Blog

A brain dump about my weird head.

Stuff I read last month.

Sapphire, take back time!

Any cunt could do it.

The header image is a narcissus flower. Geddit? Ha! I crack myself up.

A text sample from a tie-in book that was approved but never written.

When I was young, I probably read between 3 and 5 books a week. I was voracious. My tastes were catholic but I followed my father’s lead an awful lot, and many of the books I read were by authors he had enjoyed in his younger days. He pressed on me The White South by… Read more: I think I’m in a co-dependent relationship with books

About a decade ago I was approached by Rebellion, for whom I had recently written the School’s Out Trilogy, and asked if I wanted to write for their next Playstation game, Sniper Elite: V2. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable creative experiences I’ve ever had, and when they asked me to… Read more: Sniper Elite: Water Line

John Le Carré’s first novel, Call For The Dead, is a hybrid thing – a spy novel masquerading as a murder mystery, or perhaps a murder mystery masquerading as a spy novel. It feels appropriate that its genre is as slippery as a spy’s legend, but however you choose to classify it, it’s a thumping… Read more: The Deadly Affair (1967)

John Le Carré’s fourth novel, The Looking Glass War, was a satirical rejoinder to all those who had, he felt, got the wrong end of the stick in respect of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Feeling that they had missed the point that the spy game was a futile, squalid, hopeless affair,… Read more: The Looking Glass War (1970)

It’s mid-afternoon on Saturday 13 October 1979. I’m seven years old and I’m in the living room of my grandparent’s house at 85 Kenilworth Road, Aston, Birmingham. Out the window I can hear the crowds at the Aston Villa ground roaring in appreciation of another goal. When I hear the unmistakeable final roar that signifies… Read more: A Life in Doctor Who magazines

Occasionally I lose my tiny mind and I pick a lost Doctor Who story, grab up everything about it that I can and devote a week to deep diving into it. This week it was the third season historical The Massacre, produced under the aegis of script editor Donald Tosh (who Loose Cannon interviewed about the… Read more: Doctor Who and The Massacre (of St Bartholomew(‘s Eve))

Yesterday the Department for Culture, Media and Sport renamed itself the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I ran digital comms for the DCMS for about a year 2009/10 (honest, I did), a period which covered the last six months of the Labour government and the first six months of the coalition. During the… Read more: The DCMS rebrand (and me)

My first trilogy of novels, collected in School’s Out Forever, were set within the shared world of Abaddon’s Afterblight Chronicles. They’re pretty good, and you should totally pick up a copy (hint! hint!) Ahem, anyway… this August a new Afterblight omnibus is released containing three novellas: Fall Out by Simon Guerrier, which is a sequel to my… Read more: Return to the Afterblight

Twenty five years ago I visited a town in Poland called Starachowice. Since WW2 it had been a town that produced trucks – Star Trucks – and almost nothing else. When I visited, in the early 90s, the factory had closed and unemployment was through the roof. The town felt lost, abandoned, the populace shocked… Read more: A load of old cobblers

It began when three people from three different moments in history discovered that they could travel through time when they clasped hands. But the mysteries surrounding them have only deepened.

TimeBomb publishes 9 October 2014. Pre-order – paperback | ebook New York City, 2141: Yojana Patel throws herself off a skyscraper, but never hits the ground. Cornwall, 1640: gentle young Dora Predennick, newly come to Sweetclover Hall to work, discovers a badly-burnt woman at the bottom of a flight of stairs. When she reaches out to comfort… Read more: TimeBomb Cover! TimeBomb Blurb! TimeBomb Date!

So the secret’s finally out. If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook you’ll know I recently finished and delivered a book. You’ll possibly have realised it’s a time-travel story, and if you’ve really been paying attention you’ll have guessed it’s called Timebomb. It’s the first of a three-book deal I signed with Hodder… Read more: The big NEW DEAL blog

So the first draft of the next book is done! It currently clocks in at 91,437 words, which makes it longer than any of my Afterblight books. But as it goes through my editing process, then my agent’s, then my editor’s, that number will change many times. It’s been the most difficult book that I’ve… Read more: Coming soon…

Two great blogs about the relationship between author and reader floated across my screen today: The first by the always brilliant John Scalzi – How to Be a Good Fan The second by Brenna Clarke Gray over at BookRiot – Readers Don’t Owe Authors Sh*t For my part I’ve not been doing this long enough,… Read more: Readers, Authors, Fans

Picture the scene… I’m standing in Trafalgar Square watching them film the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. I’m standing behind a barrier watching Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman filming a scene. There are other members of the public here taking pics and a good-natured, smiley guard on the opposite side of the barrier to make… Read more: The Paps, in their own words

So Margaret Thatcher died. For those who don’t know who she was, she was British Prime Minister during my youth and did a lot of things that were extremely controversial. And that’s all I’m saying about it. Why? Two reasons. First, I work for the Government in my 9-5 job at the moment, so I’m… Read more: Rage fatigue and professionalism

The first Iain Banks book I read was The Wasp Factory. I knew I was going to enjoy it, so I put it aside as a reward for finishing my finals at University. It sat on my shelf, a deferred pleasure. I remember the circumstances of reading it vividly – I had been to our… Read more: Iain Banks and deferred pleasures

In December 2002 I was working for the BBC’s Top of The Pops website. Mostly I wrote silly pieces of content, like Top 5 Most Depressing Depeche Mode Lyrics, or the three news stories that the site used to publish every day. But then I was asked if I’d like to do some interviews, and I… Read more: From the archives: Robert Palmer

I’m beginning to see a theme emerging in the various discussions taking place about the future – specifically, the changing nature of the interaction between individuals and organisations, be they commercial or social. Two TED talks I have watched in the last week both articulate the same thought, and bring the theme into sharp relief.… Read more: Make / Let

In January 2013, to mark the launch of School’s Out Forever, Simone Thorogood interviewed me for Loaded’s late night book show – my first TV appearance (as an adult).

So 2012 was a hell of a year for me, personally. I started the year two stone overweight, in financial freefall and actually pretty much depressed. I had no writing gigs lined up, was struggling to find any joy in my day job and generally felt like things were Not Going My Way. But did… Read more: Toodle-pip 2012! Brace yourself, 2013!

In 2004 I made my acting debut for Big Finish. Well, I say ‘acting’ I was playing a news reader, so it was hardly Hamlet. I remember trying to be very naturalistic and being told by the director to make it a bit more ‘Day Today’, so I made it hammier and that got the thumbs up. I… Read more: UNIT: The Coup

Damn it, that Guerrier chap tagged me in a writers Q&A meme and I’m bound to follow suit or my entrails will be forfeit to Lord Beelzebub and his horde of demonic kittenbats. (Also, it will help prevent me writing a 10,000 word screed on the unbelievable corporate fuckwittery that is the Hellblazer cancellation.) Since Guerrier, and… Read more: My next big thing

I started this year with a long list of shit I needed to get done, some personal, some professional. The personal stuff has gone damn well, thanks for asking 🙂 On the professional front, I needed to get my hand back in to writing after a year off. I picked four projects and worked through… Read more: 2012 – half-time report

Online conversation I nearly had today but didn’t quite, because, well, life’s too short. In fact, I spent years having variations of this conversation on Compuserve, Usenet, eGroups, Yahoogroups, Listserves et al. I achieved nothing, but somehow I’m still occasionally amazed by people who are still randomly either rude or stupid. Or both. I try… Read more: Leave it Scott, just leave it!

In 2005 I was lucky enough to contribute a Doctor Who short story to a Christmas-themed anthology from Big Finish –  Short Trips: A History of Christmas , which was edited by Simon Guerrier.  It’s long out of print, and I certainly can’t charge for it, but I don’t think there’s any rule against me giving it… Read more: Doctor Who: The Anchorite’s Echo

Some years ago, browsing through a second hand bookshop, I stumbled across a TV tie-in book for a show called 1990. I was instantly intrigued. A BBC drama starring Edward Woodward as Jim Kyle, heroic leader of a resistance movement in totalitarian Britain? How is it that I had never heard of this show? And how… Read more: 1990 – Season One

A few years ago, Counting Crows kind of stunned everyone by walking away from Geffen and announcing they were an independent band. Whether this was prompted by a perceived underperformance of the superb ‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’ or a wider dissatisfaction with the music business is unclear. But band leader Adam Duritz’s impassioned talk… Read more: Independent online marketing & ‘Underwater Sunshine’

Last summer I was lucky enough to do some writing for the forthcoming computer game Sniper Elite V2. Basically this meant doing some plotting, developing the narrative and scripting a bunch of cut-scenes and voiceovers. It was loads of fun and has now led to this press release, hot and shiny from the, um, press… Read more: Announcing ‘Target: Hitler!’

Here’s a piece I’ve dredged up from the archives – early 2004, to be precise. At the time I was working for the BBC’s Top of the Pops website, which occasionally involved interviewing guests who had come to the studio to play on that week’s show. The highlight was when I got to have a… Read more: From the archives: Counting Crows

Back in the dim and distant I wrote a book all about a TV show called Farscape – Uncharted Territory. That book covered the first three seasons of the show and was commissioned by Virgin Books just as the SciFi Channel in America announced they’d be making seasons 4 and 5, so I was confident… Read more: Calling All ’Scapers!

So, 2012, we meet at last! Let’s recap… I started 2010 by finishing off my Highlander scripts, then spent four months writing Childrens’ Crusade. In the second half of 2010 I spent four months working VERY hard on a screenplay which I entered in the Red Planet Prize – when it didn’t even make it… Read more: Scott’s 2012 state of the union

Back in the dim and distant I used to write copy for the Top of the Pops website. Yesterday I was asked to provide samples of my online writing, so I dug out this little beauty from 8 years back to demonstrate how I can tailor my writing to an established house style; in TOTP’s… Read more: Death & Fear & Horror, oh my!

In my day job I manage social media accounts and homepages for large organisations. I tend not to blog about that much, but I’ve recently been trying to quantify my approach, to nail down exactly what it is I bring to an organisation. What follows over the next few blogs is, in effect, my personal statement of… Read more: Digital Communications: What is your homepage for?

Those lovely people at Pornokitsch, Anne and Jared – I call them The Pornos; they don’t laugh – have set up an imprint called Pandemonium Fiction to publish short story collections. The first, Stories of the Apocalypse,  contains original tales  inspired by the art of John Martin, and the book will be released in October 2011 to… Read more: Pandemonium

I was christened Scott Keegan Andrews. My middle name was chosen with care. It means ‘son of the little poet’ apparently, and since my dad’s a songwriter he deemed it appropriate. I think it’s kind of neat. However, the Keegan was a bone of some contention at school, as everyone who discovered it henceforth called… Read more: A Scott by any other name

I picked this book up at the railway station lending library this morning and it fell open at the following, deathless excerpt. “Don’t rush me, darling,” she said. “You’re a dreadful cold-blooded, ruthless person, but I had to find you tonight. Do you understand? You’re the only person I’d care to be with tonight, whatever… Read more: Matt Helm: tied hand and foot

New and imminent Bad Haven talk to me about stuff, including my involvement with the film of School’s Out. Mass Movement Magazine review Highlander: The Four Horsemen “Moran and Andrews have taken show favourites and crafted incredible tales that carry the legacy of the show to new realms.” I have a long memoir in the second issue… Read more: State of play – 16 August 2011

There are certain tropes that those of us of a certain age (cough…40ish…cough) were conditioned to expect in comedies and children’s films. The evil boss who gets their comeuppance at the end of the film, when the downbeaten hero realises they don’t have to put up with it and can Follow Their Dream instead, is… Read more: For Smurf’s sake, don’t rock the boat!

Be-caped and beguiling, Ryan Adams stages a triumphant solo return at the Barbican. Being a Ryan Adams fan can be a bit of a rollercoaster. There’s his habit of releasing everything he records, often for free, simply because he feels like it. For the record, I love it, but it drives some people nuts, and… Read more: The sentimental geek strikes back

The news story below appeared in Screen International yesterday, so I can  talk about it now. In brief: the film has got development funding, I’m on board as script consultant, and Oliver Milburn is writing and directing. I met with Oliver and Emma, the producer, a few weeks back. We got on famously and they have a… Read more: School’s Out film news

I’m all over Outpost Skaro like some kind of Time-Rash: Outpost Skaro review Highlander: The Four Horsemen “The writers also do an excellent job… I really enjoyed this… 8/10” Outpost Skaro subject me to… no, not the Mind Probe! “The element of surprise is vital. These are characters about whom the audience think they know everything… Read more: Outpost Skaro cover Highlander

I’ve never had a literary agent representing me. All the writing gigs I’ve landed – novels, plays, articles etc – I’ve secured off my own bat. But I’ve always worked on the assumption that at some point I’d need an agent, a savvy ally who could help me punch up a level in my career… Read more: Of Agents and Angles

Well, it’s been an interesting day, and it certainly got this new site off to a flying start. I was first told that School’s Out was about to be optioned over two years ago. Needless to say I was pretty excited. Quick as a flash, nothing at all happened. The recession hit, companies retrenched, silence… Read more: An interesting day

Abaddon’s ‘Attack the Block meets Lord of the Flies’ novel optioned by Multistory Films Abaddon Books is proud to announce that  it has struck a deal with Multistory Films to bring School’s Out by Scott Andrews to the big screen. Attack the Block meets Lord of the Flies in a post-apocalyptic landscape where pupils at a public… Read more: School’s Out – Optioned!

Hello and welcome to www.scottkandrews.com. It’s a bit spartan at the moment, but the content is in, I just need to dress up the window a bit. All the info about my books and plays, and a few key old blog posts, are in. More will follow. You can subscribe using feedburner for RSS or email.… Read more: Scorched earth & window dressing

The blog Daily Writing Tips recently published Three reasons to ditch your novel’s prologue. It contains much wisdom. The following extract was part of the pitch that got School’s Out commissioned, and it stayed in the book ‘til very late in the day, but I eventually decided to cut it. My editor was a bit wary… Read more: School’s Out – unpublished prologue

This is the pre-titles sequence from my Stargate Atlantis audio play, Impressions, published here by kind permission of Big Finish Productions. More information about Stargate Atlantis: Impressions Order CD or download Stargate Atlantis: Impressions trailer by scottkandrews ACT 1 SCENE 1 Neutral, narrating space. LORNE: Light and shade. The dappled green of forest leaves. The splashes of white… Read more: Stargate Atlantis: Impressions – script extract

The following interview was printed in Mass Movement Magazine. It was conducted by Jim Dodge Jr and is reproduced here by kind permission of the editor. Where did you first come up with the idea for School’s Out? I know your bio says that your time spent in boy’s schools only minimally affected the story but I’m… Read more: Interview with Mass Movement Magazine

or ‘Why I spent ten years being pointlessly annoyed at Neil Gaiman when I should have been doing something useful instead’ Way back when, I was an aspiring comic book writer living in Toronto. I used to hang out with talented and successful people like Salgood Sam and Ty Templeton, and I spent my every spare minute… Read more: A cautionary tale for writers

Written halfway through Season Three, this article was a Starburst cover feature, designed to alert people that Farscape was well worth tuning in for. I later wrote a whole book on Farscape. In an age when each autumn bombards us with new Sci-Fi shows clamouring for our attention it’s hard to know which ones are worth… Read more: Farscape: What TV Was Invented For