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[personal profile] dreamer_easy
To help with my Big Finish Benny novella, All Mimsy Were the Borogoves, I'm re-reading my 1996 Doctor Who novel Return of the Living Dad. There's too much repetition, too many in-jokes, too many characters, and far too many POV shifts, but the prose is generally holding up all right. There are certain similarities with the new show: the emphasis on relationships, the self-awareness - and it's tempting to think that the NAs influenced RTD's thinking, but I suspect that more than anything both books and show are products of their times.

Date: 2007-01-04 03:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zeusgirl.livejournal.com
I always loved Return of the Living Dad. Of your books, it's one of my favourites.

As I recall, that's the one where the soldier called Tiller puts Chris Cwej in a headlock. :-). You really made this fangrrl's day with that one.

(Has it really been 10 years since it was published? Wow. It doesn't seem that long, and yet when I think about it, so much has happened since then...).

Date: 2007-01-04 04:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrington.livejournal.com
Wait wait wait. You're writing something new that I might be able to get my hands on and read? Why wasn't I informed?

I enjoyed RotLD (looks like someone made a typo for Lord of the Rings, doesn't it?), but it's not my favourite of your books. Like most artists whose work I enjoy, you've only become better over time. Man, now I realise I still haven't read two of your books... I'd better get on to that as soon as I finish The Loved One. One of the locla libraries'll have 'em, no doubt.

Date: 2007-01-04 05:45 am (UTC)

Date: 2007-01-04 07:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cassiphone.livejournal.com
I have to say, I always liked your NA books best because of the way you handled relationships - as in, actually made the characters feel like real people? I kind of loved that.

Date: 2007-01-07 09:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com
*grin* The Roz/Chris stuff in Return is very cute (especially Chris's boxer shorts. :-)

Date: 2007-01-04 08:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alawston.livejournal.com
In-jokes in an NA? Perish the thought!

Are you doing anything for Craig Hinton's anthology?

Date: 2007-01-04 08:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com
The in-jokes get really intrusive in places, especially all the namechecks!

Tell me more about this antho.

Date: 2007-01-04 09:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alawston.livejournal.com
It's being set up by Adrian Middleton and it's a charity anthology called Shelf Life. Adrian's trailed it in a few of the Doctor Who communities, but I must admit I got the nod through mutual friends. The deadline to get a proposal in is tomorrow, I've just got into work but I shall post with more details later.

Date: 2007-01-05 02:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adrian-middle.livejournal.com
My bad.

Details are in my own LJ, and I cross-postd to a few of the LJ groups, but I stopped short of mentioning it to every Who writer I had a link to.

Its at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/the_fanthology/ and the deadline is just for title, indicative word-count, one-paragraph pitch and some context about the story or the author link to Craig/his writing.

Date: 2007-01-08 06:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com
Dude! I'm sure you contacted me about this and I just didn't get organised. Can I do you a thousand words of something Egyptian, with a nod to GodEngine? With the Tenth Doctor and Ancient Egyptian dream interpretation?

Date: 2007-01-08 01:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] adrian-middle.livejournal.com
Almost. Following some correspondence with Russell T Davies we've agreed not to include anything from the new series - so its Classic Who only (no Tenth Doctor, even if its a different Tenth Doctor).

The editors are myself, David McIntee and Jay Eales.

If you can forward a 1 paragraph description plus title plus wordcount (2000 is fine) to jptales@gmail.com, we'll confirm in the next few days.

Date: 2007-01-04 12:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dinosaurcostume.livejournal.com
I read Dad ages ago, but I remember it as an intensely pleasurable read - a sort of "Why can't they all be like this?" thing. (Argh, I mean the NA's, not the Orman-oeuvre). Two things stick in the memory - Nestene spatula, and an incredibly moving Benny-Doctor scene toward the end of the book.

Only realised recently, some of my best experiences of Who have been through the books, both Target and NA. But I love the new series, and I do really believe it owes a lot to the books. I think most importantly, the NA's cut through to some of the core ideas and themes of the TV series, and then either explored them or played with them. RTD's reinvention avoids referring back to an individual era of the TV show, but builds its characters and story arcs out of aspects of the show that have come to be taken as read. The Paul McGann failed-comeback does the opposite. I really believe RTD's understanding of the series (as something passionate, moving, about loneliness and alienness) comes out of the work done by the NA's.

What a loooong comment! I am sorry.

Date: 2007-01-07 09:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com
Yay!

I had to stop reading it for a bit to recover from the endless character POV switches. Every time I start a scene, I start in media res with a different character, so I must spend half the bloody word count trying to explain what the heck is going on.

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