'Orange swirls,' by me, via Flickr

It is amazing where ideas come from, and how quickly a plot can form if you only leave it to stew in the back of your mind while you get on with other things. Active consideration of plots and storylines is all well and good but passive consideration, where the parts of the brain you aren’t using for whatever you’re concentrating on are put to use on something else, is sometimes even more effective. Take today for example.

I have been putting together a project with my friend Jade Stewart over at Here Film This Productions for quite some time now. Way back in April last year (almost to the day, in fact) we started discussing a joint project for our two companies. The project is currently going under the working title of SlackerReality but this will very likely change before everything is ready for release. We are scheduled to begin filming in late summer but until now, the project was proving difficult to get going because there was no real plotline for it that stood up to scrutiny. We’ve had plots but they weren’t great.

Today I came up with one that everyone who’s seen it thinks is great. Not only that but it’s a plot that splits very nicely into three sections, so we can actually get three series worth of storyline out of this. That, to me, is amazing considering the whole thing came to me in an epiphany earlier today. I’ll keep you posted on how the actual scripts come together. Getting the overall ideas down will help with scripting but that doesn’t mean everything will be smooth sailing. I’m sure there will be hurdles still to overcome.

In other news, I spent an hour today studying what lawyers refer to as The Vandervell Saga. This is a particularly troublesome part of trusts law that I have had problems getting my head around in the past. I think I understand it now so it was time well spent but damn that’s an annoyingly cumbersome piece of case law.

Still, it should prove useful in the future so I can’t complain too much. Now it’s time to get back to revision!

If you use Second Life, this message is hilarious

One of the most difficult aspects of recovering from a life-changing illness is that there are many days when you think you are going to be fine from here on in. You feel great. You know you’re back on top form and you’re ready to take on the world.

And then you feel awful again in a matter of days, or maybe even hours.

I am on the road to recovery following what has really been a year of hell, during which the whirlwind of mania grew ever larger and culminated in a period of hypermania before exploding in January. It has not been an easy path but it is working out.

I’m getting far more good days than bad now, but even that is not perfect. Why? I don’t have a proper job right now, so now I don’t need to struggle with keeping my head together (and believe me, it has been a struggle) I just need to struggle with boredom. It is crippling me. I work on comics, I produce videos but that’s all. I need to write more, but I’m still spending a lot of time drawing absolute blanks.

I am focussed on revising for my final exam right now. I have 10 days left. It is going well but I am worried sick that the work I do in preparation for it will not be enough. Last time I took an exam, I was caught up in the middle of the whirlwind and I felt like I knew everything. Everything in the whole damn world. I crashed and burned badly. It was one of the factors that eventually brought me down to Earth with a sickening thud. I’m scared that is going to happen again.

Still, I have 10 days left to prepare myself as best I can. Let’s hope it’s enough.

The new set for Series 2 of The April Kohl Show

I’m one of those people for whom the solitary lifestyle of the writer is a blessing. I enjoy my own company, and have issues with being forced to socialise with others for extended periods. It’s just how I am. That’s not to say that I can’t work with other people – work is a different matter altogether. Just don’t expect me to want to spend a week constantly in someone’s company while we laugh, joke, play video games or watch films. I’d get to day three and start chewing the furniture. Or worse.

Nevertheless, it’s really nice to see family every now and again. My aunt and cousin visited for the weekend, which was nice. It’s the first time my aunt has been to my house since I moved to Bolton in 2007 and I think she was suitably impressed. We’ve put a lot of effort into making the house look nice and feel like home, and it has paid off.

We talked, watched videos, played video games and went out for a short tour of Bolton. It was going to be a longer tour but a) there’s not much in the middle of Bolton to see that I’ve not already shown on one of my ZJKR videos, and b) we were pelted with hailstones so hard I thought I was going to have lacerations by the time I got home.

That minor setback aside, we had a really great time and it was wonderful to see them both.

On Saturday night, I started work building the set for the next series of The April Kohl Show, which has languished in obscurity for many months now. It is a chat show filmed in virtual reality, which has the advantage of me being able to interview people from around the world, in real time. While building the new set, I was approached by someone who works with one of the major virtual reality television stations. We got talking and one thing led to another, now I have an opportunity to get The April Kohl Show onto one of their channels. There are a few things to sort out, like a proper intro sequence, some end credits and editing that doesn’t suck but I think I can do it. Hell, the editing was something I was going to try to get worked out for this series anyway.

I’m going to make a couple of intro sequences and then decide which I like the best. This is the first intro I’ve come up with:

In addition, I’m hoping to grab a few people while they are online and interview the hell out of them. Maybe then I can put together a few fun shows for my showreel. That would be very nice, if I do say so myself!

On a different note entirely, work continues apace on the rewriting of Unholy Crusade. The version you can find here on this very website is now totally out of date. The new and improved version is already being advertised on the All Mouse Media website as being released this month, so I suppose I’d best get to finishing it! This version is snappier, has far better writing and dialogue that is more finely-tuned. In other words, it’s a far superior product and if everything goes right, it will be available as a eBook by the end of the month.