Readers, we have a delectably crazy project on the go and have got to the point where it feels like talking about it may not jinx it!

We’re going to make a Hopeless Maine film.

At time of writing this is a project with no funding. It does however have a script, and most of the team in place to make it happen. We have some ideas about funding. However, if you have a magic money tree and were wondering how best to deploy it, we’re here to help you!

From here on in, I’m going to be blogging regularly about how this all goes. There’s quite a lot of backstory to tell, so I’ll be working my way from the beginnings of this idea forward. It’s not been a smooth path at this point, and all things considered, it’s not likely to be smooth in the future either.

While all of the team members are experienced professionals, only some of us are experienced professionals when it comes to film making. Tom and I are the least experienced in all of this. There is a great deal to come where we’ll be depending on the knowledge, skills and cunning of the rest of the team. Beautiful people that they are, they have enough faith in us and enough enthusiasm for Hopeless Maine to give this a go. I’ll be talking more about who does what as we go along – my fondness for telling a story means I want to introduce the key characters as they enter the plot. That said, if anyone wants to ‘out’ themselves that’s fine by me!

So, if that wasn’t quite bonkers enough, here’s what we’re planning. We want to make a silent movie, on a period camera, with a soundtrack. There will be puppets and actors. It will be based on The Blind Fisherman (the series of poems and images at the start of The Gathering). If you’ve read The Blind Fisherman, you will know that it doesn’t really suggest a smooth translation into film, which is part of the fun of it. We don’t want to make a film version of something we’ve already done in the comics. We want to go somewhere new.

Thank you for joining us on our latest madcap adventure, and watch this space for the story as it unfolds…