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Editors v Beta-Readers
SCENE: Flat 2a, four-hundred-and-something Chester Road, Sutton Coldfield. Ben Kitchen sits at the table, painting war-gaming miniatures (Seleucid soldiers from Antiochus’s Indian campaign if you must know) and trying to ignore Nerys Thomas who has come downstairs to get Ben’s opinion on her latest lingerie purchases. In walks Jeremy Clovenhoof (Satan) clutching a lulu.com package…
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Dating Advice from Satan
Heide and I have now spent nearly six months and approximately 50,000 words in the company of Jeremy Clovenhoof, Satan’s earthbound alter ego and we feel we’ve got to know him quite well. He’s not the character we perhaps initially envisaged. He’s more human, earthier than either of us expected. He’s like the child we…
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The Devil and the W.I.
What links the devil with the Women’s Institute? Or, more precisely, who? Go on. I’ll give you ten seconds to work it out. I got thinking about this person whilst doing a spot of research for a chapter of our Clovenhoof novel which features a children’s choir (and animal slaughter, fake blood and credit card…
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The Story of Job
I am currently plotting chapter 4 of our novel for Heide to write. This chapter has the working title of “Clovenhoof Needs People” and deals with Clovenhoof’s (aka Satan’s) being subjected to the most misery-inducing illness known to science: man-flu. It occurred to me whilst beginning to plot this, that I could make some analogies…
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Your Satan Song Titles Needed!
So, here’s Satan, alone in his crumby flat (literally; Satan likes biscuits and does not do hoovers). He’s at his desk, the floor around him littered with dozens of screwed up pieces of paper like a flock of crap origami sheep. His pen is poised above a fresh sheet of paper. Yes, Satan is writing…
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Hell: A Visitor’s Guide
In our story, Satan has been fired from his diabolical management position and evicted from hell. In our current plans, one possible reason for his removal from office is that some other fiendish individual wishes to seize the reins of power in hell. But why would they do that? What kind of real estate are…
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The Adventures of Mr Clovenhoof Part 2
As well as the neat categories mentioned below, we had plenty of other ideas from the members of Birmingham Writers Group. Index cards, and if you look carefully you can see yesterday’s credit card bill – for £666 Self contained chapter headings Here are the entries that are irresistible as chapter headings by themselves. If…
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Andy Hamilton’s Search for Satan
Just finished watching the BBC4 documentary “Andy Hamilton’s Search for Satan” Click here (only available until 7th November 2011): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016ptr6/Andy_Hamiltons_Search_for_Satan/ There were some really interesting nuggets in there about Satan’s qualities and his role. The most interesting to me was that Satan gives evil a public face and that, for a monotheistic religion like Christianity,…
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How did Satan lose his job?
So, Satan’s lost his job, has he? Well, how would that happen? By day, I’m a secondary school teacher. Actually, by night, I’m also a secondary school teacher, merely asleep. My experiences of people losing their jobs comes from my own industry so, let’s think, if Hell was run like British state education, what events…
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Who would be Mr Clovenhoof?
So that we can both write about Satan in a consistent way, we need to agree on what exactly he looks like. We thought it might be helpful to imagine who we’d get to play him in a film of our story. The above pics, Robert de Niro, Gary Oldman, Simon Callow, Tommy Lee Jones, Mickey…