until you begin writing the characters they don’t really come alive. When I’m happy, I’ll no doubt begin altering my plan, as the found voices will subtly change the outline, suggest new scenes and ways of approaching existing ones.

Doing exactly the same with Everything Ends, the feature film script I’m working on with Tito. I’m just about at the midpoint and desperately resisting the temptation to go back and revise, when I should be pushing on to the end. There’s too much of the perfectionist coming out in me, at least for these early stages of script development.

On a different note, Insomnia Publications had a fantastic weekend at BICS, see the BICS and Pieces blog post over at The Red Eye, while Cy Dethan’s The Citadel Of Comics – A Fantasy Convention In Which YOU Are The Hero! is worth any old school adventurer’s time for another perspective.

I’m really excited and grateful that Insomnia Publications has signed Sun Moon. I’ve been kicking around the idea in one form or another since before The Ionmonger’s Daughter and the opportunity to realise it now, as a graphic novel, is fantastic.

It is great keeping Sun Moon in the family, so to speak. Working with Larry and Insomnia on The Ionmonger’s Daughter has been a delight. Chatting with people on Twitter, reading people’s blogs, it is obvious everyone who is part of Insomnia is doing work they love, and it shows in the atmosphere and attitude of all involved.

Sun Moon
One ageing, one eternally young, two lovers must overcome the growing gulf, as their differing social classes remain locked in an endless cycle of oppression.

Sun Moon is the story of star and time crossed lovers, set against a backdrop of environmental disaster and segregation.

One of the underclass, Leto is the son of a cryogenic engineer and destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. A member of the ruling elite, Selene is a young and gifted scientist and one of Leto’s cryogenically frozen charges. As the years pass they fall in love, against the conventions of their segregated society and the counsel of their friends and peers.

For Leto their affair is a few brief days grabbed every few years, for Selene it is the passage of weeks, watching him grow from a boy to a man much older than her.

Together they journey aboard a city-like spaceship towards the promise of a new world and a new beginning. They leave behind them an overexploited, polluted and no longer habitable world, which Leto and generations of his class have never known.

They live in a rigid society, where at any given time the vast majority of the ruling elite rest in cryogenic sleep. Awoken every three years to undergo health checks, members of the elite live in luxury before handing over to the next group to be revived. In contrast the underclass are born, live their lives and die maintaining and running the ship. From the cryogenic suites to the hellish cathedrals of the vast engine rooms they toil in an endless endeavour.

Not Yet is being screened at the 2009 Palm Springs ShortFest on Friday, June 26, as part of Tales of the Unexpected. Working with everyone on this film was an absolute pleasure and I’m really glad that it now starting to hit the festival circuit. This also means I have my first credit on IMDB.

Not yet – 30sec Teaser from Tito Sacchi on Vimeo.

I’ve finished a complete draft of the Ionmonger’s Daughter. There is still a long way to go yet, and collaborating with Larry is suggesting new ideas and ways of presenting the story, but I’m pleased with how it is coming together. The draft is now with my editor and a couple of trusted writing friends for their critique.

It has been an interesting journey so far, hopefully one that will do justice to the themes of honour, obsession and war. Finding a way to keep the protagonist in charge of her destiny opposed to becoming just a victim of her circumstances has proved to be the hardest balancing act. It has already taken a lot of planning, plus writing and rewriting to work out how to pull this off.

So, what next? Well, I’m going to step away from the Ionmonger’s Daughter for at least a couple of weeks if not more, apart from collaborating with Larry. In the meantime I’m going to be working on a feature film script with Tito, which was born out of a short film script we had been working on together. A bitter-sweet ghost story, we’ve boiled down all the elements we liked and have mixed them back together with many new ideas and elements to create a new story. In the coming few weeks I’ll be putting these together and writing a first draft. In the background, I’ve also got another graphic novel pitch and horror film script to work on.

And now to plug another Insomnia graphic novel…

Burke And Hare
Writer: Martin Conaghan
Artist: Will Pickering
Letters: Paul McLaren
Cover: Rian Hughes
Foreword: Alan Grant

Over a 12 month period from 1827-1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, two Irishmen by the names of William Burke and William Hare murdered 16 people and disposed of their bodies to the eminent dissectionist Dr Robert Knox at 10 Surgeon’s Square. Delve into the murky, misquoted history of Scotland’s most notorious serial killers with a research-based graphic novel that unwravels a ghoulish story of medicine, murder and money.

You can pre-order Burke and Hare from Amazon.

Insomnia has posted about The Ionmonger’s Daughter, A Peep Behind The Ion Curtain, on their blog The Red Eye.

Nic has posted up some of Larry’s concept sketches of Victoria and a couple of the page roughs, as well as Larry and I waxing lyrical about the project.

I’m excited how this project is coming together. Larry is great to collaborate with, while the support of Insomnia is helping us create something I hope will be quite special.

There is lots to do yet, but enjoying the journey so far.

Insomnia had a fantastic weekend in Bristol; you can read all about it on their blog.

Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth by Cy Dethan and Stephen Downey, was in great demand. So was Layer Zero: Choices, featuring Erratum, a short sci-fi story written by me and drawn by Des Langford.

Des worked incredibly hard on Erratum, finding the time when he was facing many external trials and tribulations, and I’m very grateful for his dedication.