Well, having being pretty unimpressed with the extraordinarily dull and desperate War of the Worlds, and falling asleep (twice!) during the new year’s episode of Doctor Who, I wasn’t expecting too much from Dracula. I mean, it’s a well-worn story and given their recent form, I wasn’t sure the BBC was going to do it justice.
Turns out I was wrong. This was the most polished piece of dramatic writing I’ve seen from the BBC since Killing Eve, and I suspect there’s a good reason for that.
But before we start on the writing, let’s talk about the genius leads: Claes Bang and Dolly Wells.
If you glance over to the sidebar – that’s it; near the top, just after the recent posts section – you’ll notice that something has changed (aside from finally updating the icons for Apple Books).
Yes, it’s finally here: book number four. A novella (only 40,000 words or thereabouts).
I took a writing break after The Quisling Orchid and just focussed on short stories and reviews. Book 3 was an expensive effort in terms of time, brain space and money, so I thought I’d dial it back a bit.
Fortune started out as a collection of short stories about life in Soweto, something I could read to my mum while she was in hospital. Unfortunately, my mum didn’t recover away, so I didn’t want to carry on with the book.
A few people who’d read the unfinished version said they’d like to see how it ended, and hoped that I’d pick it up again, eventually. ‘Time’s a great healer, Dom.’
Well, they say that, but it doesn’t apply to everyone, so the book stayed in the drawer (metaphorically speaking; it actually stayed halfway down the tree in Ulysses) for a couple more years.
I think it was a combination of things that finally got me to dust it off (metaphorically speaking; I actually just opened the folder in Ulysses and started typing):
Last July (2019) there was an incident in which a body fell from the undercarriage of a plane approaching Heathrow, so I sort of thought it was a story that needed to be told.
I’d like to think my mother didn’t raise a son who didn’t finish something he’d started.
Besides, good writing is supposed to hurt, isn’t it?
