Slowly edging this to the start line. It's a serial online fiction for boys. Not to say girls won't like it, but it's written with quite a lot of criticism and pestering from my own 7 year old boy, so it's got a certain slant! I love it when he says 'that drawing is funny' by which he means absolute rubbish. A very useful and animated critic. What's really scary is that he is judging me against Lego and Moshi monsters with no sense at all that it's just me and they are mego-corps! Talk about a level playing field...

I am just putting the final touches on a film script I have been working on for six years. By finishing touches I mean that I have achieved a script that we (writer, director, potential producer) feel is good enough to start thinking about finding some money to make it.

Photo: Me atop Ben Nevis

Recently I went for a big walking trip, the West Highland Way in Scotland. It wasn't very difficult. It was very wet. For 10 days I had no real need for a computer. I took a cell phone and a Kindle (I loooved the Kindle, perfect for travel away from reliable power). I also took a small notebook (a paper one) and a pen. In the past I would have taken a sketch book but it needs to be warm and dry to really be able to sit on the side of a hill and draw, so I left the pencils behind.

This one is personal, and not at all about me. Personal in that it happens in my territory both in time and space, and not at all about me in that it is not particularly autobiographical.

It's about Wellington, and being 11 and kicking around on bikes, and the strange English boy, and parents who try to get on but just can't seem to manage it.

An ailing Vampyre in search of fresh blood lands ashore and takes up residence in his three-thousand year old castle. His prior occupation means he can make a land-claim and govern the new colony any way he sees fit.

But by the time he cleanses his palette, will there be anyone left to govern?