Saturday’s Dr Who day (Doctor Who: The Science Behind the Scenes, University of Central Lancashire) was great fun, as these things always are. When people come together for an occasion like this one, there’s an air of cynicism-free joy that’s completely at odds with some of the online griping you see. Which leads me to…

Lancashire Science Festival Presents Doctor Who: The Science Behind the Scenes on Saturday 16 November 2013, 09:30am – 16:00pm in the Darwin Building, University of Central Lancashire, Marsh Lane, Preston, PR1 2HE. £5 for full day entry (access to all sessions), free entry to the festival activities (excluding sessions) and free parking (see details on…

In case you haven’t picked it up via Twitter or any of the other social media, I have an offspring in the business – her name’s Ellen Gallagher and she’s to be found in the Film and TV department of London’s Blake Friedmann Agency. And if you’re a screenwriter with questions that call for an…

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. And sometimes, even when you do ask… When I was starting out, planning a novel that would be called Chimera, I approached the Cumbrian Police to ask for some help in researching how they’d respond to a major incident in their area. Their response was polite, brief, and…

According to Twitter there was a big booze-and-canapes soiree for BBC writers last night. I didn’t get an invite. Maybe this is why…

Although in all seriousness I can’t recommend it…

As well as its full-time MA studies the London Film School runs a number of part-time courses for screenwriters and filmmakers. They’re professional training so they’re not cheap, but if you’ve reached a point in your career where you can make use of industry insight then they can be of real value. In November/December there…

Hull’s on the shortlist of four for City of Culture, 2017. The bid submission’s going in at the end of this month and when asked if I’d support it with some kind of personal statement, here’s what I wrote: I came to Hull in 1972 to begin what would prove to be the most important…

Movies about magicians are tricky. OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, let me explain. One of my less satisfying viewing experiences of the summer was a heist movie called Now You See Me, the premise for which involved four illusionists teaming up and combining their skills to pull off a series of…

From the editorial desk of Scott Harrison come a couple of projects, both of which include new stories of mine. On sale from August 24th is Thirteen, an audio anthology available for MP3 download with a CD version to follow. Thirteen is… …presented as a portmanteau anthology, with an umbrella story tying all 13 stories…