This is going to be long, so I’ll establish the subject matter and lay in a cut.
During Pizza Week (aka, while my wife was out of town) my son and I did quite a bit of video gaming. Generally, I played and he sat beside me telling me what he thought I should do. The best game we played, the most fun and the most enthralling, was Freedom Force.
I’m going to break this up into sections:
1. Why a long post about Freedom Force?
2. A perfect game? Um, no.
3. Why my son loved the game so much he wasn’t interested in the last couple of levels (hint: it’s not because he didn’t want it to end).
4. What about the sequel? Continue reading
Back in 2004, I wrote a screenplay designed to be made on an ultra-low budget. In 2005, my friend Dan Moore shot it. Now, in 2010, it’s ready for release.
On May 20th, at NW Film Forum, the indie film I wrote will have its world premiere. It’s called THE DEAD FEED, and here’s a 21-second preview:
Facebook users, that’s an embedded video. You’ll have to click through to the blog to see it. Did I mention 21 seconds?
Will the movie be awesome? I hope so! I haven’t been involved in post-production at all, and haven’t even seen a rough cut in the last couple of years. I will be there with a camera in hand to record the responses of the audience members. After, I will post them, even if their faces are full of boredom or scorn! If folks love the movie, I will bask in the accomplishment. If they hate it, I will flush with shame.
Have I mentioned that making this movie is what drove me to write novels? Seriously. I’d long planned to go into movie-making and once I realized I was going to be a Seattle resident long-term, I teamed up with Dan to take control of our careers and make our own. (Never wait!)
But I was terrible at it. Making a movie is a real pain in the ass and I discovered I didn’t have the skill set or the temperament for it. Immediately after production wrapped, I started work on Child of Fire. Novels FTW!
But Dan never walked away. He’s been struggling with that film for 5 years, and in that time he lost his job and became homeless. All sorts of rough shit happened to him, but he stuck with it and now he’s sending it off to film festivals.
The evening of May 20th. (I’ll post more details when I confirm them.) Want to join me there?
Update: Jeez, I forgot to say what the movie is about! Quick description: a group of friends begin receiving a mysterious video feed showing one of them being murdered… before it happens. (dum dum DUMMM!)
Pizza Week has been hard on writing time. It’s the lack of sleep that does it, and the domestic duties. I’ve been keeping on top of the housework, mostly, but my wife arrives tonight so there’s some last minute straightening to be done so the place looks nice for her.
The Buried King is coming together pretty well. Luckily I’m at the planning stages so I can plot while I vacuum. If I were at the drafting stages, this would have been a rough week. At this point, though, what I really need is a decent name for my protagonist.
And there’s stuff to blog about, but no time to blog it. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. Time to be busy again.
My German foreign language agent has just sold worldwide German rights to Otherworld Verlag Krug Keg. They’re an ambitious small(ish) press out of Austria, and it’s incredibly exciting.
That makes Russian, French, and German sales. So far.
Not really. Pizza Week has been a single-parent experience, and I don’t have a lot of time to hang out online. I’m trying to keep up with my email and LJ friends list, but even that’s a struggle.
Anyway, I spoke with my agent about Project Number Next last Monday. The story idea came from this discussion, and although at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle something like that, eventually the idea started taking over my brain. I had a character I wanted to write about. I had a take on the standard urban fantasy setting that I really, really liked. All through the rewrites of Man Bites World, I was thinking of a handful of confrontations in the new project.
But I fucked it up. I wrote 44 pages with very little dramatic tension–there was no villain, no serious obstacle, just a story question that spins out without resolution. In fact, I did something I pretty much never do: I liked a character so much that I just went along for the ride in her day without a solid narrative. A character died off the page, yeah, and there’s a “Who killed the jerk?” story line, but overall it didn’t work.
Worse, the project as it stands feels very whole and solid to me. It needs to be rethought, but I’m going to need some distance before I have another go at it again. I’m too close right now.
Which means that, as I wait for a second round of notes on Man Bites World (or maybe a check instead!), I’ve gone back to The Buried King, the second-world fantasy I was writing while I was querying for Child of Fire. I abandoned it when Caitlin offered to represent me (and told me to start work on Game of Cages.) I’ve gone back to the goof and discovered I hadn’t really solved the plot yet. So, it needs a little more pre-writing planning, and then I’ll be jumping back into a new book.
And now I’ve spent too much of my writing day on this post, and it’s past time to wake my son. Have a great Friday, everyone.
Forgot to add: my back is almost back to normal today.
Sauce first, then cheese, then toppings on the very top? Sauce, toppings, cheese? Put on the sauce last, so the cheese doesn’t brown so much? Or does it vary according to the cheeses, sauce and toppings you choose?
The first full day of Pizza Week (aka, my wife is out of town) was troubled. The fruit pizza (with sweetened cream cheese) did not go over well. At all. The more traditional pepperoni pizza I made for dinner (with the good pepp) also did not go over well. My son got me to make him a mini-pizza at the end of the day and I put all his usual boring toppings on them.
As for the rest of the day, I’m a single parent so I’m not getting online all that much. I did have a productive conversation with my agent yesterday, and I plan to talk a little about that when it’s not so late. Bedtime has passed, so I must pass out.
Not ten seconds ago, heavy winds out of the south have started shaking the trees on my block. It’s like a dance party out there.
A few hours ago, my back went out for no reason I can see. I’m hobbling around the apartment, trying to straighten up the place and straighten up my posture, using ice, isometrics, dishwasher, stretching, but not the vacuum. Ow. Also, ow.
My wife flies to the east coast tonight. I need to load up her iPod with TED talks before she goes In fact, I’m going to do that now, then get down on the floor and work on my core muscles.