Writing for Different Media with Andrew Cartmel
- Fiction Fans
- 3 days ago
- 28 min read
Episode 239
Release Date: July 1, 2026
Your hosts discuss the differences between writing for the screen, the stage, and the page with Andrew Cartmel, whose repertoire includes all of the above. They also talk about writing original work in contrast with existing IP like Doctor Who, and collaborative vs individual projects.
Find more from Andrew: https://reclaimedradio.com/shows/andrew-cartmel/
Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:
- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Episode Transcript*
*this transcript is generated by Descript, please excuse the mess.
Lilly 0:04
Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.
Sara 0:09
And I'm Sarah, and I'm so pleased to welcome Andrew Carmel back onto the podcast. This time not to talk about a novel, but to talk about writing for different mediums.
Andrew 0:18
And it's great to be back, but I wanna start with a question. I've, I've spoken to you guys many times before, but for the first time today, I suddenly thought is fan fiction's? Is fiction fans a play on fan fiction?
Lilly 0:29
It absolutely is. Yes.
Andrew 0:31
It's very witty. It's wonderful.
Lilly 0:34
That was back when we were, were starting the podcast, we kind of threw out like, oh, you know, fan fiction, fiction fans, and then discovered that the username was available on
Andrew 0:44
How fabulous. Isn't that great?
Lilly 0:46
Yeah. So before we jump into our conversation today, what's something great that happened recently?
Andrew 0:53
Ooh. Well, there's actually been loads of good stuff happening lately. My garden is looking great. I've found a bunch of, because I'm a nutty book collecting type, I found some really lovely books online. Yeah, just sort of personal stuff, good things happening. And the new book is going well. You know, so that's, I, I suppose that would probably, from my very narrow viewpoint, that would probably be the most important thing.
Lilly 1:21
Well, that's a great thing.
Sara 1:23
I think that's a good thing for us too.
Lilly 1:24
Yeah.
Sara 1:26
My good thing is very silly. It is that the new season of Gardener's world has started.
Andrew 1:32
Oh, wonderful.
Sara 1:33
Which is a show that I like, a ridiculous amount. It's so low key. It's genuinely just so relaxing.
Andrew 1:43
Gardens become more and more important. I think if you get a place of your own and they, they've become sort of paramount ever since, you know, the days of lockdown. You just realize what, how valuable they are.
Sara 1:55
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And Gardner's world, I mean, because it is a British show and we have a very different climate here. There's not necessarily a ton of advice that's applicable to me, but it's still really nice to watch.
Andrew 2:07
Yeah, I can imagine that.
Lilly 2:10
I went to the mall this week. What a blast. From the past, it was very much what middle school Lily imagined adulthood to be. Which is, you know, not accurate in any way, but you know, going to the mall with friends, having absolutely no requirements on my time. We got dinner at the food court. It was very nostalgic
Andrew 2:34
Lovely.
Lilly 2:35
What is everyone drinking today?
Andrew 2:38
I was ready for this question. I, I, I'm gonna call it chocolate, but it's actually cacao.
Lilly 2:43
Ah,
Andrew 2:45
And the sweetening agent is coconut sugar, which is, I'd recommend highly to anyone who hasn't tried it. I find it agrees with me a lot better than cane sugar, especially refined cane sugar. It's just, it's got a lovely flavor and I've, I can't, I don't have from scientific proof. I suspect it's probably better for you.
Lilly 3:04
Does it taste much like coconut or is it just mostly a sugar
Andrew 3:07
No, it, it, when you sniff it, it's got a sort of kinda rich, slightly coconutty smell, but it's basically just kind of, not overpowering sweetness, but very pleasant sweetness to, it
Lilly 3:16
that sounds great.
Andrew 3:17
looks like brown sugar.
Sara 3:19
I might have to go and acquire some for myself. That does sound good.
Andrew 3:23
think because it's more of a slow release, it's better for you than than sucrose. That's, I think, whatever glucose, whatever COSA is.
Sara 3:30
I had considered making hot chocolate in, in honor of your
Andrew 3:33
Oh, thank
Sara 3:34
on the podcast Andrew, but I ended up just making tea 'cause that was easier.
Andrew 3:38
Can I change my, the great thing that's happened lately because I, you know, it's like when people ask you the name of your favorite music, your mind goes blank. I've just suddenly thought of something. So I, I commissioned a friend to do a painting for me
Sara 3:52
Ooh.
Andrew 3:53
Yep. And I thought, what I thought I'd do is show you the painting. So What that is, is, a painting. I've got a cupboard in which I keep a folding bicycle for. There is such a thing. And my friend Sarah, I commissioned her to do a painting of a cat girl riding a bicycle. So if you blow it up and in fact I'll put in another. Picture just so you can, you can see I've recently had the kitchen repainted. There's another, I know it's a, it's so middle class, but it's such a wonderful thing. and this is so sort of a picture of it in situ, so you can see a bit more of the kitchen. So she, she made the background of the painting. The same yellow as I'm painting the kitchen with.
Lilly 4:27
That's lovely. I love it.
Sara 4:29
Yeah, I love, yeah. Oh, that's really pretty.
Andrew 4:31
So I find things like that are so important aesthetically in your life. I mean, they, it is, like every day you see it and you feel good about it. So I think having a work of art in your house is, is quite, quite a major thing.
Sara 4:45
Absolutely. correct me if I'm wrong, but Sarah has done art for some of your theater,
Andrew 4:52
you, you're so smart, you. Absolutely. I was gonna give a long explanation of who she was and I just thought you guys would be bored. But no, that's, and that's one of her paintings for one of my players behind me.
Sara 5:03
I thought I recognized it.
Lilly 5:04
Yeah.
Andrew 5:04
Sarah Jane Docker, she's wonderful. So, yeah, and I, and it's just, it's great to pay a friend, to create a piece of art that goes into your life. It becomes an important part of your life. So I'm gonna make that the, wonderful thing that's happened lately. 'cause I sort of went blanked a bit when you asked me that. And thank you for remembering Sarah. She's really is a, a, a great person.
Sara 5:23
Yeah, well you've, had some really wonderful posters, so it's, of course, I'm gonna remember the, the artist.
Andrew 5:29
It's, yeah, it's great. I mean, I think visual art is such an important part of life. This seems to sound like a real kind of swerve and irrelevant, but I'm rereading a book called Shogun by James Clavel, which is about, yeah, right. You, you know, it's about, and there's a sequence in which the Samurai Lords are just meeting in, the huge castle and like they're all just gathering in this room and it, the room is just like gray stone and there's a little niche in the gray stone and there's a vase. They with a single sprig of cherry blossom in it. And like these, these are these brutal samurai, all those, but they understand the importance of aesthetics. And also it's that wonderful Japanese thing that, that a, a little can mean so much. But I just thought that was such a powerful thing. Like even these blood thirsty trained killers. they have poetry in their soul, you know, and it just got me thinking how important things like that are. so I, I love me a bit of something beautiful to appeal to the eye.
Lilly 6:23
Well, is that also your answer for what you've been reading lately?
Andrew 6:28
That's a great answer. I went on a little rereading project of James Clave. 'cause when I was young, I just thought he was a God. but I sort of stopped reading after Shogun and so I caught up on some of his later books. I read one called Noble House, which was, I mean, it was really good, like, it was a massive sprawling soap opera and it was great in its own way. But Shogun, I think is, is his master work. I think he probably peaked with that 'cause he, he's obviously so committed to it. He's so fascinated by the material and the characters. It comes through. It really is. I mean, the other books are supreme works of popular fiction, but this is something special I would say, and I'm just loving it.
Sara 7:06
I read Shogun probably at too young of an age. I think I was in. Sixth grade, so like 12 or something. And, and I remember absolutely hating it. I'm sorry to say,
Andrew 7:18
aspect of it did you hate?
Sara 7:19
I didn't like the way that he described women's bodies.
Andrew 7:25
Yeah.
Sara 7:26
But I haven't, I haven't read it since then. So I don't know if I would find more appreciation in the rest of the story. If I was to read it as an adult.
Andrew 7:35
It's definitely got a male gaze. If you wanted to build the case for defending that the, the character is about as unreconstructed as you'd get. He's Elizabeth an Englishman, but of course he's presented as being a barbarian, literally, and like his gradual civilization by the Japanese people is quite, quite interesting.
Sara 7:56
Yeah, it is. It is something that I've thought about rereading at some point, but hard when you read a book a week for a podcast.
Andrew 8:04
you, you, you might be being a bit unfair on it because I, I'm, I'm not all the way through it, but there's just been a bit where he's on the ship, all the Samurai and Marico, who's the, the female samurai who's eventually the love interest and they're all bathing naked and they're totally relaxed about it, which is sort of unusual to him. And then later on they're on the ship and she's dressed again and it says. He was more aware of her and aroused by her when she was dressed than when she was naked. So I think I, I think that's quite a an insightful and enlightened thing regarding
Lilly 8:34
That's the kind of nuance that goes over your head when you're 12.
Sara 8:37
yeah, it is. It is entirely possible that I'm being unfair to this novel. I, I will own that a hundred percent.
Andrew 8:45
But anyway, so yeah that's what I've been reading. Let
Lilly 8:48
Sarah, have you read anything non podcast related?
Sara 8:51
I do not have a good answer for this. I'm afraid I have only been doing podcast reading lately.
Lilly 8:57
Fair. My answer is very OneNote and listeners are gonna be very sick of it by now, but I've been reading only nonfiction books about babies. That's where my head is
Andrew 9:07
Oh wow. Cool. Have you, have you found a particularly good one?
Lilly 9:11
No, I've ordered a couple new ones and I'm, I'm hoping I like them better. I started with the, the classic what to expect when you're expecting and Found it very condescending.
Andrew 9:22
when I was growing up, there was a guru called, believe it or not, Dr. Spock, and his books were considered to be the last word on child rearing. Have you even heard of him or has he passed completely from public consciousness?
Lilly 9:34
I haven't heard of him, but that could just
Andrew 9:36
extraordinary. I I think that Spock in Star Trek was named after him, in fact,
Lilly 9:41
Really. That's cool.
Andrew 9:42
because it's a weird name and that this guy predated Roddenberry's Star Trek. But so yeah, it sounds like I'm making this up, but I'm not.
Lilly 9:50
No,
Andrew 9:50
like his book sold in the millions and millions. 'cause everybody, this is the way you raised your kids. Like it was just the thing, it was the accepted bestseller of the day.
Lilly 10:00
Yeah, there are so many books out now that it's hard to like sort through how many of them are, you know, based in science or any of that. And so that's kind of been my, my project of weeding through all of the nonsense.
Sara 10:18
I found Dr. Sp with. Wikipedia page. He was apparently also an Olympic athlete.
Andrew 10:24
Oh, holy cow.
Sara 10:26
Yeah,
Lilly 10:26
Good for him.
Sara 10:28
Ben Benjamin McLean, Spock.
Andrew 10:30
we go. Benjamin. Right. There you go. Does it say anything about the, the, the sales of the books? Does it, does it tell you
Sara 10:37
it says that his book, baby and Childcare from 1946 is one of the best selling books of the 20th century, selling 500,000 copies in the six months after its initial publication, and 50 million by the time of SP death in 1998.
Andrew 10:55
Yeah, so it kept going for about 50 years and sold immensely. There you go, baby. In childcare. There was a copy on our bookshelf that a lot of good, it did.
Lilly 11:06
Well, speaking of having a variety of strengths and talents, Andrew, we usually have you on to talk about your novels, but you have actually written for a huge variety of different medias and ips
Andrew 11:21
It's surprisingly that's kind of true. Yeah.
Lilly 11:25
So can you tell us how you, how you got started? I, I know a little bit of the story myself, but
Andrew 11:32
To probably repeat myself, I. Never wanted to be anything except a writer from the time I could read. But what I understood a writer to be was somebody who wrote books, basically novels. So I wanted to be a novelist because I wasn't really aware of the other kinds of writer that you could be. But as I became aware of them, like I remember going to the public library and getting out a book. Full of plays, like great plays of the sixties. 'cause I wanted to learn about plays and learn how to write them. I was living in Winnipeg, which isn't like, isn't completely a backwater, but it also isn't a, a swirling vortex of culture, at least at the time. So I don't think I might've seen one or two plays in my life, you know, like plays for kids, the kind you take a kid to. So I hadn't really seen any plays. I was just reading them. but I was very aware of it. Keen desire to write plays. And then at, at a certain point, I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing television scripts. I got a, I didn't get a book of television scripts. I got a book about how to write television scripts.
Sara 12:31
as we've said, you've written tv, you've written by this point, you've written audio, you've written stage plays, you've written comics, you've written novels. Is there anything that, that you haven't done that you would still like to do?
Andrew 12:47
I, at one time, I really wanted to write film scripts, like a feature film scripts because, and sort of the reason I didn't I is that there's a distinction. I've written TV scripts, but TV and film. Seem to be similar 'cause like they look similar on the page, but they're very different. Like you could be a really great TV writer and never be a great film feature writer because it's a different kind of beast. And I can't entirely analyze what the difference is. if I could perhaps, I could have written a really good film script, but I think I'm a very good TV writer, but I tried to write feature films and I could never quite crack that. So. I did have a burning passion to do that. I don't have that burning passion now, but I do have a sort of lingering sense of unfinished business in that I never quite mastered it. So I suppose in that sense, I would like to write a film script, but I don't sit around thinking, oh, I'd love to write a film script. What I'd love to write is another play. I don't know quite what it is yet, but that's that is my burning desire would be to write another full length play.
Sara 13:53
And how, how many plays have you written at this point?
Andrew 13:56
Well, let's have a look, shall we? I'll go into the file called plays and we'll have a quick look and it'll be, it won't be entirely accurate, but it won't be far off. So let's see. 1, 2, I'm gonna say. In the neighborhood, uh, between 20 and 30 because some of those were early efforts and some are unfinished, but, so maybe two dozen plays including shorter plays for length plays. I.
Sara 14:20
Do you find that it's, a little bit of a different skillset, writing shorter plays versus full length plays, or is it just the same process for you?
Andrew 14:29
Oh, interesting question. I'd say I, I think it's the same because you are moving towards a certain, aiming towards a certain target, and it kind of doesn't matter whether that targets. After eight pages or 80 pages, although it, that will matter keenly in terms of what you're gonna do with a play. 'cause there isn't really much market for a play that only lasts five or 10 minutes. I mean, there are things you can do with it, but there's not much in the, the real world that, that you can launch it into it, it have to be with a bunch of other stuff.
Lilly 14:56
From the outside, at least television has changed quite a bit over the years. Has playwriting changed or, or just the, the media?
Andrew 15:06
in a couple ways. there's a very clear answer to that. Back in the day, you'd say in the 1920s or thirties, you'd have a three act play, and it would've loads of characters in because like you'd have a, somebody come on who, who's a servant and they just say, oh sir, there's someone at the door for you. And that'd be it, it for the play. And that was partly because. Pay was lower, I guess, but also 'cause you had repertory companies and whoever had that tiny bit part in one play would've a better part in another play with the same company. But that sort of isn't the way it works now, so you don't want loads of characters, new plays. Although I did just see a Genius play by Tom Starboard called Arcadia had loads of characters by modern standards. But I guess you, you were Tom Stockard, you could get away with it. So fewer characters. Forget three acts now. Forget even two acts. The play, the commercial play that people want now is about, would last about 60 to 75 minutes with no break because especially since the pandemic, people want to go to the theater relatively early and get home relatively early. They don't wanna be out late and that's fine because like a 60 to 75 minute play. A good length a length that I like to write. And also, although there's a lot of things you can do with an act break, you can sort of have a big revelation and let it sink in and everybody goes out to the bar and talks about it. So that's wonderful. But I mean, that, that is the advantage of that. But having dispensed with that, what you get in return is. Velocity because what the downside of having an act break is all the energy goes, right? You have to build, you have to pump it all back up again when you restart the play. So it's, it's, you know, having a continuous play, I suppose you could call it a one act play, but one act plays used to be short plays. Very short plays. So that is the way in which that I'm aware of theater having changed. And that's just in the last 10, 20 years.
Sara 17:04
It's funny that you mention people wanting to, Have, have shows start sooner so they can get home earlier. Because I'm actually going to the theater this evening myself in San Francisco. And I was just talking with my aunt, my aunt we're going together, how glad I was that it was starting at six 30 so that we could get home
Andrew 17:21
it's great. I mean, 'cause then you, you know, you get home and you still have some time. Otherwise, you know, it's like midnight. You get to bed, it's one o'clock. It's great. It's great because I don't think it alters the experience, whether, whether it's a matinee or a mid-afternoon. I think it's the same show and it's just means that it's easier to slot into your life.
Sara 17:40
Absolutely.
Lilly 17:42
And it opens up more days of the week. Right. Like I wouldn't want to go, especially on a Sunday evening.
Andrew 17:47
Yeah. May I ask Sarah what you're seeing in San Francisco?
Sara 17:51
are, we are seeing girls Chance Music, which is a new play. Let me see if I can find the,
Andrew 17:58
But it's not a, not a musical, I take it 'cause you call it a play.
Sara 18:01
don't believe it's a musical, but I actually don't know much about it.
Andrew 18:06
But that's great. It's great to go with no preconceptions.
Sara 18:08
yeah, we, we got, season tickets to the a CT Theater, and this is one of the shows that is part of
Andrew 18:16
What a great way to, to to see theater.
Sara 18:19
Oof. Apparently it's an hour and 50 minutes with no intermission though.
Andrew 18:23
Oh, the, the thing, the thing about no intermission is you gotta keep the play fairly short. But I think the stop hard was about that length. Yeah, 110 minutes. No information. That's doable. Just don't drink lots of beer before you go in.
Sara 18:35
Yeah.
Lilly 18:36
So in my mind, kind of the big divide between different writing projects is whether you're working with a team or solo. Is that just me? Am I crazy?
Andrew 18:49
Well, that's an important part of it. But you see, although you, you might say correctly that writing a stage play and writing a TV script are both team efforts. They're very different team efforts because with a play, you write it, the writer writes it, and then it becomes a group effort. But if it's a TV script or a movie script. The writer can write it if he likes, but before it hits the screen, there's gonna be a team effort in rewriting it or, you know, getting it into a form that the people who are gonna produce it want. I suppose there's, there might be a little of that in the, like you might write a stage play and you might find a producer who said, oh, I want some change. But that's almost unknown. Basically what you do is you write your play and it goes on. If you're lucky enough to have it go on and then it's, it's well received or not. But a film or a TV script. quite likely, if it's a TV script, it will have arisen in a writing room. And even if you, it was written by one person alone, it's gonna go into a writing room before it gets to the screen. So that is a different kind of team effort. And in a, you know, I like being a lone wolf and writing my novels and writing my stage plays, and then I like not being a lone wolf as it becomes a social thing once the actors and the director are involved. With the stage play, but writing a TV show with a team doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a bad thing if you're just being rewritten and, and your script's being kicked around. But if you're part of a writing team with other people you respect and admire, and look at some of the great writing teams they had on things like the X-Files, you know, it's, it's a lovely experience. Maybe not so much in movies 'cause there's not a writing team as such. And what does tend to happen is your stuff just gets rewritten and writers don't always get wonderfully treated. But I haven't had direct experience of that. Whereas I have had a bit of a direct experience of TV writing.
Lilly 20:39
And you've been correct me if I'm wrong on both sides of a team of writers, right? You've, you've both led a team and been a part of a team. Am I correct?
Andrew 20:48
Well, let me think about this. I think all the, all the team stuff I've done, I, I have been the, I've been the script editor on the show, which is a very different vibe. I haven't done much writing outside of those shows. I wrote a cop show called the Bill. An episode of that and I wrote an episode of Midsummer Murders, which is very famous, neither of which got produced, but that wasn't part of a writing team. In both cases, I was working to a script editor and I sort of had drafts into the script editor and it, that's, you know, that's how it worked. And also on Torchwood, it was the same thing. If the torch would script advance further, then I might've ended up sitting in the room with the other riders, but it didn't get to that stage.
Sara 21:24
You touched on this a little bit earlier, but does your process differ when writing for different mediums, or is it more based on. Or, or more affected by whether or not you're writing for an IP versus your own original content.
Andrew 21:39
if I'm writing somebody else's characters, somebody else's shows, it's a very different feeling. But I, I'd always rather write my own stuff, but on the other hand, it's very exciting to write for, you know, some great established show. You know, that can be a turn on too. But in terms of the actual process of inspiration and all the rest of it, I think it's, I think it's always the same thing. You're always just waiting for that kind of idea that excites you.
Lilly 22:06
When you start working on a project and you, you have an idea for a new story, do you always know what format that story belongs in, or does it ever change over the course of the process?
Andrew 22:20
I think it is always, I always know I, like, I, I always think this is a player. This is a novel. It, having done it as a player, a novel or whatever you might think, oh. This could transfer into something else, but, but I think when it's conceived, it's always conceived in the medium that, that it, that you're gonna first write. It just, I mean, that's just a personal thing for me.
Sara 22:43
You've also written for a bunch of different genres. Do you have a, like a favorite genre? Is, is there a genre you'd like to try that you haven't done
Andrew 22:51
Ooh. I love writing crime fiction. I do. I mean, I, I've, I loved reading science fiction and I've written a fair amount of it, but I, I love crime fiction. Other genres. Hmm. I've got an idea for a, an historical novel. But I'm not sure it'll ever get written and I, I'm not sure whether it's a natural fit for me. So I suppose I wanna write that particular novel and I wanna do it well. So you might say, I have a, a, an ambition to write historical fiction, but it's just a case. I need to know that I need to sit down feeling that I can write it, do a really good job. And I don't feel that way about that particular book yet, although it's a great story. I just don't have a clear idea of the, kind of, the kind of way I should tell the story. I can see many ways of doing it, but none of them feel exciting or natural at the moment the way that it does. When I'm writing some of my other novels, I.
Sara 23:42
This is a little bit of a, of a diversion, but is this historical novel that you're talking about, the one the, I think last time we had you on, you were talking about writing a crime novel that was set in. Like the twenties or something.
Andrew 23:59
Oh, that. So, no, that I didn't, don't get into that historical, I could virtually modern.
Sara 24:02
Okay.
Andrew 24:02
the, no, this is a medieval thing, but the one set in the twenties, I've written the first one of those. I mean, the series is being sold as we, well, the, the contracts have been drawn up. They just need to be signed. They're under offer to Titan. So the, the series is, may I tell you about it? It's called Hunter and Carol. They're Detective Duo Hunter is Damien Todd Hunter, former Scotland Yard Detective. Carol is Orla Carroll, daughter of a New York cop, Los Angeles Private Eye. They meet in Los Angeles, return to London, and they operate in London in the 1930s. And I love writing that stuff and it's near enough. To today that it's not difficult to get into the heads or the senses of what it's like in those times. Whereas in medieval times, I'm at slightly at a loss. I could do loads of research, but it doesn't feel natural. The theory is, is is great and like I just, I was say, I was just Googling what a bottle of schwepps. Indian quinine, tonic water looks like, you know, stuff like that. I just love doing that stuff and fashions. 'cause sometimes you wanna describe a character and you just google women's slacks, you know, or something like that, and you think, oh, what would this character look like? And it's great and I'm really enjoying it. So I've written the first one. I am well into the second one. I've been, I was writing that today. I'm, I think I'm over halfway through that. That should be finished soon. And then I might go straight on to write the third, 'cause it's a three book deal. I might line 'em all up and send them all in. So that is what I'm working on at the moment. I'm very excited about it and really enjoying it.
Sara 25:34
I can't wait to read them.
Andrew 25:35
Well, I, you know, I can tell you the first one, the publication date for the first one is. Not this April, but next April. April, 2027. So that should, well that should be the next book of mine. That's out. Since we got into this, should we have a little discussion about where my, my writing is at the moment?
Sara 25:53
Yes, please.
Andrew 25:54
Okay. So, what I'm just doing is I'm just checking the, I just wanna make sure I've got the publication publication date. I'm too excited, I can't talk, making sure I've got the publication dates right. Yep.
Sara 26:06
I'm also selfishly very pleased that it's next April because that means that we will probably be back to doing the regular podcast by then. Uh.
Andrew 26:15
oh yeah, of course. So, April, 2027 for the first Hunter Cow book, which is called Black Silk Mask. Thereafter, the books are gonna be April annually. So, and then the next final detective will be November, 2027. So. that's where we're with that. Now, what has happened is IS, when my publisher saw the new series, it was offered to them. They loved it. They, they really wanted it and they really loved it. The vinyl detective and paperback sleuth, they've become less and less enthusiastic about, 'cause they don't think the sales are good enough. So they have decided in their wisdom to drop the paperback sleuth and to do one more vinyl detective as sort of a hail Mary pass. Now there's none of this is, although none of this fills me with joy, none of it is as bad as it sounds because, for instance, the people who do the audio books, they're like, oh, we still want. The paperback suit and the final detective. We, we'll buy any more, you know, as many of the books as you wanna write, but you, you need to have a physical book out there too. But that's not a problem because I've know various people who are publishers, like who, who are related to Doctor Who stuff and things like that. So I can find a publisher and just keep putting the books out. So the plan is do this do the, the new series that's gonna come out through Titan, and hopefully it'll be embraced by the world. Do one more vinyl detector with Titan and then if they don't want any more, publish them elsewhere. The paperback sleuth, I mentioned deadly erotica should be the next one. My hope is to have that out this Christmas. So, because the thing is, I think I can write it before Christmas and. Since it's not, I won't call it being self-published, but since it's being published by people I know, they just publish it. Like there's not this long time lag that you get with conventional publishing. So you know, as soon as they got it, they can put it out there. So my hope is to have the paperback slew out this Christmas, the first hunter and Carol book in the spring, the next vinyl detective out next Christmas, and another paperback sleuth out then too. And so continue doing three books a year. That would be my plan. One can't guarantee these things, but I, that's what I'd like to see happen. And it's, it's certainly doable.
Lilly 28:25
Three books a year is, sorry. Oh, that's doable. You say so casually.
Andrew 28:30
no, but the, the thing is Lily there, there's a, a writer called John Dixon Carr, and he used to regularly have like four books out a year. A golden age crime writer. And I remember somebody saying. Something about, oh, when he had four books out out a year, they couldn't have been very good. No, that was his prime period. Like those were the best books. He later trailed off when he was writing fewer books a year. They weren't as good books, so it's entirely doable. Graham Greene used to have this thing that he'd try and write 500 words a day, and Ben Honovich and I adopted this. We actually call it a green, like, have you done a green today with 500 words? But if you do 500 words a day, which really isn't that much, that's two books a year. So. Four books a year is only a thousand words. And like today, I, I wrote over a thousand words 'cause I needed to catch up. And it's really not that, that hard. Three books a year, 750 words a day. Try somehow. I mean, that's only like a couple pages and although it's. It can be very difficult, like if you, if your imagination dries up, obviously it's very hard, but if you got a clear idea of what you want to write and if you're excited about it, like, I'm so excited about the Hunter and Carol series, it's a pleasure to write them, especially after doing the first book where I'm familiar with the characters and it's, it's fun to see the, you know, as soon as I start writing about that, some of the characters start to get, get up to their hijinks. It's just great. And also, the other thing that happened, having written the first novel is I. I had my central characters, but all these other characters arrived and decided to move in and stay. And they're really useful characters. Like my hero hunter, Damien, Todd Hunter, he's ex Scotland Yard. So he is a private detective and so is his associate or a Carroll. But it's useful to have a cop, a proper full-time cop. So there's this old associate of hunters called Rivas, Angus Rivas, who was set up in the first book and in this book. He's so useful. 'cause like, you know, you need to do stuff that only the, the, the actual cops can do. They have the resources and the authority to do it. So Rivas is crabbing up all the time and there's this spoiled young, rich girl who's real piece of work called Caprice and she's proving to be great value too. So anyway we're talking about how hard it is to write three books a year. If you love your characters and you've got some ideas, you're excited about the actual physical writing. You know, you can do 750 words in an hour, an hour in the morning. You know, it is. It's quite easy to do that much.
Sara 30:50
I, I think that we may have asked this in one of our previous interviews with you, so forgive me for the repetition, but do you find that your background in writing for TV helps with your ability to write quickly and do this, you know, 500, 750 words a day?
Andrew 31:08
I don't think so. I think I'm just quite a fast writer. When I was writing TV scripts, I, I was writing them very fast and they weren't bad scripts. Like anybody can write a bad script quickly, but these weren't bad scripts, so I'm just naturally quite a fast writer. Some writers are, there's a guy called Sterling Sullivan who is sort of like a, a really. Toweringly important TV and film writer in the late fifties, sixties and seventies. He wrote in The Heat of the Night, for which I think he won an Oscar anyway, he wrote really fast and he wasn't always brilliant, but he was often brilliant. So some, and on the other hand, some people take forever to write. Ben Ben's speeding up. He's a lot faster than he used to be, but he's a very meticulous writer. And so, you know, and I, so I certainly don't judge writers by this speed. 'cause you can be a great writer and very slow and a great writer and very fast. Certainly Thomas Harris, who's one of my favorite writers of all time who wrote Silence The Lambs and Hannibal he's very slow, like, you know, a book every 10 years, if you're lucky. They're great books, you know, so it's yeah, I don't think television writing informed my writing in terms of making me any faster.
Sara 32:17
Do you think it informed your writing in other ways?
Andrew 32:20
Perhaps not because I've always been a very visual writer. Maybe in the sense that it, it taught me that dialogue is important, but I might've had a ear for dialogue anyway. 'cause as I say, I've been reading those stage plays. I've been thinking in those terms. I certainly always understood that you wouldn't write huge speeches. Like a lot of first time writers just write these enormous and you just think, you know, have you ever seen any television, you know. you know, people, it's, you can get carried away. I've got carried away and I've written some pretty long speeches too, in my time, which I shouldn't have done, but not, you know, I, I had a basic grasp of what was required by the form.
Lilly 32:56
Is that where the advice to read your dialogue out loud can come into play? Just sitting there and going, oh no, I'm still talking.
Andrew 33:03
Yeah, absolutely. And also take the script. Turn it upside down and just flip through it because that what you should see that the dialogue is relatively short. And also what that will tell you is it there, the pattern should change 'cause it, if it's looks the same on every page, that's gonna be boring to hear that there should be the occasional longer speech. There should be variations, pauses. You can see that just by taking a script upside down, which is a trick I heard somebody's espouse many years ago, so that's kind of interesting too. So ver variety variation is, is also crucial.
Sara 33:35
If you could bring any of your works to a different medium what work would it be? What medium would you bring it to and why?
Andrew 33:44
I've got a movie script that I wanna turn into a stage play because it would, the resonance of it being, it's about Shakespeare, so the resonance of it being a play in a theater about Shakespeare. Just really works. And also it, it just kind of feels like a play, but it's, I've been trying to boil it down and I kinda sort of see what it needs, but it hasn't yet come to life, you know, on the table, eager help. It's not, it's not alive yet. So that the answer to that question, I, I definitely wanna take that screenplay and turn it into a stage player and I, it would work better as a stage player, but I just gotta figure out. How I approach it.
Lilly 34:27
Mm-hmm. Well, you've told us a little bit about the current projects you have going on, and we're very excited. Where is the best place for our listeners to keep up with, you know, which publisher might have the vinyl detective next, or any news of that sort?
Andrew 34:44
Keep an eye on me, on Instagram, on Facebook. I'm sorry that I'm on XI really am. It's just sort of a legacy thing where I've got thousands of followers. But if you, and I completely understand if somebody doesn't wanna go there, but if you, if you're on there anyway, check me out there too. And there will be news there from my publishers and from me Also, if you keep an eye on Titan. Titan Books. That's where you'll certainly find out about the Hunter Carroll books and also what might be the Swan song of, of the vinyl detective in its titan. It's publishing history, but certainly there'll be one more from them, so that's worth looking at Titan Books as well.
Sara 35:25
And everyone should go out and buy the vinyl detective, the new vinyl detective novel from Titan when it comes out, so that they keep publishing even though there will be another option, but.
Andrew 35:34
I, I think that people, even before that, you should rush out and buy a black silk mask, which is the first hunter and Carol, because I think you'll really like it. I, I, I think you'll enjoy it. I hope so. I'd certainly have my own enjoyment and enthusiasm or anything to go by and they usually are. 'cause if you are really enjoying writing something that comes across in the writing, I believe
Lilly 35:56
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This has been really fun and can't wait for our next time to talk to you about one of your actual works in particular.
Andrew 36:07
Great. What, what? Whenever the scheduling suits you guys, you know, the timetable of various books and what's happening. So, you know, please, anytime would be, would be great. I really enjoy it. I.
Sara 36:20
Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.
Lilly 36:29
Come disagree with us! We're on BlueSky and Instagram at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com or leave a comment on YouTube.
Sara 36:40
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Lilly 36:48
We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.
Sara 36:54
Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!
