Station Zero

  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...

I’ve been spending the summer in the Wild West, which Sarah Reeve and I have very convincingly recreated in a field near our house. Unfortunately it hasn't been very Wild West weather, but occasionally the sun shines, and we've made the most of it. Prairie Rascals , our new Bonehill Films production, is a Western, in which Dartmoor gets to stand in for the prairies and pinewoods of Arkansas while a cast of top Devonian and Cornish actors put on their best American accents. When her no-good homesteader husband is murdered by outlaws hunting for the the gold he stole during the Civil War, Annie Harper sets off to find the treasure for herself. Annie's played by Rosanna Lambert, a local actress who appeared briefly in our film Gwenevere as a mystical maiden. She’s great, and it’s been good to give her more to do in this one. Also returning is our Gwenevere title star, actress and artist Laura Frances Martin . Gwenevere was rather a serious role, but Laura’s a tremendously fu...

The Bookery in Crediton is one of the best bookshops in this country, and you don’t have to take my word for it - they were literally voted Best Independent Bookshop and Best Children’s Bookshop at the British Book Awards last year. They organise fantastic events with local schools, and have arranged lots of school visits for me over the years, with and without co-author Sarah McIntyre. This year they’re marking their tenth anniversary, and have just unveiled a whole newly-built event space, which links the shop itself to the meeting room and Hub workspace areas out back, and has allowed for a rearrangement of the shop itself and an expansion of the children’s section (yay!). If you’re ever in that part of Devon (just north of Exeter) do drop in and have a look around - it’s a fantastic place, and they have loads of great events with visiting authors .  To celebrate the anniversary, the new space, and the start of Independent Bookshop Week , the Bookery threw a big party yesterday...

My plans for making my own Arthurian home movie are continuing apace. I’ve arranged to shoot it in the last week of October on some handy locations here on Dartmoor - all on private land, so won’t have to worry about random ramblers wandering into shot, although if you’re operating a paraglider off Chinkwell Tor that week you might feel your ears burning.  I also have a script of sorts. Having considered and rejected various traditional bits of the legends as too expensive, I’ve opted for a bracingly non-canonical tale in which Queen Gwenevere sets off on an autumnal journey accompanied by one loyal lady-in-waiting and one rather grumpy young knight: along the way she’ll have one of those perplexing supernatural encounters which always await those who venture far from Camelot. The exact nature of the perplexing supernatural encounter is a bit vague at the moment, and it’s stuffed with scenes which can be jettisoned if the micro-budget doesn’t stretch that far, but it’s en...