It’s time I admitted to a particular vice; an addiction I have that would be impossible to break, even if I wanted to. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s an obsession of mine…

I’m a Laurel and Hardy fan. Actually, ‘fan’ might be too weak a word for how I feel about ‘the boys’.

Stan Laurel, in particular, is my hero. The greatest clown the world has ever seen (in my humble opinion), Stan was born in Ulverston in the Lake District and began life in show business as understudy for one Charlie Chaplin. Moving to the US to stake his claim in Hollywood, Stan found that the film stock of the time meant that his eyes appeared as little more than dark holes on screen. He was relegated to the production room where he honed is craft as a master gagsmith and creator of stunning set pieces.

When technical improvements meant he could once again star on the silver screen, a fortuitous pairing with a certain Oliver ‘Babe’ Hardy began a partnership that would endure a lifetime and beyond. Stan and Ollie are comic perfection. If I could even come close to the genius of pushing a piano up a set of steps in The Music Box, or repairing a boat in Towed In A Hole, I would end my days a very happy man.

I have film cells, photos, portraits and, of course, DVDs of the duo in action. In fact, I may have to take a break from work to watch one now…

Tommy

A closer look at the first four titles in the Scream Street series, published this October from Walker Books..

Scream Street: Fang of the Vampire

Meet Luke Watson: reluctant werewolf and Scream Street’s latest arrival…

With his new friends, Resus Negative (wannabe vampire) and Cleo Farr (tomboy mummy), Scream Street might just be somewhere Luke can call home. However, there’s one small problem – his parents are terrified by their new neighbours. Can Resus and Cleo help Luke find a doorway back to the real world before they’re scared to death?

—

Scream Street: Blood of the Witch

Scream Street has been invaded – by vampire rodents…

Luke, Resus and Cleo are already on the trail of the second relic, a vial of witch’s blood. But, obstacles abound – first the evil Sir Otto Sneer turns off the blood supply, then a swarm of vampire rats emerge from the sewers and now all the residents have been infected with vampire Energy. Will Luke and his friends have to choose between finding the relic and saving their neighbours?

—

Scream Street: Heart of the Mummy

Scream Street just got darker…

Scream Street has been shrouded in constant night for as long as anyone can remember, but things look really black when millions of spiders escape, covering everything with their suffocating webs. Luke, Resus and Cleo have their work cut out to control the creepy-crawlies while searching for the third relic, the heart of an ancient mummy – and Sir Otto is determined to fight them all the way.

—

Scream Street: Flesh of the Zombie

The zombies have arrived in Scream Street…

Deadstock, the world’s greatest zombie rock festival, has come to Scream Street! Sir Otto Sneer, however, has other plans. When he pulls the plug on the concert by banishing the flesh-metal band, Brain Drain, to the evil Underlands, the result is a zombie riot. If Luke and his friends want to restore peace to the street and find the fourth relic, they’ll have to follow the band – into the darkest depths of the earth…

Writing uses muscles, and I don’t just mean the ones in your fingers as you type. I’ve had a couple of days away from my desk, doing house and family stuff. Last night, I came back to work on SS5, and found that I couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to write; I’d planned the next chapter out in detail. It was just that I’d let my writing muscles go cold.

So, I had to break through the cold crust and get back to the hot story magma below. That meant writing what felt like a chapter of utter rubbish in order to warm my muscles up again. I put the chapter to one side without reading it – I’ll get to that at some point today. It may be that it’s not as bad as it felt as I was typing the words; some of it may be usable, although I know my protagonists weren’t as involved as they should be. Still, the chapter served a purpose in that it helped get the creative juices flowing again. Sometimes, you have to write through the pain to get to the reward.

Tommy

Ooh, I’m all excited! My new iMac arrived today, contributing to my fandom of all things Apple. It’s a big computer, right enough, and the bluetooth keyboard and mouse are a joy to use. The 24″ screen is a beast next to my 13″ Macbook:

You can see Eddie – the Headless Horseman’s skull on the desk there, along with my new skull pen holder. I have other fake skulls and bones dotted around the room to keep me in the spooky mood when I’m writing.

My Mac Mini has been relegated to the other side of the office:

So, a new working environment for me (and just the excuse I needed to clean my office!) Let’s hope it helps to produce some good work.

Tommy

I need silence in order to write.

I wish I didn’t. I wish, like other writers, that I could have the radio on in the background or, at the very least, some instrumental music to inspire me. But, I can’t. I can’t have any music playing at all. It makes it impossible for me to think if I do.

The same goes for the TV. My office is far enough away from the living room for me not to be able to hear it and, if Arran’s playing computer games in his bedroom next door, I make him turn the volume down so that it doesn’t disturb me. Poor kid.

Right, I’m about to get back to work, so shhh! Keep it down!

Tommy

Now, I don’t actually subscribe to the notion of writers’ block; if you can’t write, it’s because you don’t know enough about your story or characters. Something that can easily be fixed with a brainstorming session, allowing you to proceed.

I do, however, believe in the situation where a writer doesn’t know what should come next or, even if he does, exactly how it should develop. These moments come quite regularly when you write for a living, and you have to find a way around them so that you can get over the obstacle, and hit your target for the day. Some writers move on to another area of the book or script, others switch projects entirely. Here’s how I do it…

I clean.

Literally. I clean things in the house. Happened to me this very afternoon, in fact. I was merrily tapping away at SS5 when I came to what will be a big action scene that turns the story on its head. In screenwriting terms, it would be called a plot point. Only, I wasn’t sure exactly how it should play out for best effect.

So, instead of sitting and staring at a blank screen, I went downstairs and cleaned the cooker. Top to bottom, inside and out. I didn’t give up on my problem entirely; I let my subconscious work away at the scene while I scrubbed. And – as it does every time – my mind solved the problem for me. The answer just popped in there while I was busy doing something else.

Of course, that ‘something else’ doesn’t have to be housework, but getting a few brownie points from Kirsty while I’m letting my brain work on a writing problem doesn’t hurt. In fact, whenever she catches me cleaning during the day now, she’ll often ask if I’m stuck on something. All you need is another activity that will keep you busy and leave your mind free to roll up its sleeves and attack the obstacle in your way. Trust me, it works.

So, what will you do to occupy yourself while your subconscious continues to write? Come clean…

Tommy

I tried to get some writing done this afternoon, I really did. But…

My 8 (er… 9) year old got a Wii for his birthday, and it needed testing. I mean, anything could have happened if I’d just set it up and let him play with it straight away. So, I had to work all the kinks out of the system.

For a few hours.

Tommy

PS – I rock at Wii Sports baseball!

…and the TV unit, and the DVD cupboard, and the living room door, and the fireplace. And, if I’m to be perfectly honest, they’re more scribbles than pieces of prose.

Yes, my 18-month old son, Sam, has reached the scribbling on the wall stage:

Curiously enough, he makes a point of carefully choosing his colours for each medium. Only ever green or red on the walls, orange on the door and black for the fireplace and furniture. I’m sure some child psychologist somewhere could make something out of that. Me? Well, I may be biased, but I just think there’s genuine talent there.

Tommy

Darren Shan has made a couple of very interesting posts on why writers write over at his blog. Some of his readers asked why anyone would sit down at a keyboard day after day if success is not guaranteed and, even if you are published, the financial rewards are often not enough to live on.

It’s a fair question, and one that’s not easily answered. Certainly if you’re out to make money, writing is not the game for you. The time and work you have to put in to learn the craft, perfect your style, produce the content and then maybe, only maybe, get published, is never worth the pay out at the end unless you become a superstar author like JK Rowling or Stephen King.  Many writers, even after they’re published, have to continue in a day job in order to make ends meet.  Publication doesn’t necessarily come with fame and fortune attached.

There is, and never will be, a magical shortcut to getting published; something Darren goes into in quite some depth. And yet, you wouldn’t believe how often we published authors get asked for that secret. Trust me, if there was such a shortcut, would Stephen King have cleaned hospital sheets each day before heading home to his trailer to work on Carrie in the toilet (the only space he had to write)? Would JK Rowling have sat, day after day, in Edinburgh’s coffee shops so that she wasn’t spending out to heat her flat while she worked? No, they would have flicked the ‘publish now’ switch and jumped to the rolling in money phase.

You have to work hard. You have to learn your craft. You have to write. It sounds so obvious, but there are so many people out there who don’t want to be writers – they want to have written something. Well, there’s only one way that’s going to happen. You’ve got to sit yourself down and press keys or push a pencil. And don’t start telling me that you haven’t got the time – an Italian writer recently wrote his first novel on a mobile ‘phone during his daily commute to and from work. He did it all in predictive text mode, then copied it onto his computer each night. Now, I’m not suggesting you start texting an entire novel but, if you want it as much as that guy obviously did, you’ll do it.

So, why do we write? Why do we put ourselves through months and years of stress, rejection and hardship in the hope that, one day, someone will take our work and publish it for others to read?

Simple. We’re writers. We can’t not write.

Tommy

I’m delighted to finally reveal the covers for the first four titles in the Scream Street series:

I think they’re fantastic! What do you think?

Tommy