Blimey. December already. Which means only one thing... time to do a new Xmas playlist on Spotify.
Despite all my good intentions, and a scrawled list of fascinating things I really must get around to blogging about, it’s all gone quiet up my end. My excuse is that I’ve been so busy I've had to type simultaneously on two keyboards, like Bruno out of Fame. I remember an interview where Douglas Adams said how exhausting he found it to script-edit Doctor Who and write the second series of Hitch-Hiker’s at the same time. Compared to my month, doddle. Compared to my month, holiday.
Anyway, the exciting news, which I have trumpeted voluntarily on the Twitter and the Facebook is that I’ve been commissioned to write a Doctor Who novel. It features the eleventh Doctor, as portrayed by Matt Smith, plus his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). It’s called ‘Touched By An Angel’ – though that may change, these things occasionally do – and is due out in June 2011. It’ll be about 50,000 words long, hardback, and that’s about all I can say about it, for one very important reason: I haven’t started writing it yet. But fingers crossed it will be exciting and terrifying and hilarious and heart-breaking. You can already order it from amazon.co.uk. I may be reminding you of this again in future.
I’m extremely excited to be writing this book, and extremely delighted to be asked. I haven’t written a Doctor Who book since, er – Jonny looks it up – around this time back in 2003. Blimey. Of course, I’ve done lots of things since then, but not a New Series book, so hopefully it will still have some novelty value. And I will be doing my best to make it worth the wait.
On the other hand, I’m rather nervous at the prospect. My main memories of writing my previous three Doctor Who books (discounting the many excellent and groundbreaking Doctor Who novels I wrote during my childhood that have inexplicably failed to find a mainstream publisher) are how difficult and stressful it was. And what I nightmare I was to live with. Books are hard work.
But this time I will be different. I am determined. This book doesn’t have to be quite as long, for a start. And I’ve got a lot better at meeting deadlines since then (not perfect, but better). And this time I’ve experience on my side, and I’m a writer full-time, so I’m not trying to fit in writing a book around running the Erasure Information Service. Plus nowadays there are all sorts of labour-saving devices that didn’t exist then, like Wikipedia, the TARDIS Index File, a DVD player on my computer, Microsoft Office Word 2007.
Plus – and this is the important thing – I’ve had seven years of desperately wanting to write a Doctor Who book. So, touch wood, this one should be fun.
