Good News!

FREEDOM!!!!

Yesterday I teased that I might have some good news regarding A Hero's Journey (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #1).  On the surface it might not seem like such great news:  my publisher and I have parted ways. 

It was my idea to initiate divorce proceedings, but it was an amicable and mutual decision.  I think I've gone into my frustrations with them throughout the life of this blog.  After they agreed to publish the book they really didn't contribute much to its production:  A cover I didn't like, an editor who missed deadlines and didn't really do much, and they didn't even give me a firm release date to promote so no launch parties or blog tours could be arranged.  And the paperback they put out really lacks any kind of decent formatting.  For all that they took like 60% of my meager sales so I was left with 14 cents per copy.

So recently when they said that they were no longer going to pay royalties until they accrued to $10 and that anyone who didn't accrue $10 in six months could get their rights back.  So I grumpily asked, "Do I have to wait six months?"  And they said no I don't and the rest is history--or closer to the present.

In my mind this is a good thing, at least for now; it might turn out to be a bad thing in the future.  The first good thing is now I have the whole series back under my control.  Just as soon as it's taken off Amazon, I can put it back under my auspices, and I can put it back on sale on Smashwords.  And when I do that I'm going to make it FREE like Chance of a Lifetime and Girl Power and hope that helps boost sales of the sequels a little.  So if you've been saying to yourself, "Meh, I don't want to waste 99 cents on THAT" soon you won't have to even waste 99 cents.

Also, I already have a new paperback edition ready.  It has interior formatting to look more professional and also the spine and back cover are formatted to match those of the rest of the series.  Again, once their version on Amazon is gone I can put mine up.  Not that anyone ever buys the paperbacks, but at least the option is there.

The second piece of good news is that I've got a new website for my imprint Planet 99 Publishing.  I used this Wix.com place I'd heard about.  They have some pretty good tools.  For someone who doesn't know anything about programming Flash or Shockwave or Java or any of that crap it was really helpful.  Now I can have cool stuff like slideshows and if I ever have any I could post videos.  If I ever wanted to I could actually sell books directly from the site, but that would create a whole bunch of headaches with taxes and such I'm not ready to deal with.

Of course they claim the site is free and it is--if you want a big freaking ad across the bottom of the screen.  In a way I suppose it's ironic it's $99 a year to get the site ad-free plus with a domain and other stuff.

Anyway, go check out that new site and let me know what you think.  I'm trying to think of other stuff to ad on there.  I'd put author bios and interviews and such but it's pretty much just me and interviewing myself would be weird.  And no I'm not stupid enough to put my Sims on there because I know everyone but me hates that.

Update #11 & Review: Robocop (2014)

Because I have nothing better to do, I reviewed a few recent comics I read on Comics Reader.  It's much shorter than my last round-up just because I haven't bought as many lately.  I'm trying to be more discerning or something.

Saturday I went to watch the Robocop reboot and soon wished I hadn't.  It was in a word BORING.  So boring if I'd had better things to do I would have walked out of the theater by the midway point.

Like all bad reboots they basically ran the original through a filter to screen out anything interesting, leaving behind a bland, lifeless story.  Which seems difficult because the original story was so simple:  Man is killed by criminals, becomes cyborg, takes revenge on criminals, and in the process takes down a larger conspiracy.  It's so simple of a story that it's been repeated several times in movies like Darkman or The Crow and in my book Chance of a Lifetime--free on Kindle and Smashwords!

Instead they had to fuck things up completely with a series of bad decisions.  The first was going for a PG-13 rating.  This was as bad of an idea as making the fourth Die Hard PG-13 so MacLane couldn't even say his catchphrase.  Because of the lower rating they couldn't have all the blood splatter and body count of the original movie.

The second terrible idea was that when he wakes up as a cyborg he remembers everything.  And his wife, kid, and the rest of the world all know who he is.  So instead of the machine becoming human we end up with the human becoming a machine becoming human again.

Then instead of action we get boring technobabble about dopamine levels and his state of mind and all sorts of other bullshit.  Plus a couple of gross shots where he's just a head and lungs.  Yuck.

Instead of his partner being Anne Lewis, his partner is John Lewis, who does little but get shot twice and act like a human shield once.  And since I guess there's a budget on screen time for women they focus on his wife instead and yet never really get to the core issue:  How the hell can you have a normal family life with a cyborg?  The answer is you can't, which is why the original was smart to just write the wife and child off.

The whole thing is like the writers had no idea what made the first movie work.  You don't watch Robocop to watch doctors study him or for him to mope about his wife and kid.  You watch Robocop to watch him blow the hell out shit with that big fucking gun!  It's an action movie, not a drama!

And of course instead of the goofy news breaks and goofier commercials and the "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy we get Bill O'Reilly-esque segments starring Samuel L. Jackson.  Though his bleep-filled tirade at the end was one of the few moments where the audience actually reacted.  A couple points though I was wondering when  he'd ask, "What's in your wallet?"

With good reboots like the Nolan Batman movies or the Daniel Craig Bond movies they add something new to the mix.  In those cases it was saving the franchises from camp and silliness.  With the Abrams Star Trek it was dumbing it down to the mainstream level.  With Robocop there's absolutely nothing of value added while it loses all the things fans liked about the original.

(1/5 stars)

Update #10

In case you hadn't noticed yet (and if you haven't you probably aren't here because the link didn't work) there's a new old domain for this site.  Basically I just reverted it back to a normal Blogger site and saved myself $10 a year, which I can use to buy useless Candy Crush power-ups or something equally idiotic.

Anyway, today on Indie Writers Monthly I'm writing up my version of Star Wars Episode VII, which is pretty much the only real version among the bunch.  Be sure to read the footnotes too.

It Happened Today...Hooray!

The ptdilloway.com domain finally expired.  But you can still find the blog at:
http://ptdilloway.blogspot.com/

Review: House of Cards, Season 2

I need to vent about this and the topic doesn't fit the other blogs I've been posting to, so what the hell I'll just do it here.  I doubt any of my regular readers have even watched Season 1 of the show; you can read my thoughts on it as part of the April 2013 recap.  The gist of the plot is that sleazy congressman Frank Underwood (D-SC) gets passed over for Secretary of State and decides to start playing hardball through a variety of schemes that land him in the White House as Vice President.

At the end of Season 1 they make it seem like Frank's schemes are about to unravel.  There are 3 reporters hot on his trail, sniffing into the mysterious "suicide" of a Pennsylvania congressman.  But in the first episode most of this gets put to bed all too neatly, thanks in large part to another murder.  There was also a plot about his wife's charity being sued by a former partner, which is also put to bed neatly when she just agrees to turn over the charity to the partner since the Second Lady can't own something like that.

With that out of the way, Frank is free to set his sights on the top job.  His plan is basically to create a lot of chaos, to undermine the president so the public loses faith in him.  He sabotages a deal with the Chinese that creates tensions and an economic backlash.  Later when the Justice Department begins looking into allegations of money laundering through a Native American casino, Frank has the president bring in a special prosecutor, who then sets her sights on the president.  And I think you know where that's going...

It's all complicated by Raymond Tusk (Gerald McRaney of Simon & Simon/Major Dad fame) a billionaire who's long been a mentor of the president and is the one who set up the whole money laundering scheme.  In Tusk Frank is up against an adversary just as conniving and ruthless, who also has billions of dollars to throw around.  Thanks largely to Tusk's involvement, Frank walks a tightrope between gaining ultimate power and going to prison.

I didn't like Season 2 quite as much as Season 1.  A lot of this is because there are a bunch of new characters introduced and a bunch of new subplots, many of which seemed pointless.  There's some computer hacker who kept turning up (who incidentally also played a computer hacker in White House Down--typecasting!) and seemed to get the goods on Frank's main henchman Doug Stamper (who was on the Daily Planet staff in Man of Steel; he was the guy who wasn't Laurence Fishburne--or Samuel L. Jackson to certain newscasters) but really if anything comes of that it'll be in Season 3.  Then there's the new House majority whip Jackie Sharp and her whole love affair with a lobbyist who works for Tusk; not much came of that either.  And then a pasty guy named Seth Grayson (who seriously looks like he belongs on True Blood) joins Frank's staff, but he's a double agent or perhaps triple agent or who the fuck knows.  Plus Doug Stamper has this whole creepy infatuation with this Kristen Stewart-looking hooker from Season 1.  Really Doug should have killed her back then (she's a hooker so it's not like anyone would miss her), but he's not man enough like his boss, who has no problem asphyxiating someone or pushing them in front of a train when the mood strikes him.

Since Frank's wife Claire can't work at the charity anymore they give her something to do with a plot about how she was raped back in college by some guy who's now a general.  Then she works up a bill for Congress, which didn't really amount to anything.  Like I said they pretty much introduced this so she'd have something to do other than hosting tea for the president of Luxembourg or whatever the hell the vice president's wife usually does.  (I mean really, tell me one thing Biden's wife has done in the last 5 years--without using Google.)

Last April I compared Season 1 to Game of Thrones and it definitely earns that distinction even more in Season 2 where they introduce kinky sex scenes for absolutely no reason.  The pinnacle of this being a drunken threesome between Frank, his wife, and their male Secret Service bodyguard.  It was completely extraneous and really WTF?

Anyway, I'd have given Season 1 4 stars while this latest season gets 3.  It's still great fun to see how Frank is going to navigate one hazard after another and see who else will get destroyed along the way.  Of course if you're one of those people who wants "likable" characters then this isn't the show for you because Frank is pure evil and really he has no illusions about that, which is a good thing to me because no matter what he does he doesn't whine or bawl about it afterwards.  Like Breaking Bad it's the kind of show where you're rooting for the bad guy.

A year or so from now we'll have to see what Frank does now that he's achieved his ultimate objective.  I imagine it will involve him trying to hold on to his power during the 2016 campaign while he is besieged on all sides.  There is a major loose end still out there from Season 1 thanks to Doug Stamper and that annoying hacker guy, so I'm sure they'll be part of it.  Plus I'm sure Raymond Tusk will be using his billions to support the opposition.  (Spoiler! I am really going to miss Doug next season; he was such an awesome henchman.)

If you haven't watched it on Netflix, you really should.  Even though there aren't dragons or zombies it's political theater at its finest.

That is all.

Update #9

Well hey this site is still working.  Enjoy that while it lasts.

While some people are being lazy and not blogging because it's a holiday (ha) I have two blog entries today.

On Indie Writers Monthly I'm talking about how I changed 15-20 books from pseudonymns to my name.
And on Comics Reader I'm reviewing CW's "Arrow" TV show.

So there you go, lots of fun stuff to entertain you this President's Day.

Update #8

On Comics Reader instead of talking actual comics I'm reviewing the movie version of Kick-Ass 2.  So enjoy that.

This week at some point the domain will probably expire for this site, so if this bookmark stops working, you'll know why.

Update #7

Today on Comics Reader I'm reviewing a bunch of different comics I read in the last few weeks.  It's a bunch of odds and ends, mostly Marvel ones since those were on sale on Amazon.  Tuesday I have some follow-up thoughts on some of them.

BTW, I have a new blog!  Not really a blog like this one.  It's just a blog for these Sims 2/Sims 3 comparisons I made, like this:

I tried Tumblr but didn't like it so for now it's a blog.  The navigation isn't great, but maybe I can figure out a better way at some point.  For my own gratification if no other reason.