armageddon checklist

list o acheivements

2011-09-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I finished a new novel, which I reckon is cause for celebration. 86,000 words in total for the first draft, hopefully equating to about 80,000 for the second (once I've cut most of the crap out).

By my calculations, this would be my fifteenth completed novel (disregarding the ones that have been abandoned, lost, buried or disowned)... although I could be miscounting somewhere. This I think is my full list:

1. Obsession No. 1 (about 2002, approx 90,000 words) - a thriller, for some reason. God knows why I keep trying to write thrillers. It's not my preferred genre either for reading or writing. I think a grand total of two people have ever read this, or are ever likely to read it.
2. Coma White (about 2004, approx 120,000 words) - another thriller. Also the longest thing I've written, since I hadn't learned to edit back then. And yeah, the title's from the Marilyn Manson song, which I would apologise for, except I still maintain Mechanical Animals was a perfectly fine album.
3. Animal Bones (about 2005, approx 75,000 words) - homage (i.e. blatant stealing) to Laurell K Hamilton, involving a private detective who works for supernatural clients.
4. Terror Island (2006, published 2007, approx 110,000 words) - wow, was this really the first time I put zombies in a story?
5. Blood Red Sea (2007, approx 80,000 words) - vampire pirates, in a young-adult stylee. The title "Vampirates" was already taken, annoyingly.
6. NighmareLand (2008, approx 80,000 words) - post-apocalyptic zombies. If I had to pick my favourite thing I'd written, this would probably be it.
7. Screenstalker (2008, approx 50,000 words) - my first Nano-novel, about a monster-hunter who lives in the TV and fights movie monsters. And zombies.
8. Home Ground (2009, to be published SOON, dammit, approx 90,000 words) - WWII zombies at an Internment Camp on the Isle of Man.
9. Moths (2009, published 2010, approx 60,000 words) - giant killer moths.
10. Afterglow (2009, approx 60,000 words) - giant killer glow-worms.
11. Lost Souls Maximus (2009, approx 50,000 words) - murder and campanology, my second Nano-novel.
12. Time Alone (2010, approx 95,000 words) - time travel... I'm in two minds whether to include this as completed or not. A first draft was definitely finished, but it's so full of plot-holes and difficulties, I doubt the damn thing can ever be rewritten. :(
13. Blood of the Ancestors (2010, approx 85,000 words) - swords 'n sorcery, without the sorcery and with added zombies. Consensus places this as the best thing I've written so far, which is nice.
14. Return to Terror Island (2011, approx 85,000 words) - my third Nano-novel. You'll notice it went slightly over-budget on the word count. And it wasn't finished until recently. Also I've not told anyone I've written this sequel. I'm looking forward to the reactions. :)
15. The Ravens (2011, approx 80,000 words) - and this is the newly-completed one, written for my lovely husband, with post-apoc zombies and a bike gang. Editing starts next week.

There was also a children's book I wrote in high school, but I'm disregarding that, and also four or five movie scripts. And some short stories. Plus all the stubs of unfinished novels, of which there are several.

I think I'm happy with the list so far. :)

Editing of Nos. 14 and 15 will probably take up the next few weeks, then it's on to world building for Nanowrimo. Huzzah.

who cares what it's about, as long as the kids go?

2011-08-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

This week, i decided it would be fun to make some chapbooks of short stories that haven't found a home anywhere else. Package them up with some nice artwork... it sounded like a good plan, but there was a fatal flaw that i hadn't spotted. What i ended up with initially was a pile of my rejects; stories that have been turned down several times by various places, and which most likely don't represent my shiniest work. So i've spent the last two weeks finishing off a bunch of stories-stubs (most of them little more than scribbled ideas and wine stains) and trying to bash them into something readable. And now i'm knackered.

on the plus side, the artwork looks good. Ah, the joys of living with an easily-bribable artist. I'll post some as soon as i get my scanner working again.

shiny artwork

2011-07-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

Tch, i posted this on facespace then forgot to add it here as well. Oh blogging, why are you so difficult?

Anyway, this is the beautiful shiny artwork for my upcoming book, "Home Ground", due to be released in the next month or so (fingers crossed, as always). The artwork is by the wonderful and talented Juan Moore, and i don't think i could be happier with the way it's turned out.

here are some things you probably didn't about Juan:

1. His name is pronounced the Manx way: Joo-ann. Which is a shame because it totally ruins all the "Juan Moore time" jokes we could be making.
2. He's officially designated as a National Treasure, as he's currently running an exhibition in the Manx Museum here in Douglas.
3. We very nearly share a birthday - he is one day younger than me. So as well as being a talented bastard, he's also a young whippersnapper. Dammit.

Also, if you ever do happen to meet him, ask to see the photograph he carries in his wallet. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

progress of the slow kind

2011-07-23T12:29:00.001-07:00

sent out the back-cover blurb for "Home Ground" to Mr Publisher yesterday - it took ages to do, because i hate writing blurbs. It's probably my least favourite part of the writing process. I'd rather write ten thousand new words than a hundred for a blurb. It also doesn't help that i'm rubbish at it.

Blurgh. Oh well, it's done now.

that space-cadet glow

2011-07-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Y'all may have gathered that i'm not the most tech-savvy person in the world, which is why it's taken me this long to figure out how to create an author page on Facespace:

Rakie Keig - now likeable on Facebook

So if you're "logged on" to the local "interweb", please "like" me. If you do, i promise to stop using bunny ears to highlight my technological failings. Also, facebook sends me lovely emails telling me "so-and-so likes you", which makes me feel about ten years old again.

Script Frenzy 2011

2011-04-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

Script Frenzy is upon us once again, and this year i've decided... not to participate.

this is due to a whole wodge of stuff, mainly me being too busy, with too many unfinished projects on my hands, not enough confidence in my ability to write a decent screenplay, and only half an idea about what i'd write about anyway.

So instead of 100 pages of rubbish screenplay, I've decided to devote April to reading books.

I used to read loads. In fact, i suppose i still read quite a bit, but when i've got other stuff going on in my life, reading seems to be the thing that gets pushed out. Which is not only a shame, but probably quite bad for me - no wonder my head's so stuffy and congested when i've not put anything new into it for so long.

So last week i went through my hefty to-read pile, reaquainted myself with all the forgotten gems i'd bought and then ignored, and now i plan to go thorugh as many of them as possible in April. I'm aiming for 15 by May 1st, which feels like a nice, attainable total.

And the best thing? I feel better already. Reading is one of my top five things in the world ever, and i feel really dumb for neglecting it so often.

Wendy Tells It Like It Is

2011-02-28T12:10:00.000-08:00

a quick plug for the frog who tells it like it is:

Wendy the Wide-Mouthed Frog

failing at this posting thing...

2011-02-01T14:23:00.001-08:00

again i made a resolution to post more often. Again i fail.

on the plus side, i'm watching The Usual Suspects in belated tribute to the wonderful Pete Postlewaite. Is there anything better than this movie? Okay, maybe there is, but for me this is the movie that defined my teenage years. When Chris McQuarrie won the screenwriting oscar, i woke up everyone in the house with my happy dance. When i had a massive row in the cinema with my then-boyfriend, just as the credits were starting, i let him win because i so did not want to walk out of the movie in a huff. Just listening to the score brings a nostalgic tear to the eye.

also, i've just realised the credits at the start read "Bryan Singer's film", rather than "a film by...". Like he KNEW this was THE film of his career (not to belittle his career before or since, natch). I heart you, movie.

scream for me, cosa rica

2011-01-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

watching Iron Maiden: Flight 666 and am about THIS far -

(holds thumb and forefinger a judicial half-inch apart)

- from jacking everything in and going off to form a rock band.

...Despite the fact that i don't have a musical bone in my body, have been thrown out of bars for my karaoke attempts, am 31 (positively ancient in musical terms), and the closest i've ever gotten to a rock n roll lifestyle is being booted off the tour bus for The Vandals by their terrifying yet petite manager.

Maybe i just wanna hang out on Ed Force One. Goddammit.

there's a mattress in the hallway

2011-01-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

not a quote, there just happens to be a mattress in the hallway right now. It was delivered this afternoon, i haven't cleared space for it yet, and i keep forgetting it's there, so it gives me a cheerful surprise every time i go into the hall and walk into it.

anyway, mattresses aside, we seem to have survived another year. I've cheerfully failed at least one of my resolutions, which was to blog on here more often. But i did manage to get married, and i had a book published, and i've gotten a fair number of words written. About 274,000 words in total for the year (I kept a spreadsheet).

in a vague sort of breakdown, of interest to no one but me:

About 60k on my one finished project of the year, Blood of the Ancestors.
About 70k on my NaNoWriMo novel, which STILL ISN'T FINISHED and is beginning to annoy me now.
30k on an unfinished project, The Silver to the City. Once i finally figure out how to make it good, this will be my magnificant sci-fi octopus.
13k on Search and Destroy, most of which was written in 2009 and which, again, came to a staggering halt when i realised it sucks in current form. I think this will be the next thing i work on.
10k on the start of a lone-zombie story called (imaginatively) Loner. It might've been good if it wasn't so boring. Also unfinished. There's maybe a trend developing here.
About 7k on random world building, my first real attempt at world building. I liked it. I shall do more of it from now on.
15k on my stupid sucky ScriptFrenzy script, which sucked and was stupid. I maybe need to revisit it at some point.
About 25k on short stories... maybe four completed stories and one or two broken ones.
Aaaaannnd 20k or so on critting other people's stories (yes, i'm counting that in my word count, nyah).

that doesn't come close to adding up, but trust me, once you factor in a bunch of notes and aborted stories and the like, it does apparently add up to 274,000. Which (according to my quaculations), is something like 750 words a day. Ha! That totally cheered me up. I thought i'd been well lazy this year, but 750 words a day is more or less what i'd been aiming for. Plus i think i edited at least three or four of my novel-length stories to something approaching final polish.

didn't read nearly enough books, didn't reply to enough emails, hardly watched any films, but i did make my word count. And i drank a lot of wine in doing so. At the end of the day, could we want anything more?

Victory

2010-12-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

NaNoWrimo is done for another year! I managed to complete a few days early, so came in with a final grand total of about 56k words, which i'm moderately happy with. The problem is... i seem to have underestimated the final length of this piece. I was aiming for fifty thousand words in total, but going by my 40 page synopsis (40 notebook pages, it's not as bad as it sounds), I'm about 25 pages through. That is WAY off. I can't believe i underestimated by so much. So the story's not finished last month, and i doubt it's going to be finished this month either.

i know i shouldn't be complaining, since i've got 56k words more than i had at this time a month ago, but still. It irks me more than it should.

But i love Nano. It's one of my favourite times of the year. I love frantic, deadline writing. I've got more done this novemeber than in the past three months combined. And now i've got to start planning for ScriptFrenzy... but i don't like that so much. I completed it this year and it turned out, eh, not so good, Al. The last thirty pages of that story were some of the worst writing i've ever done. In fact, the last ten pages was a flow-of-consciousness drunken discussion between three characters, because i reached the end at 90 pages and COULD NOT find a way to pad out an extra ten pages.

Also i have no idea what i'd do for ScriptFrenzy next year. What the hell would i want to write a screenplay about? It's weird. None of my ideas seem to come in script format.

Moth-eaten news

2010-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

suppose i should get round to the self-publicising thing at some point...

My second novel, "Moths" is slowly making its way out into the real world. It's on the official Guy N Smith website, along with some very nice words from the man himself, and also (apparently) on Amazon, along with a frickin awesome review from the gorgeous Chris Hall, altho Amazon's saying it's out of stock at the mo.

I've also got a wodge of signed books here for sale at cover price (£6.99 - hopefully a cheerful and affordable price in these scary economic times) so if anyone wants one, drop me an email and i'll sort ya out. If i can figure out how this Paypal business works. :)

Part 1 of 3

2010-10-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

November starts on monday... and with it comes NaNoWriMo. Doesn't seem like a whole year, does it?

if anyone wants to friend me, i'm here. This year, i'm doing a sequel to a story i wrote about a hundred years ago.

It's the second sequel i've ever attempted - the first was abandoned after my sister beat me with a Doc Martin boot. She gets very... punchy on the subject of sequels, and most of the time i tend to agree with her. After all, at best a sequel takes a bunch of characters you love and throws them back into a terrible situation, after they spent all that time and effort getting out of danger. At worst, they kill off the people you care about and sabotage relationships (hello, "Alien 3" and "Men In Black II", respectively). Plus, as someone much smarter than me once pointed out, a movie (or book, or whatever) is supposed to be about the most exciting/interesting story in the character's lives. So any sequel is going to be about the SECOND most exciting/interesting story in their lives. And who wants to pay £6.50 for that?

Don't get me wrong, i've nothing personal against sequels. Some of my best friends are sequels. I'm probably the only person you'll meet who's watched "The Fly II" more times than both the originals put together. "Piranha 2" had flying piranhas AND Lance Hendrickson ditching a helicopter into the sea. "Terminator 2", "Aliens" and "Ghostbusters 2" were all better, imo, than the originals, altho i'm sure not everyone would agree.

What i dislike is the current trend for setting up franchises. Every freakin movie you see these days seems designed as the first in a series. No one gets to kill the bad guy, save the love interest and live happily ever after anymore - the bad guy has to survive, the love interest has to stay fiesty and out of reach, and we all go home and wait for the next movie. It irks me.

The Bitter Script Reader said something similar recently, which is maybe why it's on my mind.

so i'm wondering, is the same sort of thing happening with books? Does every novel need to be the start of a franchise? (Or, at least, the first of two or three?) Do we need to start being like Brian Keene and STOP THE GODDAMN STORY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE?

It's got me thinking because i was talking to a few of my writery friends (we were in a coffee shop and everything), and, apart from me, they're all working on the first of three books (or the second of five, or... you get my point). It seems to be the done thing at the moment. Now, is this a corresponding trend in the publishing industry? Do publishers look at submitted manuscripts and say, "well, it's good, but it's a stand-alone novel. There's no way we can get a sequel out of this. PASS."? Would you get marked down for NOT leaving potential to continue the story?

why can't stories be told in a single book or film anymore?

does that question make me sound old?

i'll see y'all for the start of Nano on monday. :)

hmm

2010-05-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

don't seem to be doing so well with my NYR of keeping this blog updated. Pleh, i'm not cut out for this interweb business.

anyways. Things are slightly hectic here. I've got a new job (of a kind - it's actually an unexpected transfer to a different department, but at least the contract's for a year instead of a month), which is eating a lot of my times, but does at least let me go to court (i'm a stenographer!). Aaaand i'm about two days away from finishing a new story.

this makes me very happy. Of the four things i've written in the past year: one is a time-travel novel with so huge a central flaw i doubt anything can be salvaged from it; another is a super-hero-dectective story abandoned at 60k words after i realised a) i can't write detective fics, and b) i apparently can't write superhero fics either; the third was my nano novel; and the fourth was my attempt at script frenzy which started out well and now i can't even read through because i don't know where to start making it better. So it's kind of a relief to finish something and it not be awful.

i mean, it's not good yet. That goes without saying. Also I think everything i write is an attempt at copying a writer i love, in which case this is my David Eddings story. It's a D&D setting without the magic and with added zombies. Oh, and in the jungle. So kinda like Sapphire Rose meets The Rising meets Platoon, but minus the overbearing sense of futility and Willam Defoe.

Um, that maybe makes it sounds better than it is.

there's also some tentatively good news about one of my older stories, "Homeground", but i'm reluctant to jinx it by getting excited too soon.

a first... probably not a last

2010-04-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

rather belatedly, i've realised what's been bugging me these past few days. I was at an acting workshop on sunday, and at one point got partnered up in improv with this amazingly good-looking guy - he could've walked straight out of Tokyo Drift, he was that pretty. Anyway, in the course of things, we found out he was 17. Just turned 17.

now, i know this is not an original freak-out or anything, but i'm old enough to be his mother.

well, if it'd had him when i was 14, but still, that's still POSSIBLE, isn't it?

that is the first time i've ever looked someone up and down, then realised they're young enough to be my son. And it won't be the last time, of course not. But it's the FIRST time, and, like your first grey hair, it's a sign of the inescapable passage of time.

he was DAMN pretty tho. Siiiiiiiigh.

Feck-Arse Industries

2010-03-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

so i reckon i'm at the end of a first draft of the dumbass story i'm working on, which always provokes mixed emotions. I'm happy it's done, but i'm less happy it's totalled a grand 76 thousand words. that's... shorter than i wanted. And less than i expected. I've also got the usual worries that it's generally a bit pile of poo and i've wasted three months of my life on it.

on the plus side, i think i've figured out what's wrong with the beginning - i started in the wrong place. Once again i've tried to jump into the middle of an exciting scene to, y'know, stop everyone falling asleep, then realised i've not developed the world or the characters enough and tried to jam in a load of backstory and exposition, in what's supposed to be an action scene. Gah. I've also belatedly realised my last three and possibly four stories have suffered from the same problem. What the heck's wrong with me?

so i've got the easter weekend to kick the crap out of the stupid story and maybe make it into something good. Yaaaay.

fangirl overload

2010-03-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

my husband bought me this movie today. How happy? MOST happy.

i love Dave Bautista. I know it's sad and i know the movie's gonna be awful and i have a sneaky suspicion Mr Batista's not even going to be in it for long (like they gipped me with Chris Jericho in Android Apocalypse) but, my god, i can't help it. The man brings out the fangirl in me.

You know what i'd love to see? A God of War movie with Batista as Kratos. I think that would be the best thing ever.

Screnzy

2010-03-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

so i'm planning to do Script Frenzy this year. Tried last year with a graphic novel, failed, am trying again.

Wanna friend me? Pls?

these are the Glengarry leads

2010-03-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

ahahahaha, thank you Royal Mail, you finally came through for me. And, may i say, BOUT TIME.

this, the thing i hold in my sweaty palms, is Ex-Heroes by Mr Peter Clines. I am VERY excited about it. *squeeeee*

EDIT: btw, i don't actually live in a store cupboard, it's just the way my webcam is angled, honest.

because you're mine

2010-03-08T10:56:00.000-08:00

btw, go to Concern.net and download their charity single, raising money for Haiti. Not only is it a good cause, but amazingly, it's a damn good song as well. And Simon Cowell has been nowhere near it.

(best reaction of the day: "who told Shane MacGowan he could sing?" ... to which the answer has to be, who the hell's gonna stop him?)

spacey sunday, friend of mine

2010-03-08T10:36:00.001-08:00

a smug smile of female solidarity to Kathryn Bigelow, first female director to win the Oscar. You go, girl.

Hurt Locker wasn't my favourite film of the year (i'd probably go for District 9 there), but it also wasn't the worst and it at least deserved the win. Quite apart from anything else, i'm kinda glad Tarantino didn't win. Not that i have anything against Quint, but an Oscar would just encourage him.

and Christoph Waltz as best supporting... the academy are slowly rebuilding the faith they shattered with the Titanic fiasco.

blame it on the bad actress

2010-03-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

seej is sitting next to me and helping edit this post by usurping the delete key, so this may take longer than usual...

i'm perservering with my acting classes, altho i did miss a couple of them due to the whole getting married thing. Acting is fun (discovery of the week, i know). I'm not sure i'll ever get good at it--in fact, i'm pretty certain i never will. Like most things in life, i reckon that if i really put forth the effort and tried my very hardest, i could manage a solid C average.

something i've picked up over the last few weeks is that writing isn't actually intended for actors--Instructor Carl has told us that most stage direction (and pretty much everything else in the script that isn't dialogue) can and in fact SHOULD be ignored when you're acting. It's a distraction, the writer telling the actor how they should be feeling when the emotion should be coming from inside the actor.

and i'm not quite sure how i feel about that. I mean, speaking as a writer, how dare those flipping actors ignore all those hard-written words? who do they think they are? But equally, when you're reading the scripts as part of the class, you start to notice how superfluous a lot of stuff is. Like, if the sleasy male character says "there's something you need to know about your husband", is it necessary to tag the woman's reply as "(worried)"?

you also realise how annoying it is when people put commas in the wrong place in dialogue. I may have to start bringing a red pen along to make corrections.

partiallyclips

2010-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

remembered something i wanted to squee about. Since it's been around for eight years and i'm notoriously slow about these things, y'all probably know about it already, but anyway:

PartiallyClips.com, which has been consuming my attention all week.

this one is my favourite.
or maybe this one. It's hard to say.

you also wouldn't believe how long it took me to understand the name.

you see the hat? i am MRS NESBIT.

2010-02-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

afternoon all, i have returned and i am now a married woman. Again. :)

thank you everyone who sent happy wishes, twas very much appreciated. We had a lovely time, drank far too much wine and danced to Abba (it's obligatory, isn't it?). For those of yous with facespace tolerance, there's some photos up here.
i'll post some up here when i get my stupid internet fuctioning like it should again.

anyway, i have more stuff i wanted to mention but it's all gone out of my head. Pleh.

belated invitation

2010-02-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

afternoon, all.

right, so, me and my significant other, John (aka Special John, aka SJ, aka Seej), are finally getting married on saturday (cue much rejoicing). We're tying the knot here:

which is, y'know, moderately cool.

also, because of multitudinal reasons not least of which is the fact that i've left this to an amazingly last minute, i appreciate that at lot of people won't be able to attend. So i've sort of organised a pre-wedding chat room get together. Jacob-Pancake at Permuted Press has very kindly loaned us the PP chat room for a few hours, and basically, there's a party there and you're invited. :)

the permuted boards are here - you'll have to register to enter the chat room, but seriously you should be on this message board anyway because it's the most fun.

so yeah, if you're not busy, drop in about midnight UK time (that's about 6 pm CST... i think... please correct me if i'm wrong). There will be party hats and glow sticks and cookies.

(also, we're doing the donation thing in lieu of pressies, so if you're feeling generous, please check out these links:
Just Giving (UK)
idofoundation (US)
thank yooooou!!)

hey, i think i met you once!

2010-01-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

Adding to my tenuous list of famous people I've maybe met...

We're going to see The Book of Eli tonight, a movie I've managed to hear absolutely nothing about. But I was unreasonably excited to find out it was written by Gary Whitta, one time editor of PC Gamer, who (if i recall rightly) took the reins of that fine magazine not long after the Matt Bielby Golden Age, no less. Also, I think I met him once. It was at the Future Entertainment Show in London, way back in 1994. I certainly met a very nice bloke from PC Gamer magazine called Gary, and I guess it could've been him. It's difficult to tell from his imdb photo because all chubby bespectacled nerds have a certain similarity. But I remember he was lovely, because he gave me his autograph AND a free magazine.

So there we go, yet another tenuous link to the famous and fortunate. My mate Gary Whitta--I promise not to say anything rude about your movie, at least until after I've seen it. :)

awesome creed 2

2010-01-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

our xbox finally succumbed to the red rings of death a couple of weeks ago (i love that microsoft couldn't fix the fault that causes instant death in their consoles but they did put helpful lights in so you can tell when it's fuxxored). We thought we could survive without it... turns out we were wrong. How shallow we are.

it didn't help that i was halfway through Assassin's Creed 2 at the time of fuxxoring. So we bought a new box, and i sat up till 5 am to finish the damn game.

i... am not sure how i feel now.

the ending was better than the last one. As in it almost had an ending as opposed to abandoning us in mid sentence and causing my heart to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. But even so it was a bit of a bastard.

oh, spoilers. Btw.

it was like the sodding Architect all over again. I'm sure it was supposed to be a head-fuck but really it was just an annoyance. What's wrong with giving us actual endings to stories? why does everything have to be setting up the next sequel? Are y'all so afraid of finishing things, in case we don't come back for more later?

right before the end credits, Desmond asks the question we're all asking by that point: WHAT THE FUCK?

so in summary... AC2 did not break my heart. But it did make me very angry at five o'clock in the morning.

a whole new year

2010-01-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

happy 2010 everyone! 2010... aren't we supposed to be living on the moon by now?

as usual i made a bunch of resolutions and as usual i'm ignoring them to the best of my abilities. The "cut down on drinking" and "take more exercise" ones are looking particularly ropey.

One of the biggies is: WRITE MORE, WRITE BETTER, GET PUBLISHED. I'm happy enough with my output levels of writing (altho last year was a bit slow), but i can always use improvement, and i could really use getting published.

My master plan so far, therefore:
1. Buy a copy of the Writers And Artists Yearbook
(conveniently, i got a copy of it for christmas)
2. Write a bunch of synopseses
(i'm notoriously bad at synopsis writing and try to avoid it wherever possible)
3. Actually submit some stuff
(failure to actually submit anything anywhere has maybe hindered my grand plan to be more published)
4. Update website and blog more often
(hence this update)
5. Take up acting classes

okay, the last one is a bit of a tangent. Really, i wanted to take up writing classes, but since i live on an island the size of a shallot there are no writing classes, so i've taken up acting instead. I figured it could be useful - if you understand actors, that must make it easier to write dialogue for them, right? Don't correct me if i'm wrong, i'm happy in my blissful ignorance. Anyway, i had my first class today.

first thing i realised (or remembered) is that i don't really like actors. They bug me unreasonably. Maybe it's because I can't think of any other profession, other than fine art maybe, where a person can talk so much bollocks about what they do. Also, the guy teaching the class was very keen on method acting, so much so he insisted there was no other possible way to act (he also seems to have a man crush on Al Pacino, bless). Due to being ranted at by certain intervals, i've become slightly suspicious of people who insist "this is the only possible way of doing things". But aside from that it was a lot of fun. The people were lovely and the teacher guy was helpful and knew his stuff. I will never be an actor, i lack the whole 'ungodly acting talent' thing, but hopefully i can pick up a few tips.

viva la resolutions!

Five Murders of John Dawley

2009-03-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

gah, my internet is failing... with my last breath... i ask you to watch this trailer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhbJ8Dz7JMI

unhelpful kitteh

2009-03-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

how come kittehs always know to sit on the exact thing you're supposed to be working on? Kitteh, i need to edit that story. Please get off it.

something new from me

2008-10-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

disregarding all sensible advice, i'm doing NaNo this year. I've been meaning to give it a try for three years now and keep finding reasons not to. So yeah, am giving it a go because i've got an idea i really want to work on but which probably won't stretch out to anything much longer than 50,000 words (even that may be pushing it, to be honest).

it's called SCREENSTALKER, and it's a horror/fantasy about a guy who lives inside movies and kills monsters for a living.

if anyone wants to have a lookie, i'll be posting it on the ScreenStalker blog. Chapters start 1st November.

let's see how it goes, yeah? :)

curse you, blogger

2008-09-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

nngn, just took me ten minutes to log in because blogger insisted my google account didn't exist... then wouldn't let me make another one because there was one already registered to my email. Which would be MY ACCOUNT. Curse these computers.

anyway, i has news!

Ghostwriter Publications sign new authors

in the top right hand corner there. SQUEEE.

hobbies include disagreeing with smart people

2008-09-10T11:50:00.001-07:00

today, i don't agree with John Truby, altho usually i do.

i made a fwend

2008-09-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

went to the Guy N Smith Convention and made a bunch of fun new friends - amongst them Neil Jackson of Ghostwriter Publications. Yay, i am sociable schmoozing tart.

welcome welcome welcome to the big blue house

2008-09-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

i'm only really creating a blog here in the hope it'll give me a friend page - i'm far too lazy to remember all these blogspot addresses. :)