Chapter One

I just closed my laptop and walked out of the room feeling genuinely upset.

After a number of false starts, the first chapter of Book 2 seemed to come together quite quickly today, and it was oddly harrowing to go back to Naysmith and Kim. Maybe it's because I now know what's going to happen at the end, or maybe just because that opening chapter was pretty rough on them. In any event, I felt bad about it until I spoke to Anna and realized that this probably bodes well for my opening chapter eliciting a strong emotional response in the reader.

Which made me feel good again!

Aaron Sorkin

I recently watched "The Social Network" and was struck by how much I enjoyed it.

Obviously, the aim of most movies is to entertain, but a couple of hours on the story of Facebook doesn't bode well when it comes to great viewing.

So what made it so good?

Gage:

Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: [stares out the window]

No.

Gage:

Do you think I deserve it?

Mark Zuckerberg: [looks at Gage]

What?

Gage:

Do you think I deserve your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg:

I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don't want to perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no.

Gage:

Okay - no. You don't think I deserve your attention.

Mark Zuckerberg:

I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.

[pauses]

Mark Zuckerberg:

Did I adequately answer your condescending question?

The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin, best known for scripting "The West Wing" and "Charlie Wilson's War". On paper, I wouldn't have rated either of these, but there's something rather dazzling about the dialogue in all of them. True, ordinary people rarely quip so cleverly at one another, and the sarcastic sense of humour is much more polished than anything we experience in real life, but that doesn't matter. It makes no attempt to pander to the lowest common denominator and, as such, it's unashamedly brilliant.

I'm looking forward to whatever project he does next and, if there should ever be a bio-pic made of my life, I'd love him to write all my dialogue.

Goldfish Memories

Do you remember how the world was one year ago? How brilliant Britain was, before the election?

In recent weeks, I've noticed an increasing number of people suggest that things have started to get bad since the Conservatives were elected. How the NHS is threatened by cuts, which the Tories have always wanted to make. How the armed forces are under-supplied due to the Tories wanting to keep all the money to themselves. How students will have to pay for their education now that the Tories are getting their way. And so on and so forth.

It must have been a magical place, this Britain-before-the-Tories. I don't remember it myself, but it seems that there were no cutbacks to the NHS, our soldiers had all the equipment they could wish for, students left university debt-free, and everyone was happy.

In truth, I remember things rather differently.

Two years ago, the NHS outsourced a number of treatments, and I remember my GP telling me that he'd cancelled my hospital appointment because he was "under pressure from above to avoid costly referrals".

As the army undertook tours in the Middle East, didn't we hear continued questions about the lack of body armour, helicopters, and other equipment?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Labour who introduced fees for higher education?

But the truth is largely irrelevant. Protestors will protest, and the left-leaning media will give air-time to the beligerant amnesiacs who say it's all the Tories fault. Who assure us that Labour would sort out those greedy bankers if it was up to them. Who know that Labour would soon get the country out of debt if they were in charge.

The irony is lost on them, their recollections edited down to a series of blissful summer days "before the Tories and Lib Dems ruined it all"...

Let's hope their memories are equally effective when it's next time to find their way to the polling stations.

Breakfast on the beach

There's something hugely appealing about the Cornish coast. I've always had a horror of "seaside towns", conjuring up visions of crumbling northern outposts where stag and hen parties stumble from t'arcades to t'pubs and grim-faced pensioners sit shivering on rain-lashed promenades. But the area around St Austell bay is different. It's comparatively quiet, and is set in a landscape dominated by cliffs and rocks and rolling hills, rather than one dominated by coloured neon.

We went down for the weekend - a last-minute booking to take advantage of the promising weather forecast - and enjoyed a smooth journey through some gorgeous scenery. Cam and I had found Charlestown beach by accident on our previous West Country road-trip, but this was Anna's first visit to the place. And, aside from a slight debacle at one of the world's slowest Pizza Huts, the St Austell experience was a good one.

It was excellent to spend time together in such beautiful surroundings. We climbed the rocks, explored a deep cave in the cliffs, got wet feet when the waves caught us out, and even rescued a small crab who'd been hiding inside a small rubber tyre that we'd been playing with.

On Sunday, it got even better. The skies cleared to bright October blue, while we walked in the sunshine and climbed the rocky islands that jut out from the headland.

But for me, the best thing was breakfast with Anna and Cam. It was perfect - a cinnamon latte and chocolate twist - enjoyed on the deserted beach. If only every day could begin so well.

iPad Entertainment Summit

Apologies for a work-centric blog post, but I was fortunate enough to be a speaker at the iPad Entertainment Summit last week and I wanted to capture my thoughts on the event before they evaporated. The conference was held at BAFTA, catering for an audience largely made up of broadcasters and brand-holders. There were some serious names in the auditorium, but many of them had come to listen rather than present.

As the day unfolded, there were some good talks, interspersed by the usual bits of self-promotion and techno-babble, yet I was struck by one or two people on the podium who seemed to have little or no experience of app development, despite the buzzword-laden theories they advanced. There were several excellent speakers but, for anyone new to the iOS space, it may have been tricky to discern who was talking sense and who wasn’t.

At lunch, I had an eye-opening conversation with someone who thought Apple were “a bit rich” taking a 30% revenue share. I’m really not an Apple fan-boy, but this stunned me. Traditionally, high-street retailers take 50-60%, straight off the top. Mobile carriers took similar percentages, and none of them accepted content as easily – or paid as quickly – as Apple do. I was confused by this nostalgia for the bad old days, until it dawned on me that many of these people are new – brand new – to the market. They look at Apple’s model, a model which simply didn’t exist before iTunes, and they wonder why it’s not more favourable to them. They don’t appreciate it because they don’t understand the alternative.

This seems borne out by the eager casting-about for the “next big thing”. Some say it will be Android, others argue that Windows7 Mobile will dominate. The “anyone-but-Apple” mentality is quite in vogue just now. And there’s an element of truth in what’s being said. Certainly, it’s likely that a number of other devices will emerge to challenge Apple’s offering. Critically though, they will be competing on a hardware level – for content providers it’s revenue that matters, not handset numbers.

Perhaps the most surprising take-away from the day was the absence of serious distribution channel discussion. There seems to be an assumption that other manufacturers will simply “do their own App Store”. After all, how hard can it be?

And that’s where the problem lies. Apple already has a trusted, consistent, international, regulated store front. They have pre-existing billing relationships with every customer, pre-existing content relationships with almost every major record label, movie studio, and TV channel. They have an app for everything. And they have it all right now, today.

And to compete with all of this, other companies just need to “do their own App Store”? It might be harder than it looks. Apple certainly won’t be sitting still while the others play catch-up, but there’s yet another problem for the rival manufacturers.

iTunes and the App Store really shook up the mobile content industry, which had previously been serviced by carrier portals. When you bought something for your device, you bought it from Vodafone or T-Mobile – there was a limited amount of content available, and pricing was controlled by the carriers. Apple changed that, opening things up with an unlimited range of items, at a range of pricepoints, including “free”. Suddenly, there was a model where the carriers weren’t getting any of the revenue. To compete, the rival platforms need to get their devices into people’s hands, but their traditional route to market is via the carriers. Will the carriers allow them to “do an Apple” and build their own store fronts? The carriers know how much revenue there is to be made in the space and, crucially, they have a perfect, pre-existing billing relationship with every single one of their customers. Will they really forego their high-ground advantage and help the other platforms to climb past them?

It’s clear that Apple won’t have the field to themselves. Moving forward, a number of competitors will step up, and some of them will become established. Whether their hardware market-share can be translated into app revenue is an entirely different matter that nobody seems to be talking about.

On one level, it’s frustrating. A lot of effort is going to be expended on ill-conceived projects pitched by people who didn’t understand the business. On the other hand, I made a lot of useful new contacts at the event, so I mustn’t grumble.

And, last but not least, Stephen Fry was on the stage, right after me. His words were both witty and enlightened and I am profoundly grateful that I didn’t have to speak after him!

Legacy

When I was a lot younger, I was fortunate enough to work with a great bunch of guys on an insanely brilliant game called Carmageddon. You might remember it - "So many pedestrians, so little time", a Daily Mail hate campaign, and questions in the House... Carmageddon had it all.

The reason it was such a great game, was the people who worked on it. Patrick and Nobby had assembled a fabulous group of talented developers, and in their number was one Russ Hughes.

"Rusk" died last week. He was only in his thirties.

He was the first person on my Facebook friends list to pass away, and it's been profoundly moving to watch the vast outpouring of shock, grief, but above all appreciation of his life. I've read how the company where he worked sent their 200 staff home, heard how his old friends at Stainless were absolutely destroyed by the news, and watched the condolences pile up.

But over the past few days, I've seen people talking about him, remembering him, and celebrating him. And the strange thing is, so many people all say the same thing: that his enthusiasm brightened up the life of everyone around him.

Day after day, people saying that same thing. And it occurred to me, amid the general sadness and thoughts of mortality, that Rusk leaves a truly enviable legacy behind him. So many people smiling, so many lives brightened, just by him. Some people get buildings named after them, some people get dedications, but Rusk surpassed all of that. He made so many people happy, and he'll be fondly remembered by every single one of them. It doesn't get much better than that.

Cheers Rusk - you didn't play for long, but you racked up the achievements.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Finally. After an awfully long time, and many unwelcome pauses, the first draft of my novel is complete. It's been an interesting process - at times discouragingly hard, at times deceptively easy - but the last few chapters have come quickly and got me to the end.

Some very encouraging feedback at the Winchester Writers' Conference has boosted my confidence, and reassured me that I've not been wasting my time. I now have a month or so to relax before the Agent process begins in September.

In the meantime, I intend to follow Stephen King's advice, and leave my book alone for a few weeks before I do any more editing. This will give me time to make a dent in the tower of books, and the pile of DVDs that have been mounting up recently.

But today, I have a huge smile on my face, and I intend to celebrate in a manner that befits completion of a first novel. Cheers!