Besides the shameless grab at our wallets BDP1 is certainly the most cringeworthy episode yet. First of all, from a structural point of view, the first half has no conflict. Therefore no plot. But I enjoyed myself during the film. I laughed a lot. A real lot. But it was “at” not “with.”
I deployed a new video game topic page yesterday. This was a good chunk of work. I use a modified iThemes Builder child theme and so continued to use their custom layout and variable widget systems to build out a special page…
I’m very busy right now with different stages of both my novels. I’m line editing Untimed and trying to get my first, The Darkening Dream, ready for publication. One of the more fun parts of this is the art design….
While the first season of this show was great, the second is even better! It starts off with a bang resolving the “Tucco situation” and then keeps rolling from there. The pre-titles scene for each episode employs the effective (when done well) TV device of cryptic flash forwards to the season’s last episode, leaving us with the “uh, oh, what’s coming?” and “how the hell are we going to get to that” feeling. Breaking Bad keeps this lean and creepy, without a ton of information. It doesn’t do the kind of sophisticated and deliberately misleading layering that say, Damages (another excellent show) uses.
Finally, a bit of Game of Thrones season 2 footage. Yummy. I can’t wait for more.
Eclipse is clearly the lame duck of the three pre-Breaking-Dawn Twilight films. It’s so cheesy that it makes the original and New Moon seem high art. First of all, the A-story is about as weighty as a sesame seed. It’s the B-story (romance) that holds the focus this this film.
In honor of the upcoming return of everyone’s favorite sparkly vampires, I rewatched the earlier offerings. Oh, where to begin. The cheese is so thick in this series that it might as well be set in a Paris fromagerie. But it does have a certain charm. Hands down the best part of the whole series is Kristen Stewart. I have to admit, I do kind of like her. Here she’s severely hampered by the script, but she still makes the best of it. In better movies, like the brilliant Adventureland, she shines (and I’m not talking the CGI sparkle kind of shine).
Continuing the big upgrades on my website, I’ve built out new pages for my books: The Darkening Dream and Untimed. These pages are an attempt to look less bloggy, more like typical author and book sites. I’ll, of course, be continuing to refine and add. One of the nice things about using Wordpress is that it’s easy to continually modify. I’ll add reviews and promotional information. Sample chapters, etc.
The trailer actually looks pretty good. A hair cheesy, but not all Twilighted out or anything. For those of you who haven’t read it, the book (at least the first of the three) is pretty darn excellent. The second two devolve into pseudo-political nonsense reminiscent of the Zion scenes in the later Matrix movies. But the first is a fantastic and intense read.
I’ve officially signed a cover artist for The Darkening Dream. His name is Cliff Nielsen and he’s a very experienced artist using a cool ethereal multimedia style. You can check out his work on his website but I pasted two into this post. I originally found him though this image of the dude with the watch and I had to find out who the artist was. Then I discovered I already owned a decent collection of books he drew the covers for (e.g. City of Bones, which I reviewed recently).
The pilot opens with a serious bang, starting with the episode’s chaotic conclusion then flipping back to the turn of events that brought us there. It’s an interesting premise: what happens when a nebbishy High School science teacher, dying of cancer, tries to take care of his family by becoming a Meth producer. But shows are all about execution and this one really kills.
The Inside Story deals with character and structure, and the relationship between these and theme. I’ve read a lot of books on writing in general and story structure in particular, and this is certainly the best on the subject of the transformational arc.
Yesterday, I finished my fourth (more like 3 1/2) major draft of my new novel, Untimed, bundled it up, and shipped it out to my editor for line editing. This was a relatively quick and easy draft (about ten days),…
In my latest move to further build up my social online presence I’ve moved onto goodreads.com. You can find my new profile here. It’s also installed permanently on the righthand sidebar via the icon. Those of you who use goodreads, link to my profile…
I got notes back from my editors concerning my new novel, Untimed. This is the least stressful batch I’ve ever received. Not only are there relatively few changes, but I agree with all the big ones. Granted, this was the…
Over the last two years, I’ve read lots of books on the publishing business, and this one has the largest volume of useful information. Sure it’s mixed with a lot of random other stuff and considerable repetition. But a must read and very cheap. Just skim the parts you don’t need.
I wouldn’t have expected to like this — other than the promised nudity — but it was rather sly. This ensemble show follows nine or ten British sixteen-seventeen year-olds studying, loving, and partying (not in that order) somewhere in nowhere Western England. Each episode picks a particular cast member to focus on, using them as a POV into the group dynamics.
Any business is about the flow of money. This is a keystone for understanding them. Dean Wesley Smith, one of self-publishing’s very vocal bloggers has an excellent article on the subject of the differing flow of money in both the traditional and…
I’m plugging away on my “after the gap” read of The Darkening Dream. At the 60% point, so I should hopefully be done by the end of the week. There’s only one scene I need to go back to and…
I started a new read through and edit on my first novel, The Darkening Dream yesterday. I’m waiting for feedback on my newer book and wanted to cleanup the first one so I’ll have it ready to be proofread for possible self-publishing….