The next in the series of writing classes here in Gascony will be on Sunday 7th September, in Nogaro (Gers).
The topics of the day will be ‘Dialogue’ and ‘Voice / Style’ – both crunch issues for many authors.
The full-day writing class is suitable for authors of all kinds of fiction.
The fee is €23. The venue is wheelchair accessible and there is free parking nearby.
Everyone welcome. And if you have writerly friends, don’t bother to share the news with them (wait, that’s not quite right…).
Are you in Scotland and looking for a speaker during Halloween week? In the last week of October I’ll be knocking the French mud off my boots and venturing back to Scotland for a series of talks, and there are a few gaps in the
schedule, so I’m looking for some other opportunities.
Here’s the skinny:
On the evening of Tuesday 28th October I’m talking about ‘Supernatural Scotland’ at the Breadalbane Library in
Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross.
On Wed 29th (evening) I’m presenting my crowd-pleasing ‘Zombies from History’ to the Edinburgh Skeptics at the Banshee Labyrinth. Warning: may contain corpses.
Thurs 30th (evening) I’m in Perth with the Filmmakers Club.
And in the afternoon of Friday 31st, Halloween itself, I’m at the (drum-roll) Scottish Paranormal Festival in Stirling,
giving a talk entitled ‘Sex, Lies & Poltergeists’: expect scenes of destruction, pointless violence and icky fluids from the very beginning.
So, if you are looking for a Halloween speaker on all matters ghoul and ghast anytime between Monday 27th
October and Saturday 1st November, please get in touch.
Running Scared, a tense pursuit thriller, goes into production next week, with filming at various spectacular
outdoor locations in Tennessee. Yowsa.
The story: In rough country, three teenage boys are running for their lives from a mysterious group equipped with
helicopters and automatic weapons. Who are the pursuers? Why are they hunting down and killing youngsters?
The answer comes when the sole survivor finally reaches his destination – and it’s nasty.
Writing the script for the ten-minute short was a hoot. It’s now up to the crew and cast assembled by Pinpoint
Productions out of Florida to do the really hard work over three days’ location filming. It’s great, isn’t it? I write a
screenplay in France, and then before you know it people are running round the south-eastern United States with cameras and squibs of make-up blood.
I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the film. In the meantime, here are some of the likely locations for Running Scared:
That fine institution The Spooky Isles has one of my witterings up today, the subject being the extraordinary (and
unique) Maggie Wall witchcraft monument in Dunning, Perthshire Scotland. Appropriately, it’s part of their Spooky Scotland week.
The piece is based on my book Maggie Wall – The Witch Who Never Was and the title itself may give you a clue
about my conclusions regarding this amazing site, the only historical monument to a named witch in the country.
You can check out the piece here, and while you’re there scope out some of the other goodies on the site. My
thanks to MJ Steel Collins.
I’ve just copy-edited and proofread the synopsis for a movie written by a fellow screenwriter. He’s French, and
writes excellent English, but not being a native speaker there are all clearly all kinds of possible traps for the
unwary (for example, written French is typically both longer and more elaborate than written English, and so
sentences in translation can have multiple clauses and last as long as a paragraph, thereby trying the patience of contemporary Anglophone readers).
After a thorough overhaul and extensive proofreading the logline and synopsis are now both suitable for waving in
front of English-speakers in the film industry. Good luck, fellah.
This was the first time I’ve proofed and edited someone else’s work destined for the movie screen (as distinct from books, scripts for corporate videos, business documents etc.) and a fascinating process it was too.
It occurs to me that there may be other screenwriters and filmmakers writing in English but for whom the language is not their mother tongue. If you are in this position and would like an experienced copy-editor / proofreader /
writer to check that everything reads well in English, please get in touch. My rates are, as they say, reasonable.
The story is on Stage 32 and The Dispatch. 
There’s a genial review of my book ‘Zombies From History’ on The Spooky Isles site. “Holder’s humour and writing style is very engaging,” apparently. The book serves as “an excellent and entertaining introduction to famous
historical figures” as “he hammers home facts which you may not forget in a hurry.” Oh, and “The illustrations are also rather amusing and really well done.”
And the reviewer, a former sociology student, appreciated the joke about a resurrected Karl Marx leading the
Living Dead faction of the anti-capitalism movement with the slogan “Zombies of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your brains”.
The full review is here. And ‘Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide’, the definitive work on what do do when the
historic dead return during the zombie apocalypse, can be purchased on that there Amazon for ready money here.
My thanks to MJ Steel Collins.