Why did you decide to pitch a story for Master Pieces?
I loved the idea of centring an anthology about the Master, seeing what Moriarty gets up to without Holmes around, plus there was the chance to play with my childhood toys again. And what’s more fun than letting a villain off the leash?
What are you most proud of about your story?
Getting inside the head of a one note character and (hopefully) making him work as a literary character. And finding a way to tell a story about his obsession without breaking the anthology’s rules.
Can you give us a little taster of what the readers can expect from your piece?
It’s fundamentally about what motivates this incarnation of the Master, and reconciling that with what the Delgado version apparently wanted. It’s got this Master up to his usual tricks, but with a companion of his own you might be familiar with from the series...
How did you find the writing process?
Challenging. After choosing which Master go write about, I needed to work out what motivated him, an angle into the character. There’s really not that much on TV to translate to the page past a villain with almost cartoonish motivations. So the big decision was whether to play into that broad character or whether to find a way to tell a story about his onscreen motivations within the guidelines.
What were the biggest challenges?
Working out how to tell that second type of story. Oddly I found the solution in an old DWM poster, but that might just be my brain working in the strange way it does.
Where else we can find your work?
Currently working on my first novel, Art of History, for The Chronosmith Chronicles. Otherwise, I’ve written three Black Archives for Obverse, available from the Obverse Books site and my most recent short story came out in Sea Terrors from Other Side Books.
What’s your favourite Master story?
For purely sentimental reasons, Logopolis will always have a place in my heart - it’s the story that turned me into a fan. It’s the Master as the ultimate comic book villain, the maniac bent upon universal domination and destruction. I have to go with World Enough and Time though - the two Masters, their relationship and the way that explores the Master’s character is gloriously done and an intrinsic part of one of the show’s true *ahem* masterpieces.
Who do you think should play the next Master and why?
I doubt she’d do it, so a Master in the vein of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. A villain with so much trauma bubbling Just under the surface and who could draw the audience onto their side as Ian Richardson once did as Francis Urqhart. Use the character’s charming nature properly.
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