Just in time for Halloween, I can announce that we’ve formally started pre=production on my very first movie. It’s a short film, but we all start somewhere right? A nice little quick burst of horror – to be cast, filmed and edited right here in Plymouth, Devon.

A quick, atmospheric little horror flick – I am looking forward to multitasking. I’ve always just been on the writing side of things (and for those screenplay gigs, as opposed to novels, I’d always be indebted to Cedric Sundström of Moviworld and Sheila McGillivray for her Centrum Guardian Project).

But this time the script was just the beginning. I’m actually directing.

It’s another form of storytelling – one that uses a wider range of tools than just 26 letters and some punctuation on a keyboard. It’s an art form I’ve been a fan of my entire life, but one that circumstance and environmental factors simply completely excluded from the realm of possibility for me. That’s all changed now.

I love – always have loved – horror movies. And I’ve been a ferocious couch critic for several decades as well. Plus I’ve been around the block as a hack – Lord knows – under my own name, or some other, or with some logo attached, I most certainly will have over a billion words floating out there in the aether, in print, on the box, or over the airwaves, somewhere.

But I’ve never stepped out of that and gone to do something else… and directing is about as hard a creative task as it gets.

That’s okay… I’ve always been a highly, highly experienced beginner.

I’m grateful to some of the teachers providing me with some good advice… friends I know personally as well as those who share their know-how with us bootstrapping, self-educating, hungry creatives (I’m thinking in particular of Ryan Connolly and Justus McCranie).

I also have a whole team helping, and (for the first time in my life) backers – and with pre-production now in full swing, the flick should be out next year.

Even with all this run up space and time, and all this great advice, this is my first short film…

As with anything else that is ‘new’ and ‘first’ – there is a possibility that it might be ‘shit’.

But then, given the road behind me, I figure I should at least stop doubting the possibilities of the road ahead.

And I will most certainly give it the old college try…