Five Things for a Friday

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1. After weeks of trying to figure out how to fit exercise into my schedule (“What do I give up?” and “When would I have the energy?” being the most important considerations) I suddenly realized that I could squeeze a long walk into my schedule after I finish my shift at my day job, but before I come home. This week I’ve been walking the bus route toward home for 30-40 minutes, and it’s working well. Soon I’ll bump that up to an hour. It means giving up some reading time at the bus stop, but it’s worth it.

2. My feet and leg pain is back. See number one above. I haven’t told my wife about it because it freaks her out, but it’ll soon be obvious because…

3. Our Mothers Day jaunt will be a trip to the park. Lots of walking. Lots of greenery. She loves long walks outside and considers them an essential part of her spiritual self-care. Unfortunately, our son only ventures outdoors after an hour of whining and misery. But we’re doing it, for her. I expect to be in a lot of pain, and to be stuck in the middle.

4. Also this weekend, a very good, very old friend will be in a nearby town. Will he be able to visit? Will I be able to go visit him? No clue.

5. I’m pretty much committed to making a book trailer for book three. Nothing much is going to happen to it at least until the fall, after Game of Cages (aka book 2) comes out. No rush. I will, however, be watching a ton of trailers in the meantime to see what I like and don’t like.

Surprising 6th item: The pre-writing for The Buried King is at the absolute worst part–I have all the characters set and what they want. I know how they’re going to try to get what they want. What I don’t have is a clear idea of how all the conflicts are going to play out.

Truthfully, I don’t need to know this exactly, but I have to have enough information to be sure that the protagonist is going to have conflict with each of the antagonists, and I need to know that each conflict is going to be different. I’m not there yet, which means I’m ready to start writing chapter one but I’m also not ready. Frustrating.

There was supposed to be a surprising seventh thing, too, but I can’t remember what.

A quick tip

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People, think hard before you drop this link into a fat person’s email inbox.

FAQ Generation

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Reading through the thread at Suvudu about what an author’s website needs, I realized how badly I need to revise my site. One thing I need is a FAQ (apparently).

So! Do you have any questions you think I should address in a FAQ? Ask away, please!

Randomness for 5/6

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1) Arizona’s new immigration law made simple.

2) Hey, if they wanted privacy, they wouldn’t be doing it in the woods!

3) Women who are awesome.

4) Williams Syndrome, part 2.

5) Automatically generate a very popular or unpopular TED Talk. Here is the TED Talk lecture that explains it all.

6) Microflora inside the human body, and how it relates to digestive illness, obesity, and other health issues. It’s amazing how little we still know about our own bodies.

7) I hate to bury this one at the bottom of the list, but I don’t want to delay posting it until the next link roundup: The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling. For some years, DC had been recasting “legacy” heroes with non-white characters. The new Atom was Chinese-American (and awesome!). The new Blue Beetle was a Mexican-American kid (and a lot of fun, if not as awesome as The Atom). I never read the new Firestorm, probably because my library doesn’t carry it. Now they’re pushing them to the side so they can “bring back” the original characters. Idiots.

Let me follow up that long post with this short one?

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What’s your favorite book trailer? Links are appreciated.

“I hate the imperialist west, but I got such a great deal on this coat!”

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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

Live near Seattle? Want to see a movie?

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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:

The Dead Feed Teaser from Blaine Street Productions on Vimeo.

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!)

Last Day of Pizza Week

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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.

And now I abandon my child to share some news with you

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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.

:D

Online much?

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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.