Station Zero

Prairie Rascals poster by Sarah McIntyre This post contains some minor SPOILERS about Prairie Rascals , so you may want to watch the film first. You can find it here. WAGONS ROLL When Sarah Reeve and I started making our little films here at Bonehill, it wasn't because I was eager to get into screenwriting. I'm much more interested in the other bits of film making, like finding costumes and locations, working with the actors, and editing. But before you can get to those parts of the process you do need a screenplay, and since I'm the cheapest writer available, I write those myself. Writing a screenplay - at least for the sort of micro-budget productions we're making - is not like writing a book. With a novel the problem is that there a thousand different paths the story could take. With a screenplay,  998 of those paths are blocked by large signs that say YOU CAN'T AFFORD THIS, so in a way it becomes much easier: your choices are made for you. * When I set out to wr...

  The time has come to release Prairie Rascals on an unsuspecting world. Bonehill Films' Cream Tea Western has gone down well at a few local screenings, so I've decided to make it free to watch on YouTube, at least for a month or two. If you've had a chance to catch our previous film, Gwenevere , you'll know roughly what to expect - we work at an absurd speed, with a tiny budget which almost all goes on costumes and catering. But I think the story is sound, Sarah Reeve's photography is lovely, and we have some great actors.    You can see for yourself on the Bonehill Films YouTube channel. As with Gwenevere , the story was very much dictated by what we could afford and what locations were available. We've ended up with a tale of a young widow setting out to find some buried treasure before the bandits who did her husband in can get their hands on it. Her adventures eventually intertwine with those of a rich and naive young man from back east who has come to see...

    Bridge of Storms , the sequel to Thunder City , will be published in the UK and US in February 2026, and once again Ian McQue has done us proud with some striking cover art... It should be possible to pre-order Bridge of Storms now from your local bookshop or online, so please do... Shops that have a few advance customer orders for the book are more likely to take a few copies for stock too, so it really helps to get the word out that, among next year's avalanche of new titles, there lurks a brand new Mortal Engines story. 2026 will also be the 25th anniversary of Mortal Engines , so I expect I'll be banging on about it quite a bit over the coming months.