Out of Office

The plan today was to write something long and in-depth about SOMETHING, but then the cold/flu/whatever that is doing the rounds sunk its claws into me over the last couple of days and I'm sitting here woozily typing, with no voice to speak of (or with), a sore throat, aching limbs - the whole nine yards.

And so I'm going to be brief, and I'm going to take the opportunity to do a little housekeeping and to outline a few ideas for the future.

As you know, the "Pro" side of things here is mostly an opportunity for me to write a little more in-depth about writing for screen and audio, and about directing, and about related tips and processes. When I get the bit between my teeth, I really enjoy this, but it can be difficult sometimes to land on a particular topic - I have made the deadly error of not giving myself much of a brief and so I sometimes suffer from a self-inflicted "just write whatever you want" paralysis.

The Pro membership exists to help cover the costs of this site, but it should also be an opportunity to create some sense of community. We have done that very successfully with the Cartoon Gravity Club, but not everyone wants to download an app and be part of an online community. To that end, I have now opened up comments again across this whole site, so that anyone who wants to share an idea or an observation can do so. You need to be logged into the site, but that (and civility, obviously) is the only requirement.

Specific to this piece today, I'm asking what you want me to write about in these pro letters. I'm not promising to obey any and all commands, but it would be really handy to know if there are any burning questions or areas of illumination that I have not yet thought to address. Even a bad idea may lead to a good one, and at least a few suggestions might spark something for next time.

I'm also beavering away on a new feature here, tentatively called "The Rabbit Hole". Those of you who are paid members of the Pleasant Green site will be aware of "The Attic", which is the developing repository for information about that universe. Over here, the Rabbit Hole will be a similar thing but on much broader themes - I want to offer up a twisting, turning archive of notes, images, links etc, like an evolving digital commonplace book that Pro members can dip into and get lost in. For some reason, my mental image for this is the staircase in House of Leaves, but that's just how my mind works - don't let it worry you.

The Rabbit Hole will never be "finished" but I do want to wait until it is pretty stuffed with... stuff... before I launch it. So let's label that as "Coming Soon".

I'm also still noodling with what a Cartoon Gravity podcast might sound like... I'd really like to do one, but I'm still sketching out ideas.

In real-life, for those keeping tabs, the first two episodes of Crowley are now written and we're on to episode 3. Mythos 4 is coming down the pipeline and I'll be breaking ground on that in a couple of weeks. We record Crowley in December and Mythos in January. Elsewhere, I am on the home straight of a new movie script that I hope to be handing over to my reps in a week or so, and I'm taking a new TV show out to networks in the US at the end of the month. There's also some encouraging movement on a couple of movies that I want to make myself next year. Watch this space...

Oh, and I teased the idea of a Lovecraft Investigations 5 crowdfund in a Kickstarter update last week. That will happen, but I think we need to deliver SOMETHING on the Crowley/Mythos one first.

Lastly, while I can still stay upright, it would be great to have a better sense of who you guys are. Some of you came over from Substack, some via the Pleasant Green or Aldrich Kemp stuff, some were process nerds who were already on Cartoon Gravity, and I think we picked up a fair few people from the Crowley Kickstarter. But it feels like I have not yet met many of you.

I'm not on social media any more (oh, the joy), which means that my only interaction with subscribers now is via the occasional e-mail or via the Cartoon Gravity Club. As mentioned above, I'm re-opening comments on this site right now, so please feel free to introduce yourselves if you haven't already - it would be great to get a sense of who I'm talking to.

Normal service will resume soon.