Tim Lebbon – horror and dark fantasy author

Well, what a great opening episode!  I read in one preview that Big Brother is beyond satire, and in a way I think that’s right.  But I also think that the Big Brother producers were either brave – or possibly stupid – to let this happen.  I’m delighted they did, of course … because it turned out to be a true horror movie, on TV!

One of the best moments was when the guest room, featuring – so my wife informs me – some of the ex-housemates from real life Big Brother – was invaded by zombies.  If only they hadn’t held back showing Chantelle having her throat ripped out, but ho hum, I guess that would have messed up her look for her next Hello! shoot.

Now if the Big Brother producers were really brave, and had a real handle of what the public wanted to see, we all know what they’d do for the next series, right?  Cut the cameras, silence the area, and drop just a small hint somewhere that the world had been taken over by zombies.  The smell of cooking meat wafting into the BB compound, perhaps.  Screaming.  Explosions.  And I’ll bet that at least some of the housemates would think it was real.

After all, they’ve seen it on the telly.

Really looking forward to seeing how this progresses, although I do fear that it’ll be all downhill from now.  Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong.

Writing updates: I’ve just finished a spec screenplay – a zombie movie, no less, that I’m very excited about.  It’s with my agent now, so we’ll see what happens …

And zombies seem to be in my life right now, because today I wrote the first draft of a zombie story.

This is just such a neat idea …

Take one crap reality TV show, have it take place in a world slowly being taken over by zombies, people it with characters no more outragous that the oddballs you usually get on the show … and then turn the real-life presenter into a zombie!

I can’t stand Big Brother.  I watched some of the first series and found it mildly interesting, but from series 2 on it was painful to watch, exploitive victim-TV at its worst.  There was a time when I thought, “Why not introduce a mass-murderer into the house and see how these feeble fucks handle that!”  Never happened – probably because the producers couldn’t get permission, more than anything else – but this is certainly the next best thing.

Davina as a zombie. I’m there.

Writing updates: I’ve been working hard on The Secret Journeys of Jack London, the YA series I’m writing with Christopher Golden for Atheneum in the USA.  It’s going to be a scorcher, and Chris and I are thrilled with how it’s going.  More news on this as and when it’s available.

Also been tinkering with ideas and sample chapters for a possible dark crime novel … we’ll see if this one has legs.  And a screenplay, a novella, and some short story idea for three anthologies I’ve been invited to submit to but which I can’t say much about just yet …

More soon!