An anecdote This kind of illustrates what I'm saying about sitcom. A few years ago I was at a workshop with Marks and Gran: it might have been at LWT, I can't remember. We each had to pitch an idea. One writer did, and I was the only one present who recognised it as My Dead Dad, a minor (but not that minor, not like Tottenham Two or something) series from the 1990s. He might not have plagiarised it, it might have been coincidence, but it seems to me, if you want to write sitcom, you should know about sitcom. Do your homework, or end up writing - well, I'd better not say.

Breaking in It's a cliche that almost every major, popular modern novel has been rejected by most publishers, but it's one of those cliches which is horribly true. It might seem shocking that what many of us think of as a publisher's primary role - finding new books we'll like and bringing them to us - is something they do so badly, but it's the way it is. Writing is one of the few professions you can't get paid to learn. These days, you won't even get advice from an agent or a publisher: you send them finished work, and if they don't want it immediately and exactly as it is, you won't get a reply. It's a business, and you're not the customer. I'm not complaining, I'm just describing. It does remind me of the old joke about Hollywood, though: the one about the aspiring actress who was so stupid she went to bed with the writer.

I've flirted with publishers, producers and agents. The agents were always interested only when I already had a publisher or producer looking at something, and disappeared when they turned it down.

I haven't given up on the non-comics writing. I love sitcom, but British sitcom is in a sorry state, convinced that bottoms are the funniest thing in the world again, and produced by people who'd rather be doing something else. Fiction publishing is teetering on its back foot, pumping out copycat works and dodging blows from supermarkets and the internet.

I have plans to self-publish through fantasticamazing.com, and I might try again with publishers and TV.

I have decided to show some of my writing for children here, though. Atlantis is a book series for 9-12s, which I'll continue unchanged if at all: click on the image to read the first two chapters in Word. A Fish Out Of Water is for much younger children, and here it is complete. I will probably re-do the artwork - I'm not as fond of photorealistic 3D as I was - and certainly the lettering, but the script - Well, I'm proud of the script. Really.