Earlier this week, I signed a contract with two artists to develop a graphic novel from a script variously altered since 2011. It’s a very special story, and it’s terrifying beginning something so important to me, but as you’d expect, quite relieving to have it out of the gate.

I’m also working on a novella, loosely based on Hold the Phones. Hold the Phones was a comic anthology I put out in 2012, with well over 1,500 previews. Unfortunately the digital distributor never paid us a penny and disappeared under bankruptcy. So, this adaption is looser based on the lead character, but retaining the same humour and a grander, muscular structure.  The novella is ‘On the Air with Axel America’. I’ll be bringing it out by June to time in with the US elections, and Belfast Book Week.

I’ve also a second novella on the go which came to me totally unexpectedly. It’s part comic drama, but part…biography; formed from my experiences, and those of people I’ve talked to, around interaction with mental health institutions, programmes and problems. It arrived fully formed in my head, a hi-speed download, and demanded I write! I must be 20,000 words through now; half-way?

The actual plan was to write another novel altogether, one that’s come in bits and bobs, a keen character comedy, and I’ll say more about it later this year. The rest of the time it’s re-drafts and submissions of shorts, and oh, I’ve a tutorial on writing for radio to deliver in a few days.

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