Last week I talked about rewatching Babylon 5 and I mentioned the follow-up series, Crusade. It aired for 13 episodes on TNT in 1999 before it was canceled. It's a similar situation to Fox's Firefly but I don't think people rant about bringing it back nearly as often.
The premise for the show was actually established in a TV movie called Call of Arms. In that the Drahk, an ally of the evil Shadows from the B5 series, attack Earth. When their attack is thwarted they spread a plague across Earth. In 5 years at most the plague will destroy all life on Earth--unless a cure can be found.
So that's where the show picks up. Captain Matthew Gideon (Gary Cole) of an explorer ship is chosen to take a new ship, the Excalibur, and search for anything that might lead to a cure. The first episode then has him assembling a crew. Some like his telepath first officer come through regular channels while others like an alien thief and a brilliant archaeologist named Max come along through less conventional means. And stalking them is a "technomage" named Galen (Peter Woodward, son of original Wicker Man and Equalizer Edward Woodward) who uses technology to simulate magic. (There was an episode about them in the second season of B5.)
While comparisons between B5 and Deep Space Nine were obvious, Crusade takes more of a classic Star Trek or Next Generation approach in that most of the episodes have them visiting a strange new world, seeking new life and new civilizations--that whole thing. They even do one of those Trek mind fuck episodes when they run into a disabled alien ship and some evil alien hive mind tries to take over the Excalibur.
This was the sort of show where it could have worked if the network had given it time. It just needed some time to gel and to work up the characters. And more Galen! He's only in about half the episodes but he's funny and generally awesome. And they needed more space battles. The Excalibur has this awesome "main gun" like the SDF-1 in Robotech but they only use it like 3 times in the whole series, once on a ground target and twice against the Drahk. Still, it's wicked cool so they should have used it more.
One drawback is the special effects looked pretty lame. Most of the time they looked like something from a PC game of the era like Wing Commander or whatever. Which is probably one of the reason they didn't have more awesome space battles.
I'm sure J Michael Straczynski had a whole 5-year plan for the series but I always think a concept like Crusade is somewhat problematic. Either they're going to find the cure in year 5 or as happened they'll get canceled before that and leave an unsatisfying ending. It was like on Voyager you knew they weren't going to find a way home until the series was either canceled or voluntarily quit--the latter being what happened. For that matter you know they can't really find a safe haven from the zombies in The Walking Dead until the show is over--if then. But I just think when you have such a specific goal it can limit the drama. Maybe if there had been a more open-ended goal (like classic Trek or TNG) it would have worked better. Probably not.
Something that might also have worked against the show was they cast Gary Cole in the lead role and that was not long after Office Space came out, where he played the infamous Bill Lumbergh. Obviously the two characters aren't much alike (though that would be a hilarious parody) but maybe it was hard for some people to take it seriously. And unlike The Orville, Crusade pretty much played it straight, with the exception of one funny episode where they run into aliens who are parodies of Mulder and Scully from the X-Files. It's funny how everything in that is turned upside-down with the humans as the mysterious beings who are supposedly controlling this alien society.
Anyway, unlike Babylon 5 this wasn't on Amazon Prime so I had to buy the DVDs for like $10. One annoying thing is there are 13 episodes and 4 discs that they split 4-4-4-1. And there aren't that many special features to warrant just one episode on the final disc. I'm just saying.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Stuff I Watched And You Probably Haven't
I don't know how long this will turn out to be. It depends on how many times I go to the Redbox or find something interesting on HBO or Amazon or Pluto TV or whatever. Or if I watch/rewatch a series on Hulu or Amazon or whatever instead of watching movies. Or if I buy a bunch of movies on DVD from Amazon or Big Lots or wherever. It's kind of like the snowball going downhill where it starts off tiny and just keeps getting bigger.
So let's get that snowball rolling!
Super Troopers 2: This was one of those movies Kickstartered--or actually it was some other site that was the same deal--by fans and released for a few weeks in theaters. Because Disney moved Avengers 3 back a week it ended up coming out a week before that and thus being obliterated. Which might be just as well. Most of it is just a bunch of moldy cliches about Canadians and/or French Canadians as the doofus cops from the first movie are brought out of being fired as city cops to patrol a part of Canada being annexed into the US. The funniest parts were when they dress up as Mounties and mess with people on the road and "the Fred Savage Incident" that's referenced but not shown until the credits. (And the gag reel during the credits.) If you haven't seen it, you're probably better off. (2/5)
Isle of Dogs: To my knowledge this is Wes Anderson's second stop-motion movie after The Fantastic Mr. Fox about 8 years ago. This is about a Japanese city in the near-future that banishes all dogs to an island of garbage because of a dog flu. One of the dogs is the son of the mayor's dog so the kid goes to the island to find him. A group of dogs finds the kid and helps him traverse the island. Like most everything Anderson does it's kinda weird but it has heart. I mean at the core it's basically a story of a boy and a cur becoming friends. Just the stop-motion and weirdness like most human lines being only in Japanese (only sometimes with translation) might throw people. Though it's on a Japanese island it features mostly white people doing the voices: Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, and long-time Wes Anderson alum Bill Murray. Does that count as cultural appropriation? (3/5)
Upgrade: This is packaged as a revenge thriller. In the near future, a mechanic's wife is murdered after an accident where their robocar is hijacked. The guy (named Grey, like the 50 Shades guy) is paralyzed but a computer guy offers to implant a chip in him that will let him walk again. The chip is powered by an AI called STEM that can talk to him and do all sorts of things, like turn him into a total ninja in a fight, access computer records, and hijack a robocar during a chase...hurm. You might then figure out the big twist, which reminded me of Ex-Machina in that it becomes about a machine's quest to become human. It's not a great movie but worth a rental or stream. (2.5/5)
Tag: Based on a true story there's a group of guys who for one month of year play an epic game of tag. They get in disguise and stuff to tag each other, but they've never tagged their friend Jerry (Jeremy Renner) who is getting married. So they all go home for the wedding hoping to tag him, but he won't make it easy. It was amusing but a little long. In the credits they show the real guys this was based on and some of the stuff they did was better than the movie. One guy dressed up in a bulldog mascot costume so he could tag another guy at a basketball game. That would have been cool in the movie. Also during the credits Jeremy Renner with the other guys as backup sings the old Crash Test Dummies song Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm--however you'd spell it.
Beirut: This is one I saw at the Redbox but never got around to renting it. When I saw it on Amazon Prime I decided to watch it. As soon as I saw it was a Brad Anderson film I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. I've liked all his movies: Session 9, The Machinist, TransSiberian, Vanishing on 7th Street, and The Call. He specializes in taut thrillers and this is no exception. As you'd expect, it takes place in Beirut. Mason (Jon Hamm) is a diplomat in 1972 when a terrorist kidnaps a boy from a party he's holding and his wife is killed in the process. Ten years later he's brought back when an old friend is kidnapped. And surprise, the kid who was taken 10 years ago is the kidnapper! So with the help of a CIA agent (Rosamund Pike of Gone Girl) he has to find the kidnapper's brother, which gets complicated, and arrange a swap without being murdered in the process. It's another good thriller, though it's more suspense than action. I mean there's not running and fighting all the time like a Jason Bourne or James Bond movie. (3/5) (Rant: Seriously, why has Brad Anderson not gotten the call to the big leagues yet? He should get his own superhero franchise or Star Wars film or some damned thing instead of directing these small movies and TV shows. If you get the chance, rent some of his movies.)
Revenge for Jolly!: You could say this was the secret origin of John Wick. Basically the same premise: a guy comes home after a night of drinking and finds his dog is dead. And so with his cousin Cecil (Oscar Isaac) he goes on a killing spree to find the man who killed his dog. They go to the local bar and kill the bartender (Elijah Wood) and then go to a couple of hookers and kill them. Then a law office where the guy supposedly works and kill everyone there. And a wedding reception and guess what? Kill a lot of people. All while drinking the equivalent of a few kegs of beer, downing a bunch of painkillers, and smoking a few joints just for the hell of it. It's a black comedy that's darkly funny but then it gets to the guy's house and takes a piss on the audience. The guy whose dog died goes into the house to meet the murderer (Ryan Philippe) and...the camera backs out and we hear two shots. Who died? Who knows?! That's a nice Screw You to the audience. And it would have taken like 10 seconds, which they waste instead having the credits go at half speed. I hate when movies do that shit. You showed like 30 people being killed already, so what's one more? You jerks ever hear of closure? (2.5/5)
Fallen Stars: This is an indie dramedy about a bartender who's 36 and realizes that he has no direction in his life. Then a shy Asian young woman comes into the bar. She's a famous writer, which is something he only learns later. It's kind of a slow movie but really engrossing. In the end it's frustrating because it leaves a lot unresolved. Basically the woman gets a dog. I guess that's kind of a happy ending, right? (3/5)
Pickings: I got this free from Amazon Vine. This is another indie movie that stars no one you've heard of. It has sort of a Smokin' Aces-type style with the comic book-style graphics in the credits and interspersed through the film. The story is a little confusing because it starts sort of at the middle and then goes back and it's hard to figure out how it all fits together. It's about a mob outfit shaking down a woman who owns a bar and her retaliation. It's pretty good. At least worth a rental or stream. (3/5) (Fun Fact: It takes place in "Port City, Michigan" but was filmed in New York state. There is no Port City as far as I know. I'm not even sure what it was supposed to be: Detroit? Port Huron? Benton Harbor? It's funny when a mobster says they're half the country from any other mob outfits. Um, Chicago, maybe? Just a few hours away?)
Bear With Us: This indie horror comedy is about a guy whose girlfriend claims to be afraid of bears so he sets up this trip to the forest so she can kill a "bear" (his friend in a bear suit) and then he'll propose to her. But when they go to the wrong cabin and a real bear shows up, it throws everything into chaos. It's pretty funny but I don't know why it had to be in black-and-white. I'm not one of those people who hates black-and-white movies but this was from 2016 so there seemed no reason for it. And like Revenge for Jolly! it ends without giving us closure when the guy asks his girlfriend if she'll marry him and then it just ends. Why do movies do that? Who thinks that's fun or clever? It's just irritating! (2.5/5)
The Code: Morgan Freeman is an art thief who's after a pair of super-rare Faberge eggs. He recruits a younger thief (Antonio Banderas) to help him in the caper. But they have to deal with cops and the Russian mob. The heist isn't too difficult and then there are a few twists--twists upon twists really. Probably could have done without one or two of them. It's a decent heist thriller though not necessarily breaking the mold. It just seems weird I'd never heard of this until now; you'd have thought in 2009 Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas still had enough star power to open a movie. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: Tom Hardy has a small role as a junior detective. A year or two later he got his big break in Inception and a couple of years after that he and Morgan Freeman worked together again in The Dark Knight Rises.)
Edge of Darkness: This was from 2010, maybe one of Mel Gibson's first "comeback films" after his shenanigans in the 2000s. Anyway, he's a Boston cop whose daughter is gunned down (by Crossbones if you're a MCU fan) and so he goes all rogue trying to unravel the conspiracy involving some defense contractor. Fairly predictable and felt a little long. Probably would have been better if someone who's not a total piece of shit starred in it. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: This came in a two-pack for $2.50 at Big Lots if you're wondering why I watched it. Basically it was free.)
Armed & Dangerous: This 1986 movie starring John Candy & Eugene Levy predates Paul Blart by about 2 decades but it's sort of the same premise. Two bumbling security guards stumble onto a real crime and save the day. In this case it's a crooked union stealing money. A pretty forgettable comedy. Meg Ryan co-stars as the daughter of the head of the security guard company. She hooks up with Eugene Levy. And then a year later moves up to Billy Crystal. And then a few years later Tom Hanks. Not exactly a Chippendales roster there. Maybe that explains why she cheated on her husband with Russell Crowe. (2/5)
Highlander II: The Quickening: This is one of those where the story of its creation is actually more interesting than the movie itself. So about 5 years after the first one they started production of a sequel in Argentina. But financial troubles hit the backers in that country and so basically they took control of the production to try to make it as appealing to a wide audience as possible. Thus all the sudden the immortals from the first movie were aliens! They rebelled against a tyrannical alien leader named General Katana (Michael Ironside) who punished them by...banishing them to Earth where they'd be immortal except if their heads were cut off. The last one would then have the power to return. Um...what the fuck? Then we get to the plot of the movie itself which is in 2024 the ozone layer has gone and there's a shield to replace it but it pretty much gets rid of all sunlight and turns the earth into a hellhole. Connor Macleod (Christopher Lambert) is now a bitter old man--until for no reason Katana sends goons to kill him. That triggers a "quickening" and he's young and immortal again. Just by calling for Ramirez (Sean Connery, whose character died in the 15th Century), he actually comes back to life because of some magic bond they had and forgot about. (Like they forgot about being aliens.) Together with some woman they go to destroy the shield because (spoiler alert) the ozone layer has regrown! It's a complete, dreadful mess of a movie. There is a "Renegade" Cut that takes out the alien hogwash. Kind of funny reading the trivia about this on IMDB. Apparently Michael Ironside knew this was such a piece of shit that he hammed it up as much as possible for the hell of it. Sean Connery was only in filming for 9 days and donated his money to charity. (So maybe they could write this off as a charitable donation.) Christopher Lambert almost cut off a finger using a real sword and lost all his money to con artists. The director was so pissed off by what they'd done to the movie that he walked out of the premiere after only 15 minutes. Moral of the story: keep creative control! (1/5)
The Identity Theft of Mitch Mustain: The title is more interesting than this documentary actually was. The "identity theft" is sadly only metaphorical. In 2006, Mitch Mustain was the latest "can't miss" quarterback prospect in college football. Lots of big programs wanted him, but to land him, hometown university Arkansas hired his coach as offensive coordinator and gave scholarships to some of his teammates on offense. That sealed the deal and in his first 8 starts Mustain was 8-0. But the head coach was pissed off about having to bring in an offensive coordinator that didn't use his system and so in the next game as soon as Mustain threw an interception he was benched the rest of the season. Mustain transferred to USC but couldn't crack the depth chart. He sold some Adderall to undercover cops (for no real reason as he tells it) and that ruined any chance of being drafted into the NFL. He tried baseball and arena football but never really did much with those. So the "identity theft" is that the supposed grown ups at Arkansas acted like petty little children and wound up ruining his life. He never got the chance to be an overvalued college prospect who got a huge, undeserved contract from the Browns or Jets before being cut 2-3 years later! This would have been more interesting if they had been able to get the Arkansas coaches on the record and confront them but of course they refused to appear. Even Mustain's mom wouldn't appear in it! Sad. (2/5) (Fun Fact: the head coach at Arkansas was fired a year after benching Mustain. The offensive coordinator left after Mustain's season without telling his players. He went on to coach Auburn to a national title.)
So let's get that snowball rolling!
Super Troopers 2: This was one of those movies Kickstartered--or actually it was some other site that was the same deal--by fans and released for a few weeks in theaters. Because Disney moved Avengers 3 back a week it ended up coming out a week before that and thus being obliterated. Which might be just as well. Most of it is just a bunch of moldy cliches about Canadians and/or French Canadians as the doofus cops from the first movie are brought out of being fired as city cops to patrol a part of Canada being annexed into the US. The funniest parts were when they dress up as Mounties and mess with people on the road and "the Fred Savage Incident" that's referenced but not shown until the credits. (And the gag reel during the credits.) If you haven't seen it, you're probably better off. (2/5)
Isle of Dogs: To my knowledge this is Wes Anderson's second stop-motion movie after The Fantastic Mr. Fox about 8 years ago. This is about a Japanese city in the near-future that banishes all dogs to an island of garbage because of a dog flu. One of the dogs is the son of the mayor's dog so the kid goes to the island to find him. A group of dogs finds the kid and helps him traverse the island. Like most everything Anderson does it's kinda weird but it has heart. I mean at the core it's basically a story of a boy and a cur becoming friends. Just the stop-motion and weirdness like most human lines being only in Japanese (only sometimes with translation) might throw people. Though it's on a Japanese island it features mostly white people doing the voices: Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jeff Goldblum, and long-time Wes Anderson alum Bill Murray. Does that count as cultural appropriation? (3/5)
Upgrade: This is packaged as a revenge thriller. In the near future, a mechanic's wife is murdered after an accident where their robocar is hijacked. The guy (named Grey, like the 50 Shades guy) is paralyzed but a computer guy offers to implant a chip in him that will let him walk again. The chip is powered by an AI called STEM that can talk to him and do all sorts of things, like turn him into a total ninja in a fight, access computer records, and hijack a robocar during a chase...hurm. You might then figure out the big twist, which reminded me of Ex-Machina in that it becomes about a machine's quest to become human. It's not a great movie but worth a rental or stream. (2.5/5)
Tag: Based on a true story there's a group of guys who for one month of year play an epic game of tag. They get in disguise and stuff to tag each other, but they've never tagged their friend Jerry (Jeremy Renner) who is getting married. So they all go home for the wedding hoping to tag him, but he won't make it easy. It was amusing but a little long. In the credits they show the real guys this was based on and some of the stuff they did was better than the movie. One guy dressed up in a bulldog mascot costume so he could tag another guy at a basketball game. That would have been cool in the movie. Also during the credits Jeremy Renner with the other guys as backup sings the old Crash Test Dummies song Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm--however you'd spell it.
Beirut: This is one I saw at the Redbox but never got around to renting it. When I saw it on Amazon Prime I decided to watch it. As soon as I saw it was a Brad Anderson film I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. I've liked all his movies: Session 9, The Machinist, TransSiberian, Vanishing on 7th Street, and The Call. He specializes in taut thrillers and this is no exception. As you'd expect, it takes place in Beirut. Mason (Jon Hamm) is a diplomat in 1972 when a terrorist kidnaps a boy from a party he's holding and his wife is killed in the process. Ten years later he's brought back when an old friend is kidnapped. And surprise, the kid who was taken 10 years ago is the kidnapper! So with the help of a CIA agent (Rosamund Pike of Gone Girl) he has to find the kidnapper's brother, which gets complicated, and arrange a swap without being murdered in the process. It's another good thriller, though it's more suspense than action. I mean there's not running and fighting all the time like a Jason Bourne or James Bond movie. (3/5) (Rant: Seriously, why has Brad Anderson not gotten the call to the big leagues yet? He should get his own superhero franchise or Star Wars film or some damned thing instead of directing these small movies and TV shows. If you get the chance, rent some of his movies.)
Revenge for Jolly!: You could say this was the secret origin of John Wick. Basically the same premise: a guy comes home after a night of drinking and finds his dog is dead. And so with his cousin Cecil (Oscar Isaac) he goes on a killing spree to find the man who killed his dog. They go to the local bar and kill the bartender (Elijah Wood) and then go to a couple of hookers and kill them. Then a law office where the guy supposedly works and kill everyone there. And a wedding reception and guess what? Kill a lot of people. All while drinking the equivalent of a few kegs of beer, downing a bunch of painkillers, and smoking a few joints just for the hell of it. It's a black comedy that's darkly funny but then it gets to the guy's house and takes a piss on the audience. The guy whose dog died goes into the house to meet the murderer (Ryan Philippe) and...the camera backs out and we hear two shots. Who died? Who knows?! That's a nice Screw You to the audience. And it would have taken like 10 seconds, which they waste instead having the credits go at half speed. I hate when movies do that shit. You showed like 30 people being killed already, so what's one more? You jerks ever hear of closure? (2.5/5)
Fallen Stars: This is an indie dramedy about a bartender who's 36 and realizes that he has no direction in his life. Then a shy Asian young woman comes into the bar. She's a famous writer, which is something he only learns later. It's kind of a slow movie but really engrossing. In the end it's frustrating because it leaves a lot unresolved. Basically the woman gets a dog. I guess that's kind of a happy ending, right? (3/5)
Pickings: I got this free from Amazon Vine. This is another indie movie that stars no one you've heard of. It has sort of a Smokin' Aces-type style with the comic book-style graphics in the credits and interspersed through the film. The story is a little confusing because it starts sort of at the middle and then goes back and it's hard to figure out how it all fits together. It's about a mob outfit shaking down a woman who owns a bar and her retaliation. It's pretty good. At least worth a rental or stream. (3/5) (Fun Fact: It takes place in "Port City, Michigan" but was filmed in New York state. There is no Port City as far as I know. I'm not even sure what it was supposed to be: Detroit? Port Huron? Benton Harbor? It's funny when a mobster says they're half the country from any other mob outfits. Um, Chicago, maybe? Just a few hours away?)
Bear With Us: This indie horror comedy is about a guy whose girlfriend claims to be afraid of bears so he sets up this trip to the forest so she can kill a "bear" (his friend in a bear suit) and then he'll propose to her. But when they go to the wrong cabin and a real bear shows up, it throws everything into chaos. It's pretty funny but I don't know why it had to be in black-and-white. I'm not one of those people who hates black-and-white movies but this was from 2016 so there seemed no reason for it. And like Revenge for Jolly! it ends without giving us closure when the guy asks his girlfriend if she'll marry him and then it just ends. Why do movies do that? Who thinks that's fun or clever? It's just irritating! (2.5/5)
The Code: Morgan Freeman is an art thief who's after a pair of super-rare Faberge eggs. He recruits a younger thief (Antonio Banderas) to help him in the caper. But they have to deal with cops and the Russian mob. The heist isn't too difficult and then there are a few twists--twists upon twists really. Probably could have done without one or two of them. It's a decent heist thriller though not necessarily breaking the mold. It just seems weird I'd never heard of this until now; you'd have thought in 2009 Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas still had enough star power to open a movie. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: Tom Hardy has a small role as a junior detective. A year or two later he got his big break in Inception and a couple of years after that he and Morgan Freeman worked together again in The Dark Knight Rises.)
Edge of Darkness: This was from 2010, maybe one of Mel Gibson's first "comeback films" after his shenanigans in the 2000s. Anyway, he's a Boston cop whose daughter is gunned down (by Crossbones if you're a MCU fan) and so he goes all rogue trying to unravel the conspiracy involving some defense contractor. Fairly predictable and felt a little long. Probably would have been better if someone who's not a total piece of shit starred in it. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact: This came in a two-pack for $2.50 at Big Lots if you're wondering why I watched it. Basically it was free.)
Armed & Dangerous: This 1986 movie starring John Candy & Eugene Levy predates Paul Blart by about 2 decades but it's sort of the same premise. Two bumbling security guards stumble onto a real crime and save the day. In this case it's a crooked union stealing money. A pretty forgettable comedy. Meg Ryan co-stars as the daughter of the head of the security guard company. She hooks up with Eugene Levy. And then a year later moves up to Billy Crystal. And then a few years later Tom Hanks. Not exactly a Chippendales roster there. Maybe that explains why she cheated on her husband with Russell Crowe. (2/5)
Highlander II: The Quickening: This is one of those where the story of its creation is actually more interesting than the movie itself. So about 5 years after the first one they started production of a sequel in Argentina. But financial troubles hit the backers in that country and so basically they took control of the production to try to make it as appealing to a wide audience as possible. Thus all the sudden the immortals from the first movie were aliens! They rebelled against a tyrannical alien leader named General Katana (Michael Ironside) who punished them by...banishing them to Earth where they'd be immortal except if their heads were cut off. The last one would then have the power to return. Um...what the fuck? Then we get to the plot of the movie itself which is in 2024 the ozone layer has gone and there's a shield to replace it but it pretty much gets rid of all sunlight and turns the earth into a hellhole. Connor Macleod (Christopher Lambert) is now a bitter old man--until for no reason Katana sends goons to kill him. That triggers a "quickening" and he's young and immortal again. Just by calling for Ramirez (Sean Connery, whose character died in the 15th Century), he actually comes back to life because of some magic bond they had and forgot about. (Like they forgot about being aliens.) Together with some woman they go to destroy the shield because (spoiler alert) the ozone layer has regrown! It's a complete, dreadful mess of a movie. There is a "Renegade" Cut that takes out the alien hogwash. Kind of funny reading the trivia about this on IMDB. Apparently Michael Ironside knew this was such a piece of shit that he hammed it up as much as possible for the hell of it. Sean Connery was only in filming for 9 days and donated his money to charity. (So maybe they could write this off as a charitable donation.) Christopher Lambert almost cut off a finger using a real sword and lost all his money to con artists. The director was so pissed off by what they'd done to the movie that he walked out of the premiere after only 15 minutes. Moral of the story: keep creative control! (1/5)
The Identity Theft of Mitch Mustain: The title is more interesting than this documentary actually was. The "identity theft" is sadly only metaphorical. In 2006, Mitch Mustain was the latest "can't miss" quarterback prospect in college football. Lots of big programs wanted him, but to land him, hometown university Arkansas hired his coach as offensive coordinator and gave scholarships to some of his teammates on offense. That sealed the deal and in his first 8 starts Mustain was 8-0. But the head coach was pissed off about having to bring in an offensive coordinator that didn't use his system and so in the next game as soon as Mustain threw an interception he was benched the rest of the season. Mustain transferred to USC but couldn't crack the depth chart. He sold some Adderall to undercover cops (for no real reason as he tells it) and that ruined any chance of being drafted into the NFL. He tried baseball and arena football but never really did much with those. So the "identity theft" is that the supposed grown ups at Arkansas acted like petty little children and wound up ruining his life. He never got the chance to be an overvalued college prospect who got a huge, undeserved contract from the Browns or Jets before being cut 2-3 years later! This would have been more interesting if they had been able to get the Arkansas coaches on the record and confront them but of course they refused to appear. Even Mustain's mom wouldn't appear in it! Sad. (2/5) (Fun Fact: the head coach at Arkansas was fired a year after benching Mustain. The offensive coordinator left after Mustain's season without telling his players. He went on to coach Auburn to a national title.)
Monday, September 24, 2018
The KBoards Debacle: A Tale of Greed and Paranoia
I don't use KBoards very often, but in the last week I heard on Facebook and Critique Circle all these people freaking out because the site was sold to new owners. The new owners have a Terms of Service that basically says everything you post is their property to use however they want for all eternity throughout the universe or some damned thing like that.
My first thought was: so what? It's not like people are posting stories on there. But someone mentioned it applies to covers and links people might post. So that would mean that this random site could use my cover in their promotions if they want.
People are panicking in droves but really they should just chill the fuck out. On Writers.net there would occasionally be newbies saying they weren't comfortable posting because someone could steal it! My usual response was: no one wants your shitty story. Not in those exact words, but that's the gist. Stealing some newb's story on a writing critique site is about as valuable as stealing my collection of action figures: they have value to me because I bought them, but they have no value to anyone else.
Unless you become the next Stephen King or JK Rowling, it's unlikely any pirate or skeevy site owner if going to want to use your cover or links or whatever else. There's no profit in it for them. So just calm the fuck down people. The odds that your stuff will be violated is about the same as winning the lottery.
At the same time, the root of the problem here is greed--on both sides. The people who used to own the site sold it because it was too time-consuming and expensive for them to keep maintaining it. There are firms like the one that bought KBoards or CrowdGather, the people who own writers.net and Writer's Circle, who buy these things basically so they can put ads all over and make some money. From experience I can say CrowdGather is the virtual equivalent of a slum lord: they buy the site, make only the bare minimum of improvements to keep it running, and collect the money. They don't worry about growing the site. Some people say "you have to spend money to make money" but companies like CrowdGather don't really buy into that. I don't think the group that bought KBoards is going to be any better about that.
But you can't really let users entirely off the hook either. What I've learned in selling books is people loooove free shit. Paying for stuff? Not so much. It was kind of funny when someone quit my newsletter because "the free book wasn't free." Well, OK, but the newsletter is to sell my books; it's not about giving away free books. So if the only reason you signed up was for free books, you're doing it wrong. Still, it was refreshing honesty.
Writers love using sites like Kboards, writers.net, Writer's Circle, Absolute Write, Writer Buddy, or whatever, but what if you ask them to pay a membership fee? People would flee in droves because they don't want to pay for it. So what happens is owners of those sites eventually have to sell out to some shitty slum lord because they can't afford to operate it on their own. I don't use KBoards enough to know, but if the original owners had asked people to pay a monthly fee to keep the site operating, how many would have done it? Or how many would do as they're doing now: fleeing to some other free site?
I don't like paying for stuff like that either, but the reality is that these sites can't operate for free. Critique Circle raises revenue with ads and "premium" memberships that let you do stuff like submit more often or skipping the line to get critiques. I of course don't have one of those.
I'm just saying that while you might want to consider these new owners monsters, just remember that they're just trying to make a buck. And that they're probably not going to steal your shit unless it has value. So don't panic!
My first thought was: so what? It's not like people are posting stories on there. But someone mentioned it applies to covers and links people might post. So that would mean that this random site could use my cover in their promotions if they want.
People are panicking in droves but really they should just chill the fuck out. On Writers.net there would occasionally be newbies saying they weren't comfortable posting because someone could steal it! My usual response was: no one wants your shitty story. Not in those exact words, but that's the gist. Stealing some newb's story on a writing critique site is about as valuable as stealing my collection of action figures: they have value to me because I bought them, but they have no value to anyone else.
Unless you become the next Stephen King or JK Rowling, it's unlikely any pirate or skeevy site owner if going to want to use your cover or links or whatever else. There's no profit in it for them. So just calm the fuck down people. The odds that your stuff will be violated is about the same as winning the lottery.
At the same time, the root of the problem here is greed--on both sides. The people who used to own the site sold it because it was too time-consuming and expensive for them to keep maintaining it. There are firms like the one that bought KBoards or CrowdGather, the people who own writers.net and Writer's Circle, who buy these things basically so they can put ads all over and make some money. From experience I can say CrowdGather is the virtual equivalent of a slum lord: they buy the site, make only the bare minimum of improvements to keep it running, and collect the money. They don't worry about growing the site. Some people say "you have to spend money to make money" but companies like CrowdGather don't really buy into that. I don't think the group that bought KBoards is going to be any better about that.
But you can't really let users entirely off the hook either. What I've learned in selling books is people loooove free shit. Paying for stuff? Not so much. It was kind of funny when someone quit my newsletter because "the free book wasn't free." Well, OK, but the newsletter is to sell my books; it's not about giving away free books. So if the only reason you signed up was for free books, you're doing it wrong. Still, it was refreshing honesty.
Writers love using sites like Kboards, writers.net, Writer's Circle, Absolute Write, Writer Buddy, or whatever, but what if you ask them to pay a membership fee? People would flee in droves because they don't want to pay for it. So what happens is owners of those sites eventually have to sell out to some shitty slum lord because they can't afford to operate it on their own. I don't use KBoards enough to know, but if the original owners had asked people to pay a monthly fee to keep the site operating, how many would have done it? Or how many would do as they're doing now: fleeing to some other free site?
I don't like paying for stuff like that either, but the reality is that these sites can't operate for free. Critique Circle raises revenue with ads and "premium" memberships that let you do stuff like submit more often or skipping the line to get critiques. I of course don't have one of those.
I'm just saying that while you might want to consider these new owners monsters, just remember that they're just trying to make a buck. And that they're probably not going to steal your shit unless it has value. So don't panic!
Friday, September 21, 2018
Sometimes Crazy Works
A couple of months ago I saw Red Dawn, the original 1984 version, on Pluto TV. I remember on TNT one time they showed it with a host and expert who basically described it as the most ludicrous war scenario ever. And really it is. I mean somehow a bunch of Cubans and Nicaraguans and Russians avoid radar detection for hundreds of miles--if not thousands--through Mexico and the southwestern US to drop troops in some little town in Colorado.
I mean if you think about it, it's utter nonsense. How do you sneak thousands of soldiers on planes through Mexico and New Mexico/Arizona to Colorado? And if you were going to do that, why would you attack some pathetic little town that has no strategic value at all? Wouldn't you attack Colorado Springs with the Air Force Academy or some of the military bases? Or capture some power plants or natural resources? I mean as it is it'd be like invading Mayberry first thing.
And within hours after dropping a bunch of troops these guys have Soviet armored vehicles. They dropped those from planes? It's possible with huge cargo planes like the Il-76 but how the hell do you get that in there without being noticed? That'd be like a blue whale trying to hide in my local pond--presuming it were salt water.
So even before you get to the notion of child soldiers led by Patrick Swayze defeating professional soldiers for months, the whole story is completely ridiculous.
Yet the remake, which tried to be slightly more realistic in that they were in Oregon and there was some Doomsday weapon the North Koreans were setting up, wasn't nearly as loved or financially successful. What happened?
Sure Reagan-era foaming at the mouth about the "Evil Empire" had died out--now Russia is our best friend!--but also I think people liked the absurdity of it. They bit on this little fantasy that commies could drop out of the sky into their little town and only they could stand up to the enemy! It's kind of a power trip where you think only you with your daddy's hunting rifle might be able to thwart a Soviet invasion.
I was thinking Robocop was the same way. The original movie is just so absurd and over-the-top with violence, gore, and goofy TV shows/commercials. Then they remade the movie without all of that stuff and what happened? It was so boring that I almost left the theater before it ended and financially it fared poorly.
A couple of months ago The Onion's AV Club ran an article about Jaws the movie vs the book--even stealing my Page to Screen title! The movie is a straight-ahead adventure with not a lot of moral shading. Shark bad, people good. Good people kill bad shark. The book has some darker elements, like the sheriff's wife sleeps with the marine biologist and the mayor has mob ties. It occurred to me that someone remaking Jaws would probably put those elements back in to make it "gritty" and "real." And then like those other remakes it would probably flop.
Because when you think about it, what are most of the top movies financially? Space fantasies and superheroes. Guys riding around in spaceships with glowing swords or jumping off rooftops in capes. People don't really want gritty and real. They want the fantasy. They want to buy into the absurd idea that Soviets could invade a central US small town and nearly be run off by a bunch of teenagers with hunting rifles. They want absurdly violent and gory revenge fantasies.
Sometimes crazy works. And a lot of times it doesn't. But fortune favors the bold as someone famous once said. The problem with a lot of remakes is they aren't bold. By definition they're not usually bold endeavors. They're just trying to cash in on a name. And most of them try to play it as safe as possible to appeal to the widest audience. They're cooked up by studio heads, not artists. A few have not fallen into that trap like The Fly or The Blob back in the 80s. The former especially is about as different as can be. I guess in those cases they weren't so much trying to "remake" the movie as reimagine it.
Anyway, the point is that sometimes it's better to foresake "real" and do something crazy. Sometimes it works. If it doesn't, well, there's plenty of time to play it safe.
I mean if you think about it, it's utter nonsense. How do you sneak thousands of soldiers on planes through Mexico and New Mexico/Arizona to Colorado? And if you were going to do that, why would you attack some pathetic little town that has no strategic value at all? Wouldn't you attack Colorado Springs with the Air Force Academy or some of the military bases? Or capture some power plants or natural resources? I mean as it is it'd be like invading Mayberry first thing.
And within hours after dropping a bunch of troops these guys have Soviet armored vehicles. They dropped those from planes? It's possible with huge cargo planes like the Il-76 but how the hell do you get that in there without being noticed? That'd be like a blue whale trying to hide in my local pond--presuming it were salt water.
So even before you get to the notion of child soldiers led by Patrick Swayze defeating professional soldiers for months, the whole story is completely ridiculous.
Yet the remake, which tried to be slightly more realistic in that they were in Oregon and there was some Doomsday weapon the North Koreans were setting up, wasn't nearly as loved or financially successful. What happened?
Sure Reagan-era foaming at the mouth about the "Evil Empire" had died out--now Russia is our best friend!--but also I think people liked the absurdity of it. They bit on this little fantasy that commies could drop out of the sky into their little town and only they could stand up to the enemy! It's kind of a power trip where you think only you with your daddy's hunting rifle might be able to thwart a Soviet invasion.
I was thinking Robocop was the same way. The original movie is just so absurd and over-the-top with violence, gore, and goofy TV shows/commercials. Then they remade the movie without all of that stuff and what happened? It was so boring that I almost left the theater before it ended and financially it fared poorly.
A couple of months ago The Onion's AV Club ran an article about Jaws the movie vs the book--even stealing my Page to Screen title! The movie is a straight-ahead adventure with not a lot of moral shading. Shark bad, people good. Good people kill bad shark. The book has some darker elements, like the sheriff's wife sleeps with the marine biologist and the mayor has mob ties. It occurred to me that someone remaking Jaws would probably put those elements back in to make it "gritty" and "real." And then like those other remakes it would probably flop.
Because when you think about it, what are most of the top movies financially? Space fantasies and superheroes. Guys riding around in spaceships with glowing swords or jumping off rooftops in capes. People don't really want gritty and real. They want the fantasy. They want to buy into the absurd idea that Soviets could invade a central US small town and nearly be run off by a bunch of teenagers with hunting rifles. They want absurdly violent and gory revenge fantasies.
Sometimes crazy works. And a lot of times it doesn't. But fortune favors the bold as someone famous once said. The problem with a lot of remakes is they aren't bold. By definition they're not usually bold endeavors. They're just trying to cash in on a name. And most of them try to play it as safe as possible to appeal to the widest audience. They're cooked up by studio heads, not artists. A few have not fallen into that trap like The Fly or The Blob back in the 80s. The former especially is about as different as can be. I guess in those cases they weren't so much trying to "remake" the movie as reimagine it.
Anyway, the point is that sometimes it's better to foresake "real" and do something crazy. Sometimes it works. If it doesn't, well, there's plenty of time to play it safe.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
DC Metal and Clarity in Stories
Author's NOTE: I'm going to talk about a comic book and your first impulse will be to say, "I haven't read that." I know you probably haven't read it (or comic books in general). Just be like a TV lawyer show judge and trust that I'm going somewhere with this.
Over a month ago I read DC's latest "event" series Metal. I'd like to write a description but it's pretty much impossible because the plot made almost no sense to even someone like me who isn't a "true" comic book fan but who has read plenty of them in the last 6 years or so.
I can give you a basic gist. Somehow Batman opens a gateway to a "dark multiverse" and the evil god "Barbatos" and a bunch of evil Batmen (and one woman) come out to take over Earth and try to "sink" it into the dark multiverse for...reasons. And only by going to the literal "forge of creation" can Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman hope to save the day. They discover a new metal and somehow reshape the universe. Makes sense, right?
Now there are a few problems with this plot. First, how can there be a "dark" multiverse and a "light" multiverse? In strict quantum physics terms (which might be an oxymoron) a new universe would be created every time you make a decision. So each decision 7 billion people make each day creates a new universe. There is no inherent "dark" or "light" multiverse, just an infinite number of other worlds.
The way DC gets around this is that there's a "Monitor" and only 52 worlds of the "multiverse." I guess the Monitor is like the curator of a museum and these 52 worlds are the pieces on display. Which is pretty asinine, but whatever. In these 52 worlds you have one based on the Batman: Vampire comics where Batman is a bloodsucking fiend who at one point slaughters every villain in Arkham. Gee, that sounds like a really "light" universe, doesn't it? So shouldn't that be part of the "dark multiverse?" No, because...reasons. Other universes are based on the graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns and Superman: Red Son, neither of which is very sunny and pleasant. Earth-3 is traditionally the home of the Crime Syndicate--aka, an evil version of the Justice League--and Earth-X is a world where Nazis won WWII. So the "light" multiverse is pretty dark already.
While we're talking math-type shit, writer Scott Snyder constantly confuses "nth" for "ninth." He keeps saying that "nth metal" is the ninth metal. In actuality, "nth" is mathspeak for just a bunch of stuff. It's not shorthand for ninth. It CAN be ninth, but it can be any freaking number you want it to be really; it's not a specific number. I sucked at calculus and I knew that. So a major plot point is courtesy of a dude falling asleep during algebra.
As I described in half-assed fashion, the plot is about this "god" Barbatos wanting to sink Earth into the dark multiverse. Why? If there are all these other universes, who gives a shit about just one? And if you're the god of the whole dark multiverse, why do you give a shit about our pathetic little one planet in one universe? Jealousy? Multiverse envy? It'd make more sense if like Galactus or Unicron he fed on universes, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He just wants to destroy "our" universe, or the main DC comic book universe really.
To power his contraption to "sink" Earth, he lures Superman into a trap. Why? I mean there are all these evil Supermen in the dark universe; can't you just use one of them? And why do you need Superman? Sure his body is like a living solar battery, but so what? If you take over the earth you should have plenty of power.
(BTW, reading some of the spin-off issues later on helped make the story...still not make a ton of sense.)
There are a whole bunch of other stupid things I could complain about. The point--and I said there would be one--is that it makes no sense. I bet you've read books similar to this before, where the plot just makes no sense at all. Like pretty much anything by Thomas Pynchon. Some snob might want to say that self-published books would be the most frequent offenders, but the self-published books I read generally make sense--even most of Tony Laplume's! I did comment on one last year called Lightspeed Frontier that was just a long ramble. So that's one for the snobs.
A lot of query letters on Critique Circle I see suffer from this problem. Fantasy ones especially. There's just all this gobbledygook that in a brief letter you can't really explain. Maybe the book itself would make more sense, though I doubt it.
Whether you're writing a query letter or an outline--or a comic book series--it's a good idea to think beforehand about those journalism questions: who, what, where, when, how, and (the big one) WHY? Who is your hero? Who is your villain? What do they want? Where are they? When are they? How will they get what they want? And WHY do they want it? If you have a problem answering any of those questions then you are probably in trouble. You probably also need someone with a good bullshit detector to look over your answers to tell you how many of your answers are just BS. I mean I'm sure if I had gone to ComiCon and asked Scott Snyder what the fuck was going on in Metal he could have gone on and on with a lot of BS until he was blue in the face and passed out. But could he answer in just one simple sentence? Probably not.
For fun let's try it with one of mine you might be familiar with: A Hero's Journey.
Who: Dr. Emma Earl/the Scarlet Knight (hero), Dr. Ian MacGregor/the Black Dragoon (villain)
What do they want: The Black Dragoon wants to take over Rampart City and then the world. The Scarlet Knight wants to stop the Dragoon and thus save the world.
Where are they: Rampart City, USA (a simulacrum of New York with a little Detroit in there)
When are they: 2000
How will they get what they want? The Dragoon manipulates a crooked mayoral candidate so that if the candidate wins the Dragoon will have a safe haven. The Scarlet Knight stops him with the help of her friends, who tip her off to the Dragoon's plan and help her find him.
Why do they want it? The Dragoon is an ancient evil spirit and thus wants to destroy the world. Emma wants to stop him because she's good and also it's the only way she can ever free herself of the burden of being the Scarlet Knight.
There you go, pretty simple, right? It's pretty easy when your story is a fairly classic good v evil tale. Like, say, a superhero comic book. Right? Right?!
Chance of a Lifetime might be more difficult.
Who: Detective Steve Fischer/Stacey Chance
What does she want: To become a man again and get revenge on the bad guys who caused her change
Where are they: The unnamed city that again is a New York/Detroit simulacrum
When are they: About 2011
How will they get what they want? To the first goal (being a man again) Stacey gets the help of a scientist who worked on the project of the drug that changed her. To the second goal she tracks down the bad guys and kills them one-by-one for the most part.
Why does she want it? Why she wants to be a man again should be obvious--she wants her old life back even if it kinda sucked. The other is just basic revenge; they pretty much killed her so now she's going to kill them.
OK, maybe not that much more difficult! But let's try a literary story like Where You Belong:
Who: Frost Devereaux and the Maguire twins: Frank and Frankie
What do they want: Frost initially wants Frankie but Frankie doesn't know what she wants. Frank wants Frost and eventually Frost decides he wants Frank before deciding he doesn't really want anyone.
Where are they: Lots of places. Largely Iowa, Phoenix, and New York.
When are they: 1973-2008
How will they get what they want: Mostly Frost gets Frankie in a moment of weakness. The same way Frank gets Frost. It's not so much a conscious plan as just taking advantage of the opportunity.
Why do they want it: Frost grew up with the twins and spent a lot of time with Frankie, which turned into unrequited love. Frank is mostly jealous of his sister and wants what she has--in this case, Frost's love.
So it's a little less concrete, but still not total BS right? Yeah. Suck it, Scott Snyder! You with your...lucrative comic book writing career and legion of fans. Yeah.
I can give you a basic gist. Somehow Batman opens a gateway to a "dark multiverse" and the evil god "Barbatos" and a bunch of evil Batmen (and one woman) come out to take over Earth and try to "sink" it into the dark multiverse for...reasons. And only by going to the literal "forge of creation" can Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman hope to save the day. They discover a new metal and somehow reshape the universe. Makes sense, right?
Now there are a few problems with this plot. First, how can there be a "dark" multiverse and a "light" multiverse? In strict quantum physics terms (which might be an oxymoron) a new universe would be created every time you make a decision. So each decision 7 billion people make each day creates a new universe. There is no inherent "dark" or "light" multiverse, just an infinite number of other worlds.
The way DC gets around this is that there's a "Monitor" and only 52 worlds of the "multiverse." I guess the Monitor is like the curator of a museum and these 52 worlds are the pieces on display. Which is pretty asinine, but whatever. In these 52 worlds you have one based on the Batman: Vampire comics where Batman is a bloodsucking fiend who at one point slaughters every villain in Arkham. Gee, that sounds like a really "light" universe, doesn't it? So shouldn't that be part of the "dark multiverse?" No, because...reasons. Other universes are based on the graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns and Superman: Red Son, neither of which is very sunny and pleasant. Earth-3 is traditionally the home of the Crime Syndicate--aka, an evil version of the Justice League--and Earth-X is a world where Nazis won WWII. So the "light" multiverse is pretty dark already.
While we're talking math-type shit, writer Scott Snyder constantly confuses "nth" for "ninth." He keeps saying that "nth metal" is the ninth metal. In actuality, "nth" is mathspeak for just a bunch of stuff. It's not shorthand for ninth. It CAN be ninth, but it can be any freaking number you want it to be really; it's not a specific number. I sucked at calculus and I knew that. So a major plot point is courtesy of a dude falling asleep during algebra.
As I described in half-assed fashion, the plot is about this "god" Barbatos wanting to sink Earth into the dark multiverse. Why? If there are all these other universes, who gives a shit about just one? And if you're the god of the whole dark multiverse, why do you give a shit about our pathetic little one planet in one universe? Jealousy? Multiverse envy? It'd make more sense if like Galactus or Unicron he fed on universes, but that doesn't seem to be the case. He just wants to destroy "our" universe, or the main DC comic book universe really.
To power his contraption to "sink" Earth, he lures Superman into a trap. Why? I mean there are all these evil Supermen in the dark universe; can't you just use one of them? And why do you need Superman? Sure his body is like a living solar battery, but so what? If you take over the earth you should have plenty of power.
(BTW, reading some of the spin-off issues later on helped make the story...still not make a ton of sense.)
There are a whole bunch of other stupid things I could complain about. The point--and I said there would be one--is that it makes no sense. I bet you've read books similar to this before, where the plot just makes no sense at all. Like pretty much anything by Thomas Pynchon. Some snob might want to say that self-published books would be the most frequent offenders, but the self-published books I read generally make sense--even most of Tony Laplume's! I did comment on one last year called Lightspeed Frontier that was just a long ramble. So that's one for the snobs.
A lot of query letters on Critique Circle I see suffer from this problem. Fantasy ones especially. There's just all this gobbledygook that in a brief letter you can't really explain. Maybe the book itself would make more sense, though I doubt it.
Whether you're writing a query letter or an outline--or a comic book series--it's a good idea to think beforehand about those journalism questions: who, what, where, when, how, and (the big one) WHY? Who is your hero? Who is your villain? What do they want? Where are they? When are they? How will they get what they want? And WHY do they want it? If you have a problem answering any of those questions then you are probably in trouble. You probably also need someone with a good bullshit detector to look over your answers to tell you how many of your answers are just BS. I mean I'm sure if I had gone to ComiCon and asked Scott Snyder what the fuck was going on in Metal he could have gone on and on with a lot of BS until he was blue in the face and passed out. But could he answer in just one simple sentence? Probably not.
For fun let's try it with one of mine you might be familiar with: A Hero's Journey.
Who: Dr. Emma Earl/the Scarlet Knight (hero), Dr. Ian MacGregor/the Black Dragoon (villain)
What do they want: The Black Dragoon wants to take over Rampart City and then the world. The Scarlet Knight wants to stop the Dragoon and thus save the world.
Where are they: Rampart City, USA (a simulacrum of New York with a little Detroit in there)
When are they: 2000
How will they get what they want? The Dragoon manipulates a crooked mayoral candidate so that if the candidate wins the Dragoon will have a safe haven. The Scarlet Knight stops him with the help of her friends, who tip her off to the Dragoon's plan and help her find him.
Why do they want it? The Dragoon is an ancient evil spirit and thus wants to destroy the world. Emma wants to stop him because she's good and also it's the only way she can ever free herself of the burden of being the Scarlet Knight.
There you go, pretty simple, right? It's pretty easy when your story is a fairly classic good v evil tale. Like, say, a superhero comic book. Right? Right?!
Chance of a Lifetime might be more difficult.
Who: Detective Steve Fischer/Stacey Chance
What does she want: To become a man again and get revenge on the bad guys who caused her change
Where are they: The unnamed city that again is a New York/Detroit simulacrum
When are they: About 2011
How will they get what they want? To the first goal (being a man again) Stacey gets the help of a scientist who worked on the project of the drug that changed her. To the second goal she tracks down the bad guys and kills them one-by-one for the most part.
Why does she want it? Why she wants to be a man again should be obvious--she wants her old life back even if it kinda sucked. The other is just basic revenge; they pretty much killed her so now she's going to kill them.
OK, maybe not that much more difficult! But let's try a literary story like Where You Belong:
Who: Frost Devereaux and the Maguire twins: Frank and Frankie
What do they want: Frost initially wants Frankie but Frankie doesn't know what she wants. Frank wants Frost and eventually Frost decides he wants Frank before deciding he doesn't really want anyone.
Where are they: Lots of places. Largely Iowa, Phoenix, and New York.
When are they: 1973-2008
How will they get what they want: Mostly Frost gets Frankie in a moment of weakness. The same way Frank gets Frost. It's not so much a conscious plan as just taking advantage of the opportunity.
Why do they want it: Frost grew up with the twins and spent a lot of time with Frankie, which turned into unrequited love. Frank is mostly jealous of his sister and wants what she has--in this case, Frost's love.
So it's a little less concrete, but still not total BS right? Yeah. Suck it, Scott Snyder! You with your...lucrative comic book writing career and legion of fans. Yeah.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Revisiting Babylon 5
Like Star Trek the Original Series I had watched a lot of Babylon 5 in reruns (on TNT and maybe Sci-Fi) but I'd never gotten the chance to actually watch the whole thing from start-to-finish. To my knowledge it wasn't on Netflix or Hulu or even some other ones on my Roku to stream. I heard last year or so it was on some weird service called GO90 that also had some Transformers shorts, but I never got around to looking for it. Then it went under, I guess so then finally Babylon 5 was on Amazon Prime so in July I finally watched all 5 seasons in order.
Probably the thing that always worked against Babylon 5 is Star Trek Deep Space Nine came out around the same time--maybe about a year earlier--and they had a similar premise focusing on a space station. And the stories wound up largely going the same way with an epic war.
There were of course some differences. The universe of Babylon 5 is a lot grittier than the Star Trek universe. Everyone still uses money. There are homeless on the station in the "down below." Characters have problems like alcoholism and drug addiction; they aren't the squeaky clean Federation officers. The humans at least don't have artificial gravity and no one really has shields. Instead of "warp drive" they use "jump gates" to traverse hyperspace from one point to another. Part of this difference I would suggest is the involvement of Harlan Ellison as a "conceptual consultant;" Ellison was not a big fan of Gene Roddenberry and thus I'm sure he wanted the Babylon 5 universe as non-Trek as possible. In that sense it is probably a lot more familiar to our 21st Century notions than DS9's 24th Century with the Federation where everyone gets along in peace and harmony.
Unlike DS9, which starts with the station being taken over by the Federation and Bajorans from the Cardassians, Babylon 5 just kind of throws you right into it. The station has already been operating under Commander Jeffrey Sinclair. As the somewhat overbearing intro explains, the Babylon Project was an attempt by humans to create a nexus point for all the known races of the galaxy for trade and political negotiation. There were 4 other stations but 3 were sabotaged and the fourth mysteriously disappeared--which is the subject of three episodes, one in the first season and two in the third season.
The Earth Alliance (Earth and its colonies, no alien races) operate the station but there are representatives from other worlds. The main races are the Minbari, who are sort of like Vulcans in that they're more dispassionate and philosophical only they have weird bone things wrapping around their heads that look like an HR Geiger sculpture; the Centauri are very human-like but the males have their hair standing up in fan shapes while the women are bald and in one episode its suggested they have sort of tentacles hidden inside that are sex appendages; the Narn are brown and spotted and more reptilian and like the Bajorans were occupied by the Cardiassians, the Narn were occupied by the Centauri before repelling them; and the Vorlon are a mysterious race that go around in "encounter suits" to contain their living energy.
Most of the first season is just a grab bag of episodes with different problems facing the station like an alien couple that refuses treatment for their child and a strike by the dock workers. There's some set up for the future with mention of the Shadows and the episode about Babylon 4's disappearance. That season more than any other has episodes from a variety of writers like original Trek writer DC Fontana, Trek novelist Peter David, and Beast Wars writer/story editor Lawrence DiTillio--who was also the story editor for the first two seasons of B5. Really after that first season most of the episodes are credited to series creator J Michael Straczynski.
The first season especially was one I don't think I'd watched as much of in reruns. I always thought the departure of Sinclair was handled a little more smoothly, but it wasn't. Season 2 starts with an announcement that Sinclair has been abruptly transferred to Minbar as an ambassador. At the end of the first season he proposed to his girlfriend but she was never seen or heard from again--maybe she joined Richie Cunningham's brother and that middle child from Family Matters in the TV Character Witness Relocation Program.
Anyway, season 2 introduces Captain John Sheridan as the new commander of the station. He was played by Bruce Boxleitner, who you might remember from the 80s series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. (He was the Scarecrow, obviously.) That season starts to ramp things up as the Centauri ally themselves with the Shadows and take over the Narn homeworld. There's a brutal scene where Centauri ambassador Londo has Narn ambassador G'Kar banished from the council meeting because he's no longer an ambassador since his planet surrendered. Up to that point the two ambassadors had been sorta frenemies so that was really a turning point.
Season 3 slowly builds up the war against the Shadows. At the same time as the Centauri with their Shadow allies are running roughshod across the galaxy, the Shadows are also making a play for Earth. The Earth president is killed in an explosion that's ruled an accident, but eventually information is uncovered that the ship he was on was sabotaged so that the vice-president could take over. When the evidence is leaked and an investigation begins, the president declares martial law and basically sets himself up as Dictator for Life. As the new president turns the main TV network into a propaganda network that even Fox "News" would think goes too far; creates a government agency to dispense "alternative facts;" and sets up a secret police force, it's not too hard to see how our own shady president might act should the Mueller investigation get too hot for him.
During the third season Captain Sheridan declares Babylon 5 to be an independent state and with help from the Minbari manage to fight off Earth forces to keep it free. It then becomes the focal point for gathering resistance to the Shadows.
At the end of the season Sheridan is lured to the Shadow homeworld of Za-ha-Dum (Za-ha-doom) by the wife he thought died on an expedition to the planet. (She was played by Bruce Boxleitner's real wife--at least at the time--Melissa Gilbert. It's funny that in the episode they actually reshot a message she had sent to him before leaving on the trip. In a second season episode where the message was first shown there was a different actress--probably someone they got on the cheap--but the third season episode they replaced her with Melissa Gilbert; kind of a George Lucas deal there.) Sheridan turns down their offer and instead crashes a ship loaded with nuclear bombs into the planet, obliterating the Shadow base. As the ship comes down Sheridan presumably jumps to his death.
The fourth season begins with the search for Sheridan. While no one from the station can find him, he's brought home by an ancient alien named Lorien who was living on the planet. Then the war goes into full swing, though it ends after about 6 episodes in a fairly anti-climactic way. Basically the Shadows and Vorlons and other "First Ones," or the oldest races around, decide to pack up their shit and leave the galaxy when they're brought together by the oldest of the old, Lorien.
Then the season turns its focus on liberating Earth from the evil president. Sheridan begins gathering Earth Alliance forces willing to turn on the president along with the Rangers, a group of humans and Minbari trained to fight the Shadows. Meanwhile undercover agents work on helping to free Mars from Earth control.
The season ends with Earth being freed and Sheridan forming a new Interstellar Alliance--basically a Federation. Sheridan is elected the president of the new Alliance, which for the immediate future is based on Babylon 5.
It seems watching the end of that season that they weren't really sure they were going to have a fifth season. Everything is pretty much wrapped up. The last episode of that season sort of echoes that old song "2525" that went "In the year 2525, if Man is still alive..." and then each verse would be a different year like 3535, 5555, and so on. Only in this case it goes from 2262 to 2362 to 2762 to 3262 to a million years in the future where basically humans have evolved into Vorlons.
Maybe that's why the fifth season just seems so slow and dull. With Sheridan as the Alliance president, a new commanding officer of the station is brought on. But after the epic Shadow War and human civil war, going back to more minor crises like with "rogue telepaths" and a dust-up with the Centauri was just kind of disappointing. By the end of the season the only one left on the station from the first season is Vir the assistant Centauri ambassador--now full ambassador. There were more goodbyes in the last half-dozen episodes than Return of the King.
The final episode is sort of an epilogue set 20 years in the future, when Sheridan is set to die. That's not really a spoiler as in the 4th season it was established that after he was brought back from the dead on the Shadows homeworld he would only live 20 years. So he says goodbye to all his old friends and then goes to Babylon 5, which like him is also being shut down. Finally he's taken "home" by the First Ones. The station is blown up in a scene that's heart-wrenching after you've watched the rest of the series.
While you can nitpick about the effects and stuff not being that great--even by 90s standards--it was still a great show for the most part. It's kind of ironic that with Enterprise and Discovery Star Trek has been trying to become grittier, becoming more like Babylon 5.
There was a follow-up series called Crusade made for TNT but it only lasted 13 episodes. The premise of that was the Shadow allies the Drahk unleash a disease on Earth that will kill the planet in 5 years. A human ship called the Excalibur is sent to look for a cure. It was an interesting show but didn't really have time to gel the way the other series did. Interestingly the premise is pretty much the same one ABC used later for The Last Ship, only that involved a US military ship on the high seas, not in space.
Something else interesting is there are actually a lot of Star Trek-Babylon 5 connections. Besides writers Harlan Ellison and DC Fontana involved, I mentioned Trek novelist Peter David wrote an episode. Original Chekov actor Walter Koenig was a frequent guest star as the evil telepath Bester. David Warner, who was in Star Trek V/VI and the Next Generation episode where Picard is tortured by the Cardassians, guest starred as a guy searching for the Holy Grail. Worf's father guest stars as a rabbi in a first season episode. Some episodes were directed by Mike Vejar, who also worked on the Trek shows of the time, and Leonard Nimoy's son Adam. Even Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett appears in one episode as a Centauri noblewoman.
Some more pop culture connections: Neil Gaiman wrote a fifth season episode where one alien race has a "Day of the Dead" and crew on part of the station are visited by ghosts. In that same episode magic/comedy duo Penn & Teller play a comedy duo called Rebo & Zooty. The guy who played Basil in the Austin Powers movies plays a guy who thinks he's King Arthur, which was weird because he was also in the adaptation of Shatner's TekLab that features a lot of Arthurian legend stuff. The cast of B5 included Bill Mumy, who was in the original Twilight Zone as the kid who wishes people into the cornfield (and another episode or two), and Steven Furst, who was the fat nerd in Animal House, directed by John Landis, who directed part of the Twilight Zone movie that I think Bill Mumy appeared in. In one of the episodes leading up to the climactic battle with the Shadows, a then-mostly-unknown Bryan Cranston played the captain of a Rangers ship that sacrificed itself to lure the Shadows into a trap. Since Babylon 5 ended, J Michael Straczynski has had runs on iconic comic books like Spider-Man and Superman.
While Star Trek shows pretty much have the same credits every season with slight variances, Babylon 5 had a new credits sequence every season with a different theme song. I actually liked the 3rd season theme best.
This I think is a compilation of the different seasons:
I'm sure there are plenty of nerd debates about which is better: Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine. But really, can't we like them both? They are both really good shows. Now if you've seen both shows, here are some questions to answer:
Here, I'll go first and answer:
(Finally, here's a little joke for you: if you think about it, "Minbari" is an anagram of "Minibar." So I bet J Michael Straczynski was in a hotel when he was working on the script. What would be a good name for these aliens?...[look around hotel room] minibar! No, wait, Minbari! Eureka!)
Told you it was a little joke.
Probably the thing that always worked against Babylon 5 is Star Trek Deep Space Nine came out around the same time--maybe about a year earlier--and they had a similar premise focusing on a space station. And the stories wound up largely going the same way with an epic war.
There were of course some differences. The universe of Babylon 5 is a lot grittier than the Star Trek universe. Everyone still uses money. There are homeless on the station in the "down below." Characters have problems like alcoholism and drug addiction; they aren't the squeaky clean Federation officers. The humans at least don't have artificial gravity and no one really has shields. Instead of "warp drive" they use "jump gates" to traverse hyperspace from one point to another. Part of this difference I would suggest is the involvement of Harlan Ellison as a "conceptual consultant;" Ellison was not a big fan of Gene Roddenberry and thus I'm sure he wanted the Babylon 5 universe as non-Trek as possible. In that sense it is probably a lot more familiar to our 21st Century notions than DS9's 24th Century with the Federation where everyone gets along in peace and harmony.
Unlike DS9, which starts with the station being taken over by the Federation and Bajorans from the Cardassians, Babylon 5 just kind of throws you right into it. The station has already been operating under Commander Jeffrey Sinclair. As the somewhat overbearing intro explains, the Babylon Project was an attempt by humans to create a nexus point for all the known races of the galaxy for trade and political negotiation. There were 4 other stations but 3 were sabotaged and the fourth mysteriously disappeared--which is the subject of three episodes, one in the first season and two in the third season.
The Earth Alliance (Earth and its colonies, no alien races) operate the station but there are representatives from other worlds. The main races are the Minbari, who are sort of like Vulcans in that they're more dispassionate and philosophical only they have weird bone things wrapping around their heads that look like an HR Geiger sculpture; the Centauri are very human-like but the males have their hair standing up in fan shapes while the women are bald and in one episode its suggested they have sort of tentacles hidden inside that are sex appendages; the Narn are brown and spotted and more reptilian and like the Bajorans were occupied by the Cardiassians, the Narn were occupied by the Centauri before repelling them; and the Vorlon are a mysterious race that go around in "encounter suits" to contain their living energy.
Most of the first season is just a grab bag of episodes with different problems facing the station like an alien couple that refuses treatment for their child and a strike by the dock workers. There's some set up for the future with mention of the Shadows and the episode about Babylon 4's disappearance. That season more than any other has episodes from a variety of writers like original Trek writer DC Fontana, Trek novelist Peter David, and Beast Wars writer/story editor Lawrence DiTillio--who was also the story editor for the first two seasons of B5. Really after that first season most of the episodes are credited to series creator J Michael Straczynski.
The first season especially was one I don't think I'd watched as much of in reruns. I always thought the departure of Sinclair was handled a little more smoothly, but it wasn't. Season 2 starts with an announcement that Sinclair has been abruptly transferred to Minbar as an ambassador. At the end of the first season he proposed to his girlfriend but she was never seen or heard from again--maybe she joined Richie Cunningham's brother and that middle child from Family Matters in the TV Character Witness Relocation Program.
Anyway, season 2 introduces Captain John Sheridan as the new commander of the station. He was played by Bruce Boxleitner, who you might remember from the 80s series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. (He was the Scarecrow, obviously.) That season starts to ramp things up as the Centauri ally themselves with the Shadows and take over the Narn homeworld. There's a brutal scene where Centauri ambassador Londo has Narn ambassador G'Kar banished from the council meeting because he's no longer an ambassador since his planet surrendered. Up to that point the two ambassadors had been sorta frenemies so that was really a turning point.
Season 3 slowly builds up the war against the Shadows. At the same time as the Centauri with their Shadow allies are running roughshod across the galaxy, the Shadows are also making a play for Earth. The Earth president is killed in an explosion that's ruled an accident, but eventually information is uncovered that the ship he was on was sabotaged so that the vice-president could take over. When the evidence is leaked and an investigation begins, the president declares martial law and basically sets himself up as Dictator for Life. As the new president turns the main TV network into a propaganda network that even Fox "News" would think goes too far; creates a government agency to dispense "alternative facts;" and sets up a secret police force, it's not too hard to see how our own shady president might act should the Mueller investigation get too hot for him.
During the third season Captain Sheridan declares Babylon 5 to be an independent state and with help from the Minbari manage to fight off Earth forces to keep it free. It then becomes the focal point for gathering resistance to the Shadows.
At the end of the season Sheridan is lured to the Shadow homeworld of Za-ha-Dum (Za-ha-doom) by the wife he thought died on an expedition to the planet. (She was played by Bruce Boxleitner's real wife--at least at the time--Melissa Gilbert. It's funny that in the episode they actually reshot a message she had sent to him before leaving on the trip. In a second season episode where the message was first shown there was a different actress--probably someone they got on the cheap--but the third season episode they replaced her with Melissa Gilbert; kind of a George Lucas deal there.) Sheridan turns down their offer and instead crashes a ship loaded with nuclear bombs into the planet, obliterating the Shadow base. As the ship comes down Sheridan presumably jumps to his death.
The fourth season begins with the search for Sheridan. While no one from the station can find him, he's brought home by an ancient alien named Lorien who was living on the planet. Then the war goes into full swing, though it ends after about 6 episodes in a fairly anti-climactic way. Basically the Shadows and Vorlons and other "First Ones," or the oldest races around, decide to pack up their shit and leave the galaxy when they're brought together by the oldest of the old, Lorien.
Then the season turns its focus on liberating Earth from the evil president. Sheridan begins gathering Earth Alliance forces willing to turn on the president along with the Rangers, a group of humans and Minbari trained to fight the Shadows. Meanwhile undercover agents work on helping to free Mars from Earth control.
The season ends with Earth being freed and Sheridan forming a new Interstellar Alliance--basically a Federation. Sheridan is elected the president of the new Alliance, which for the immediate future is based on Babylon 5.
It seems watching the end of that season that they weren't really sure they were going to have a fifth season. Everything is pretty much wrapped up. The last episode of that season sort of echoes that old song "2525" that went "In the year 2525, if Man is still alive..." and then each verse would be a different year like 3535, 5555, and so on. Only in this case it goes from 2262 to 2362 to 2762 to 3262 to a million years in the future where basically humans have evolved into Vorlons.
Maybe that's why the fifth season just seems so slow and dull. With Sheridan as the Alliance president, a new commanding officer of the station is brought on. But after the epic Shadow War and human civil war, going back to more minor crises like with "rogue telepaths" and a dust-up with the Centauri was just kind of disappointing. By the end of the season the only one left on the station from the first season is Vir the assistant Centauri ambassador--now full ambassador. There were more goodbyes in the last half-dozen episodes than Return of the King.
The final episode is sort of an epilogue set 20 years in the future, when Sheridan is set to die. That's not really a spoiler as in the 4th season it was established that after he was brought back from the dead on the Shadows homeworld he would only live 20 years. So he says goodbye to all his old friends and then goes to Babylon 5, which like him is also being shut down. Finally he's taken "home" by the First Ones. The station is blown up in a scene that's heart-wrenching after you've watched the rest of the series.
While you can nitpick about the effects and stuff not being that great--even by 90s standards--it was still a great show for the most part. It's kind of ironic that with Enterprise and Discovery Star Trek has been trying to become grittier, becoming more like Babylon 5.
There was a follow-up series called Crusade made for TNT but it only lasted 13 episodes. The premise of that was the Shadow allies the Drahk unleash a disease on Earth that will kill the planet in 5 years. A human ship called the Excalibur is sent to look for a cure. It was an interesting show but didn't really have time to gel the way the other series did. Interestingly the premise is pretty much the same one ABC used later for The Last Ship, only that involved a US military ship on the high seas, not in space.
Something else interesting is there are actually a lot of Star Trek-Babylon 5 connections. Besides writers Harlan Ellison and DC Fontana involved, I mentioned Trek novelist Peter David wrote an episode. Original Chekov actor Walter Koenig was a frequent guest star as the evil telepath Bester. David Warner, who was in Star Trek V/VI and the Next Generation episode where Picard is tortured by the Cardassians, guest starred as a guy searching for the Holy Grail. Worf's father guest stars as a rabbi in a first season episode. Some episodes were directed by Mike Vejar, who also worked on the Trek shows of the time, and Leonard Nimoy's son Adam. Even Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett appears in one episode as a Centauri noblewoman.
Some more pop culture connections: Neil Gaiman wrote a fifth season episode where one alien race has a "Day of the Dead" and crew on part of the station are visited by ghosts. In that same episode magic/comedy duo Penn & Teller play a comedy duo called Rebo & Zooty. The guy who played Basil in the Austin Powers movies plays a guy who thinks he's King Arthur, which was weird because he was also in the adaptation of Shatner's TekLab that features a lot of Arthurian legend stuff. The cast of B5 included Bill Mumy, who was in the original Twilight Zone as the kid who wishes people into the cornfield (and another episode or two), and Steven Furst, who was the fat nerd in Animal House, directed by John Landis, who directed part of the Twilight Zone movie that I think Bill Mumy appeared in. In one of the episodes leading up to the climactic battle with the Shadows, a then-mostly-unknown Bryan Cranston played the captain of a Rangers ship that sacrificed itself to lure the Shadows into a trap. Since Babylon 5 ended, J Michael Straczynski has had runs on iconic comic books like Spider-Man and Superman.
While Star Trek shows pretty much have the same credits every season with slight variances, Babylon 5 had a new credits sequence every season with a different theme song. I actually liked the 3rd season theme best.
This I think is a compilation of the different seasons:
I'm sure there are plenty of nerd debates about which is better: Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine. But really, can't we like them both? They are both really good shows. Now if you've seen both shows, here are some questions to answer:
- Who's your captain: Sisko or Sheridan?
- Who's your tough-as-nails second: Kira or Ivanova?
- Which is your ship: The Defiant or the White Stars?
- Which is your smaller ship: Runabout or Starfury?
- Who's your security chief: Odo or Garibaldi?
- Who's your alien hottie: Dax or Delenn?
- Who's your doctor: Bashir or Franklin?
- Who's your blue collar hero: Chief O'Brien or Zack Allan?
- Who's your alien comic relief: Quark or Vir?
- Who's your know-it-all aliens: Wormhole aliens or Vorlons?
Here, I'll go first and answer:
- Sisko
- Ivanova
- Defiant
- Starfury
- Garibaldi
- Dax
- Franklin
- O'Brien
- Quark
- Vorlons
(Finally, here's a little joke for you: if you think about it, "Minbari" is an anagram of "Minibar." So I bet J Michael Straczynski was in a hotel when he was working on the script. What would be a good name for these aliens?...[look around hotel room] minibar! No, wait, Minbari! Eureka!)
Told you it was a little joke.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Logic Problem
Another one of those examples from Critique Circle. Someone posted a query and it was kind of funny to me because it says:
This really made no sense to me. You find out some ancestor was murdered and so you go back in time to save her. Wait, what? It's so super casual in this query how in one sentence she decides to go back in time to save a complete stranger she only read about recently in a book.
I guess you could say I'm being picky but it seemed like a gap in logic. If I have a sister who can use magic to time travel, am I going back to save some ancestor 325 years ago first thing? I mean I think I'd go back to buy a lottery ticket first. Then maybe save JFK or kill Hitler or keep Trump from running for president.
When I mentioned this the author got all snotty about it. Isn't saving a child's life enough? Wouldn't anyone do that? Um...not really. I mean if it's a child I know then maybe I would if I have the means. But a child I read about in a book who died 325 years ago? Am I going to just drop everything and travel back in time to the Salem Witch Trials? That's a lot of danger to undergo for a complete stranger and basically on a whim.
Star Trek had a number of time travel episodes but the lamest was when they went back to 1968 (what was then the present) for basically no reason except to set up the pilot for a show that never happened anyway. It was really dumb because there was no reason to go back in time except that the story called for it. So on some flimsy excuse they just go back in time with like no setup.
Other episodes were done much better. The famous City on the Edge of Forever they go back in time when Bones goes crazy and jumps through the gateway, altering the history to destroy the Federation. Kirk didn't see the gateway and say, "Hey, I'm going to go save Edith Keeler!" And then jump through. It wouldn't have made sense.
Similarly in First Contact the Borg go back in time to destroy humanity before it can contact the Vulcans and usher in the Federation. The Enterprise follows to prevent Earth from being assimilated. It's not like Captain Picard read about an ancestor dying in a book and decided to go back in time to save her.
Anyway, I'm not saying the story is a piece of shit, but there needs to be a logical bridge from cause to effect. Now if H reads about her ancestor's death and then some of S's goons try to kill her so she can't reveal their activities then it might make sense that she wants to go back in time to stop them in the past. Or if the girl's ghost shows up to beseech H to save her. Or you can always just make it an accident: she opens a book or touches an artifact and goes back to that era.
The point being stories aren't like the real world; you don't want a lot of just random stuff happening. And especially when you write a query you need to have your logic so the agent's intern can follow it. If your query seemingly makes random jumps--or just very weak jumps--they'll probably figure your manuscript is that way too.
It was one of those weird moments when other people on the board actually agreed with me. I figured there'd be some mushheads who'd say, This is Fine. There usually are.
When H discovers that one of her ancestors was among those murdered by S's witch hunters, she calls upon the best witch she knows—her sister B—and together they travel back in time to save the girl’s life.[Names redacted]
This really made no sense to me. You find out some ancestor was murdered and so you go back in time to save her. Wait, what? It's so super casual in this query how in one sentence she decides to go back in time to save a complete stranger she only read about recently in a book.
I guess you could say I'm being picky but it seemed like a gap in logic. If I have a sister who can use magic to time travel, am I going back to save some ancestor 325 years ago first thing? I mean I think I'd go back to buy a lottery ticket first. Then maybe save JFK or kill Hitler or keep Trump from running for president.
When I mentioned this the author got all snotty about it. Isn't saving a child's life enough? Wouldn't anyone do that? Um...not really. I mean if it's a child I know then maybe I would if I have the means. But a child I read about in a book who died 325 years ago? Am I going to just drop everything and travel back in time to the Salem Witch Trials? That's a lot of danger to undergo for a complete stranger and basically on a whim.
Star Trek had a number of time travel episodes but the lamest was when they went back to 1968 (what was then the present) for basically no reason except to set up the pilot for a show that never happened anyway. It was really dumb because there was no reason to go back in time except that the story called for it. So on some flimsy excuse they just go back in time with like no setup.
Other episodes were done much better. The famous City on the Edge of Forever they go back in time when Bones goes crazy and jumps through the gateway, altering the history to destroy the Federation. Kirk didn't see the gateway and say, "Hey, I'm going to go save Edith Keeler!" And then jump through. It wouldn't have made sense.
Similarly in First Contact the Borg go back in time to destroy humanity before it can contact the Vulcans and usher in the Federation. The Enterprise follows to prevent Earth from being assimilated. It's not like Captain Picard read about an ancestor dying in a book and decided to go back in time to save her.
Anyway, I'm not saying the story is a piece of shit, but there needs to be a logical bridge from cause to effect. Now if H reads about her ancestor's death and then some of S's goons try to kill her so she can't reveal their activities then it might make sense that she wants to go back in time to stop them in the past. Or if the girl's ghost shows up to beseech H to save her. Or you can always just make it an accident: she opens a book or touches an artifact and goes back to that era.
The point being stories aren't like the real world; you don't want a lot of just random stuff happening. And especially when you write a query you need to have your logic so the agent's intern can follow it. If your query seemingly makes random jumps--or just very weak jumps--they'll probably figure your manuscript is that way too.
It was one of those weird moments when other people on the board actually agreed with me. I figured there'd be some mushheads who'd say, This is Fine. There usually are.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Another Amazon Mystery
I check my Amazon sales graph a few times each day. June 28th I had checked it early in the day and it was at about 5 units. Then later my eyes just about bugged out of my head to see it had jumped to 170 units!
Wow, 170 units would be a lot of money--provided some asshole didn't just refund them all, though have fun refunding 165 books. Since most of my books are $2.99 you have to figure that would be like $300 in the US, maybe less if some were overseas.
Yet when I checked the next day and days afterwards it was only $75. That's nice but a lot less than it should be. There had to be an explanation, right?
Well here's a partial explanation: the sales chart isn't really your actual SALES. It's ORDERS. And apparently there can be orders that aren't actually sales. If you don't believe me, here's the Excel chart for June 28th. On the left are the royalty-paying SALES and on the right the ORDERS from the "Orders" tab on the workbook.
Now you see the SALES are only 39 units, which if you do the math actually makes sense. 39 x $2 would be $78 so if a few are less than $2 royalties then that would make the $75.
The interesting thing is when I lined them up. You see a lot of them are the same but where there was 1 or 2 SALES there were 6 or 7 ORDERS. There were also two books in the SALES that aren't in the ORDERS and vice-versa, which is weird.
The only explanation I can think of is someone placed an order for those books that have 6-7 orders and it didn't go through the first five times or they accidentally hit the button a few times or it was just a system glitch that caused it to be repeated for the chart.
Asking Amazon seemed pointless, so I didn't bother. I asked the Kindle Boards and someone else had noticed a similar problem and never got an answer from Amazon. But no one could really explain it. Of course you get one or two "geniuses" who have to Amazonsplain to me that different countries have different rates and stuff. Like I haven't been selling on Amazon for 9 fucking years now. Also you can see on the chart they're all US and UK and only one has 35% royalty. Hence that's not the reason.
We'll probably never know the exact reason. But I guess it's a good reminder that just because that bar graph shows a number, doesn't mean that's what you're actually going to be paid for. What a gyp.
Wow, 170 units would be a lot of money--provided some asshole didn't just refund them all, though have fun refunding 165 books. Since most of my books are $2.99 you have to figure that would be like $300 in the US, maybe less if some were overseas.
Yet when I checked the next day and days afterwards it was only $75. That's nice but a lot less than it should be. There had to be an explanation, right?
Well here's a partial explanation: the sales chart isn't really your actual SALES. It's ORDERS. And apparently there can be orders that aren't actually sales. If you don't believe me, here's the Excel chart for June 28th. On the left are the royalty-paying SALES and on the right the ORDERS from the "Orders" tab on the workbook.
Now you see the SALES are only 39 units, which if you do the math actually makes sense. 39 x $2 would be $78 so if a few are less than $2 royalties then that would make the $75.
The interesting thing is when I lined them up. You see a lot of them are the same but where there was 1 or 2 SALES there were 6 or 7 ORDERS. There were also two books in the SALES that aren't in the ORDERS and vice-versa, which is weird.
The only explanation I can think of is someone placed an order for those books that have 6-7 orders and it didn't go through the first five times or they accidentally hit the button a few times or it was just a system glitch that caused it to be repeated for the chart.
Asking Amazon seemed pointless, so I didn't bother. I asked the Kindle Boards and someone else had noticed a similar problem and never got an answer from Amazon. But no one could really explain it. Of course you get one or two "geniuses" who have to Amazonsplain to me that different countries have different rates and stuff. Like I haven't been selling on Amazon for 9 fucking years now. Also you can see on the chart they're all US and UK and only one has 35% royalty. Hence that's not the reason.
We'll probably never know the exact reason. But I guess it's a good reminder that just because that bar graph shows a number, doesn't mean that's what you're actually going to be paid for. What a gyp.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Everything You Know About Food is FAKE NEWS!
On Pluto TV I watched the documentary Fat Head, in which a computer programmer named Tom Naughton decides to take on Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. In Super Size Me, Spurlock ate McDonald's 3 meals a day for 30 days and guess what? He gained weight. No shit.
So you think the premise for this is going to be this guy is going to eat fast food all the time and lose weight. Which is true--with a caveat. It's what he eats that's different from Spurlock. Basically he does a low carb diet. He eats some hamburger buns and breading but mostly he stays away from carbs like French fries, ice cream, and sugary sodas.
See that was the real problem with Spurlock's diet: he was gorging on French fries, regular Coke, ice cream sundaes, apple pies, and buns/biscuits/English muffins. So in a way he was right, but for the wrong reasons. It wasn't just McDonald's making him fat, but the type of food at McDonald's he was eating. By eliminating most of the carbs, Naughton lost 12 pounds in 28 days and what you might think is really weird, his cholesterol was improved.
With doctor interviews, bad animation, Jay Leno-type man-on-the-street questions, and a lot of sarcasm, Naughton talks about how everything we've been told about food from about the early 70s on has been totally bass ackwards. Or as Trump would say: FAKE NEWS!
It was in the 70s when the government started saying we should be lowering fat intake and eating lots of grains. In the process they ended up telling us to eat a lot of carbs. And then were baffled at why people were getting fat and issues like diabetes became so prevalent. Ironically, "health" food advocates around that time also protested using animal fats at fast food places and the like and insisted on using what became known as "trans fats." 30 years later those same groups then said to stop using trans fats!
While the movie is a little over-the-top with some of its criticism and simplification, I still buy into most of it. Why? Because when my doctor put me on all the diabetes meds he said to do what? Stop eating carbs, especially refined sugar.
Which is easier said than done. Not only because I really like things like French fries, but our whole society is largely geared towards eating carbs. Look at breakfast foods: cereal, toast, muffins, donuts, pancakes, waffles, French toast--all loaded with carbs. You want something portable for lunch? How about a sandwich? Made with bread of course. Or have you looked at most "Lean" Cuisines or the like? Most of them are filled with pasta or potatoes or the like. Why? Because those are cheap and "filling" and "healthy" by conventional standards. And dinner? Potatoes, rolls, or whatever. Look at our favorite foods: hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken, ice cream, etc. It's all loaded with starches and sugars, which is what leads to fat and diabetes.
There's also a section debunking something we've long been told: high cholesterol diets lead to heart disease. In reality there's no correlation. Even anti-cholesterol drugs claim in the fine print that they don't cure or treat heart disease. In many ways cholesterol is good for us; basically every cell in your body uses it. The worst "bad" cholesterol doesn't come in the foods we associate with high cholesterol like bacon or sausage or eggs. It's actually in "good" foods like bread. Like I said earlier, Naughton ate plenty of fat and yet his "good" cholesterol level went up and his cholesterol ratio improved to "excellent." So forget that noise about fat = cholesterol = heart disease. It's a load of crap. (I watched part of another, better-looking documentary on the paleo diet that said the same thing. Confirmation!)
Now you might say this is just an anecdotal example (the same way Spurlock's movie was) but the thing is, there really is no scientific evidence supporting the government guidelines on "healthy" eating. In fact, it's largely the opposite. The guidelines that became the food pyramid weren't made by scientists; they were made by politicians and bureaucrats and rubber stamped by a few tame scientists. In other words: FAKE NEWS! One of the earliest studies called the "lipid hypothesis" showed that in countries with high fat diets there was more heart disease, but this conclusion came by excluding a lot of countries that didn't fit the data, like where they eat a lot of fat but don't have heart disease--Norway for instance.
Another thing is that when people go on low fat diets they often get depressed. Why? Because our brains want salty animal fats. We might be more "evolved" and yet our biology is still mostly the same as it was tens of thousands of years ago when they ate animals and wild grains.
WILD grains, not what we have today. A thing at the end talks about how in the late 70s they started growing a modified "dwarf" wheat that's shorter but has more yield. By the mid-80s pretty much everyone was doing it. And not long after cases of food allergies and gluten sensitivity skyrocketed. Because our guts weren't used to this new wheat.
Now the problem is what Naughton does in the end is buy a farm and grow his own food and raise chickens to provide eggs and so forth. What about those of us who can't afford to buy the farm? The problem I have trying to be low carb is it's not all that portable. And it's expensive. I mean for breakfast you can make sausage/bacon and eggs but try eating that in the car without toast, English muffins, or biscuits. The best substitute I can think of are low carb tortillas. I'm not sure how well that really works. Lunch is more problematic. Sandwiches are out if you want to eliminate carbs. And things like TV dinners as I've said are loaded with pasta or potatoes usually. There are Atkins meals but those are like $4 a pop and take about 6 minutes to cook. Most of the time I just say fuck it and make tuna sandwiches that I eat at my desk while I'm working. Dinner is easier since I can just make it at home. Except that I love French fries and pizza too much. I should probably eliminate those entirely.
Then there are all the hidden sugars in products. Things like ketchup, pasta sauce, and even canned peas all have added sugar in them. Reading labels for bread the problem is many breads--even "healthy" ones--have sugar/corn syrup and molasses. That's part of why they have so many carbs. The problem for poor people is so many of the cheapest most convenient items are full of carbs: mac n cheese, ramen noodles, spaghetti, etc. In cities like Detroit it's really hard for poor people to find and buy fresh vegetables (low carb ones, not like potatoes or peas for instance) or fresh, lean meat. So they end up buying a lot of high carb stuff and that can lead to problems.
Anyway, if you're looking to lose weight, you're probably doing things wrong. Instead of low fat or low calorie, you should be doing low carb or paleo. Your body will thank you.
(BTW, if you're wondering, it says at the end the movie was entirely self-funded, not produced by McDonald's or Atkins or anything.)
So you think the premise for this is going to be this guy is going to eat fast food all the time and lose weight. Which is true--with a caveat. It's what he eats that's different from Spurlock. Basically he does a low carb diet. He eats some hamburger buns and breading but mostly he stays away from carbs like French fries, ice cream, and sugary sodas.
See that was the real problem with Spurlock's diet: he was gorging on French fries, regular Coke, ice cream sundaes, apple pies, and buns/biscuits/English muffins. So in a way he was right, but for the wrong reasons. It wasn't just McDonald's making him fat, but the type of food at McDonald's he was eating. By eliminating most of the carbs, Naughton lost 12 pounds in 28 days and what you might think is really weird, his cholesterol was improved.
With doctor interviews, bad animation, Jay Leno-type man-on-the-street questions, and a lot of sarcasm, Naughton talks about how everything we've been told about food from about the early 70s on has been totally bass ackwards. Or as Trump would say: FAKE NEWS!
It was in the 70s when the government started saying we should be lowering fat intake and eating lots of grains. In the process they ended up telling us to eat a lot of carbs. And then were baffled at why people were getting fat and issues like diabetes became so prevalent. Ironically, "health" food advocates around that time also protested using animal fats at fast food places and the like and insisted on using what became known as "trans fats." 30 years later those same groups then said to stop using trans fats!
While the movie is a little over-the-top with some of its criticism and simplification, I still buy into most of it. Why? Because when my doctor put me on all the diabetes meds he said to do what? Stop eating carbs, especially refined sugar.
Which is easier said than done. Not only because I really like things like French fries, but our whole society is largely geared towards eating carbs. Look at breakfast foods: cereal, toast, muffins, donuts, pancakes, waffles, French toast--all loaded with carbs. You want something portable for lunch? How about a sandwich? Made with bread of course. Or have you looked at most "Lean" Cuisines or the like? Most of them are filled with pasta or potatoes or the like. Why? Because those are cheap and "filling" and "healthy" by conventional standards. And dinner? Potatoes, rolls, or whatever. Look at our favorite foods: hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken, ice cream, etc. It's all loaded with starches and sugars, which is what leads to fat and diabetes.
There's also a section debunking something we've long been told: high cholesterol diets lead to heart disease. In reality there's no correlation. Even anti-cholesterol drugs claim in the fine print that they don't cure or treat heart disease. In many ways cholesterol is good for us; basically every cell in your body uses it. The worst "bad" cholesterol doesn't come in the foods we associate with high cholesterol like bacon or sausage or eggs. It's actually in "good" foods like bread. Like I said earlier, Naughton ate plenty of fat and yet his "good" cholesterol level went up and his cholesterol ratio improved to "excellent." So forget that noise about fat = cholesterol = heart disease. It's a load of crap. (I watched part of another, better-looking documentary on the paleo diet that said the same thing. Confirmation!)
Now you might say this is just an anecdotal example (the same way Spurlock's movie was) but the thing is, there really is no scientific evidence supporting the government guidelines on "healthy" eating. In fact, it's largely the opposite. The guidelines that became the food pyramid weren't made by scientists; they were made by politicians and bureaucrats and rubber stamped by a few tame scientists. In other words: FAKE NEWS! One of the earliest studies called the "lipid hypothesis" showed that in countries with high fat diets there was more heart disease, but this conclusion came by excluding a lot of countries that didn't fit the data, like where they eat a lot of fat but don't have heart disease--Norway for instance.
Another thing is that when people go on low fat diets they often get depressed. Why? Because our brains want salty animal fats. We might be more "evolved" and yet our biology is still mostly the same as it was tens of thousands of years ago when they ate animals and wild grains.
WILD grains, not what we have today. A thing at the end talks about how in the late 70s they started growing a modified "dwarf" wheat that's shorter but has more yield. By the mid-80s pretty much everyone was doing it. And not long after cases of food allergies and gluten sensitivity skyrocketed. Because our guts weren't used to this new wheat.
Now the problem is what Naughton does in the end is buy a farm and grow his own food and raise chickens to provide eggs and so forth. What about those of us who can't afford to buy the farm? The problem I have trying to be low carb is it's not all that portable. And it's expensive. I mean for breakfast you can make sausage/bacon and eggs but try eating that in the car without toast, English muffins, or biscuits. The best substitute I can think of are low carb tortillas. I'm not sure how well that really works. Lunch is more problematic. Sandwiches are out if you want to eliminate carbs. And things like TV dinners as I've said are loaded with pasta or potatoes usually. There are Atkins meals but those are like $4 a pop and take about 6 minutes to cook. Most of the time I just say fuck it and make tuna sandwiches that I eat at my desk while I'm working. Dinner is easier since I can just make it at home. Except that I love French fries and pizza too much. I should probably eliminate those entirely.
Then there are all the hidden sugars in products. Things like ketchup, pasta sauce, and even canned peas all have added sugar in them. Reading labels for bread the problem is many breads--even "healthy" ones--have sugar/corn syrup and molasses. That's part of why they have so many carbs. The problem for poor people is so many of the cheapest most convenient items are full of carbs: mac n cheese, ramen noodles, spaghetti, etc. In cities like Detroit it's really hard for poor people to find and buy fresh vegetables (low carb ones, not like potatoes or peas for instance) or fresh, lean meat. So they end up buying a lot of high carb stuff and that can lead to problems.
Anyway, if you're looking to lose weight, you're probably doing things wrong. Instead of low fat or low calorie, you should be doing low carb or paleo. Your body will thank you.
(BTW, if you're wondering, it says at the end the movie was entirely self-funded, not produced by McDonald's or Atkins or anything.)
Friday, September 7, 2018
How Not to Respond to Mild Criticism
I don't often react well to negative reviews. And sometimes I can be a dick in reviews online. But in this case it's someone else reacting badly to what I didn't think was a nasty criticism at all. Decide for yourself.
So here's the original post on a Twitter Pitch:
And here's my response, which I think is pretty tame:
To which this dude just completely jumps down my throat:
That doesn't seem like a proportional response, does it? For once I didn't really waste time going head-to-head on this except to point out the obvious:
For the record I think a Twitter pitch is like an elevator pitch. You're in a confined space and thus have to quickly hook your audience. It was tougher when you only had 144 characters. Still the point is you have to do something short and punchy to get your foot in the door. Like a query letter you have to consider than an agent is going to see hundreds of these things so if you just do some boring standard line you're not going to get much interest.
It just didn't seem like any point wasting the time or energy with someone who immediately becomes so irrational. I guess this was just one of those who really only wanted a pat on the head and a cookie. Maybe it's not a surprise the dude got no more advice from anyone after this. Who'd want to bother if you're going to get snapped at like that?
So here's the original post on a Twitter Pitch:
(This will be under "MG.")
The "Made in America" Act has tossed most stuffed animals aside. Now, Spaulding the teddy bear and his kind must create their own community or be exterminated by dogs, rats, buses, and skateboarder.
And here's my response, which I think is pretty tame:
Agree this doesn't really do anything for me. A Twitter pitch—or elevator pitch—needs to be short and punchy.
It's like Toy Story with stuffed animals! [Or Toy Story meets Animal Farm....or whatever.]
What if you had to give up your favorite stuffed toy? In [whatever] a bunch of discarded stuffed toys seek to build a new community, but have to avoid dogs, rats, and a nasty skateboarder.
Don't get bogged down in details.
To which this dude just completely jumps down my throat:
Toy Story is stuffies. Woody and Buzzy are both stuffed. A Twitter pitch isn't an elevator pitch. And, no, really, a pitch isn't a comparison. And no, it really should never include a question in it. And, no, "a bunch of" doesn't belong in it. And, yes, details matter, otherwise pitches would all look like what you wrote.
I really was looking for help, but when "help" is teaching someone how to do something completely wrong, that's not helpful. Have you ever truly helped someone on this forum?
That doesn't seem like a proportional response, does it? For once I didn't really waste time going head-to-head on this except to point out the obvious:
Buzz Lightyear is an action figure, not a stuffed toy. He has a battery powered laser and sound effects for crying out loud.I don't know if Woody is stuffed or if he's wooden, though I think he was patterned more on Howdy Doody than a stuffed toy. I mean to me "stuffies" are like Winnie the Pooh or Spot Mangy Mutt II.(And wings!)
For the record I think a Twitter pitch is like an elevator pitch. You're in a confined space and thus have to quickly hook your audience. It was tougher when you only had 144 characters. Still the point is you have to do something short and punchy to get your foot in the door. Like a query letter you have to consider than an agent is going to see hundreds of these things so if you just do some boring standard line you're not going to get much interest.
It just didn't seem like any point wasting the time or energy with someone who immediately becomes so irrational. I guess this was just one of those who really only wanted a pat on the head and a cookie. Maybe it's not a surprise the dude got no more advice from anyone after this. Who'd want to bother if you're going to get snapped at like that?
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
HBO's Believer Shows How Religion Becomes Toxic
The lead singer--Dan Reynolds I think; mostly I thought he sorta looked and sounded like Chris Pratt--is a Mormon and got his wife to convert. This brought up some problems because his wife had lesbian friends and the Mormon church was big into Proposition 8 in California to keep gay people from getting married. The lesbian friends refused to even go to the wedding. Then once his group started to hit the big time he started to hear from some gay fans who were feeling suicidal because their Mormon families wouldn't accept them.
Around the same time the Mormon singer of the group Neon Trees came out as gay and found that not all his family and friends were all that supportive. This guy talked to Dan Reynolds and they came up with the idea of putting together a music festival. It seemed like a slam dunk; Imagine Dragons was routinely selling out stadiums and the other group was doing well too. So together they should be able to sell out a park or something, right?
Well first there was the issue of finding a location. It took a while before someone agreed to let them hold the show on a baseball field that could hold about 20,000 in Provo, Utah. And then ticket sales were pretty sluggish. Imagine Dragons could sell out the basketball stadium in Salt Lake but they could only sell 7,500 tickets for this. Hurm...
It wasn't until the Mormon church gave its OK that the show sold out. You basically had 11,000 people who couldn't decide on their own to go; they needed some old guys in a temple to say it was OK. Were they afraid that Mormon spies would rat them out and get them excommunicated? I guess it could happen with social media or whatever. But if your church is that anal, maybe it shouldn't be your church?
Despite singing some songs and some testimonials from LGBTQ Mormons, nothing changed. The old white guys in charge said it was this generation's challenge to resist "temptation" and whatnot. So I guess they're going to have another festival this year.
The documentary shows the ways that a religion that can otherwise be fine to bring people together can become toxic. Mormons who come out are basically shunned by the rest of the church and can be excommunicated. I'd say six of one, a half-dozen of the other, just find yourself some other church, but to these people it's a big deal. It gets to the point that many of them attempt suicide, if not actually succeed. Suicide rates at Brigham Young University are well above other schools.
Religion should be about bringing people together, not pushing away. And sure as hell not killing them. That's why there's been fighting in the Middle East for about 4000 years now. If you're more concerned with words in a book than actual people then there's just something wrong with you. Books are great--except when they justify hatred. As I said before, if your church is this anal, maybe it shouldn't be your church.
Something I like to remind smug Christians of: they're the minority. Christianity in all its forms is the largest religion but even that is only about 1/7 of the world population. You have a billion plus Chinese, nearly a billion Indians, and almost that whole Middle East and Africa that aren't Christian so before you're so sure you're on the winning team, maybe you ought to do the math. And then maybe not take it so fucking seriously. It's not worth anyone's life.
Monday, September 3, 2018
Laboring Day II: End of the Year Clearance
If you're wondering, this was the first "Laboring Day" post
With my Eric Filler books I try to release them every two weeks. I got into doing that after I read that one book about setting up a newsletter and stuff. The idea is not to overload your readers by having too many new books all at once. I figure every 14 days or so is usually good enough so they won't forget me but it's not necessarily too much stuff. No one's told me any different yet.
So a couple of months ago I realized I had a glut of unreleased material. I made an Excel sheet to plug in the titles and saw I pretty much had enough for the whole year! If I wrote a Halloween and XMas story that would fill out the schedule until 2019.
I did this by writing 11 stories in the 24 Hour Gender Swap series and 4 in the Dark Gender Swap series (that's 15 books or 30 weeks right there--over half a year) and a few other projects besides. This freed me up in May-June to write a short novel to conclude the Gender Swap Heroes series.
It also gives me some freedom to work on other, longer projects. Like Casting Change, which is still a gender swap story but a longer one that's more like a real novel. It ended up about 65,000 words so kind of a short novel but long for that sort of story. It'll probably be out this month in Kindle and paperback.
I might even do an actual non-gender swap book! I've thought of writing my Dognapping story that I wrote about last November. I thought maybe I'd do that for Nanowrimo if I have the story all worked out by then.
Anyway, happy Labor Day.
With my Eric Filler books I try to release them every two weeks. I got into doing that after I read that one book about setting up a newsletter and stuff. The idea is not to overload your readers by having too many new books all at once. I figure every 14 days or so is usually good enough so they won't forget me but it's not necessarily too much stuff. No one's told me any different yet.
So a couple of months ago I realized I had a glut of unreleased material. I made an Excel sheet to plug in the titles and saw I pretty much had enough for the whole year! If I wrote a Halloween and XMas story that would fill out the schedule until 2019.
I did this by writing 11 stories in the 24 Hour Gender Swap series and 4 in the Dark Gender Swap series (that's 15 books or 30 weeks right there--over half a year) and a few other projects besides. This freed me up in May-June to write a short novel to conclude the Gender Swap Heroes series.
It also gives me some freedom to work on other, longer projects. Like Casting Change, which is still a gender swap story but a longer one that's more like a real novel. It ended up about 65,000 words so kind of a short novel but long for that sort of story. It'll probably be out this month in Kindle and paperback.
I might even do an actual non-gender swap book! I've thought of writing my Dognapping story that I wrote about last November. I thought maybe I'd do that for Nanowrimo if I have the story all worked out by then.
Anyway, happy Labor Day.
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