Archive for the ‘Dirk Dangerous’ Category

It’s over a year since Astonishing Adventures #8 came out including Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom.  I think that’s long enough to leave it before posting the whole story here.  So now available for your delectation and delight the first adventure of Dirk Dangerous and his companion Johnny – Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom.

I realised I’d not posted a progress report on any of my writing for ages. Its far too easy to update twitter and forget to mention stuff here.

I finished a completely rewritten draft of the Role Playing Game that’s been occupying a lot of my writing time for the last year. The plan was to make it leaner and more focused. This draft came in 7000 words longer and exactly the same number of pages so it isn’t leaner. However it is now more focussed with more detail where it was needed. So I need to circulate it and see what reaction it gets.

I took a look at the reworked opening to NitS that I wrote last year. I hate it so I need to go back to square one. The core story of NitS is written (although it will need a thorough edit at some point) but I’m struggling with the outer story as NitS takes the form of an investigation of the story. Still it’s not a lost cause.

I scribbled down the first few pages longhand of a short story on Thursday night that came to me thinking about some of the pictures in Exposed at Tate Modern. Discovering the book for the exhibition was a lot cheaper on Amazon than at the Tate I’ve ordered a copy as additional inspiration. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve a couple of Dirk Dangerous short stories I must post up over on the Dirk Dangerous web site. I must try to find a pulp zine since Astonishing Adventures Magazine really seems to have gone (although I’m happy to be corrected on that). I’ve a good stand alone DD story that needs finishing and I’d like to continue the serial adventure I began by accident to see where it winds up.

I’ve been scribbling some notes on a very old idea for an RPG that has overtones of The Prisoner; The Invaders; and Health and Safety films. The system for it is very lightweight. The big idea is that the setting should be mostly detailed on a large map of the key location with lots of margin notes and scribblings.

Above the main door into the Georges Dock Ventilation Tower and Central Station is this statue: Speed – the Modern Mercury.  The relief in Portland Stone (one of my favourite construction materials) is seven meters tall including the base.  It was designed by Herbert J. Rowse and the sculptor was Edmund C. Thompson assisted by George T. Capstick.

It is just one of the details on the art deco structures of the Mersey Road Tunnel that show the egyptian styling Sir Basil Mott, J. A. Brodie and Herbert J. Rowse included in the designs.  For example each of the ventilation shafts takes the form of a stylised obelisk.  The tunnel was constructed between 1925 and 1934 during the Egyptian craze following Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

I have an incomplete Planet of Danger short story Dirk Dangerous and the Mummy that features a climax in the tunnel.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine #8 is out now.  Find out how to get it at DirkDangerous.com.

Four years in the making I’ve just put DirkDangerous.com live including an exclusive short story One of THOSE days.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine has accepted my short story Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom for issue 8.  I’ve one minor rewrite to do and I’m going to look at adding back in some of what I cut to get it down to 3000 words since their word limits gone up since I first wrote it.  Hopefully it will make more sense as a sequel to The Steward, the Kriegsherr, his Femme Fatale & her Brother with the addition of a few extra scenes.

I’ve spent the day finishing the first draft of Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom – as usual the stories over the 3500 word limit for AAM. So I’ll have to slim it down in draft 2.

When it was quiet late on Friday night I recorded the first half of myself reading The Electron Jockey. I’ve spent some of today editing the first Planet of Danger cast which will eventually be a part of the, yet to be launched, Dirk Dangerous web site. So far I’m about half way through the recording and editing of the PoD Cast. I also need to turn the design for the site in to a template for Word Press so I can get the site up and running soon.

I got inspiration for the Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle tonight and pushed on through the next scene and past the 3,500 word limit which is a problem as I’m not close to the end yet. However I scrimped on a couple of earlier sections so I’m thinking I could expand them and move some of this story off into a second 3,500 word story. However that would push back introducing Dirk Dangerous by another story. Since Dirk is really the hero of the piece I ought to bring him in sometime. I’ve run across off screen villains before but never an off screen hero…

I’ve been using the wibbly wobbly web and associated Internet thingy for well over a decade now. In that time I’ve made friends all over the world including America. Funny thing is that today is the first time I can remember being wished happy thanksgiving. Its not just happened once though but several times.

Anyway when I wrote The Electron Jockey I was planning it as a one off so I didn’t think a lot about continuity, setting or well much other than the story itself. Then Tim at Astonishing Adventures Magazine! suggested I might write something else with the same characters so I knocked out The Steward, the Kriegsherr, his Femme Fatale & her Brother (tStKhFF&tB)which has been picked up for issue 2. Still not a lot to worry about – when a plane first came into use and a period of China’s history. Now I was starting to plan longer term so I found another hook in The Electron Jockey to hang Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle from and one at the end of tStKhFF&tB to hang another off that will also need to follow on from Mrs H.’s Knitting Circle – Dirk Dangerous and the Giant Balls of Doom.

But me being me I started to think if this is going to turn in to a strange series of short stories all hooked up in a vaguely serial form and with a common background I need to start keeping track of things. I need to fix the chronology a bit better than sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Now Mrs H.’s pushes the setting in to being alternate history because its premise and its title require two prominent historical figures to marry who didn’t. That doesn’t bother me too much. However it also means that these stories have to be post prohibition and I had a nice idea for a story featuring one of the characters in a prohibition era situation.

So my dilema is do I do unto US history what Hollywood has done to the rest of the worlds history for years or do I at least vaguely try and keep within some sort of reasonable chronology?

Trust me to do it on Thanksgiving. And to all my American friends have a happy thanksgiving.