Develop - July 2025
Well the year is simultaneously whizzing by and dragging on as July comes to a close. This was a busy month, full of developments! I developed projects, and developed as a writer and a person! Plus, Develop is the title of the gaming industry conference I attended in Brighton for the first time.
Before we begin the great chronological roundup, though, I’m so happy to announce that WIP Comic’s ∞ anthology has launched on Kickstarter!
Please at least go and peruse the campaign, (linked above) and watch the trailer! Any support would be so appreciated, even if you just go for the digital expanded edition (the one I’ll be in!).
Please consider checking out this amazing anthology! I joined WIP Comics earlier this year and they've been an amazingly supportive group - I'm so happy to be a small part of this incredible project.
More on that project further down in Things I wrote, which also features some super exciting cover reveals!
Things I did
As promised, here’s a whistle-stop recap of my two nights in Cambridge, and days exploring further afield, at the end of last month!
On the drive up, we visited Royston Cave, which I’d heard about through a British Museum lecture. The town itself has an amazing history, with a crossroads of an ancient trackway and the Roman road Ermine Street going north from London, now the A10! Just beside and beneath the modern crossroads, is an artificial chamber filled with mysterious Medieval art.
As well as obvious religious figures, there's early heart symbols and handprints. There’s several theorised parties/owners of the space. I definitely thought there were two overlapping art styles, whether a private chapel, hermitage or Knight’s Templar church. It definitely had a level above the carvings, and its entrance shaft was uncovered in the 1700s!
Still on the way to Cambridge, we popped in Wandlebury Country Park, with great views, a massive multivallate (double ditch!) Iron Age hillfort we circled, close to another Roman road, a section that’s maintained as a 40km walking path.
We had an evening walk along the Cam, but headed the next morning to the prehistoric (2600 BCE!) flint mines known as Grime's Graves after the Saxons found them and related them to their god Grim, also known as Woden. It was great to finally visit and venture down into such an important ancient place, antler picks and all. Seeing the layers of flint amongst the chalk, and crouching into the tunnels, gave a whole new appreciation for the flint tools found all over. Well worth a visit if you’re ever near Thetford!
I won’t fill this newsletter with pictures of the aboveground dips, or the many Cambridge sites on our afternoon and evening walks round the city, with the sound of the choir drifting from King's.
I'd forgotten most things in the Fitzwilliam. I liked the modern art alongside the older upstairs, and paid much more attention to the Roman artefacts after my writing and travels. Plus, I saw one half of Ramesses III's coffin - the Pharaoh I learnt so much about studying the original reports from Medinet Habu at the British Museum for my THE WATCHERS pilot script.
On the way home we dropped by Audley End House and Gardens. There's a lot of history there, Jacobean but way before then in the grounds, a hillfort, Roman factory, the usual…
Many more photos from the trip are available to peruse on my instagram in handy Part 1 and Part 2 posts.
The evening we drove back, I attended another Screen Players Film Club at Selfridges. Instead of a retrospective on an older film, this one was an early screening of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s film Hot Milk, her directorial debut as well as adapting of the novel. It was a great film with a very impactful ending, and hearing afterwards about the adaptation process, the impressive production and the film’s stars I’d seen in other projects was fantastic.
I joined Stark Holborn on a video call, running through her talk Murder She… Modularized? Authored Narrative in a Proc-Gen World about the game Shadows of Doubt which she wrote. It was great to find out about her game writing experience and provide feedback.
This was all ahead of Develop: Brighton, the gaming industry conference Stark kindly informed me I could attend for free. I had a great time attending some roundtable talks, meeting people from all over the industry from solo devs to composers and had a proper meeting with Mike Faraday, a great writer who was full of advice and support. I also had lunch with a friend while in Brighton and of course hung out with Stark towards the end of the day.
After the usual monthly WIP Comics zoom, I was back in London to see Irina Imme play with her full band at a fantastic showcase evening. The three other acts I saw, Campbell, Onur and Ending Everything were all great too! A fantastic variety of music all in one place.
Back in London for an afternoon with Irina who I now call a friend, I saw the new prints on display at the Hiroshige exhibition at the British Museum. The one above stood out for its mythical character, especially as I was reading Samantha Shannon’s brilliant Priory of the Orange Tree (and it’s perfect prequel A Day of Fallen Night) at the time!
On the 17th, I was one of the lucky few to see Bastille’s intimate 320ish capacity gig at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, celebrating 100 issue of DORK magazine.
The long wait sitting on the street was worth it, not only for that concert view, but for the hours spent with friends and the larger Bastille fan community - I’m now a recognisable regular! Check out two of the community’s newsletters - https://quinnwritesthings.substack.com/ and https://tallerinanotherdimension.substack.com/
The concert itself of course was fantastic. Liang Lawrence and her two harmonizing bandmembers were great. But it had been too long since I’d seen the full Bastille band live. Being amongst a room with that community belting every word, jumping up and down to old classics, plus the fact Dan recognised me every time his eye contact would pan over. It was well worth pre-ordering DORK’s magazine. One of those moments of pure celebration-connection.
The official write up has many better photos and a chronicle of the night than I could ever capture: Small room, big moment: Bastille do The 100 Club for Dork 100
Not only were there so many familiar fan faces, but I saw Charlie Barnes and photographer Joe Horridge outside the venue, as well as Gabba from EMI Records who came over and said hello, recognising me from the Ampersand open studios when I won tickets to Shepherd’s Bush last October.
After the gig had ended, I didn’t just get to tell Liang what a great show she put on, but chatted again to Charlie and Ralph from To Kill a King. So members of that band, and Fours, who I saw support them Feb 2024 were just hanging out supporting their friends.
After that busy evening, the next morning it was up to Oxfordshire for a full weekend and Monday morning volunteering at North Leigh Roman Villa, 16 hours total. Two of my fellow volunteers very kindly put me up (in fact, I was really well looked after with an excess of food, board games, we watched a film, went out for pizza and to the local church to see some characterful art of Doomsday which survived the Reformation).
I could write about many aspects of my weekend as Centurion (head volunteer) on site but highlights were quality rather than quantity visitors on the first day, who gave £57 between the 52 of them! There were some very enthusiastic kids who took the time to make their own mosaics or hunt for snails, who I treated to our snail pins. 99 of the Roman variety were out on the Saturday after long drizzle!
Seeing all the new education material, including painted panels from one of our volunteers, the old/new stonework in the mosaic house, actually being able to get close to the mosaic for the first time was fantastic. And Monday morning I gave my first full tour of the site to a third of a U3A group on a special visit. Definitely all good developmental experiences. I’ve put one pic below but there’s many more mosaic close ups towards the end of this instagram post!
On the topic of North Leigh, I’ll repeat last month’s plea about the Minecraft competition I’m running with EH and Blenheim - (there may even be a year’s family pass and a handover from the Duke for the winner)!
Whatever your Minecraft knowledge, here’s the link to the form, with all the entry details and further links to online resources and a folder of pdfs: https://forms.gle/hDgySG5yrcdgWWjy5 We had our first top-notch entry this month, with two more months still to go!
To cap off the month - and bringing me to a shocking ten gigs in the last three months - I saw Imagine Dragons at Tottenham Stadium. Each musical experience has been so different, not just artistry but experience, people I meet, different facets of emotions expressed through the communal experience of songs known for over a decade or brand new…
Imagine Dragons was no different. They’re the first band I discovered myself, getting their first album CD for my tenth birthday. So it was incredible to finally see them, after many albums and their continued success. I wouldn’t recommend five hours queueing outside a stadium, then three and a half standing before the main band come on.
But I would recommend it for myself, because I had a perfect view of the long walkway lead singer Dan continually struts down with a diamond on the end for the whole band to join him. And I was surrounded by great fellow fans which made the time whizz by and who I could enjoy the experience with, and the supports, FLETCHR FLETCHR and Declan McKenna were great too.
There were hundreds of massive beach balls, at least seven confetti sprays of different colours, flames, massive sparklers, screen, lights and beams and thousands of people chanting along. Standing in the middle of the pitch with all the seated fans around gave me a small dose of what footballers must feel.
Things I wrote
This newsletter…
Most excitingly, I wrote what will hopefully soon be my first short film, with the director/camera operator from Greenwich uni and the twenty one pilots fan community. It was a lot of fun putting that script together with characters from the band’s lore only mentioned in letters to each other in fan exhibitions before shows. Everything’s tbd with the project, but writing a sort of casting call for it was another exciting new thing.
I also have a continuity role on an unrelated pilot filming next month!!!
I’m very excited to also share the covers for Star Wars Insider 234, the issue with my next magickal article. All three are listed on Forbidden Planet with the solicits, but here are the covers!
A longer post about my feature will surely be coming!
I linked to the Kickstarter at the start of this newsletter, but in the lead up to the campaign launch, WIP Comics, specifically the amazing Claudia Matosa behind their socials, used my art!
She shared my two completed inked panels and the pencils from my layout sketch for the third, very nicely put together with some text about my single page piece.
In his contribution, beautifully illustrated by himself, @hhamer5 takes us on a journey through time and civilisation.
Then my Stonehenge panel was also included in their 3 days to go post!
Our eight anthology is launching in just a few days! Keep your 👀 peeled, friends. This will be a good one!
Art by @hhamer5, @cartoon_shaunak, Markus Pattern and @fergocomics!
Throughout the month I submitted stories to the opportunities I mentioned last time, plus a 100-word drabble contest for editor Kai Delmas to appear in Apex Magazine on the theme of “The Masks We Wear.”
I have seen these two opportunities for Flame Tree Publishing’s Myths, Gods and Immortals series, which I plan to pursue before the August 24th deadline. They’re looking for stories on Valkyries and Odysseus.
To cap off the month, I spent a couple of days sending out another batch of literary agent queries for Children of Shadows!
Things I gained
This month’s Star Wars comics delivery provided great continuations of all the ongoing series and launch of the new Doctor Aphra series! The Rise of Skywalker adaptation really stuck the landing with the art.
Still a decent month new book-wise, all finds from the parents. I’m excited to flick through the Literary Trails one, and all the reading on Ancient Egypt and the Greek Myths. And I was enamoured enough with Royston Cave to buy that day’s last book from our guide!
Plus there’s that Vader Down 1 variant cover for ZBox (which I hadn’t heard of before). I don’t normally collect variants for no reason, but Vader Down holds a special place in my heart as the first crossover of the canon Star Wars Marvel comics. It is a brilliant coming together of Jason Aaron’s main run and Kieron Gillen’s Darth Vader, both of which were only just starting. It’s just a fantastic Star Wars story which cemented the comics on my mind, making them feel equally as important and cinematic as on-screen stories - if that makes sense. Plus it’s the first cover appearance of beloved character Black Krrsantan, art by Pasqual Ferry!
Thank you for reading! It means a lot that you’re still here while I chart my development - see how I brought it full circle again there?
Bye!