Oh. That didn’t last long. My excuse is, busy writing for the last couple of days, and for the first two weeks I was in a recording studio, hearing one of my scripts being brought to life. What it is, I’m not at liberty to say, but I daresay it will be announced with triumphal fanfares soon enough.
Before I get back typing out the current load of nonsense – or ‘working’ as I like to call it – a quick reminder, if any be needed, that tomorrow is Big Finish Convention Day. It takes place at a school in Barking, and in attendance will be something like 60-odd Big Finish writers, producers, directors, script editors, sound designers and last but by no means least actors. I suspect we may actually outnumber the paying attendees. As I understand it there will be interview panels about the various ranges and signings (I am not important enough to be on the “AUTOGRAPHS with a Purchase” list!). They’ll also be selling stuff I expect. I’m quite looking forward to it, these things have a celebratory, reinvigorating effect on the ego.
I have mixed feelings about Doctor Who conventions. I used to find them fun when I was a teenager, just for the thrill of seeing old episodes and meeting the stars, a fun from which became a little jaded in the early 90’s, for various reasons I won’t go into here, and since then my experience of conventions has consisted of gate-crashing the disco at the calamitous 2003 Panopticon and sitting in a long, long row of Big Finish writers at a Barking event feeling like a complete impostor because I’d barely written anything at all.
But then I was invited to attend a convention last month, Utopia 2011, and I found it great fun. I was interviewed on stage with television’s Joseph Lidster, which was unexpectedly fun. I signed things for a couple of hours. And I wore my stylish new cap throughout, arousing much envious comment. And I met some old friends, and made some new friends, and that’s kind of the point of these things, isn’t it?
