April always seems like a special month. Celebrating light and life - there’s the anniversary of my first book (eleven years!) as well. And three years since the Star Wars Celebration that changed my life. This April was full of bluebells and many more precious fleeting things.

Things I did

Perhaps the longest event of the month, and surely my biggest achievement, was organising every book I own into proper shelves by read/unread, keep/read and go, fiction/non-fiction, genre and special sections in various rooms… and mostly by moving stacks on the floor. Fun!

Here’s the new shelf (carved out of my dad’s bookcase) of mosly special editions and ARCS, with a few ‘just signed’ titles too that fit!

Balancing that out were trips to places like Ightham Mote, Oldbury Hill, Pevensey and Vigo/Harvel/Trottiscliffe - an illuminating visit to Whitehorse Wood.

Amidst these days out, I received a message from Mariama Bah, lead on A Life in Colour that I acted in last month, asking me to be an extra in Socially Silent, another Brighton-based short she was producing, directed by Joseph Quinn Peterson. Of course I said yes. We were all in an art class, and sitting around and having lunch with my fellow students was like being back at school for the day. And there were four more faces from last month amongst the cast and crew - two shorts in two weeks!

The latest Screen Players Club did not disappoint, and neither did earlier that day. I reconnected with someone from my school, who’s recently started a newsletter and is pursuing screenwriting. We had a lovely walk in London’s spring sun (pictured above) and I managed to avoid the rain that day in the Disney shop (pictured below).

I wished the faint 1 on that price tag was fully gone. But the film that evening was Broken English, and there was a Q&A with the filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, and the lead actor George MacKay. It was a delight to hear from all of them and be able to say hello to them and to host Charlotte afterwards.

Broken English is a docu-portrait, a fictionalised non-fiction film. There’s a Ministry of Not Forgetting who are carrying out a study on Marianne Faithful, uncovering all sorts of artefacts, photos, videos and reports.

There were roundtable discussions about controversies but the best parts were when George, acting but really improving, was interviewing Marianne and showing her everything they’d found. I hardly knew anything about her story, so it was such an education. Her last performance, that she spent months and years building up to after COVID, bookends the film. I really hope the Ministry makes more!

On a weekend seeing family up in the Midlands, we visited the Cannock Chase Visitor Centre, site of the WW1 Rugeley Camp. I found that Tolkien wrote some of his earliest Middle Earth poems (which I still have to read!) while there in 1915-16, and his wife lived in nearby village which I know well. It was such a strange connection that somewhere so familiar to me had such a link to the origins of a fantasy I adore.

The fact that he wrote such beautiful things in such conditions was also incredible to think about, cramped in a camp, training, then going to fight in the Somme, to come back and expand on that beauty… very inspiring!

Whilst trying to link together a few more important locations in Tolkien’s life - and mine! - I did discover this complete Tolkien Trail which does shed more light. And I had a beautiful message of my own come through while there too… (and I’ve since had more!)

On the way back we visited Charlecote Park, a country house with a very nice estate. As per usual, there were lots of incredible furnishing and art pieces from around the world. But I thought I’d share the above one. I felt some recognition upon seeing the doves… but surely it couldn’t be Roman? No, but it was based on the mosaic from Hadrian’s Villa, which I saw in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

There were more family trips, to the bluebell-ocean of Emmett’s Wood, named after the old word for ant - a fact which I knew from Gemma Amor ITCH!.

I took my parents to the BM and BL, round the current exhibtions and seeing a few new things in the library, followed by walking round Coal Drops Yard in the sun. There were two new free additions in the BM, a selection of many incredible Netherlandish drawings, and the Asante Ewer, the largest surviving bronze jug from medieval England, which somehow made its way to a photographed shrine, only to be looted and purchased…

That evening I was at Arcus Sounds for the first of VOICED’s Backroom Live sessions. The organisers were lovely, and Ksenia and her guitarist Ledi performed a fantastic acoustic set of unreleased songs before a cosy interview/chat.

On a final excursion, we visited the Richmond area. Ham House had some fantastic surviving 17th century designs, like a (large but filled with small things) closet, and these stairs inspired by Roman military decor - modern cannons and drums alongside SPQR and those dodgy ancient dolphins.

Richmond Park was fantastic to explore for the first time too, with great views and the Isabella Plantation in bloom. Of course I went to find the ancient burial mound, reshaped over the years and installed with this telescope to scan the preserved avenue vista to St. Paul’s. It was a magical moment to turn the scope around and see THE WAY. Hard to capture in a photo though.

That night, Irina Imme was in the finals of an open mic night at Bikesoup Cafe by Westfield. There were fourteen other talented singers to be introduced to, and a real community atmosphere - the power of music.

Next month will start with a Balu Brigada concert and some more fun events, but I don’t think you’ll hear about those for a while. I’m going to be in France for a month, and will probably give most things a break, while catching up on others… while I visit some caves.

Things I wrote

This newsletter…

My conversation with Cup of Tea With That Book, Please released! I had a fantastic time on their Tea & Books Chat, talking all about my self-published multiverse and more! Tabrizia and Whitney were great hosts with a variety of fun questions. The YouTube recording is above, but there’s a link to their site below with many more podcast platforms and more about me and my latest book!

In Conversation with Harvey Hamer

I didn’t quite make the open call I mentioned last month. But, for the first time I received great feedback about the story from an editor, both constructive and congratulatory!

I can’t take for granted all these steps on the journey. Another one of those steps came in when a story I wrote at the start of this month, Metamorphosis, made the shortlist of seven in Station Books’ Short Story Competition, judged by Lesley Kara. Here’s a screenshot!

I’ll know if I’m in the top three tomorrow!

I’ve also written a poem for another local opportunity, on the theme of Friendship for the Ashdown Forest’s competition, celebrating 100 years of Winnie the Pooh!

The competition closes on May 8th!

I’ve still been pitching many things, working on several comics projects and my short film. Collaborating with artists is such an incredible thing. The one I can share a bit more about is WIP Comics-related, and is coming together tesserae by tesserae very nicely - we’ve settled on a layout and story, and writing a script this month for an artist for the first time was so exciting.

Preparing as much as I can remotely for this year’s North Leigh Roman Villa open days, I helped on the new leaflet and made this YouTube playlist of some entries from last year’s Minecraft Reconstruction competition I ran with EH and Blenheim. Sadly these were the only ones I could add to a playlist, but for the installation I can include more.

Tonight will be Chrissy William’s monthly poetry comics group! There’s always great discussion and inspiration if any of you feel like joining!

2026 Projects Written

Comic: 1

Pitchdecks: 2

Poems: 6

Rewrites: 4

Short Film: 1

Short Stories: 6

Steam Page: 1

Things I gained

This month brought the first issue of the prequel series to the new Maul - Shadow Lord series. It is pure brilliant Star Wars, like The Clone Wars and Andor smushed together on a painter’s palette. It’s been a real treat having new doses of that and another red horned protagonist - in Daredevil: Born Again - every week. “The Grand Design” episode which flashed back to the Netflix-era series while incorporating and paralleling everything in the present…

I could write about both of the above shows for a long time. But we have other books before I tie this up for you. Highlights from this stack are Charles Soule and Ryan Browne’s Eight Billion Genies which I followed along with as it released but now finally own, and The Anatomy of Melancholy, a book, due to its Weston Library exhibition years ago, that directly impacted by first novel. The exhibition highlighted the different facets of Burton’s theories and cures, but it’ll be fantastic to dive into the 500-page depths.

Thank you so much for your continued support. And if you’re a new reader, welcome! I hope you’ll consider subscribing to hear about everything I’m doing, writing and gaining.