She is also my favorite writer. I’ve come to realize, that even though she’s never published a novel (she has published a short story, though. Check it out.), I’ve ‘read’ many of her books through her telling me about them.
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First thing’s first. Check this out: FILM ANNOUNCEMENT! After that, why don’t you hop on over here to find out a little more.
- The excitement of knowing that something you wrote is going to be made into a movie is inexpressible.
- Knowing it’s also going to be a movie shot in 3D makes the excitement unbearable.
- Looking at the timeframe it takes to make a movie is sobering.
While this post is mostly announcing the fact that someone thought something I wrote was interesting enough to try to make into a movie… it also gives me a chance to talk about something else that has had an impact on my life as a writer. Tempering excitement.
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I had to go to the store last night and pick up some food for this weekend. It’s when I have my kid with me, so it needs to be food that’s easy to prepare, can alternate between a meal and a snack, and is relatively cheap. There are some standards that I can rely on, but my son tends to get burnt out pretty fast on them. He doesn’t have the most discerning taste, though, so I’m usually pretty safe with getting lower quality stuff.
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I’ve chosen to go with the label of ‘speculative fiction’ when it comes to explaining the stories I write. Almost all of my stories are different from each other, and almost none of them can be socketed neatly or cleanly into one of the main genres used to describe books these days.
“But why?” you ask. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:
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Written in Time and Other Short Stories is now up on Amazon for pre-order.
There were a lot of difficult decisions I had to make in order for this book to come about. The first of these was including the 3 short stories that were previously published as separate ebooks. I’m still very proud of them. One is even being made into a short video/movie… slowly. So, just looking at that one point, if you choose to buy this book, you’re already saving a buck on those 3 stories, alone.
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How long should a book be? Hundreds of thousands of guidelines have been posted on the internet. Publishers each have their own requirements based on genre and topic. Well-meaning people from all walks of life have chimed in with what they believe to be the magic range to keep a book at. It’s mind-numbing at times.
I guess the first question is: Who are you asking? I would guess that if you ask an author, you’ll either get pointed to one of the myriads of guidelines I was talking about up there or even a shrug. Personally, I write my stories to be as long as they need to be.
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Last night, it snowed… about 10 inches. Last night I also got sick (at least, began feeling the effects of getting sick). Today I woke up a little before noon because my body needed the rest. I’m still tired and sore and doing my best to keep my head in one piece. I’m also recovering from blowing the snow off the driveway and scraping the car.
Why didn’t I call in sick? Why am I still going to work tonight? Because a coworker has called in sick every day for the last week. I’ve seen how it effects everyone else’s schedules… how people need to be called and shifted around, how this person is asked to stay longer, how management is suddenly on the hook for people not willing to come in. When a monkey-wrench is thrown into a well-oiled machine, things tend to go downhill fast.
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…or, a rebuttal to yesterday’s post.
I got a few comments regarding my complaint about the advertising habits of a few writers I’ve recently started to follow on Twitter, yesterday. The essential gist was, “Why do you hate the writers/writing community on Twitter?”
I don’t. I hate certain habits of a very few. But that was another post, this is a different one. This is about the redemptive qualities of the writing community on Twitter, and why I enjoy interacting and engaging with them.
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I’ve been following more authors on Twitter lately, and I’ve noticed something that has me a bit concerned. The constant deluge of advertisement and self-promotion to the point of annoyance.
I’m not going to point fingers and name names, but there are a few people that I’ve recently followed who seem to have a series of targeted tweets set to auto-post every single day. I’ll load up Twitter, reading tweets and catching up on my echo-chamber of news that has been deemed important enough to mention, when out of the blue, I’ll see a familiar post… one with a picture chosen specifically to capture an emotion that said poster hopes to evoke from the viewer/reader. Then, invariably, there will be the exact same selection of tweets to follow… each one with a book cover or image, that are very indelibly inked upon my brain… in the exact same order that I’ve seen them tweeted every day since the day I followed that person.
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I’ve been hooked by the 3D printing bug. Over there, you should see the very first thing I’ve 3D printed that I designed on my own.
I got a small 3D printer for Christmas, and have been scouring sites like Thingiverse and My Mini Factory for models to print. I’ve printed off a few benchys and a Fuckofftopus or two. I’ve made a keychain for a co-worker and my kiddo… played around with vase mode with some translucent filament, and as I’m typing this, the dress of a fairy is being printed (upside down). I’ve been having a blast with this thing… and also feeling a bit guilty for it becoming a distraction from editing.
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