The random witterings of Jonathan Morris, writer.

Saturday 21 March 2009

Vegetable Man

Tonight, on the Big Finish site, they’re making the first episode of my new Doctor Who audio adventure, ‘Hothouse’, available for download. It’s available individually or as part of a subscription, where people buy a whole seasons’ worth of Doctor Who adventures, which strikes me as a very good deal when you bear in mind there’s a second adventure by me later in the run. Plus all sorts of marvellous stuff by Alan Barnes, Barnaby Edwards, Nick Briggs, Pat Mills and the he’s-almost-as-talented-as-me genius that is Eddie Robson.

Somewhere on my hard drive I’ve got the first outline for this story, back when it was called ‘Blooming Horrible’. I’ll stick it up on this blog after the story has come out on CD, give you all a fascinating insight into the creative process, or rather the process of how Alan, Barnaby and Nick helped me turn a not very good idea for a story into something much better.

I’m really rather excited about the whole thing. Fingers crossed the Big Finish servers don’t explode. The idea of having everyone listen to a thing more-or-less at once really adds an edge. And, having heard the finished play a couple of days ago, I think it’s turned out pretty well. There’s some very effective post-production in there, the cast navigate a course through the choppy waters of my dialogue, and I had a couple of tingly, ‘Now that is actually good’ moments. What, were you seriously expecting that I might slag it off? Of course there are things which are now glaringly apparent to me that I might’ve done better... but not as many as usual.

Part two will be up the same time next week. Please don’t download it illegally; if you want golden eggs, you gotta feed the goose.