Rise & Fall - August 2025
The WIP Comics anthology hit its funding goal! As of writing this, we surpassed it by £300 with over 140 backers! Thank you so much anyone who checked out the campaign. And that’s just one exciting milestone of many for my creative endeavours this month!
The title of this month’s roundup does connote some negatives, but that will not be the case with this newsletter. Rise & Fall is the title of my one-page comic which is now definitely being published!
Things I did
I think to chart busyness with month, it would be an exponential curve. It started steadily. I finally visited the Museum of Sussex Archaeology in Lewes, filled with so many great finds and sites I never knew about! A glimpse:
A day in London consisted of taking my parents around the two current British Museum exhibitions. They were both so much quieter (exhibitions, not parents), which was lovely. It meant I could get some more close up shots of Hiroshige’s art and meander through Ancient India.
The real reason we were in London that day was to see Charlie Barnes. It was fantastic to see so many familiar faces in the crowd.
Ukesnaile was the perfect support, a brilliant performer, songs filled with humour, which balanced Charlie’s emotional songs perfectly.
It was fantastic to say hello to him properly, and witness so many of his amazing songs from his whole discography live. He even dedicated a song to my parents, celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary the next day!
I had a private viewing of The Fantastic Four: First Steps at the Lewes Depot. That’s what happens when you wait a few weeks to see a film. Speaking of filming!
I was script supervisor on the proof of concept pilot episode of a series! I had a video call with some of the crew at the start of the month, and in my role as continuity and part of the props department, I read through the script and tracked all objects and costumes and inputted them into the shot list.
On the two days, I was working with everyone on set, checking continuity and noting down preferred takes, but most importantly organising new shot lists with Toby. It was fantastic being thrust into the filmmaking experience, the collaboration and camaraderie. I’ll spare you the list of everyone involved but I made some great contacts, including fellow props department/runner and actor Anastasia. And it was great to work with Marion Githegi in her role as producer/co-writer/lead actor after working over email for her podcast.
Photos taken by Elijah Idowu, First AC. Ivan, our second lead actor, also very kindly drove me from north to south London after the second day was done. He had lots of great advice and support. They were all great people to work with, and Marion and her family made sure we were well fed!
On the back of that, I began assembling my team for my own short film, but with this being a busy month and most of September away, it’s a process!
I spent two fantastic days near Swansea with George Nash, my archaeologist quotable expert for my first Star Wars Insider article! I finally got to give him a contributor copy. I was part of a team he and the National Trust assembled to perform a very important excavation.
Like with the pilot I crewed on, I can’t reveal too many details yet. But I felt so lucky to be visiting the site and taking part in history. For a first proper jaunt and archaeologist, it was special. And George went above and beyond, taking me and colleague Anna Clark to other great sites and sights. Above is Rhossilli Beach and Worms Head. I’d forgotten how beautiful Wales’s scenery is since my first visit on a school trip at 13!
This was all on our first evening. With the best tour guide imaginable, we visited Parc le Breos and saw this Neolithic Burial Chamber, a long mound with a false portal at the front, and five individual chambers for women, men, children, elders and pets. Bodies were probably left outside to decay and be pecked clean, then the skeletons would be placed in the right chamber. There’s also intriguing archaeoacoustic properties, especially if you imagine more height to the stonework, capstones and a mound.
And two minutes away in the same park is Cathole Cave. (If I lived anywhere close, I’d be here all the time!) This was the path up to it, a large cave with two openings and rock art! A grate now protects it from vandalism, but George described all the discoveries within so well! I found an old BBC article for your perusal.
The last few days of this month will be spent up at North Leigh again, volunteering at the villa but also spending some time on another exciting project and seeing a Romanised version of The Mikado. I’m writing this before all that, though. Some photos may grace your screens at the start of September‘s post-Rome roundup!
Through the month, I’ve also started driving lessons!
Things I wrote
This newsletter…
The month started with my Shelfie releasing! My little spiel, a manufactured shelf of books important to me, went out to all their subscribers. Here’s the page. I’d really recommended subscribing to the blog, as you don’t only discover new writers contributing, but all the authors they mention! And here’s their instagram post. I loved their humorous music choice (may only work on the app), and the excerpt they chose to share in the caption.
I finished inking my eight-panel comic for WIP’s anthology, which as you know is funded! It was great to see it also shared on Broken Frontier. The physical edition will be sold at Thought Bubble, the major comics convention in Harrogate which I attended last November.
Just for you, here’s a teaser of a later panel…
This month also marked ten years since I self-published my first paperback, the first volume of many stories in a multiverse I created initially novelising DanTDM’s worlds and characters.
30 books later, a lot of unpublished short fiction and some published articles, I'm a long way from that twelve year old with too much time in his summer holiday, but this was the book that started it all.
This leads nicely into another of my ongoing projects:
The teaser trailer for The Diamond Adventures, the game on which I’m lead writer, is out! It was hastily put together with some new elements and work from what we have so far, teasing a smidgen of the minigames and styles we have cooking. I also did a little more editing to the script.
From one Minecraft-related thing to another, my North Leigh competition was added to English Heritage’s site. I linked the image to that one.
And here’s the competition link in case you feel like sharing it around with any gamers you know!
Speaking of competitions now… I sent seven short story or poem submissions off to magazines this month. Uncanny’s call for speculative stories is open until September 8th!
Last but not least, I made a brief cameo appearance on This Dad Reads’ podcast! I just mentioned two favourite recent reads (hint - one is in this newsletter!), but you’ll have to listen to the episode, a great interview with the creators of the graphic novel Super Science, to find out.
If you must know, I’m about 20 minutes in!
Things I gained
This month’s Star Wars comics continued all four series fantastically. I loved how Jedi Knights tied into the animated Tales of the Jedi, and how the new ongoing mainline and Aphra are showing the post-ROTJ galaxy. Legacy of Vader, despite the comparatively limited timeframe in which to tell its story, is amongst Charles Soule’s best.
I treated myself to the signed edition of Stark Holborn's new book For the Road from PS Publishing. Packing that same punchy prose from Stark's Factus Sequence which I adored, it’s a fantasy-romance-surreal-acid-western inspired by Bob Dylan's One more Cup of Coffee and Gaulish mythology! It’s a winning combination and a beautiful little book.
There was a relatively slim amount of other new books. My kind parents always pick up a few they know I’ll like!
While the top book focusses on Wessex, the from the Air has brilliant views and a great map of many significant sites. And I’ll be diving into some Batman with that big volume, containing some great colouring from my flip through so far, and writing from Greg Rucka who led the way with some of the new Star Wars canon with comics and books leading up to The Force Awakens.
Thank you all, as always, for following my journey!