White Witch of Devil’s End – release date

Just in from Kevin Barnfather  of Reeltime Pictures Ltd – release details for White Witch of Devil’s End  DVD

 Reeltime Pictures are pleased to announce a new drama production for release on DVD to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Doctor Who.

White Witch of Devil’s End is a spin-off from the highly regarded Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Daemons and will star Damaris Hayman reprising her role as Miss Hawthorne.

At the grand age of 84 (in June this year), you’d expect Damaris would be happy to be enjoying retirement quietly in her Cheltenham home … but no! When approached by producer Keith Barnfather about the idea she jumped at the chance. “I shall retire, I think in my coffin!  Miss Hawthorne was my all-time favourite role and I was enchanted by the thought of being her again for a little while.”

“I was amazed and delighted that, as an octogenarian, Damaris was prepared to take this on,” says Keith. “We had recently recorded an interview with her for our Myth Makers series profiling actors who had appeared in Doctor Who and I already knew she still had a hunger to act. But I really didn’t expect her to be so keen.”

Although eager to take the project on, Damaris knew she had to pace herself, so in an innovative move, director Anastasia Stylianou decided to film the drama in a “talking head” style – adding dramatic cutaway material to bring Damaris’s words to life!

Says Anastasia; “I knew it would be a challenge. We needed to film a 50 minute drama at least, so I decided to make an asset out of a limitation.”

Primary filming has already taken place at a cottage near Damaris’s home. The crew collected and returned Damaris each day – allowing her to return home each evening to recover and study the next day’s script!

“We used autocue to help Damaris,” says Keith. “It was an impossible task for any actor to learn so much dialogue. Damaris was a true professional and took to it instantly.”

With a planned release date of 31^st October, which is appropriately also Halloween, Anastasia hopes to have the project completed for the 50^th anniversary celebrations. “It’s just getting all the dramatic cutaway material ‘in the can’ that is crucial. The drama is really an anthology – a set of connecting stories about Olive’s life told, as it were, in her own words.”

When considering who to approach to write these stories which would exist within an overall theme, Keith immediately thought to contact old friend David J Howe at Telos Publishing. “I thought it would be fantastic to ask individual writers knowledgeable in the occult and magic to write each story and David, through Telos, knew so many of the best young talent in the country.”

“I was delighted when Keith got in touch,” says David Howe, “and immediately started to think of who might be a good fit for the project. Along with my partner, the award-winning author Sam Stone, we contacted several authors who we felt would be sympathetic to the material and were pleased to get them all on board for the project.”

“I took on the task of outlining the whole story,” says Sam Stone, “and then asked the writers to come up with ideas which fitted that framework. We needed to tell stories at different points in Olive Hawthorne’s life, and the writers rose to the challenge and delivered scripts which exceeded all my expectations. I then worked with them to refine the scripts into the completed screenplay.”

The writers involved in the project are, as well as David J Howe and Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Debbie Bennett, Jan Edwards and Suzanne J Barbieri, with a final script-polish from Big Finish writer Matt Fitton. All have brought a unique perspective on Olive’s life, and the end result is an anthology of tales which will surprise, entertain and hopefully move the viewer.

Does Damaris have any regrets about throwing herself into such a big commitment? “Definitely not! I was enchanted to work with Anastasia and Keith again, who are great friends anyway. After a lot of working together consulting over the scripts, I’d subsequently never enjoyed filming more – and I can’t wait now to see the final result.”

RELEASED BY: REELTIME PICTURES LTD

RRP: £12.99

PROVISIONAL RELEASE DATE: 31/10/2013

PRE-ORDER FROM: Galaxy 4: www.galaxy4.co.uk/product.thtml?id=3556&vts=geBkAgQ

***

Olive is a rather special Dr Who character. Both quintessentially  English and a strong female character.  I had a great time as part of the script team for this one and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

(jan)

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A-Z Cities of Death

A-Z Cities of Death, Edited by Dean M. Drinkel,  Static Movement, 2013 

“Travel the world from Adelaide to Zebulan. Twenty-six stories of death and danger in Twenty-six cities from Twenty-six talented writers!”

A Is For Adelaide by Steven Gepp
B Is For Baltimore by Ron Koppelberger
C Is For Calais by Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet
D Is For Darktowne by Ran Cartwright
E Is For Erum by Robert Tangiers
F Is For Fortune by Paul Woodward
G Is For Gotham by John X. Grey
H Is For Harbin by G.R. Yeates
I Is For Intrepid by City George Wilhite
J Is For Johannesburg by Suzanne van Rooyen
K Is For Kathmandu by Dave Fragments
L Is For Lobo by Sandra Norval
M Is For Miami by Rachel Chipp
N Is For Necropolis by Richard Salter
O Is For Ottawa by Carrie Orr
P Is For Paris by Dean M Drinkel
Q Is For Quito by Sean Monaghan
R Is For Ripon by Philip Meeks
S Is For Stoke-On-Trent by Jan Edwards
T Is For The Greatest City In America by S. Wayne Roberts
U Is For Ur by Jonathan Green
V Is For Venice by Edward McKeown
W Is For Waddington by Jason Brawn
X Is For Xanadu by Steven Gepp
Y Is For York by R.S. Pyne
Z Is For Zebulan by Justin Miles

Now available from Amazonuk  and Amazon.com

 

Selective Memory

I found a large bruise on my arm this morning and was thinking ‘where the hell did that come from?’ And then I remembered

Gardening –  a dangerous occupation in my hands.I was tussling with an especially large and tenacious dandelion when it snapped off at the base (as they do), sending me flying backwards in a perfect, albeit unplanned, backward roll. (You wouldn’t know to look at me now but I used to be in the school gym team.)

I only halted the fall by grabbing hold of the jutting remains of a cypresses tree and landed just inches from a three foot drop over a terrace wall, below which is a swathe of newly emerged geraniums. They would have been rendered green pancakes for the season, but there would have been a soft landing of sorts. Small compensation I suspect.

Granted it must have looked quite spectacular, not to mention hilarious, but my first instinct was sit up and check that nobody was watching.

As luck would have it my only audience seemed to be the chickens; no doubt wondering why those succulent leaves had been scattered to the winds and not into their run.  Stomachs on legs, the lot of them!

Not sure which is more surprising. The fact that I had fallen on my arse (and being a walking disaster area since I could first walk that wasn’t likely), or that I had totally forgotten my stint as chicken-entertainer.

Senior moment or selective memory?

Garden looks nice though…

Paranormal Roots

When Mick Walters asked me to give a talk on Paranormal in Fiction to the Mystery Society in Stoke I blithely said ‘yes, no problem’ without giving it any thought.

I gave that talk last week and I think it went reasonably well, i.e. I hope I didn’t bore people too much. I was asked questions, so there must have been interest.

I had fun doing it, but oh prepping was a panic-striker.

Writing a fair few ghost tales and dark urban fantasy stories as I do I thought it would be simple enough. Then I looked up the definition of paranormal and broke into a sweat.  Don’t get me wrong, I knew the definition, but didn’t ‘know’ it.  That is to say I hadn’t really given it much thought.

Anomalistics

Cryptozoology

Paranormal phenomena

Paranormal hoaxes and frauds

Parapsychology

Ufology

Urban myths and legends involving the paranormal

And that is just the basics.

Once you begin to think about how much of what we read or watch in films and tv programmes relates to paranormal it becomes overwhelming. I could have stood there just listing titles for several hours and never once repeated myself.

But the biggest question of all was how far back should I start?

Victorian Ghost Stories?

Gothic Novels?

Macbeth?

Homer’s Odyssey?

Yeah, okay, for practical purposes most people would just include the books you could buy in the here and now – maybe back as far as say Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho?  Or did I need to go that far?

Stressing much, because once I’ve started, the OCD kicks in and I can’t rest until I think I’ve found a good candidate for the source of my pararormally-fictional Nile. Except that it’s not really possible.

If you consider the definition of Paranormal  as: pertaining to events or perceptions occurring without scientific explanation, as clairvoyance or extrasensory perception, and you make the assumption that the further  in time you go the less the understanding mankind had of the world’s origins, then potentially? It stretches back as far back as spoken word.

Makes you think, dunnit?

White Witch of Devil’s End – Doctor Who DVD

Just in from Kevin Barnfather  of Reeltime Pictures Ltd – release details for White Witch of Devil’s End  DVD.

Reeltime Pictures are pleased to announce a new drama production for release on DVD to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.

White Witch of Devil’s End is a spin-off from the highly regarded Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Daemons and will star Damaris Hayman reprising her role as Miss Hawthorne.

At the grand age of 84 (in June this year), you’d expect Damaris would be happy to be enjoying retirement quietly in her Cheltenham home … but no! When approached by producer Keith Barnfather about the idea she jumped at the chance. “I shall retire, I think in my coffin!  Miss Hawthorne was my all-time favourite role and I was enchanted by the thought of being her again for a little while.”

“I was amazed and delighted that, as an octogenarian, Damaris was prepared to take this on,” says Keith. “We had recently recorded an interview with her for our Myth Makers series profiling actors who had appeared in Doctor Who and I already knew she still had a hunger to act. But I really didn’t expect her to be so keen.”

Although eager to take the project on, Damaris knew she had to pace herself, so in an innovative move, director Anastasia Stylianou decided to film the drama in a “talking head” style – adding dramatic cutaway material to bring Damaris’s words to life!

Says Anastasia; “I knew it would be a challenge. We needed to film a 50 minute drama at least, so I decided to make an asset out of a limitation.

Primary Filming has already taken place at a cottage near Damaris’s home. The crew collected and returned Damaris each day – allowing her to return home each evening to recover and study the next day’s script!

“We used autocue to help Damaris,” says Keith. “It was an impossible task

With a planned release date of 31st October, which is appropriately also Halloween, Anastasia hopes to have the project completed for the 50th anniversary celebrations. “It’s just getting all the dramatic cutaway material ‘in the can’ that is crucial. The drama is really an anthology – a set of connecting stories about Olive’s life told, as it were, in her own words.”for any actor to learn so much dialogue. Damaris was a true professional and took to it instantly.”

When considering who to approach to write these stories which would exist within an overall theme, Keith immediately thought to contact old friend David J Howe at Telos Publishing. “I thought it would be fantastic to ask individual writers knowledgeable in the occult and magic to write each story and David, through Telos, knew so many of the best young talent in the country.”

“I was delighted when Keith got in touch,” says David Howe, “and immediately started to think of who might be a good fit for the project. Along with my partner, the award-winning author Sam Stone, we contacted several authors who we felt would be sympathetic to the material and were pleased to get them all on board for the project.”

“I took on the task of outlining the whole story,” says Sam Stone, “and then asked the writers to come up with ideas which fitted that framework. We needed to tell stories at different points in Olive Hawthorne’s life, and the writers rose to the challenge and delivered scripts which exceeded all my expectations. I then worked with them to refine the scripts into the completed screenplay.”

The writers involved in the project are, as well as David J Howe and Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Debbie Bennett, Jan Edwards and Suzanne J Barbieri, with a final script-polish from Big Finish writer Matt Fitton. All have brought a unique perspective on Olive’s life, and the end result is an anthology of tales which will surprise, entertain and hopefully move the viewer.

Does Damaris have any regrets about throwing herself into such a big commitment? “Definitely not! I was enchanted to work with Anastasia and Keith again, who are great friends anyway. After a lot of working together consulting over the scripts, I’d subsequently never enjoyed filming more – and I can’t wait now to see the final result.” 

RELEASED BY: REELTIME PICTURES LTD

RRP: £12.99

PROVISIONAL RELEASE DATE: 31/10/2013

PRE-ORDER FROM: Galaxy 4: www.galaxy4.co.uk/product.thtml?id=3556&vts=geBkAgQ

***

Olive is a rather special Dr Who character. Both quintessentially  English and a strong female character.  I had a great time as part of the script team for this one and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

(jan)

Events in May – the bus phenomenon!

Yes, I know it is a terrible cliche, but sometimes it really does seem as though events in life are like buses. Nothing interesting happens for months and then two things come along at once that are fun, exciting, and if I am a little honest – rather SCARY!

At the end of April not a sausage by way of events in the offing and suddenly there are two for me to mither on about!

Firstly I was recently asked my Mick Walters  to give a talk on The Paranormal in Fiction for the Mysteries Group in Stoke-on-Trent http://www.facebook.com/groups/74854923532/

This one is taking place next week (Tuesday 20th May) at the Red Lion in Harthill, Stoke.  Paranormal in Fiction is a huge subject and I only hope I can do it justice.

Then the chance came along for a radio slot on Paul Oldfield’s Nite Klub (CRE8 Radio 87.7 fm)  So – on Tuesday 28th May at 9pm  I shall be talking about both my writing in fantasy and horror and also about Reiki.

For those who don’t already know, in addition to writing fiction and editing for the Alchemy Press  I am also a Reiki Master Practitioner. Though currently I don’t ‘practition’ nearly often enough so if you need Reiki I’m your gal! (shameless plug over).

I’m keeping everything crossed that I don’t make a complete arse of myself in the process of either and I promise to blog the sordid outcomes of both of them as they pass, for good or bad.

Only thing left to say is… eeeeeek!

The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 2: contributors announced