BIG ANNOUNCEMENT & Thursday Review: I Am Legend

This exists.  Now in paperback!

Hey, good news!  Thanks to badgering my "publisher" over the last few days, they finally got off their butts and released A Hero's Journey in paperback!  So all you folks who don't have an ebook reader can now enjoy it in paperback.  Right now it's only on CreateSpace but it will eventually matriculate to Amazon and possibly other sites. Again, here's the link: https://www.createspace.com/4161712

It comes out to $16.58 with the shipping.  That's less than some ebooks are going for these days!  (Probably.)

 And now on with the show!

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I still haven't had much time for watching new movies or TV or reading books other than my own, so here's a random old review of the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.  As I note in the review, other than the title and overall premise there's very little similarity to the recent Will Smith movie.

This is one of those classic books I've been meaning to get around to. When it was finally on sale for less than a buck on the Kindle, I decided to take the plunge and I was not disappointed.

I've only read one of Matheson's other books (his latest one at the time of this review) but I'm a big fan of his work on the original "Twilight Zone" and "I Am Legend" certainly has much of the same vibe as many TZ episodes.

Many "Twilight Zone" episodes (including the pilot) dealt with a lone or small group of survivors after the apocalypse. Only in this case instead of nuclear war it's a plague that gradually turns everyone into "vampires." It's important to note that in many ways Matheson's vampires are more akin to the zombies of "Night of the Living Dead" and such than the vampires in "Dracula" or especially "Twilight." These vampires cannot go out in the light and they drink blood, but they aren't super strong or super fast and they can't change into other shapes. The way they shamble around, seemingly unable to even open a door, definitely makes them closer to zombies than vampires.

Robert Neville is seemingly the last man on Earth, or at least the last man in his neck of the woods in California. After about five months he's built his old house into an impenetrable fortress that's stocked with food and has a generator for electricity. He even has a hothouse to grow garlic that helps keep the vampires at bay. Every night the vampires gather around his house, hoping he'll come out. One of his former neighbors yells at him constantly to come out while the undead women strike lurid poses in the hope of coaxing Neville from his fortress.

Most of the story then deals with Neville's survival. In particular in how he has to deal with the crushing loneliness and isolation of being the only real human left. To help combat that, Neville begins trying to understand the disease that wiped out humanity and possibly to find a cure for it.

Along the way we learn a little more about Neville's life before the plague, in particular what happened with his wife and daughter. Though still by the end the details are a little skimpy, especially where the daughter is concerned. One bit of confusion for me was that it took a while for Matheson to really establish whether Kathy was the wife or daughter and the same for Virginia.

Still, I found this a riveting, suspenseful read. Modern readers who yearn for buckets of blood and gore aren't going to find that so much in here, but it is a fascinating tale of survival in the face of great horror and adversity.

Another note is that if you saw the Will Smith film from a few years ago you should disregard that as except for the title and basic premise they don't have much in common.

(5/5 stars)

Tomorrow Box Office Blitz continues!

Phony Photos: February

If you read January's Phony Photos then you know all year the first Wednesday I'm giving you a corresponding page from my Sims calendar, which was called "SIMply the Best"--ah hahahaha...punny.

And just to clarify, this calendar is only for my personal use.  I doubt anyone else enjoys my Sims characters that much.  Also, this cost like $22 on Shutterfly (that was with a discount) so I doubt anyone else would want to pay that much for a calendar.

Anyway, this is February's image:

This story focuses on a Mexican mother (yes actually Mexican, PC Police, so shut up) and her two kids.  The mom, Elena, is on the far left.  Next to her is her daughter Margarita at 6.  The biggest image is Margarita at 12.  And then at the right is Elena's other daughter Anita at 5.

Besides this story, Elena and Margarita actually show up in volume 2 of the Scarlet Knight series, which is due out in six days!  See if you can find their cameo in the story.  All three characters also appear in my second Stacey Chance story "Little Chance" as well.  Because I'm lazy and just reuse characters.  Also it amuses me to put in little Easter Eggs that no one will care about except for me.

Tomorrow I review something!

Two-Cent Tuesday: Publishing 101 Lesson 1

This is some more blogging motivated by self-interest as I'll probably put these segments on my imprint's website.

Anyway, here are some lessons on how to publish an ebook.  The first lesson is about formatting the manuscript.

One of the ebooks I've produced

Most of the formatting I learned from the Smashwords How-to guide.  I load my stuff first to Smashwords, but the file will also load just as well on Amazon and presumably B&N--I don't have a Nook to verify how well the ones I load through B&N's site look.  The whole Smashwords guide is 50-60 pages or so, but unless you're trying to publish something really complicated, there are only a few things you need to remember.

Presumably your manuscript is in Word (or maybe OpenOffice; does anyone use WordPerfect anymore?).  If you're doing things the right way then your base document should be double-spaced with a 12-point font like Times New Roman.

So Step 1 is to highlight everything (Select All or Control-A in Word).  Now in Word 2003 and earlier you can go to Format and Paragraph.  For Word 2007 or later, right-click the mouse and select Paragraph.

Step 2 is on the Paragraph screen you want to go to Line Spacing and select Single.  Next to that box are a couple of boxes that say "Spacing" and then "Before" and "After".  You want those to be empty or 0pt.

Step 3 is to stay in the Paragraph screen and go up to Indentation--Special.  Select "First Line" and then next to that it will default to 0.5".  You can use that, although I use 0.33" so it's not as far of a tab.

Now you can hit OK and go back to the manuscript.  Presumably when you typed the thing you used the Tab key for each paragraph.  Or if you were crazy you might have used multiple spaces.

So now Step 4 is to go to the Show/Hide command, which looks like a backwards paragraph symbol.  On Word 2003 and earlier it should be on the toolbar; mine is next to the Zoom box.  On Word 2007 and newer it's on the Home/Paragraph grouping.  I'll include a couple of pictures to show you where it is.

Word 2003 (click to enlarge)

Word 2007 (click to enlarge)

Click the Show/Hide button and all sorts of weird symbols pop up.  For Step 5, go to the start of a paragraph.  If you used tabs, you'll see a little arrow pointing to the right.  If you used spaces then it'll be a cluster of dots.  Go ahead and select the arrow or dots and Copy it to the clipboard--you know how to Copy, right?

Step 6, go to Find/Replace.  It's Control-H in Word.  In Word 2003 and earlier it's under the Edit menu.  Once that pops up, go to the Find box and Paste.  You won't actually see anything, except the cursor should have jumped closer to the middle of the box.  Leave the Replace box empty.

Click Replace All.

You might wonder what that accomplished.  If you did it right, that got rid of all the tabs in your manuscript.  And yet your manuscript's first lines will still be indented.  Pretty sweet, huh?  This is important because when the file is converted to an ebook Tabs and spaces can get messed up to make things look weird.  Whereas the First Line Special way makes the indents nice and even so the thing looks professional.  Believe me, I've done it many times now!

Now then, for Phase 2 of the process if you're going to put it on Smashwords they like to have italics changed to underlines.  This isn't as big of a deal with just Amazon's KDP or B&N's PubIt apps.

Still, it's pretty easy to make the change.  Go back to the Replace screen; see above on how to access that.  Click the More button so it shows all the options.

Now, make sure the Find box is empty.  Then go down to the box that says Format and click Font.  A submenu pops up with a lot of options, but all you want is to go to Font Style and select Italic.  Then hit OK.

Go to the Replace box and again make sure it's empty.  Again click Format and Font to go back to that menu.  Under Font Style select Not Italics.  Then go to the Underline Style and select Words  If you want it to be like this.  Or just a single line if you want it to look like this.  If you don't have tons of stuff in italics it probably won't matter.

Click OK and then Replace All.  Now magically all of your italics are converted to underlines!

That's just about all you really need to do, so long as you don't have a bunch of weird stuff like pictures and paragraph boxes.  If you do, best of luck to you!

Here's a before and after to give you an idea what should happen.

As a little housekeeping, you should go to Find and hit the No Formatting button and then type in Chapter to go and check to make sure all of your chapters are separated by page breaks.  This can be a problem created when you go from double to single space if on double space your chapter ended right at the bottom of a page.

More housekeeping:  if you use # to separate your scene breaks, which I used to do, then you can find Replace those to be something like *** and centered (Format/Paragraph under the Replace menu).

Finally, Smashwords at least likes you to put a little antipiracy warning in there and a copyright notice.  This is what I use:

Copyright 2012 Claire Lachance

Published by Planet 99 Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.   Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

 
You can use whatever wording you want I suppose.  I'm just lazy and prefer cut and paste.

And that's pretty much all you need!  But you're not ready to rock n roll yet.  Lesson 2 will focus on the Cover.  Scintillating.

Tomorrow is page two of the Phony Photos calendar!

Comic Captions 2/4/13

It's another edition of Comic Captions, where I take a panel of a comic and you try to make a funny caption for it.  Emphasis on TRY.

This week's comes from the Adventures of Superman #500:

Steel:  Crap, that's the third pair this week!

Now you try to do better in the comments.

Tomorrow begins a tutorial on how to be an "indie" publisher.

Box Office Blitz Week 4 Scores: Trifecta, baby!

Trifecta!

After a really subpar week for me last week, I hit the trifecta this week!  That's right, I called all three top 3 movies, in the right order.  So there's no need to read this entry further, is there?  Anyway, the top 3 this weekend were:

1. Warm Bodies $20M
2. Hansel & Gretel $9M
3. Silver Linings Playbook $8M

I was wrong about the amounts, mostly because I forgot about Super Bowl weekend.  But after getting burned by Silver Linings Playbook 2 weeks in a row I finally put it in my top 3 and it paid off big time!  Here were my picks:

1. Warm Bodies $25M
2. Hansel & Gretel $11M
3. Silver Linings Playbook $10

So that's 100 each for each pick being right and in the right order, which makes 300 points.  Plus since I got the trifecta and I'm sure no one else did, I get 500 bonus for the round.

Now then let's see what you mere mortals had this week:

Rusty Carl had:
Warm Bodies - $24mil
Stand Up Guys - $15mil
Bullet in the Head - $13mil

That's 100 points for Rusty for Warm Bodies and 0 for the others.

Maurice Mitchell had:
1. Warm Bodies - $18 mil
2. Hansel and Gretel - $9 mil
3. Bullet to the Head -$5 mil

That's 200 points for Maurice for the first two.  So close there Maurice!

Stephen Hayes had:
#1 Silver Lining Playbook---$18 mil.

#2 Bullet in the head---$14 mil.

#4 Hansel and Gretel--$10 mil.

That's 50 points each for Silver Linings and Hansel and Gretel, but no bonus since they aren't in the right position for 100 points total.

Tony Laplume had
 1. Warm Bodies ($15 mil)
2. Hansel & Gretel ($9 mil)
3. Bullet to the Head ($8 mil)

Like Maurice that's 200 points.

And Andrew Leon was pretty much the same as Maurice and Tony:
Warm Bodies -- $20m
Hansel & Gretel -- $11m
Bullet to the Head -- $10m

So also 200 points for him.

There you go.  So now I have a commanding 600 point lead, but things can still change quickly.  There's also the 100 point bonus question in play.  I'll reveal who won (if anyone did) next Friday.  If no one wins then I'll roll the points into the next one.

And here are the standings:

	4	Total
PT Dilloway	800	1800
Tony Laplume	200	1200
Andrew Leon	200	1000
Rusty Carl	100	450
Stephen Hayes	100	250
Maurice Mitchell	200	250
David P King	0	200
Michael Offutt	0	100
Donna Hole	0	50
Briane Pagel	0	50
	1600	5350

So there you have it.  And sorry to be such a gloating prick...as if that's unusual or something, right?

Tomorrow is a very revealing Comic Captions!

Box Office Blitz Week 4

It's the fourth week of the hottest new game on the Internet...or just a game on the Internet.  Anyway, the object is to pick the winners of this weekend's box office.  Put them all in the right order and you get bonus points.

As we begin the fourth week there's a tie at the top spot between me and Tony Laplume.  Andrew Leon is just slightly behind and then there's the rest of the pack.  But with a 500 point bonus to the winner anything can happen.

Now then, here's what's playing at my local theater this weekend (* denotes a new release)

• A Haunted House
• Argo
• Broken City
• Bullet to the Head*
• Django Unchained
• Gangster Squad
• Hansel & Gretel
• Jack Reacher
• Les Miserables
• Lincoln
• Mama
• Movie 43
• Parental Guidance
• Parker
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Stand Up Guys*
• The Guilt Trip
• The Impossible
• The Last Stand
• This is 40
• Warm Bodies*
• Zero Dark 30

I'll make my picks first to get it started.  Since horror(ish) movies have generally ruled the box office in January I'll go with:

1. Warm Bodies $25M
2. Hansel & Gretel $11M
3. Silver Linings Playbook $10

Of the other new releases I have no idea what Stand Up Guys is.  Haven't heard a thing about it.  And Bullet to the Head...well we already saw how Ahhh-nold's movie tanked.  These old action heroes should stick to team-ups like "The Expendables."

Now it's your turn to pick! Put your top 3 in the order you think they'll end up at and be sure to put dollar amounts since that's the tiebreaker.  (No dollar amount means $0.)

Just to add some spice to things, I'm going to throw in a bonus question that will be worth a 100 point bonus to one person.  This is a multiple guess question and if there are multiple people who get it right then I'll let Random.org decide a winner--the winner can't be the one who wins this round though.

Here's the bonus question:
"Movie 43" has been panned as the worst movie ever by many critics.  How many daily showings will be playing next week for this awful film at my local theater?
A.  0
B.  1-2
C.  3-4
D.  5 or more

Answer in the comments along with your picks.  The winner will be determined next Thursday and the 100 points added to their score.

Good luck!

Thursday Review: Grumpy Bulldog Picks the Oscars

A couple weeks ago they announced who was nominated for Oscars.  So by now I think it's time to pick some winners.  Here's my in-depth analysis of who I think will win. 

Best Picture:  Zero Dark Thirty
(Every time I hear about this I wonder, how good can this movie really be if it came out less than 18 months after bin Laden died?  I mean except for splatterfests like the "Saw" movies or low budget, overglorified haunted house attractions like "Paranormal Activity" you need at least 18 months to make the thing.  I mean did they have the script already in production when bin Laden died?  Did they use some top secret government time machine to find out in advance?  Has bin Laden actually been dead for years and on ice all that time as some have claimed?)

Best Director:  Ang Lee "Life of Pi"
(I dunno.  Why not?  They didn't nominate Kathryn Bigelow for "Zero Dark Thirty" or Ben Affleck for "Argo" so it would seem like it'll either be Spielberg or Lee.)

Best Actor:  Daniel Day-Lewis "Lincoln"
(You know anonymous SEAL guys aren't going to win it, so this is a good fallback position.)

Best Actress:  Meryl Streep...wait, has she even been in anything this year?
(I just assume she'll win every year.  OK, she's not in anything so I'll go with Jessica Chastain from "Zero Dark Thirty" but maybe Streep will pull a Kanye West on her.)

Best Supporting Actor:  Philip Seymour-Hoffman "The Master"
(Because Hollywood has no originality, so let's just give all the awards to people who already have them!)

Best Supporting Actress:  Anne Hathaway "Les Miserables"
(This is just wishful thinking that she'll go up to accept and flash her vagina again.)

Best Screenplay:  Whoever wrote "Zero Dark Thirty"
(Because they worked really fast!)

Best Special Effects:  The Hobbit
(The best special effect being to stretch a 300-page book into 10 hours of films!)

Best Animated Picture:  The Avengers...wait, it wasn't animated?  OK, then whatever Pixar came out with this year.

Just for fun I decided to do a little research project from Tony Laplume's box office breakdowns from 1980-2011.  Just going back a few years I wanted to see what place overall the "best picture" of the year came in:

2011:  71. The Artist ($44 mil)
2010:  18. The King's Speech ($135 mil)
2009:  116. The Hurt Locker ($17 mil)
2008:  16.  Slumdog Millionaire ($141 mil)
2007:  36. No Country for Old Men ($74 mil)
2006:  15. The Departed ($132 mil)
2005:  49. Crash ($54 mil)
2004:   24. Million Dollar Baby ($100 mil)
2003:  1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($377 mil)
2002:  10. Chicago ($170 mil)
2001:  11. A Beautiful Mind $170 mil
2000:  4. Gladiator ($187 mil)

Kind of an interesting trend that at the start of the 21st Century the Best Picture was actually a fairly popular and successful movie.  But after Lord of the Rings it's like the Academy decided enough of this populist stuff and started to go back to more obscure pictures, notably "The Hurt Locker" in 2009 and "The Artist" in 2011. It is often odd how the "Best Picture" of a given year will hardly be seen by anyone and only be shown in six theaters by the end of that year.

Speaking of movies, tomorrow is Week 4 of Box Office Blitz!

January Recap

It's the first-ever Recap post!  In case you haven't been paying attention to this blog at all the last month, here's where you can catch up on some things you missed.

From the number of views, the top 5 entries this month were:

1. How to Do a Wonder Woman Movie Without Even Trying
2. Thursday Review:  Movie Catch-Up
3. Thursday Review:  2012 Reads
4. Thursday Review:  The Night's Legacy (Sales generated by this?  Zero.)
5. Two-Cent Tuesday:  The Brave New World of Publishing

Yay, Thursdays! Also 1, 4, and 5 were all in the same week so people really paid attention that week.

In addition to that, here are some other things I've read/watched this month and want to share some thoughts on:

1.  Arkham Asylum:  The graphic novel, not the video game.  I don't have a PS3 or XBox 360 to play the game and it's probably too complicated for me anyway.  The game is slightly based on the 1989 graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean.

The gist of the plot is that the inmates have taken control of the asylum and demand Batman go in to play with them.  Mixed in with this is the story of Amadeus Arkham, the founder of the asylum, who becomes one of the inmates.  That substory was actually more interesting than the main story to me; it would make a great standalone novel or a horror movie.  Unlike the video game, there's not a lot of action involved in the main story, except for the battle between Batman and Killer Croc.

I was glad I couldn't buy this online because the actual comic is very difficult to read.  Not just Morrison's story but the artwork by McKean is so murky and much of the lettering (especially for the Joker) is hard to decipher, especially if you have shitty eyesight like I do.  Really if you want to read this you have to get the 15th Anniversary edition that has Morrison's original script and even better some author commentary included with it.  That really helped to spell out a lot of the symbolic elements.  Plus there are a lot of interesting factoids in there.  Like me, Morrison didn't really like the 80s Frank Miller Batman, who was a violent psycho little better than the criminals he fought against, so Morrison conceived the story to create a different version of Batman.  His original concept for the Joker was to have him dressed as Madonna (the "singer" ick) but the people in charge nixed that idea.  There are also some deleted scenes in the script.  If you ever read Morrison's later Batman RIP series you can see where he reuses some of this material.

Anyway, while I didn't like the actual graphic novel so much the extras made it really interesting.  (And if you like extras, maybe go check out the Special Features tab sometime.  I'm just saying...)

2.  Archer:  Briane Pagel turned me on to this FX show a couple of years ago.  It's a hilarious and foul-mouthed spoof on James Bond.  Or like Austin Powers if it were rewritten by Seth MacFarlane and had an R-rating.  Season 3 came out on DVD not long ago so I bought that to rewatch it--that season wasn't on Netflix yet--which also included the "Heart of Archness" trilogy that I missed most of because it was aired between seasons 2 and 3.  This isn't my favorite animated show, but it is fun.  I just wish Jon Benjamin could do more than one voice.  I mean all his characters (Archer, Carl the convenience store clerk/Yoda on Family Guy, Bob's Burgers) sound exactly the same.  It's kind of distracting.  Though for the first episode of Season 4 it did lead to a hilarious bit where Archer thinks he is Bob's Burgers.  There is a lot of potty/sexual humor so it's not something to watch with your kids.

3.  Up So Down by Briane Pagel:  Speaking of Mr. Pagel, I read his Up So Down this month.  It was nearly as good as The After.  You can read my full review here, but suffice it to say if you liked The After you should read this.  And if you haven't read either, go buy them both because they're only 99 cents each!

4.  Ted:  This was funny, though pretty predictable.  Basically if you like Family Guy then you'll like this movie.  If you don't, then fuck it.

5.  Dredd:  This Judge Dredd has to be the least charismatic character ever put on screen.  He never once takes off his helmet, so we never see more than his mouth and stubble.  Does he even have a first name?  Did he grow up somewhere?  Does he have any backstory at all?  Ah, why bother making characters when we can just shoot people and blow stuff up?  Yeah, so there.  It's kind of like watching the Expendables movies (also by Lionsgate) where you go into it not really expecting much in terms of plot or characters, just lots of action.  And it delivers!  But since there was no Rob Schneider involved it by default is better than the 90s movie.

6.  TekWar:  Just to piss of Michael Offutt, I'm going to mention Bill Shatner's novel TekWar, which I got on sale from Amazon over the holidays and finally got around to read.  I was prepared for it to be really terrible, but it wasn't so bad.  It wasn't the greatest thing I've ever read either.  It's a serviceable sci-fi detective story, like a poor man's "Blade Runner."  The actual writing isn't great--see my entry on -ing verbs, of which Shatner uses many needlessly with phrases like "came running at" and so on.  I watched the TV movies at one point on Netflix but they are no longer there.  The book was actually better because it covers a bit more ground.  I have four more of the books to read at some point just to see how bad they get.

7.  Warrior:  This is the 2011 movie that starred Tom Hardy (of Inception and Dark Knight Rises fame) and some other guy as estranged brothers who end up fighting against each other in a big MMA tourney.  Most of the movies is a string of cliches:  the father was an abusive drunk, Tom Hardy ran away from the army, his older brother is losing his home but determined to win.  The older brother is basically Rocky combined with Walter White of "Breaking Bad"--basically if Walt had decided to be an MMA underdog instead of dealing meth.  The scenario is fairly ludicrous as no one figures out Tommy is a deserted until the end--and then the Marines let him fight yet!  (In the old days deserters got a firing squad, but now I guess they're more forgiving.)  The end fight where the brothers square off makes up for the shortcomings in the rest of the film.  And I suppose that beatdown saved on years of therapy.

8.  Total Recall (2012):  This was an exciting movie, but the plot was pretty ludicrous.  I'm not one of those who says they should have kept it on Mars, but the whole thing where people can only live on England or Australia and have to commute from Down Under to the UK everyday via high-speed train is pretty dumb.  Plus while the people in charge are all in England they all speak like Americans.  WTF?  Instead of stopping some invasion, it would have kept more with the original if there had been some way to revitalize the rest of the world that was being held hostage by the people in charge who didn't want to lose what they had.  But whatever.

9.  Premium Rush:  Joseph Gordon-Leavitt outruns a manic Michael Shannon on his bike, probably with the aid of PEDs.  It was another exciting movie, even if the plot is paper thin and character development almost nonexistent.  Here's a little superhero movie trivia:  you have Joseph Gordon Leavitt (Robin from the Dark Knight Rises) vs. Michael Shannon (General Zod in the upcoming Man of Steel) in a movie written/directed by David Koepp, who wrote the first Spider-Man movie, which contained a line where Tobey Maguire claims to be hit by a bike messenger.  Neat.

Tomorrow I make my Oscar Picks!

Two-Cent Tuesday: F-ing Ing Verbs!

My "editor" on A Hero's Journey did not make many suggestions, but the one thing she insisted on was to change -ing verbs to -ed verbs.  She's one of those who believe those are "stronger."  I've never really understood this belief.  I asked someone more in the know about grammar than I am but even her explanation didn't really convince me this needed to be done.

Anyway, this Grumpy Bulldog finally just grumbled, "Fine...goddamnit." and spent a whole day to hunt down -ing verbs and change many of them to -ed verbs.  Or in many cases from -ing to "to [whatever]".  In other cases I had to get more creative than that.

Here's a little primer on the kind of stuff I did:

Original sentence:

As she mounted the steps to her dream job, Emma’s main concern was not tripping over her own feet.  

The revised:

As she mounted the steps to her dream job, Dr. Emma Earl’s main concern was not to trip over her own feet.   

Original:

Emma needed a moment to remember that she was Dr. Earl now, the title sounding so strange from someone else’s mouth.    

Revised:


Emma needed a moment to remember that she was Dr. Earl now; the title sounded so strange from someone else’s mouth.   

Original:

As she felt her face turning red-hot, she summoned the courage to add, “Am I too early?”  

Revised:

As her face turned red-hot, she summoned the courage to add, “Am I too early?”

And that's only like half the first page!  For 300-plus pages in double space you can imagine how many instances of this there were.  I missed a few because I did it on the quick. 

The question for the sequels was whether or not to do the same thing.  Ultimately I decided I should be consistent.  So for weeks I've gone through the seven sequels to cut out as many -ing verbs as I can. 

It is a very cumbersome process.  First I print out the story.  Then I read through it and mark it up in red pen.  Then (the worst part) I have to make all those red pen changes on the file.  Seriously that step is so dull I need someone to stand behind me with a cattle-prod to keep me on task.  I'm not done after that, though!  Next I convert it to Kindle format on Smashwords (and charge an obscenely high price so no one else will buy it--or if they do I make an obscenely high profit!) and then I read the story AGAIN to see if I've missed any errors or (in many cases) made new errors.  I highlight those on the Kindle and then make those changes to the file.  It's slightly less tedious to make those changes because there are fewer of them.

I have to do that 7 times over, for about 3,000 pages (double-spaced) of text!  So you can see why I've really started to hate -ing verbs.  And more so the "editor" who said I need to eliminate those -ing verbs.  I have to go to all this trouble because some two-bit hack probably still in college read some stupid blog entry somewhere and decided it was LAW.  Argh.  I've gotten all the way through 2-5 and am up to the Kindle phase of Book 6 and am in the process of the red pen edits to Book 7.  Book 8 is not started at all yet and it's 570 pages so it'll take a while.

For the most part I don't think these changes make the stories better.  More often than not instead of "stronger" it seems to me the sentences are bulkier.  But there are a few good instances because I, like many people, often unconsciously misuse -ing verbs.

I might say for instance:  She entered the room, walking to the kitchen. [Only something less inane.]

That's not how you should do it because the enter room part and walking to the kitchen are two separate actions.  What I should really say is more like, "She entered the room and then walked to the kitchen."  That, to me anyway, is more grammatically correct.

Another good thing is sometimes it helps to eliminate a word I don't need.  Like if I wrote, "She left her purse sitting on the counter."  I would change it to "She left her purse on the counter."  As you can see, the "sitting" verb isn't necessary because if it's on the counter we know it's sitting on it, right?

Another bugaboo of mine is the expression "She couldn't help thinking" or "couldn't help feeling" where really I could just say "she thought" or "she felt" or whatever.  Simplify, man!

A good example of unneeded -ing verbs came when I read TekWar by Bill Shatner.  He constantly uses expressions like "came running" or "came charging" or "came dripping" where it could easily be "ran" "charged" and "dripped" respectively.

Still, on the balance it's a huge pain in the ass.  Most of the time I think it's an unnecessary pain in the ass too.  I mean, just look at other books and you'll see -ing verbs everywhere!  I think shortly after I did one of my books I read "John Dies At the End" and it used -ing verbs all the time!  And that's sold a bunch of copies and has a movie adaptation to be released this year so clearly the -ing verbs didn't matter to people.

However, when you do edit a story, you might want to reconsider some of your -ing verbs.  They might not be as necessary as you might think.

(If I did this right there aren't any unnecessary -ing verbs in this blog entry!)

Tomorrow is the first-ever Recap entry!