I’ve been a bit quiet lately, in terms of blogs, tweets and videos, so I thought I might just provide a little update about what’s been going on. As I reflected in my last video, there’s a lot I can’t/won’t talk about specifically, but suffice to say there are exciting things going on that have dominated my time and attention.
 
Of course, saying that doesn’t indicate that any of these things will come to fruition. Being a creative means getting very used to seeing stuff collapse out from under you, so, simply put, I’m not going to start whooping and cheering until official confirmations. But for now, things look promising on a lot of different fronts. I’ve had to compartmentalise my time in order to efficiently follow up on a few different projects, and in the midst of this, after a dreary, uninspired start to the year, I’ve found myself with a bit of a deluge of new, strong ideas that I’m really keen to write. It’s by turns energising and exhausting, but never less than exciting.
 
In terms of updates I can be clear about; a new podcast is on the way, probably sooner rather than later. I’ll save the announcements about what it is and who’s involved for a more official forum, but suffice to say at this stage we just need to get in the room, bulk record, then work out when to start releasing. Time, again, has proved a bit of a pain in the arse here, but we’re all committed to making it happen so watch this space. While we’re not expecting to recapture the audience numbers of Movie Maintenance, we all feel pretty good about what this can be; a chance to recapture the spirit of the old show without the negativity. Hopefully.
 
We also had a full table read the other night for the web-series adaptation of Heroes, which was more than a little exciting. It’s almost entirely cast and all six episodes have been drafted by our team of writers; the read was about seeing what we have on our hands and working out the next steps. What we seem to have on our hands is something gritty, surprising and tense that evokes the spirit of the play without being entirely faithful to the letter of its events. Purely by merit of it not being two guys talking in a room, it has a different style and energy to the stage/radio version in a way that, for my money, both complements the original and charts its own path. Once the feedback from the read has been addressed, we’ll be moving into proper pre-production and I’m really excited to see where this goes. If you liked the play, you’ll love this. I hope.
 
Meanwhile, The Trial of Dorian Gray is in the early stages of working out its next destination, whether that’s Sydney or overseas. It seems fairly likely that the show will go on, and if it doesn’t, it’s also in production as a radio play AND a film by two different companies in England, so you’ll get to see a version of it at some stage.
 
Elsewhere, there has been some tangible forward momentum for some of my novels, TV concepts and film projects, but again; I’ll celebrate when there’s something solid to celebrate. For now though, I’m optimistic.
 
In the middle of all of this, I’ve been working on a new book that’s vastly different to anything I’ve done before. Namely because it’s non-fiction. It’s also a bit of a hard concept to define in terms of where it would sit in a bookstore. Consequently, I have absolutely no idea of what I’ll do with it when it’s finished.
 
The short summary is that it’s a kind of autobiographical industry guidebook. A lot of people have told me how valuable they find my blogs, and this kind of stemmed from that; it’s not that I’m super successful or anything, but writing is how I make a living and I have a bit of a following so I figure I have at least a few things of value to share in terms of how to build a viable career out of storytelling. It’s not a memoir; there are no lengthy, nostalgic reflections on childhood or anything – it’s strictly about how to develop as a writer, with particular emphasis on what not to do, using the many, many embarrassing mistakes I’ve made as examples.
 
So yeah, it’s a weird one in terms of where it would sit in the market, or if it would even have a place. And, being only partway through, I have no idea if it just reads as supremely self-indulgent (if it does, you can rest assured it will never see the light of day). I guess it’s that rare case of something that I’m feeling out as I go with no clear idea of what the long-term goal is. Honestly, at this stage I’m just as likely to release it as a series of free blog posts as I am to investigate any legitimate publishing options. It might be something cool and unique. It might be thoroughly awful. All I know is that it’s new territory for me and I’m enjoying the process, especially as there are no stakes to whether I finish it or not.

So yeah, across the board stuff is moving along nicely and hopefully before long I’ll have something really exciting to share. For now though, I feel like I’ve finally got my groove back. 

​I spoke in a recent blog post about how, ever since Boone Shepard’s final adventure came out I’ve had trouble coming up with new ideas. Not for lack of trying; I’ve toyed with new novel, screenplay and play ideas in that time, but none of them have really ignited in that way that means I have to write them.
 
The other night, I was about to go to bed when an idea for a short story hit me. Nothing exciting or revelatory, but something I could write quickly. So I did. And as I finished what I thought was an alright little piece, I wondered if I could try and do the same every day for a week. Write a short story without pressure, intent or pre-planning. The kind of initiative that could turn out good, average or awful and not really matter.
 
So over the last week I wrote seven short stories, and at the bottom of this page is a link to download a PDF of all of them if you’re so inclined. Not a single one of them had more than a few minutes of planning before I started typing. Some came together fast, some were a bit more torturous. Some I feel pretty good about, others are a mixed bag.
 
But the exercise did its job; by the second day I already felt better than I had in ages, creatively energised and ready to dive back into some big projects. Honestly, I did this more to challenge myself than anything, but I think it actually turned out to be really good for me. 

Lately I haven’t been writing; or at least not much. I did some work on Nelson and the Gallagher over Christmas and about a month before that finished my play Three Eulogies for Tyson Miller, but beyond that I haven’t written anything that wasn’t either for a freelance gig, an application or a blog post. And while lots of exciting things have been happening with various projects, I haven’t felt 100% about any of it.
 
This malaise is the very definition of a first world problem so let me clarify; I’m not throwing myself a pity party or courting sympathy. I have no doubt this vaguely defined flat feeling will pass. No, the reason I’m writing this is to grapple with the source of why I feel this way, something that has genuinely blindsided me in how much it’s affected me.
 
That, of course, is saying goodbye to Boone Shepard.
 
A bit of context: by the time The Silhouette and the Sacrifice had gone to print, I felt largely done with Boone. I had told the story I wanted to tell, and while of course I would love the books to reach the biggest audience possible, the fact remained that thousands of people around the world had read the books in either text or audio form, and that’s a hard thing to be unsatisfied with. Add to this the endless list of rewrites and re-edits and eventually you get to a point where you’re just sort of done. I wrote the first ever version of a Boone Shepard story in 2008 and in 2018 his last published adventure was hitting bookshelves. Ten years is a long time to spend with a story.
 
It wasn’t until a couple of nights before Silhouette was published that the reality of what was about to happen started to dawn on me. I wrote a retrospective post about my journey with the character and the books, and near the end I started to choke up. I wasn’t really sure why; the ending you see in Silhouette is the same ending I originally wrote in 2014. I wrapped up Boone’s adventures back then. But still, this deep, raw sadness remained.
 
The next day, publication eve, I wrote a short Boone story as a kind of goodbye to him. I had no real plan for it, I was just walking past a pub and thought ‘you know what, I’d like to see Boone again’. So I sat down and wrote what, despite being set prior to the first novel, amounts to a kind of thematic epilogue for him. And as I typed out the last words, I realised why I felt the way I did; I was finished with the character.
 
That probably sounds simple and obvious, but bear in mind that, consistently after I typed out the words ‘The End’ in 2014, Boone stayed with me, through both short stories and the ongoing re-edits and rewrites of the novels.
 
But now he’s gone. I look in the place where Boone always waited in my mind, and it’s empty. I used to know he was always there, ready to ride off on some random adventure, to bicker with Promethia and save the day from whatever nonsensical threat he’d stumbled upon this time. But when he rode away at the end of that short epilogue, he rode away from me as well.
 
It’s a hard thing to quantify. Nothing is stopping me from coming up with a new Boone short story. But I know that it would feel forced and artificial. The need to write about him has dissipated. I let Boone go and I hardly realised I was doing it until he’d ridden off into the sunrise, chasing more adventures and mysteries that I won’t be privy to anymore.
 
And that has left me feeling hollow, like part of me rode away with him. Because of course it did. Because Boone was part of me and part of my life. My journey with him is my journey into adulthood. And maybe Boone being gone means finally growing up, somehow.
 
I didn’t think it would feel like this. I had no prior experience to suggest it might. When you finish a play you can always revive it. Before a story is published, you’ll be tinkering, tweaking and re-writing. Windmills has been around almost as long as Boone, but I haven’t had to say goodbye because, unlike Boone, it hasn’t gone out into the world in complete form yet.
 
It’s bittersweet; knowing you’ve finished something you feel so proud of, knowing that a journey can begin with a weird dream and become a thrilling reality. But journeys end, and maybe when they do part of you ends with them. And that can be harder to come to terms with than you ever let yourself consider.
 
So the book came out and instead of euphoria I felt empty, uninspired and unlike myself. Because part of what made me myself was gone.
 
It’s so easy to begrudge authors like J.K. Rowling or John Marsden returning again and again to the properties that made their names. But for the first time I get it. If I feel this way after three relatively short books that only achieved a modest readership, I can’t imagine what saying goodbye to something on the scale of Harry Potter or The Tomorrow Series must be like. Of course we need to know when to let something go, but that doesn’t make letting go easy.
 
There will be new stories and knew characters who mean as much to me as Boone. I’m confident of that. And of course the times that feel a little colourless always pass. New horizons and new projects make sure of that. Like I said at the start, this isn’t me throwing my hands in the air and wailing ‘woe is me’ because I’m no longer writing about a made up character who, in theory, I can do whatever I want with. This is me trying to articulate a whole new experience that I’ve never had to deal with as a writer before; being done with a story you love.

Learning from your mistakes is important, but it’s also essential to recognise when you feel like you’ve gone right. The sweet spot between the two is, for my money, where you learn; build on your successes and memorise your failures so as to avoid ever repeating them. It’s partly for this reason that, following on from a lengthy retrospective of Bitten By Productions’ first ten shows and one recapping our 2017 output, that I’m endeavouring to make it a yearly thing. It’s not so much something I’m doing for anyone else to read or enjoy, but more a way for me to candidly arrange my thoughts regarding our work and also go on the record about what I felt was or wasn’t successful. As in previous years, I’ll be honest but not specific – if you’re looking for particular names to be named then look elsewhere. This isn’t designed to speak for anyone except me; it’s squarely a personal reflection written in the interests of charting further advancement.

2017 was a big year for Bitten By. Springsteen and Dracula gave us our biggest ever audiences, and both were warmly received. Heroes struggled in the audience department, but went on to win multiple awards and, as of last December, is now my first published play. So that’s pretty vindicating. The Commune, which closed our 2017 season, was a show that I wish more people had seen; everyone did exemplary work and in terms of quality, ambition and realisation, it might have been our most consistently good show. But it provided a strong foundation for an even better 2018, especially coming into the opening of Moonlite, our first musical and first show as part of a festival. So, looking back a year later, how did that work out?

Moonlite
 
Full disclosure; Moonlite nearly broke me. I’m only now starting to be able to look at it with any clarity, after a gruelling rehearsal process and an equally rough run of performances. In some ways this was probably inevitable; apart from the live songs interspersed throughout Springsteen, we’d never done anything in the territory of a musical before and early discussions of getting on board a director experienced in that kind of thing swiftly dissipated as composer Dan Nixon and I made the, in hindsight arrogant, decision to direct it ourselves.

The cast we assembled were across the board brilliant; all professional actors trained in musical theatre, but the flip side to that was that their collective availability was all over the place. From day one, rehearsals were nearly impossible to schedule, and that was just for the acting side of things. Add to this the fact that our band were a group of professional working musicians and the prospect of trying to wrangle full rehearsals to work out the shape of the show became a pipe dream. The first full rehearsal with the complete band and cast didn’t happen until the week the show opened.

I did my best trying to keep a smooth ship running, but it was a case where my best just wasn’t enough. I didn’t know the first thing about directing a musical and all I could do was handle the material as I would a straight play and hope that everybody would do their jobs and put it all together into a coherent show when it counted.

This might have been less of an issue if it wasn’t for the venue. Let me clarify; I’m not badmouthing the Grace Darling here, as they fully supported the show from the start, but miscommunications with the staff and the fact that, simply put, the basement space where we performed was not equipped as a theatre meant that the process became pretty tense at times. We chose this venue due to its rumoured connection with the real Captain Moonlite, but the idealistic dream of its suitability quickly proved to be just that. Purely due to the nature of the space, performing in the Grace Darling actively harmed Moonlite; there was no way of facilitating the scripted lighting changes to cleanly delineate between past and present scenes (which confused several audience members) and the constant noise from upstairs meant that several of our most emotional, pivotal scenes were punctuated by loud laughter or music. Then there was the total lack of air conditioning; which, when you’re performing in a packed cellar in the middle of summer, is a bad, bad thing.

It's a testament to the work of everyone involved that Moonlite somehow managed to not be a total embarrassment. In fact, it might have sat somewhere in the territory of really good – honestly, in the wake of trying to make it happen it’s a tough one for me to gauge. What is indisputable is the following; we sold out every single show before we even opened, we got stellar reviews across the board, and large chunks of our audiences were openly wiping away tears by the end of the performance. The extra show we added halfway through the season also sold out within a couple of days. Moonlite was a hit, something that was consolidated down the line when it was chosen for the Grassroots Development Initiative and got some fantastic feedback from a panel of industry judges, who uniformly saw enormous potential for future productions.

On that, it’s not the end of Moonlite. We’re going to be recording a radio play version soon, incorporating some of the Grassroots feedback to make the show even stronger, then after that we’ll be investigating the potential of a tour. The story of Captain Moonlite is an incredible one and when all is said and done I remain thrilled to have been able to tell my own version of it to a seemingly appreciative audience. That, ultimately, is what matters to me when I think about the show. But it doesn’t change the fact that putting it together was a nightmare.

That, of course, is where the important lessons come in. I would handle any future run of Moonlite or potential other musical project vastly differently. Given the behind the scenes process, part of me feels like we were lucky that Moonlite managed to not crash and burn, but to suggest luck had anything to do with it would be to suggest that the show’s success was due to anything other than an immense amount of hard work against the odds. I just hope the team who made that show happen know how grateful I am for what they managed to pull off.

Dead Air
 
Dead Air had the unique distinction of being the first Bitten By show that I had nothing to do with. Even Dracula, which I didn’t write, I played a small part in that kept me around for most of the process. Dead Air, on the other hand, was something I watched unfold like a proud uncle; naturally invested in its success, but separate from it all the same. Which, after Moonlite, was something I needed.

While this might imply more of an ability to be objective, in some ways it’s the opposite when it’s still your company but not your work. The success or failure of your own work is something you personally have to come to terms with one way or another, which means you approach it with a level of analysis you simply can’t apply to something you weren’t involved with but still falls under the banner of the company you co-created.

So, speaking as somebody who saw almost every performance of Dead Air but wasn’t part of its development, I was thrilled with how it turned out. The performances were fantastic, the slow build of tension kept audiences on the edge of their seats and the use of sound and lighting represented a totally new step for us as a company.

I guess if I had one major reservation it would be that the venue didn’t exactly complement any of the above. The Bluestone Church in Footscray is a fantastic, versatile performance space but for my money Dead Air would have benefited from a tiny, claustrophobic theatre. As it stood, the high ceilings and clear sightlines around the curtains that boxed in the performance meant that any illusion of a small, contained space was quickly eliminated by lighting changes that illuminated the size of where we were. To me this mitigated the hard work the special effects were doing and occasionally sapped some of the tension. I don’t for a second think it killed the show, but it was a problem nonetheless. I would love to do more shows in the Bluestone Church, but I don’t think it was the right venue for this particular production.
We Can Work It Out
 
Of all the shows we’ve spoken about bringing back for a new run, We Can Work it Out was always the no-brainer. Its 2015 run was probably our first inarguable hit in terms of ticket sales and audience response, and after the success of pairing a known quantity with a festival in the case of Moonlite, we decided to try a similar thing by reviving We Can Work It Out for Fringe.

Except, in truth, calling it a revival feels disingenuous. While it had much of the same cast and the same script as the 2015 run, this We Can Work It Out was a very different beast to its predecessor. After delivering amazing performance after amazing performance in several Bitten By shows, Greg Caine put up his hand to direct and swiftly demonstrated a natural aptitude for it, to the point where I had to re-evaluate some of my fond memories of the 2015 WCWIO (which I directed) in light of the fact that Greg was doing it far, far better than I had. While I tried to play up the farce, Greg focused on emotion and character. I won’t lie; during the rehearsal process I was scared that he was losing some of the humour and fun of the show, but I needn’t have worried. The humour went nowhere; the only difference was that now it sat in a natural, believable place, rather than a heightened one. Which is much, much better.

We didn’t repeat the sell out success of Moonlite, but to be fair the Butterfly Club seats twice as many people as the Grace Darling cellar, so that was probably a given. We did, however, have healthy audiences across the whole run and both opened and closed with a rapturous full house.

We had long planned to follow it up with a regional tour, but this became less of a given when, a week and a half out from our first country performance, we discovered that Brett Wolfenden, who had been excellent as Ringo in both 2015 and 2018, wouldn’t be able to come on tour due to unforeseen (but positive) circumstances. With the shows booked and advertisements run cancelling wasn’t an option, but Justin Anderson, a co-founder of Bitten By fresh off his leading performance in Dead Air, stepped in and learned the role in ten days. Regional audiences didn’t know the difference; Justin killed it, got lots of laughs, and won over a raucous full house audience of over a hundred people in my hometown of Mansfield. The tour turned out to be an enormously fun capper to an enormously fun season. All things considered, this version of We Can Work It Out ran relatively smoothly and earned itself a whole new round of great reviews and highly entertained audiences. Having also been performed by a different company in Queensland, We Can Work It Out has proved more than almost any of our other shows how much life it has in it. Which is another way of saying a further revival is not unlikely.

Nobody likes to be seen as repeating themselves, but I feel that we’ve reached a point as a company where we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot to not give another run to some of our proven successes, providing good shows the chance to reach a whole new audience. We Can Work It Out 2.0 proved the worth of that.

Next?
 
There are three major things I want to replicate from our 2018 season; conveniently, one from each show. From Moonlite I saw the value of swinging for the fences, of being ambitious even when it scares or wears you down. Dead Air strengthened my commitment to supporting the work of new writers – I would love to reach a point where Bitten By Productions runs a whole season of scripts not written by me. And We Can Work It Out, simply put, demonstrated the value of the crowd pleaser and reinforced another lesson Moonlite taught us; that pairing an appealing show based around a known quantity with the exposure of a festival can yield major dividends.

That’s what we’re trying to repeat with our first show of 2018, The Trial of Dorian Gray. Like Moonlite, this production will be a part of the Midsumma Festival and so far that seems to be paying off; it’s not selling quite as well as the earlier show, but tickets are moving steadily and I’m confident that, given the subject matter, it will do well. Furthermore, The Trial of Dorian Gray is looking really promising; the cast and crew are across the board one of the best we’ve ever worked with, thanks to the involvement of respected director Peter Blackburn, who brought his own team together, all of whom are working professionals in their field, all of whom are doing amazing work. Had Dorian been directed by myself, it probably would have been a pretty basic, no frills two hander. Under Pete however, it’s become something far more ambitious, something that will fire on all cylinders from a production standpoint. Add to that the fact that James Biasetto and Ratidzo Mambo are a pair of incredible actors who bring so much depth, danger and pathos to their characters, and Dorian promises to be something pretty special.

Next up, the plan is for me to return to the director’s chair with The Wild Colonial Boys, a script I’m really proud of that works as a kind of subversion and deconstruction of the Ned Kelly legend. It’s pure fiction, a sort of ‘what if’ set during the Siege of Glenrowan that further examines the themes of myth-making that drove Moonlite, but I think it could be really good. I can certainly promise that it offers a take on a well-trodden story that you have never seen before.

After that, the idea is that we’ll return to Fringe for the first play by my friend, housemate and former Movie Maintenance co-host Kath Atkins, Three Cigarettes and a Hooker, which tells the story of a group of highly ‘woke’ twenty somethings who attempt to prove their virtue by inviting a sex worker to a dinner party. Naturally, in stumbling over each other to show off how progressive they are, buried hypocrisies and prejudices are swiftly exposed. Three Cigarettes is a hilarious script and a highly pointed satire; it will ruffle feathers and probably piss people off with how accurate it is on many things. I can’t wait.

So yeah; things are in a good place for the company. I’m proud of our 2018 run and grateful for the valuable lessons we came away with. Independent theatre can be trying, but when things go well it’s hard not to feel good about where you’re at. Some bumps in the road aside, 2018 was a year in which things went pretty well indeed.​

​I’m proud of Boone Shepard, but it took me a little while to get there.
 
This is somewhat complicated so I’ll do my best to explain. At the risk of sounding like an egotistical wanker, around the time the first Boone Shepard was gearing up for release, I’d gotten a little too used to being told I was brilliant after various Movie Maintenance episodes. In my defence, it was the first time in my life I’d had what amounted to any kind of following for my work, and that’s a hard thing to keep a level head about. People were tweeting and emailing me fairly regularly to tell me how excited they were for Boone Shepard, and maybe that somehow coloured how I actually saw the book.
 
On Movie Maintenance I was known for putting dark or revisionist spins on franchises, mainly horror. Boone Shepard, by contrast, was only ever intended as a quirky, gothic, children’s novel. But being released through Sanspants Radio as an audiobook read by me automatically linked the novel to the podcast, and the impression I got was that some fans of the show were let down by the book.
 
Look, I don’t want to speak for anyone’s experience. No book is for everyone and Boone Shepard is certainly no exception, but I heard from a few readers that they expected something more explosive or shocking from me, and that’s fair enough. I’m also sure there are plenty of readers who just didn’t like Boone Shepard very much and, that’s equally fair, just like there were plenty who liked Boone enough to send fan art and theories and all kinds of stuff that made me feel awesome. The value of what anyone creates is subjective and if there’s one massive lesson I learned from Boone and my time on Movie Maintenance, it’s that that’s okay. Somebody’s opinion on your work doesn’t reflect on you personally, whether positive or negative.
 
But I do feel like there was a contingent of Boone Shepard readers whose expectations didn’t meet the reality of the book, and it took me some time to wrap my head around that. Despite all the great feedback Boone got, I think I was a little let down by some of the reactions, and that led me to look at it through slightly cynical goggles. It was only really after the first book was shortlisted for the Readings Young Adult Prize that I let myself think it was maybe pretty good after all. Re-reading it then, a year after release, I was taken aback by how much I actually liked it.
 
I think that the first book, for the most part, works as the establishment of a character and a series. It’s super pacy; never spending a second longer than it needs to on any given stretch of the plot. The characters are pretty clearly defined and the dialogue is funny and bouncy. Both Boone and Promethia grow and change in tangible ways over the course of the book, and there are passages that lend the book enough thematic depth to make it more than just a rollicking adventure yarn.
 
I’m glad that I can still feel warmly about my first published novel three years later. The fact is that Boone Shepard is the best book I could have written at the time. I’m proud of it and I think, overall, the response it got vindicates me feeling that way But since it was released I’ve learned a lot and consequently, there are things I would approach differently if I was writing it today.
 
Like the prose. I don’t think it’s bad or anything, but there are times when the language is perfunctory at best, clunky at worst. This is one case where the timing of the book worked against me; I don’t think I really mastered prose in a way I was happy with until 2015. Boone Shepard was written in 2014. Looking at American Adventure and The Silhouette and the Sacrifice I feel like there’s a natural flow that isn’t always there in the first book.
 
Part of the flow issue might be due to the plotting. A big criticism that’s been levelled at the first Boone Shepard a few times is that it jumps around a lot. This is true and I think it’s hard to pinpoint with much specificity what the central plot of the book is before the end. Boone’s goal changes regularly; at the start he’s trying to eradicate a book that contains his secrets, in the flashback section he’s trying to become a famous journalist, in the back half of the book he’s trying to defeat his evil brother then, in the last two chapters, all the threads come together. I think the book’s fast enough for this to not be the biggest problem in the world, but in retrospect I probably could have found a way to give it one clear through line around which the other plots could orbit.
 
Tone is a bit of an issue too. For context, the Boone Shepard series was, in development, supposed to be goofy with flashes of darkness, but in practice I think it ended up closer to the other way around. Part of this is due to the fact that Boone Shepard was initially written as the darker sequel to a jaunty first book that was skipped by the publisher. It’s the reason American Adventure is my favourite of the three; ultimately it hews closest to what the series was originally meant to be.
 
I don’t think the foregrounded darkness is necessarily the worst thing in the world. Starting goofier might have made where the series went feel kind of jarring. I guess the problem is that now the weird silliness at times might feel a bit egregious. I don’t know what the solution to this could have been. In the end, without being at least a little goofy, Boone just wouldn’t be Boone. The series straddles some vast tonal shifts, and that’s always a tough thing to manage, especially when you’re going from silly manatee jokes to human experimentation and murder.
 
Speaking of murder.
 
If Boone Shepard was more well known, I think I’d be excoriated for the treatment of Marbier. A friend who read the book in the early days suggested that, in killing her off to drive Boone’s story, I’d ‘Gwen Stacey’d’ her. Which, look, yeah. I defended the choice at the time; Marbier was never some damsel in distress, besides which she had a larger role to play in the series and it wasn’t like her death marked the removal of the only major female character in the book. After all, Promethia Peters remained alive and kicking. Plus, the second book went on to introduce Jessie and Addison Cane; across the board, I’m proud that the Boone Shepard books boast a cast of female characters who are not only collectively tough and capable, but very different to each other. Promethia is immature and gleefully snarky, Marbier is laconic and mysterious, Jessie is excitable and optimistic while Addison delights in her own corruption and selfishness. I’m proud of the fact that I didn’t just write a pile of Black Widow-esque super cool tough girls and pat myself on the back for my stellar feminism.
 
But look, all of that dances around the fact that what happened to Marbier was a fridging, plain and simple. And the fact is, the early development of the series happened long before I had any idea what ‘fridging’ even was. By the time the term and its ugly implications entered my lexicon, there wasn’t much I could have done short of overhauling so much carefully planned narrative.
 
Or maybe there was something I could have done. Maybe. Or I could have handled it differently. I don’t know. In isolation, Marbier’s fate is a valid plot point. But it doesn’t change the fact that even as recently as Deadpool 2 we’ve been seeing the clumsy death of the love interest to motivate the hero. It’s a trope I detest and yet one I still used because I guess I didn’t know any better. So what’s the solution? I wouldn’t change it, as it would dramatically alter far too much of the story. But I can’t pretend I’m happy with it as it stands. Which is a sticky place to be.
 
I guess, like anything, the lesson is not about changing what’s done, abut about knowing what you wouldn’t do again. Which is especially fitting for this retrospective as it’s essentially the theme of the whole Boone Shepard trilogy. 

​In a lot of cases, I might have taken the adage ‘write what you know’ a little too seriously. In my late teenage years I wrote a kind of novelised autobiography; a painstakingly true to life (at least insofar as my own biased recollections could be true) book that I for some reason thought would be super entertaining to anyone other than a nostalgic me looking back. It wasn’t.
 
I pretty quickly moved on from the idea of unaltered autobiography being something worth pursuing if you haven’t had a particularly interesting life, but that didn’t stop me outright lifting real events to use in stories. Or, in some cases, writing highly specific ‘what ifs’ populated with characters who were basically just people I knew with changed names (Hometown, Reunion, Regression).
 
Writers wouldn’t write if they didn’t have some stuff in their lives they wanted to work out to some degree or other. The challenge, of course, is making that stuff matter to anyone who isn’t us. Sometimes we do it by wrapping broad themes and ideas lifted from our own experiences in stories with far more action and excitement. Sometimes we do it by writing plays like Three Eulogies for Tyson Miller.
 
Three Eulogies for Tyson Miller tells the story of Quentin, a twenty-something journalist whose former best friend, Tyson Miller, has recently died in a car accident. When Tyson’s partner Jill asks Quentin to give the eulogy, he is initially reluctant but, thinking back on the good times, decides to say yes. Jill finds his first eulogy too sanitised, arguing that Tyson would have wanted honesty. So Quentin gets honest, in the process digging into what went wrong with their friendship and exactly who was to blame.
 
Structurally the play moves between the present-day conversations between Quentin and Jill, the three (spoiler) eulogies Quentin ends up writing, and flashbacks to Quentin’s friendship with Tyson that largely take place out of order, drip feeding bits of the puzzle as Quentin digs deeper and deeper into just how he feels about his friend now that he’s gone.
 
Quentin and Tyson’s relationship is less based on an old friendship of mine and more a direct depiction of it. Except, I should clarify, the real-life friend the play is based on isn’t dead. As far as I know, he’s actually doing very well for himself.
 
This friendship was something I wanted to write about for a long time. The issue, of course, was trying to find the hook that might make it remotely interesting to an outside audience. I toyed with a few different versions half seriously before stumbling on the eulogy angle. Immediately it gave the play structure and stakes; wanting to not screw up the last public word on somebody’s life is a pretty big deal.
 
The writing process was somewhere between cathartic and challenging. Personal stories always are; requiring you to hit a balance between honest and conscious of the fact that nobody except for you has any reason to care about this so you’d better work damn hard to give them one. Did I manage it? Honestly, I don’t know.
 
But I do know the reasons I wanted to write about this. Tyson Miller strays into new territory for me, as it’s a play specifically about the complexities of friendship. Especially friendship between young men. I think guys in their teens and early twenties can be destructive in their bonds with each other. Fuelled by insecurity, friendships can become ugly games of one-upmanship, figurative dick measuring contests that ultimately nobody walks out of happy. Because friendship isn’t a competition; it’s mutual affection and support. But masculine insecurity can destroy even the warmest of friendships, and that’s what this play looks at. It’s honest; uncomfortably so, at times. Like Quentin, I had to evaluate my own actions and, for the first time, admit fault where previously I had protested my own innocence. In re-examining a friendship, I eventually landed at a place where I realised that maybe it was for the best that it ended. On my last day of writing, realisation struck that in some ways what I had put together was both a play and a eulogy for a friendship that meant a lot to me once, but slipped away after years of hurts both real and imagined during which time we became different people and went in different directions. There were times, in writing it, when I felt really sad. Other times I found myself getting angry at decade-old slights. But ultimately I finished it with a weird sense of closure.
 
So yeah. Challenging and cathartic.
 
Will it work for a broader audience? I think so. I think it has a lot to say that will be relevant to a lot of people, and I suspect it gets to some ugly truths that are universal across our interactions with each other. I could be wrong about all of that, but if I am I’m still really glad I wrote this. The process was unlike anything I’ve done before; all the way through I challenged myself to ask whether this was what a real person would say, eschewing any kind of stylisation for an attempt at naturalism. I also identified any place where I was starting to feel uncomfortable and made myself face up to what it was that caused that feeling. The result, I suspect, could be something special. As always, we’ll see. 

Saying goodbye to Boone Shepard had a much bigger effect on me than I thought it would. Before the release of The Silhouette and the Sacrifice I’d assumed that, given the manuscript had been completed for so long, I’d already kind of let go. But the day before publication it hit me hard; this was it for Boone. And while a few people who’ve finished the book have asked about the potential of a fourth instalment, I would put that in a box marked ‘extremely unlikely’. I wrote a little story to send him off into the sunrise, and since then there’s been a Boone shaped hole in my heart. His story feels finished, and it’s a hard thing to accept.
 
But maybe, in some ways, letting go of Boone has liberated me. Hindsight is very much 20/20 and it’s slowly become clear to me that, in some ways, the last decade of my writing life has been very much built around the twin pillars of Boone Shepard and Windmills. Without going into depressing detail, Windmills hit a couple of brick walls earlier this year that led me to put it on ice for the foreseeable future, while Boone came to his natural end. For the first time, I’m facing a slate of work that involves no variation on either property. And that feels bloody weird.
 
But at the same time, exciting. I can’t say much about a lot of the projects that have consumed my time in the last few months, but there has been some thrilling forward momentum for a couple of them. Nothing concrete, but enough to know that we’re on the right track. As for the stuff I can discuss, The Trial of Dorian Gray has no less than four different versions currently in production (a film and radio play in England, two stage versions in Australia) while I’ve been hard at work with an awesome team of writers developing Heroes into a web series, the pilot of which is scheduled to shoot early next year. The series will broaden the scope of the play/radio play over six ten-minute episodes. It’s been thrilling to see what different voices have done with these characters, and I can’t wait for people to see the finished product.
 
Meanwhile, my major literary project right now is the ongoing adventures of Maggie, the protagonist of Sunburnt Country around whom I’m planning a whole series of standalone novels. The first of which is an expansion of Sunburnt Country, the rest new ideas for crime stories shot through with horror. In some ways Maggie is a spiritual successor to Boone; the wandering nomad who stumbles into situations and rights wrongs, but in almost every way that matters they couldn’t be more different. Where Boone was fast talking and cocky, Maggie is laconic. Where Boone eschewed violence, Maggie’s quick to administer shotgun blasts to those who deserve them. Where Boone was weighed down by his past, Maggie doesn’t think about hers. At least, not until it comes back to bite her.
 
I love writing Maggie, and I think there’s a lot of potential in her stories. But it’s early days and it will take a long, long time to know whether this, or any of the other seeds I’ve been planting of late, will actually grow into anything.
 
But I’m optimistic. As I think you have to be. Pessimism hampers ambition, and honestly, I think working in this industry requires a willingness to be at least a little bit deluded.
 
This year marked the end of both Movie Maintenance and Boone Shepard, along with an indefinite hiatus on Windmills. I’d be lying if I tried to claim that these endings or pauses weren’t a mix of depressing and terrifying at times. It’s easy to rest on the laurels of proven successes. But nothing is permanent and if you rely too much on what’s already established you’ll find yourself at a loss when it’s suddenly pulled out from under you.
 
New horizons mean new possibilities. And, very probably, new failures as well. But you can't have one without the other. 

In 2008 I was obsessed with the Beatles and by extension, of all things, the conspiracy theory claiming that Paul McCartney had died in 1966 and been replaced with an imposter. It wasn’t that I believed it, just that I found it kind of fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that I had a dream one night that I was an investigative journalist delving into said conspiracy while riding around the countryside on a giant tricycle.
 
It was a weird dream, but often it’s the weird ones that stick with you, that give you this strange feeling that somehow, for some reason, this is important. As with most things I can’t stop thinking about, I figured I had to write about it. So I came up with a story; a story that could balance the strangeness of the whole thing with the deeper pathos and creepiness that underpins any good conspiracy theory. And for that very particular story, I needed a very particular character.
 
The name Boone Shepard had been in my head for years; a name that I knew would one day belong to a hero in one of my stories. And the kind of hero who could investigate Beatles conspiracy theories while riding a giant tricycle was the kind of hero who deserved a name like Boone Shepard.
 
I wrote three stories about him that year. They weren’t great; a mismatch of violent darkness, weird nonsense and tragedy. They were overwritten and packed haphazardly with the things I loved at the time; gonzo journalism, gothic horror, murder mysteries, 60s hippy culture and time travel. The friends I showed them to reacted accordingly, saying that they were dumb and unrealistic compared to the other stuff I was writing at the time – considering the already dumb and unrealistic nature of that other stuff, the fact that Boone Shepard stood out probably said something – so I let Boone fade away and focused on other stories.
 
Years passed. I left school, went to uni, and wrote more – some bad stuff, some good stuff, most in between. Boone lingered in the back of my head; like most ideas I’ve had I entertained the notion of revisiting him, but never seriously.
 
Then along came the real hero of Boone’s story; April Newton. She read the old stories and, where nobody else had, saw potential. Her excitement for the world and the character reignited my own; soon the gears start turning and, as if he’d never been away, Boone rode back into my thoughts and quickly, back on to the page.
 
Some things changed. The weirdness was toned down. The giant tricycle became a battered motorbike. But the spirit of the old stories; the wild, strange sense of adventure, had gone nowhere. And at a time when I’d been writing mostly melancholic, personal plays and super dark novels, returning to Boone was a breath of fresh air and a homecoming that I think I really needed. Over 2013 and 2014 I wrote five novels, finally wrapping it all up with an ending that I still to this day think is one of the best things I’ve ever written.
 
I sent the first book to a few publishers and agents, but there was never much interest. Then April contacted me to tell me she was starting a publishing house and she wanted Boone Shepard to be her first title. There was no hesitation from my end. April understood Boone better than anyone and knew what the story needed to get the best out of it.
 
Some parts of the plan did change. The intended first book, The Broken Record, was skipped, with elements of it folded into the subsequent instalments. Book two, Darkening Ventures, became book one: Boone Shepard.
 
I can’t overstate the work April put in to make that first book a reality. But she did an incredible job and what resulted was the kind of book it was hard for me to believe my name was on. But the jury was still out on whether readers would see in Boone what we had.
 
The reaction to the first book was a learning curve. Thanks to my involvement with Sanspants Radio it reached a huge audience; the audiobook was listened to by thousands all around the world, and the responses were wide ranging. The very first bit of feedback I got was somebody tweeting me the morning of release to say ‘your book sucks mate’. Subsequently I heard it all. Some people thought it was a disappointment. Others told me it was their favourite book. I was sent fan-art and photos of kids dressed as Boone Shepard for Book Week. It was probably the widest audience my work had reached at that point and I learnt that what you write can never please everyone but as long as you know that you said what you set out to say, then you can be proud.
 
But that first book was only one part of the story. In retrospect, ending on a giant cliff-hanger was about the most presumptuous thing I could have done, as there was no guarantee of it selling or being well liked enough to get a sequel. Luckily, it did.
 
American Adventure might have debuted to a slightly more subdued response, but it did so at the same time that the first book was nominated for the Readings Young Adult Prize. I can’t stress enough what a moment of vindication that was. For months, Boone stood proudly on posters in every Readings store, side by side with some of the most talked about YA books of recent times. It was definitive proof that this strange idea of mine that somehow found its way into stores had managed to be seen as a contender. That was a pretty special feeling.
 
Merging the final two books was, in the end, not only practical but logical. I wasn’t arrogant enough to assume a fourth was likely, so we decided to go out with a bang. The final two books were always linked plot and theme wise anyway, and now it’s hard to imagine them as separate entities. The Silhouette and the Sacrifice probably needed the most work to bring together, but it paid off in a big way. The three books together tell one complete story and the final book, for my money, is comfortably the best; sprawling, emotional and with an ending, almost unchanged from what was written in 2014, that I think shows just what Boone Shepard was always about beneath the adventure and the manatee jokes.
 
And as of today, it’s out in the world. The whole story, all wrapped up for people to read or not read as they desire (please read it).
 
How do I feel in this moment of completion? It’s hard to say. Things in my life have been so busy for so long that Boone has almost become an afterthought. But today, more than any other day ever, is his day. Tonight the book officially launches at Readings Kids (6:30, come along, there’ll be wine) and after that, well, who knows?
 
But for now, Boone has ridden off into the sunset, along with Promethia, Oscar, Jessie, Marbier, Avery and all the rest. And I think for the rest of my life, no matter what I write or what happens, I’ll always have a certain singular fondness for that gang of misfits and miscreants. Boone’s story is one of hope and heroism, about overcoming the worst in yourself to find the best, about learning from your mistakes and saying goodbye to the past. It’s about becoming your own person and being better to those around you. It’s about, in short, all the lessons I learned in the years I was telling it. Beneath the craziness is the most personal thing I’ve ever written.
 
I hope you’ll read the end and I hope you’ll like it. But it’s out of my hands now. I’m finished. 
 
Goodbye Mr Shepard. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known you. 

There’s an old saying, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s one of those things that seems to make sense on the surface, until you look at it a little closer. For example, you can regularly sneak into a vicious country town with a bone-deep hatred of journalists and a marrow deep hatred of journalists named Boone Shepard and assume that, statistically speaking, it’s highly unlikely that said town will manage to catch and try to hang you every single time. After all, a town with such a particular and nonsensical prejudice probably, it stands to reason, isn’t populated with the brightest sorts.
           
But at a certain point you’re just making excuses without confronting the issue at hand, the issue at hand being that I, once again, was locked up in the cells of the Greenville Police Station waiting to be hanged at dawn, having once again snuck into the town in pursuit of a story and been caught because of an unexpected amorous midnight rendezvous between little old Mrs McCurdles and John the friendly butcher, who had chased me into the police station with his friendly battle axe.
           
It was also highly possible that the issue at hand was my own insanity, but that one would keep for dealing with at a later date. The same luxury was not offered by a meeting between my neck and a noose.
           
Leaning against the cold wall of the cell, I sighed. There weren’t many escape options being presented to me at that stage, which meant I would have to rely on my wit and charm when the morning came. That, given Greenville, was bound to be yet another case of doing the same thing and expecting a different result, although to be fair I might well end up vindicated this time – Greenville had never successfully hanged me before. That counted as a different result, right?
           
I looked around the cell for roughly the hundredth time, but to my surprise I was met with a different result. A face behind the bars was staring back at me, a face that did not belong to the policeman or the Mayor, who had a habit of turning up at all hours of the night to gloat. No, this face was far too young to be either. He was about ten, wearing plain overalls with glasses and a mess of thick brown hair.
           
‘Hello,’ I said.
           
‘Hello,’ he replied. ‘You’re Boone Shepard.’
           
‘Guilty as charged.’
           
'Is being Boone Shepard what they charged you with?’
           
‘Might as well have been,’ I grinned. ‘Prying, this time. Which is a change from the standard meddling, but both are pretty synonymous with being Boone Shepard.’
           
‘Do you think big words make you seem smart?’ he asked.
           
‘If I wanted to seem smart I wouldn’t be back in Greenville, would I?’
           
‘So why are you in Greenville?’
           
I shrugged. ‘There was a story. I heard Mrs McCurdles was running a jewel thieving operation by night. Turns out she was really just running a kissing-the-butcher operation, which doesn’t quite have the same front page potential.’
           
‘I dunno,’ the boy said. ‘Front pages last a day. That gossip will fuel Greenville for weeks.’
           
‘More than my finally being hanged?’
           
‘People care more about gossip than justice.’
           
I laughed despite myself. ‘That’s… that’s a cynical thing to think at your age.’
           
‘That’s a condescending thing to think at your age,’ he replied.
           
I nodded. ‘Fair enough. I’m sorry. People always underestimated me because of how old I was too. I should know better.’
           
‘But you don’t,’ the boy said. ‘You’re an adult. Adults are supposed to know best.’
           
I raised an eyebrow. ‘In your experience, has that ever been true?’
           
The boy grinned. ‘Guess not.’
           
‘I reckon it’s better to be proud of being an idiot than deluded about being smart,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you why I don’t know better. I just don’t. Too curious. Too stupid. Too…’ There were other words for what I was too much of. That didn’t mean I wanted to say them. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’
           
‘Never seen you up close,’ the boy said. ‘Only ever heard all the outraged stories. Thought I’d see if they were true.’
           
‘Are they?’
           
‘Yep.’
           
‘Good.’
           
‘My Father says that you’re bad news because you dig up things that should stay buried,’ he said. ‘Truths that make dinner parties uncomfortable.’
           
‘Is your father an exception to the rule about adults knowing nothing?’
           
The boy shook his head. ‘I think he’s half the reason the rule exists. Do you think you’ll get out?’
           
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Probably. I usually do, right?’
           
‘But you don’t have a plan.’
           
‘Never do.’
           
‘Then how will you escape?’
           
‘Something always turns up.’
           
‘What if it doesn’t?’
           
‘If it doesn’t…’ I tried to think of a witty answer. But there wasn’t one. I thought of the noose. I thought of the faces of the town baying for my blood.
           
And then I thought about what I would see in that moment. About the bent gum trees and dry brown grass of my childhood. About the foggy streets of London now and then, about the rolling fields of England, about blood in the snow and pain and the subsequent endless pursuit of something even I didn’t quite understand.
           
‘If it doesn’t,’ I said, and tried to keep the tremor out of my voice, ‘then at least I know I’ve had a life.’
           
‘Everyone’s had a life,’ he said. ‘Some people even have long ones. Or good ones.’
           
‘Maybe you need the bad to see the good,’ I said. ‘Maybe the kind of life we should want is one that’s full, not one that’s good. Have a few stories to tell at the end of it.’
           
‘Well considering you might be at the end,’ the boy said, ‘what’s the best story you have?’
           
I looked at the roof. Closed my eyes. And smiled. ‘Once upon a time there was a boy. Not much was special about him. But he wanted more than what he had. So he did whatever he could to get it, until he learned that he’d been so focussed on one thing that there were a lot of other things he’d missed. And then he started to see those things and then…’ I opened my eyes. I looked at the boy. ‘And then life was full of colour. And the boy knew that as long as he kept seeing those colours, seeing colours even though other people told him they weren’t there, he would be okay.’
           
For a moment, there was silence.
           
‘Seeing things other people don’t is a sign of insanity,’ he said.
           
‘Who cares?’
           
‘Other people.’
           
I winked. ‘There you go.’

For a moment, the boy just watched me. ‘I don’t know if I like that story.’

‘It’s the best one I’ve got.’
 
‘It’ll have to do I guess.’
           
He reached out a hand and dropped a key through the bars.
           
I stared at it, unsure if this was real. I looked back at the boy. He was smiling.

‘Something always turns up,’ he said. Then he was gone, vanished in the dark beyond the bars.

For a long moment I just sat there. Then I reached out and picked up the key. It was heavy and cool in my hand.

I unlocked the cell door and quietly slid it open. I moved through the still, silent and dark station before stepping out on to the cobblestoned main street of Greenville; just quiet, murky shadows at the point where night starts to become morning.

I found my bike around the back of the station and wheeled it down the main street, careful not to make a noise. But nobody else was awake. They slept their boring sleeps, waiting for the morning when they could watch a man hang. A morning that, for Greenville, might as well be a Christmas during which Santa had finally paid some actual attention to who was on the naughty list.

I arrived at the outskirts of Greenville just as the first fringes of sunrise lit the horizon. I stopped for a moment and watched. The distant waves of dark hills were slowly becoming green as fire grew in the sky above, seeping through the purple until it became a lighter blue. Another day, and I was still alive. I took a long, deep breath. The air was cool and bracing. I felt alive. I felt ready. For what, I didn’t know yet.

I looked over my shoulder. Greenville remained partly in shadow. But maybe, standing on the main street I had left the town via, I could see a shape. Maybe it was the figure of a young boy, watching. Maybe it was nothing.

But just in case, I waved.

I started my bike. The thrum of the engine filled the air. I revved it, once. It was like a roar. I laughed, and clambered on. My eyes moved to the road ahead, to the morning and the rolling fields beyond. I didn’t know where I was going to go. But I’d figure that out as I went. Something always came up. Always.

Whistling, I accelerated into the morning light.
 
*******
​
See you around, Boone.
-GB

Some of you may or may not be aware that I’m a bit of a hobbyist sculptor, although even saying that probably gives my abilities more credit than they deserve. Making stuff out of clay is something I’ve enjoyed doing since I was a kid, and I’ve recently decided to commit to more frequent attempts, as, frankly, I need a low stakes creative hobby, something to focus attention on that isn’t writing.
 
It’s funny though, how similar the two things are in some respects. When you start making something out of clay you begin with a smooth sphere of the stuff, then slowly work it until it begins to take the shape of what you can see in your head. Clay doesn’t react well to you being too tough with it. If you work too long on one piece then it can dry out and start to crack. And the worst possible thing you can do it tear some off and stick in back on to fashion an arm or extra appendage or whatever. The moment the clay hardens, anything that’s been stuck on will fall away.
 
You have to roll with the (very) metaphorical punches. Sometimes trying to get the shape of the nose or mouth right will ruin another part. As much as individual aspects of the work require attention, you have to try and keep the whole of what you’re working towards in your head at all times. Overthinking can ruin it, but carelessness is just as detrimental. It’s also important to know when to stop. It’s hard to be a perfectionist with something that dries out after too long. Sometimes the rough parts are what adds character.
 
A novel or a script is pretty similar, but over a much longer stretch of time. The big difference is that the sculpting doesn’t end when you hit the conclusion of the story. The first draft is really just one step removed from the plain ball of clay that you started out with. The beginnings of the shape are there, but you’re a long way from the finished product, even if you think you are.
 
I used to finish something, decide I was largely happy with it, then move on. This is another reason working with clay is probably good for me; it provides a creative outlet in which I can do that. But in writing, I’ve found myself developing a new commitment to take my time. Instead of jumping erratically between projects, I’ve taken to spending a lot more time focussed on the ongoing development of a couple (in this case Sunburnt Country and Nelson and the Gallagher). I’ve taken my time; getting feedback on the drafts, letting those new ideas percolate, and then coming back to keep working at the thing.
 
A major adjustment in my thinking is patience. A few years ago I was desperate to be a famous writer. I didn’t care what theatre produced my plays or what publisher or agent I ended up with. I think I craved validation so much that it didn’t really phase me where I found it.
 
A few years later, that desperation is long gone. I’d much rather a story took a few years to be perfect, and the first step is to be flexible enough to never view anything as finished. Back in 2013 I chose to ignore extremely valuable feedback on Below Babylon because I didn’t want to do the work to get it up to scratch. I kind of shrugged and was like “oh well, too bad, it’s basically finished so there isn’t much I can do”. It’s the same way of thinking that led me to self-publish Windmills despite knowing on some level that it was yet to reach its full potential.
 
I’m not a patient person, but writing is a patient craft. Like sculpting, it takes time and a gentle touch to eventually find the right shape for a story. The difference with writing is that there’s rarely a time limit for finishing the work.
 
Take advantage of the fact.