I’m currently coaxing a spec sci-fi feature screenplay to move from the 4th to the 5th draft. Then I’ll hopefully start on the marketing. Here’s a hint of what it’s about:
PS The website has been spring cleaned. You’d be amazed what I found behind the furniture. Anyway, it’s neater now, I think.
The site was down for a while recently, but now the internet elves have been fed and all is well. Apologies for the
communication breakdown.
In the interim, there have been a few developments here at Holder Towers.
Firstly I had a guest blog on the splendid film & TV website Stage 32, discussing writing scripts for corporate videos. My thanks to RB, Shannon and Andre at Stage 32 for facilitating this, and to all those who responded to the blog
and their kind comments.
Then I delivered the manuscript for my 36th non-fiction book, another on weird history. Further news on the
publication of this series later in the year.
I’m also delighted to announce that I’m collaborating with a talented illustrator on a vampire-themed bande dessinée (graphic novel). Once the 5-page sample is honed to perfection we’ll be pitching it to French BD publishers.
While all this is happening I’m continuing with the ProSeries screenwriting course at ScreenwritingU, which is superb. I’m slightly in awe of some of my fellow students and their abilities. Me, I’m working on a supernatural western
feature script for the course. I’m also taking a class on writing horror films with a Hollywood producer, which is the
bees’ knees. And I’m writing an entry for the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest.
So, movies, graphic novels, weird history – exciting times ahead, girls and boys.
I’ve recently delivered the fourth and final draft of my first commissioned movie script. It’s a ten-minute animation
called DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, and deals with the titular character’s resistance to Hitler from within Germany.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was perhaps the world’s most unlikely dissident – a conservative and highly intellectual
theologian from a comfortable upper-middle-class German family. If the Nazis had not come to power Dietrich
would have spent his life as a respected but obscure university professor in Berlin. As it was he resisted Hitler for
an amazing twelve years, firstly by attempting to prevent the Nazification of the German Protestant church, and
eventually playing a minor part in Operation Valkyrie, the German plot to assassinate Hitler. He ended his life in a
concentration camp just weeks before the end of the war.
To tell the story I’ve used a mix of history and humour, with a James Bond joke, a Terry Gilliam reference and even Adolf Hitler going door-to-door with a collecting tin: “I wonder if you’d consider supporting the Nazi party? Our
policies are the extermination of the Jews and the Gypsies, the subjugation of the whole of Europe and the
enslavement of lesser races. No? Perhaps you’d take a leaflet?…”
Writing the script was a powerful experience, mining Dietrich’s amazing life for episodes that could be used
visually and to show the humanitarian principles he stood for. I’ll confess to in being tears sometimes, especially as I was writing the last pages.
The script was commissioned by The Lives of the Dissidents project – my deep thanks to Patrick Lavery there for
this opportunity. Pending funding, the film will go into production in 2015.
Bloody British History, my 31st book, has just been published. It’s a sanguinary canter through some of the
more gruesome aspects of British history, with an eye to not merely the murderous and macabre, but also to
the strange and, at times, surreal. Delve within the illustrated pages and you will learn of prehistoric cannibals using skulls as drinking cups, discover how to boil a poisoner to death, understand the technique of chemical warfare during medieval sea battles, and learn more about the use of cheese as an instrument of torture than you ever wanted to know.
With a full cast including Ancient Britons, Romans, Barbarians, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Pirates,
Jacobites and invading Frenchmen, Bloody British History relates some of the most famous episodes in the
history of the British Isles from unfamiliar perspectives. The sight of the largest ship in the Spanish Armada
keeling over with blood pouring from its scuppers. The giant Viking at Stamford Bridge finally defeated by a
spear thrust to the testicles from below the bridge he was defending. William the Conqueror turning the North of England into an uninhabited wasteland. The Scots inventing the concentration camp. Roman SEALs
conducting amphibious warfare. Witchcraft in Westminster politics. Not the six wives, but the Six Executions of Henry VIII. And how not to assassinate Queen Victoria.
Featuring walk-on parts from all manner of unpleasant characters from Richard the Lionheart and Bloody
Mary to Jack the Ripper and Hitler’s Gestapo, Bloody British History does what it says on the can.
There will, indeed, be blood.
The book is published by The History Press and is available through all the usual retail channels, including the country’s hard-pressed but indispensable brick-and-mortar bookshops.
This Halloween I’m giving a series of talks on spooky subjects at various places in Scotland. Zombies, poltergeists, vampires, witchcraft – there’s something for everyone.
1. SUBJECT: SUPERNATURAL SCOTLAND
WHEN: Tuesday 28th October, 7pm
WHERE: ABERFELDY – Breadalbane Campus, Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross PH15 2DU
DETAILS: A medieval monk describes an outbreak of zombies in the Scottish Borders. A poltergeist case in
Edinburgh ends up in court. The Maggie Wall Witchcraft Monument in Perthshire is a complex fake. A ghost
sighting in Dundee provokes a mini-riot. And hundreds of Glasgow schoolchildren invade a graveyard hunting a
vampire with iron teeth. Based on meticulous original research, prolific author (and highly entertaining speaker) in
this Halloween special Geoff Holder reveals some of the historical and modern mysteries of the Scottish
paranormal experience. Welcome to Supernatural Scotland. It’s stranger than you can imagine.
COST: £5
MORE INFO: http://www.pkc.gov.uk/article/9844/Supernatural-Scotland-with-Geoff-Holder
2. SUBJECT: ZOMBIES FROM HISTORY
WHEN: Thursday 30th October, 7.30pm
WHERE: EDINBURGH – Skeptics in the Pub, Banshee Labyrinth, 29-35 Niddry Street, EH1 1LG (just off the Royal Mile).
DETAILS: It’s the night of the living dead… Zombie culture didn’t start with George Romero. Here be medieval
chroniclers’ sworn-to-be-true tales of the plague-spreading undead, including the pugilistic zombie of Paisley and
the zombie monk of the Scottish Borders; archeological evidence from graveyards of Anglo-Saxon and Romano-
British fear of the walking dead; several ‘Ladies with the Ring’, all supposedly revived in the grave by jewel-stealing gravediggers; the men who were hanged and buried – and then revived; the Cumbrian Crusader whose corpse
was still bleeding 800 years after his death; and the ancient bog body that accidentally solved a modern murder
mystery.
Warning: contains corpses.
COST: FREE
MORE INFO: here
3. SUBJECT: SEX, LIES AND POLTERGEISTS! at the FIRST EVER SCOTTISH PARANORMAL FESTIVAL
WHEN: FRIDAY 31ST OCTOBER, 3.30PM
WHERE: Albert Halls, Albert Place, Dumbarton Road, Stirling FK9 4LA
DETAILS: Activity which has baffled paranormal investigators for centuries. Focusing on Scotland, Geoff will
discuss the earliest recorded Scottish poltergeist, a witchcraft episode from Stirling, and an Aberdeenshire
example kickstarted by young lust.
A canvas of commonsense-defying mysteries that stretches from the year 1635 to the present day.
COST: £5
MORE INFO: http://www.paranormalscotland.com/presentations/geoff-holder-sex-lies-and-poltergeists/