Saturday, January 28, 2017

Hey M Night Shyamalan, Stop Independently Coming Up With The Same Idea As Me!

M Night! Come on, man! I thought we were friends. And by friends, I mean people who don't know each other. What's up with you independently coming with a story about a guy with a murderous split personality just like I did? You even chose the same title as me! Geez Louise, couldn't you have come up with some other designation that perfectly encapsulates your narrative?

Just look at how awesome the book cover is that I commissioned from the artist Christiana Helgeson.


 Isn't that freaking awesome?! I had intended to publish my short story as a standalone, but I liked the cover so much I thought I might wait and see if I could grow the story into a novel. While I was dawdling, you totally beat me to market! 

What's with the rush? I know we live in a  competitive creative environment and everything, but have you ever considered taking the final print of one of your movies and just sticking it into a drawer for a little while? It's something to think about.

Despite the fact that, judging by the average Hollywood production schedule, you must have come up with your idea at roughly the same time, or even a little before I came up with mine, you should probably cancel your distribution deal and have your film removed from theaters ASAP. It only seems fair to me.

In the meantime, I'm going to get back to writing the other three novels I have in the queue before getting getting around to expanding my short story Split into a full length novel. 

When will I finish? Who knows? But when I do, I'd like to be able to sell the film rights.

Say... I don't suppose you'd be interested in directing?

Monday, January 2, 2017

Writing Goals for the New Year

I haven't posted in a while, but I have been writing. Yesterday, I finished the second draft of Blood Cries and submitted it to a group of readers. Based on their reactions, I'll give the book another pass and a polish before publishing.

Which brings me to my New Year's writing resolutions for 2017, also known as my writing goals for the new year.

1) Finish Blood Cries. By this time next year, I would like to have either self-published the book through KDP and Createspace or have an agent preparing to submit the manuscript to traditional publishers. That decision will come later and will be the subject of a future blog post.

2) Complete another draft of Dashboard Hula. For those who don't know, Dashboard Hula has been the great white whale of my writing career. I started the novel in 1996, and though I have produced flashes of good writing, I have never managed to produce a coherent story. Anyone with common sense, would have retired the manuscript and written off the lost time as a learning experience, but clearly I have no sense. Year after year I bring the book out of the drawer and year after year I have to put it back again. And guess what? I pulled it out of the drawer again this morning. I plan to spend every morning from now until May working through another draft. Will this be the year I produce my masterpiece? Not if the past is indicative of future success. Either way, I'm putting in the work.

3) Work through a draft of Franken-Bubba. I started this book about a redneck brought back from the dead by a deranged backwoods medical dropout in 2009, but have only produced about 15 chapters. I'm budgeting August through September to work through a complete draft.

So, what do you think of my goals? They seem pretty realistic to me. All I need to do is to stick to my plan and write a little every day. I can do that.

CV