Fabulous! A Missing Episodes Anthology

Every now and again, I get an email from somebody connected to Obverse Books asking if I want to submit an idea for some collection or other. Being an obliging sort, I always tend to give it a couple of days to see if I might be able to come up with something; if no idea comes, I let the opportunity slip by quietly. I thought that would be the case when I was asked if I wanted to submit a story for Fabulous, a short story collection that would donate all its profits to help Film is Fabulous hunt down and protect more gems of film and TV history. I’m not actually so much of a TV and Film buff that I can tell you what is missing from the archives off the top of my head, but the list of shows that was already taken covered all the bases I could think of.

But searching for what shows actually had missing episodes, I found that the Obverse website had a secret corner where there was a handy list: https://obversebooks.co.uk/missingepisodes/index.html. The least I could do was give it a once over and see if anything leapt out at me.

By complete coincidence, something did jump out at me: The Trollenberg Terror (The Crawling Eye in the US where they apparently like their titles to give away the ending) was a film that had recently popped up on YouTube and I’d watched and enjoyed it. And it was listed in Obverse’s records as being lost from the archives. That did give me a moment of thinking I might need to point Film is Fabulous at YouTube and say “Er, there it is”, but reading a bit more I found out that the film was based on an old ABC television serial that was indeed missing presumed wiped.

It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up: here was something missing that I really enjoyed but could also look at a version of to get any reference material I might need. None of the other writers could say that. I knew I could do something with the setting, and the image of the giant eye offered me lots of possibilities: I wrote in and asked if I could do Trollenberg Pt 2, and was quick told I could.

I started writing without a clear plan, which is I have to say something of a novelty for me: usually even for a short story I do a rough outline to work out the kinks before I start putting down words. But this time I had an image of the opening scene, trying to tell the story in a way that mimicked the idea of watching something on a screen. My intention was that it would be more of a mood thing than anything else, something to warm me up for when I inevitably needed to get into the plot mechanics. That never happened. In the course of writing that scene, the rest of it opened up to me: I knew who the main character was, what her connection to the original story was, and exactly how everything would end.

I don’t tend to race writing, even if I’m excited: I put down a set number of words a day on something and then stop. Even if stopping might involve moving onto something else. I find it gives me a chance to think about things without slowing down too much: problems in what I’m doing have time to bubble up and nag me to fix them, while still letting me get to the end before I start second-guessing everything. And that was what I did, waiting for the wheels to fall off and to have to go back to the drawing board at every turn. Pretty quickly, I had a finished story with only a couple of little nagging issues that I could go back and fix there and then.

Obviously I didn’t trust this burst of inspiration, so I put the story away and did something else for a good while. As soon as it was out of my head, I would be able to see what I had actually written in all its tattered glory. But when I came back to it, I still liked it. The mood came across - to me, at least - and it hit all the beats I wanted it to, said all the things I thought it should. Still shaking my head in disbelief, I sent it off to my editor with a month still left on my deadline.

He thought it was great too, and that was that. 

Towards the middle of October, I got a proof version of the whole collection and suddenly I could see what illustrious and talented company I was in. I gave a little gulp and went through my story again, just in case. And - as there always are at this stage - there were a couple of little things that I wanted to tweak, just to phrase them better or get rid of a little repetition. But despite that, there was still this great little story there that I really liked and was very proud of. And now it’s out there, and a few more people can read it and see what they think. I hope you like it. I do. And I bet you’ll like at least some of the others, and get that warm glow of helping out a gang of people doing something great, saving things from disappearing forever. Making the world a better place, one film canister at a time.

Buy a copy. Tell your friends. Buy your friends a copy.

And be careful when it’s cloudy out …