Hidden talent

In this instance I am not talking about you, gentle (talented) reader.

I have been in That Birmingham meeting and talking with friends (desperately trying to persuade one of them to start writing, he's a clever chap, I bet he could do it).

Then there's my mate Chris in Birmingham. Chris is a bassist, generally acknowledged as one of the best bass players in the country, he has headlined with Jules Holland among others. People come to him when they want a classy bass line on pretty much any type of music. His story is an odd one - apparently he decided one day, in his late teens, that he wanted to play the bass guitar. So he disappeared into his bedroom, and re-emerged a year later, having practised all day every day, a virtuoso bass player.

Despite his current success he's looking for new challenges and asked me if I knew of any other paying gigs for musicians - he's like to compose as well. So I'll be sending him a list of ideas, and if you have any ideas I'll be happy to pass them along.

For a while now I've been wondering whether I could make Monsters into a comic - well, okay, I knew I could and I wanted to. The only stumbling block was an illustrator - I do have contacts who know illustrators but these are professionals and would most likely want paying. How do you find a professional quality illustrator who likes your stuff and is willing to work for nothing?

There's this bloke Rob. I've known him for a few years, his day job involves working with people who need help. He's a jolly good chap. Turns out that Rob used to work as a professional illustrator, the type who says, when you say what you're after, "What style?" That kind of professional.

And he's love to help me turn Monsters into a comic. I've given him a quick brief and we're going to look at styles - he even asked whether I wanted colour or mono. Excellent question, I love professionals, since I'm planning for us to make money out of this, it'll be mono. (Means I can create downloadable PDFs that people can pay for and print out themselves without a huge colour printer bill.)

As has been mentioned I use Celtx for screenwriting. It just so happens that Celtx also has a comic-writing option. So I shall be exploring that.

But I mustn't get too side-tracked. I still need to finish draft 1 of Unit X, might manage that tomorrow.

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What's on the turntable? "Cascade" by Gordon Giltrap from "Perilous Journey"