Flotsam and jetsam on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm taking a break from other work ... tomorrow is my day off, when the rest of the world is back down the salt mines and saying "I hate Mondays." (I'm not too partial to Mondays either, but they're nicer when you don't have to work on them.)
The news is all wiki news, so I'll be brief. GLBT Bookshelf is growing at a fantastic rate, and looking so good, the boss at EditMe (the company which owns and hosts the engine) has complimented it, and has Twittered about it.
All this is fantastic ... but I have to admit that it's turned into a hell of a lot more work than I thought it would. I still haven't tackled the two remaining HELLGATE books, and tomorrow is July. I want (passionately, desperately) to have the series finished by Christmas, and these are going to be two very, VERY large books... hmmm.
Anyway, the wiki might be a lot of work, but it's also immensely satisfying. It's coming together into something that's already looking superb, and it's only been a month since I started with a blank page.
A few bugs have come out of the woodwork -- for instance, we've discovered the hard way that Mac users can't "shake hands" properly with the interfac, so can't build their own pages. This is damned annoying (and that's a euphemism!), and in the short term, the only solution we've been able to offer is, "so long as you have your materials together, we'll build your pages for you."
So, if there are Mac users out there who are cussing up a storm, don't give up just yet. Get over to the wiki and drop us a line.
In other news, AQUAMARINE has appeared on Kindle: and oddly enough, my Kindle sales have more than doubled lately. They're still not as wide, nor as lucrative, as one would have imagined, given that there are such vast numbers of Kindles out there, but we're coming along...
...That makes eight Keegans available for your Kindle now -- the 9th will be Storm Tide, next week. And then the whole NARC series will "go up" all of a piece -- they'll also go up to Smashwords at the same time, so if you've been waiting for Jarrat and Stone on the phone (and there's a thought worthy of the warm fuzzies), you don't have much longer to wait!
Little else is happening in this neck of the woods. It's just work, same old same old, although I will say that watching the wiki grow is quite exciting.
Cheers,
MK
Showing posts with label AQUAMARINE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AQUAMARINE. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
"Talk to the wrist," and other ends and odds
The world is changing so fast, it's almost caught up with where we were forty-odd years ago.
I grew up with the original Thunderbirds -- not the Jonathan Frakes kid-flick that apparently laid an egg a couple of years ago: don't know nuthin' about that, didn't see it. No, no, the Thunderbirds I'm talking about was the dream come true of every six year old, and I was about six at the time myself.
People wore their phones on their wrists ... you talked to your wrist instead of sticking one hand on the side of your head, like you have an agonizing earache. And whaddaya know? It's happening. Right now, right here, for $399 a pop:
Just when it was almost fashionable to wear a ridiculous Bluetooth headpiece and talk loudly to yourself in shopping centres, now we'll have people talking into their wrists. Or will we?
Adelaide-based NV Mobile today launched a range of mobile phone watches complete with a sampling of the bells and whistles we see in the mobile phones in market already, including Bluetooth, touchscreens, and audio and video players. NV Mobile's CEO Anthony Cook describes the mobile phone watch as the "evolution of communications".
"In 10 to 20 years [watch phones] will take over the large screen phones," said Cook.
The range includes 10 models starting with the entry-level Motch all the way through to the top-of-the-line NV Sapphire, with sports watches and watches for tradesmen in between. Prices range from the basic model at AU$399 through to AU$999. The phones are currently available through the NV Mobile website.
http://www.cnet.com.au/mobilephones/phones/0,239025953,339294659,00.htm
Hey, man -- "Calling Thunderbird One!"
I grew up with the original Thunderbirds -- not the Jonathan Frakes kid-flick that apparently laid an egg a couple of years ago: don't know nuthin' about that, didn't see it. No, no, the Thunderbirds I'm talking about was the dream come true of every six year old, and I was about six at the time myself.
People wore their phones on their wrists ... you talked to your wrist instead of sticking one hand on the side of your head, like you have an agonizing earache. And whaddaya know? It's happening. Right now, right here, for $399 a pop:
Just when it was almost fashionable to wear a ridiculous Bluetooth headpiece and talk loudly to yourself in shopping centres, now we'll have people talking into their wrists. Or will we?
Adelaide-based NV Mobile today launched a range of mobile phone watches complete with a sampling of the bells and whistles we see in the mobile phones in market already, including Bluetooth, touchscreens, and audio and video players. NV Mobile's CEO Anthony Cook describes the mobile phone watch as the "evolution of communications".
"In 10 to 20 years [watch phones] will take over the large screen phones," said Cook.
The range includes 10 models starting with the entry-level Motch all the way through to the top-of-the-line NV Sapphire, with sports watches and watches for tradesmen in between. Prices range from the basic model at AU$399 through to AU$999. The phones are currently available through the NV Mobile website.
http://www.cnet.com.au/mobilephones/phones/0,239025953,339294659,00.htm
Hey, man -- "Calling Thunderbird One!"
It worked like this: you got yourself into all kinds of trouble, till nobody could figure out how to pull your hopeless little fanny out again and save your worthless life, and then you yelled blue murder for International Rescue, and the next thing you knew, this tall, dark, blue-eyed hunk arrived in an ultrasonic rocketship, and uh, rescued you.
Six year olds, the world over, were delirious. A few of us grew up; a lot of others never did.
But seriously -- wristwatch phones. It's only taken forty bloody years, and we have them now. Yes, I know Dick Tracy did it back in the Days of Yore, but to this day I have only a nodding acquaintance with Dick. Couldn't pick him out of a police lineup. Was he the one that wore the hat? Then again, they all wore hats back then ... like that alter ego of Picard's, Dixon Hill. For me, the whole "talk to the wrist" thing was about being a little kid whose eyes were still starry, and this adventure show that was on the telly on a Saturday arvo.
Put it this way: the world was a simpler place.
And as you've already guessed, the Mel-o-Sphere is a vacuum that is still sitting at something like 109F. There's little to blog about save odds and ends...
I want to thank Aricia for the really nice review of Aquamarine she uploaded earlier today. As she mentioned, I did go over to Amazon, and searched for the DreamCraft version of the book -- twice. Get this: the first time, it was absent from the Keegan search results list. The second time, it showed up. Go figure. I have no idea what's going on there, but doubtlessly the pundits at the Big A do: Amazon moves in mysterious ways.
Saying "thanks" to AG, then, I'll give her other blog a little plug here -- because, frankly, it deserves it. It's turning out to be the proverbial load of fun. What was it today? David Beckham in underwear, everyone else in kilts, Ewan McGregor in -- what the hell is that he's half-wearing?! And Orlando Bloom looking like a cherub in need of rescuing. I also like the line in humor AG has going there. This blog, Aricia's Album, it top-notch and only getting better:
I've braved the heat long enough to make a swag of uploads to the photoblog, too -- this also has turned out to be a great deal more fun that I'd imagined:
Broad Pass, Alaska, in winter
An aviation icon of the north
Koalas really are too cute!
Signage
Heavenly shades of evening
Beachcombing
And the rest of the gang hasn't been idle. There's a rare collection of images online now, that weren't there the last time I looked.
Good news on the Blogger bustup, Template tantrum front: I do believe it's been fixed. The LEGENDS template has been rewritten to suit Blogger, and I owe Jade massive thanks for this. God knows what she does. I don't even want to ask, because she might explain, and I don't speak cascading style gibberish. Hopefully, The Fall of the Atlantean Empire will be online next week.
And that really is the size and shape of the Mel-o-Sphere right now! It's HOT. It's damned hot. And it's another week before the weather breaks. So --
Ciao for now,
MK
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Book Launch: Aquamarine
Welcome, one and all, to the book launch we've been promising for the last few weeks!
The pilot copy arrived sizzlng off the digital press yesterday, and we've been ready to launch for ten days or so. It's ready to go, so let's check it out.
Here's the "blurb" from the back cover:
Mel Keegan's new story is set in the late 21st Century when major land masses have been submerged by rising oceans and the Earth is a world of water. Russell is a hydrologist, based on the great floating platform of Pacifica. Eric is one of fifty Aquarians, a new sub-species of human who can breathe underwater. When the pair refuse an attractive offer for Eric's services on a suspicious salvage, Eric is kidnapped and a fast-paced intrigue unfolds on the "acorn principle" ... a small event turns out to be the key to a major war which would involve the whole Pacifica region.
And if that isn't enough to whet your appetite, have the first 10% of the book on us:
Read the first segment of the novel in PDF format...
And, getting right down to the business end of the booklaunch:
Get the screenreader style ebook, for iLiad, Palm, Pocket PC and Adobe Reader... Get the PC/Macdesktop style ebook ...Both ebooks are $9.95, which is a handy saving over the paper version. But we know many people prefer paper, so:
272pp, 6" x 9" trade-size paperback;
full color ccover by Jade
Price:
US$22.50
US$9.95(eBook)
Buy the paperback here:
AQUAMARINE is a book with a publishing history. Rather than go into the whole thing again (it's a long and rather frustrating story), I'll refer you to this page, which tells the whole thing (and you can also look at various pages on the blog here, which go into a bit more detail, and with a tad bit more emotion):
the Aquamarine page on the website...
...of the blog posts that rattle on about the "publishing misadventures" of this book, here's the best: books getting printed without being proofread? Hey -- I'm not alone, it happens to the big boys, too!
Suffice to say, the DreamCraft version of AQUAMARINE has been proofread to death. It's been done at least half a dozen times, and we're confident of the proofing and copy editing to let it go out on its own. It'll be 99.999997 right this time, and all here are breathing great sighs of relief.
It's fantastic to have this done done, finished, "out there and cooking." Were I to sum up AQUAMARINE myself, I'd tell you there are two parts of the year when it makes very good reading. The dead of winter is one ... you're longing for tropical beaches and blue-green water...
...and the other time is the height of summer when it's hot and still and sticky, and you're longing to be submerged in the aforementioned blue-green water...
Well, I can't actually transport you to Tahiti (where the waters are warm and clear beyond your imagination, the beaches are white, and the most beautiful of the girls turn out to be boys), but AQUAMARINE will do instead, and cost you a heck of a lot less than a plane ticket!
Incidentally, the images above are, at full-size, 800x600 -- they were designed as wallpapers, or desktops. To get them to fit the larger size 1024 monitors, set them to "stretch to fit" when you install them. Enjoy. And -- did you get your screensaver, a couple of weeks ago? In case you missed it, here it is again, in versions for XP and Vista:
Get your AQUAMARINE screensavers right here!
This about wraps it for the book launch. Lulu is shipping immediately, and of course with the ebooks from Payloadz, it's instant gratification. As for me, I'll be devoting the whole afternoon to THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE, and the next book launch you see on the blog will be that one. Please enjoy AQUAMARINE ... for the first time in history, meticulously proofread, thoroughly copy edited and wearing a blazing, full color jacket. The pilot copy looks nothing less than gorgeous.
Cheers,
MK
Monday, August 25, 2008
Extra, extra!
The news bulletin a lot of people have been waiting for: the pilot copy of AQUAMARINE was in today's mail drop, and it's perfect. No corrections to be made to the layout, cover or content. It'll be online with "buy me" buttons tomorrow. Phew.
It's taken a fair while longer than I'd originally though -- then again, everything does. Someone wise once said, "Everything takes longer and costs more." (I wonder if it might have been Benjamin Franklin who said that? He also said, "Time is money." And Malcolm Forbes must have been in a droll, condescending mood when he went on record with this one: "You want to succeed? Try hard enough." Duh.)
Also worthy of note and apropos of a recent post: Spring has definitely sprung, as witness these guys:
The garden is full of them -- we're being invaded by small furry creatures.
Back to work, guys: THE LORDS OF HARBINDANE await.
It's taken a fair while longer than I'd originally though -- then again, everything does. Someone wise once said, "Everything takes longer and costs more." (I wonder if it might have been Benjamin Franklin who said that? He also said, "Time is money." And Malcolm Forbes must have been in a droll, condescending mood when he went on record with this one: "You want to succeed? Try hard enough." Duh.)
Also worthy of note and apropos of a recent post: Spring has definitely sprung, as witness these guys:
The garden is full of them -- we're being invaded by small furry creatures.
Back to work, guys: THE LORDS OF HARBINDANE await.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Better late than never
Done and done: the screenreader version of WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT is online, and my apologies for the delays in getting this one done. Work kept getting in the way. Better late than never, I guess, the format for Palm and Pocket PC, iLiad and Sony Reader is up now; get it from the ebook kiosk or the bookstore (links to your right).
The other big news today is that we're expecting the ISBN for AQUAMARINE tomorrow, latest, and the book will be available next week -- just as soon as we've uploaded it, ordered up a copy, and made sure there are no (hacking sounds) font issues. It only takes five days to get a book from Lulu now: they secured an Australian digital partner at last.
(This didn't make the books any cheaper, but it sure makes them faster. We had expected the cost to Aussie readers to come down a bit, but it didn't, and the reason dawns on you eventually. Things are a lot more expensive in this country than in the States. They wouldn't be able to lower their prices, even though the books are made and shipped locally.) Ah, the thrills of POD work.
We're quite excited about the reissue of Aquamarine. It's been a fantastic opportunity for me to go through the manuscript and MEND IT. As you probably recall, this was the novel that went to the printer, in 1999, without even being proofread, much less edited. Millivres appeared to print exactly what I sent them -- I never saw a galley proof. One day I emailed the files to London; six or eight months later, a box of books appeared in the mailbox, and you can imagine my reaction. Stunned mullet? Whacked silly? Jaw trailing on floor? It's a writer's worst nightmare come true, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, when it's happened.
To this day, I hear remarks like, "Keegan needs a better editor" (they mean, I need a good PROOFREADER, which was true till I signed with DreamCraft, and I have nothing but praise for them. Even worse, "Aquamarine has spelling mistakes." They mean TYPOGRAPHICAL errors. Doesn't it carbonize your noodles, the way some people call a typo a spelling error? As if you don't know how to spell cat, which is why your tired old fingers typed cta.)
For ten years, I've wanted to get into Aquamarine and fix the bloody thing. Well --
It's fixed. And the new covers are glorious. Jade has delivered in spades this time, not only with the feature art for the cover, but with a whole raft more, which we just zipped into a free screensaver --
These and a bunch more like them have been zipped into a seductively tropical (or tropically seductive) show. Download it here:
The screensaver for Vista ... doesn't self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and right-click for a pop-up menu; and ...
The screensaver for XP ... DOES self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and double-click on it; the executable will do the rest.
"Watch This Space," to know instantly when AQUAMARINE goes up. (Incidentally, if you'd like to read outtakes, you can find them here: 40% of the book is online, right on the blog. The whole project goes up to the wesite next week.)
For the moment, enjoy the screensaver ... Sad to say, I gotta get back to work.
Cheers,
MK
The other big news today is that we're expecting the ISBN for AQUAMARINE tomorrow, latest, and the book will be available next week -- just as soon as we've uploaded it, ordered up a copy, and made sure there are no (hacking sounds) font issues. It only takes five days to get a book from Lulu now: they secured an Australian digital partner at last.
(This didn't make the books any cheaper, but it sure makes them faster. We had expected the cost to Aussie readers to come down a bit, but it didn't, and the reason dawns on you eventually. Things are a lot more expensive in this country than in the States. They wouldn't be able to lower their prices, even though the books are made and shipped locally.) Ah, the thrills of POD work.
We're quite excited about the reissue of Aquamarine. It's been a fantastic opportunity for me to go through the manuscript and MEND IT. As you probably recall, this was the novel that went to the printer, in 1999, without even being proofread, much less edited. Millivres appeared to print exactly what I sent them -- I never saw a galley proof. One day I emailed the files to London; six or eight months later, a box of books appeared in the mailbox, and you can imagine my reaction. Stunned mullet? Whacked silly? Jaw trailing on floor? It's a writer's worst nightmare come true, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, when it's happened.
To this day, I hear remarks like, "Keegan needs a better editor" (they mean, I need a good PROOFREADER, which was true till I signed with DreamCraft, and I have nothing but praise for them. Even worse, "Aquamarine has spelling mistakes." They mean TYPOGRAPHICAL errors. Doesn't it carbonize your noodles, the way some people call a typo a spelling error? As if you don't know how to spell cat, which is why your tired old fingers typed cta.)
For ten years, I've wanted to get into Aquamarine and fix the bloody thing. Well --
It's fixed. And the new covers are glorious. Jade has delivered in spades this time, not only with the feature art for the cover, but with a whole raft more, which we just zipped into a free screensaver --
These and a bunch more like them have been zipped into a seductively tropical (or tropically seductive) show. Download it here:
The screensaver for Vista ... doesn't self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and right-click for a pop-up menu; and ...
The screensaver for XP ... DOES self-install. Extract it from this zip archive onto your desktop and double-click on it; the executable will do the rest.
"Watch This Space," to know instantly when AQUAMARINE goes up. (Incidentally, if you'd like to read outtakes, you can find them here: 40% of the book is online, right on the blog. The whole project goes up to the wesite next week.)
For the moment, enjoy the screensaver ... Sad to say, I gotta get back to work.
Cheers,
MK
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Taking a break from Kosmic Tedium
Just a couple of questions from readers today. The Mel-o-Sphere has reverted to its normally event-free nature. I'm working on the most boring topic in the cosmos (grammar; a feature for the Write-A-Novel site, which is due up shortly and looking great), the sun is shining for a while, and we're waiting for the ISBN to be awarded for AQUAMARINE, before we upload.
(Speaking of AQUAMARINE, if you're looking for the sample readings, just scroll down. The link is on a post from last week ... it'll be up on the website in a day or two. On the next upload, at any rate.)
First off, a plea for help from someone completely confused by the title of my post a few days ago: blogito, ergo sum. What in the world is Keegan babbling about now. It's a joke, a play on "cogito, ergo sum" which is the Latin for "I think, therefore I am." Cogito is the first person present tense of the verb Cogitare, to think. Now, reverse engineer it from Blogitare, "to blog." (And no, before anyone even asks, there is no such Latin verb!!)
Second question: does the aforementioned Latin joke constitute some kind of sophisticated intellectual wanking? Well ... I'd have called it primitive intellectual wanking. I should think they were doing that joke in the stone age, when people blogged on cave walls in pictures, with charcoal sticks and ochre. It's been done about a thousand times, folks --
Google it. Go on, right now, Google it and see what happens. I'll wait.
... ... ...
Still here. See? Intellectual Wankers of the world, unite. (The truth is, some people have too way much time on their hands. I wish I were one of them.)
The next project to leave my hands, after AQUAMARINE, will be the fantasy novel, and I hope to have the haunted house piece done this side of Christmas.
Speaking of the fantasy novel, I'm about to be responsible (again) for hopelessly confusing readers. I've been shuffling titles. I have two fantasy projects and three titles, and have been playing "musical titles" with them for more than a year. The trilogy which used to be called "The Lords of Harbendane" is reverting to its old title, "Mythgaard," which was the original title of the version I produced about 12 years ago. (15?) So, the trilogy is now called "Mythgaard." With me so far? The stand-alone novel you'll be reading in a couple of months, which wore the title of Mythgaard for a long while, is becoming The Lords of Harbendane ... because I like that title mich more than its own original title.
Confused, now? *I* am, so you must be. Suffice to say, there's a stand-alone and a trilogy. The stand-alone is launching this year. The trilogy is on the shelf, and I'll get to it in due course, after the next HELLGATE novels, and the next NARC.
Which prompts me to mention that sales of the NARC novels, in both paperback and ebook formats, are surprising us all, and the NARC website is drawing a lot of traffic in its own right. I need to shuffle the order of titles on my "must write" list, before readers are chewing on me.
(Speaking of AQUAMARINE, if you're looking for the sample readings, just scroll down. The link is on a post from last week ... it'll be up on the website in a day or two. On the next upload, at any rate.)
First off, a plea for help from someone completely confused by the title of my post a few days ago: blogito, ergo sum. What in the world is Keegan babbling about now. It's a joke, a play on "cogito, ergo sum" which is the Latin for "I think, therefore I am." Cogito is the first person present tense of the verb Cogitare, to think. Now, reverse engineer it from Blogitare, "to blog." (And no, before anyone even asks, there is no such Latin verb!!)
Second question: does the aforementioned Latin joke constitute some kind of sophisticated intellectual wanking? Well ... I'd have called it primitive intellectual wanking. I should think they were doing that joke in the stone age, when people blogged on cave walls in pictures, with charcoal sticks and ochre. It's been done about a thousand times, folks --
Google it. Go on, right now, Google it and see what happens. I'll wait.
... ... ...
Still here. See? Intellectual Wankers of the world, unite. (The truth is, some people have too way much time on their hands. I wish I were one of them.)
The next project to leave my hands, after AQUAMARINE, will be the fantasy novel, and I hope to have the haunted house piece done this side of Christmas.
Speaking of the fantasy novel, I'm about to be responsible (again) for hopelessly confusing readers. I've been shuffling titles. I have two fantasy projects and three titles, and have been playing "musical titles" with them for more than a year. The trilogy which used to be called "The Lords of Harbendane" is reverting to its old title, "Mythgaard," which was the original title of the version I produced about 12 years ago. (15?) So, the trilogy is now called "Mythgaard." With me so far? The stand-alone novel you'll be reading in a couple of months, which wore the title of Mythgaard for a long while, is becoming The Lords of Harbendane ... because I like that title mich more than its own original title.
Confused, now? *I* am, so you must be. Suffice to say, there's a stand-alone and a trilogy. The stand-alone is launching this year. The trilogy is on the shelf, and I'll get to it in due course, after the next HELLGATE novels, and the next NARC.
Which prompts me to mention that sales of the NARC novels, in both paperback and ebook formats, are surprising us all, and the NARC website is drawing a lot of traffic in its own right. I need to shuffle the order of titles on my "must write" list, before readers are chewing on me.
Monday, July 28, 2008
What, no periscope jokes?
As promised, sample readings from AQUAMARINE (40% of the book) are on the blog as of, uh, now. There'll only be minor changes between here and the paperback release. The widows and orphans have yet to be attended to (so just ignore them in the typeset you have here; I think there's something like three of the little buggers; we make them disappear, but don't actually ship them to a gulag, so it takes time) and we're still waiting for the ISBN.
Now, ISBN generation is supposed to take about three working days and sometimes takes two working weeks. You see, "ISBN" is an acronym standing for Interdimensional Superstring Boson-type Neutrino," and they're a bloody nightmare to catch. It takes a special kind of cyclotron to generate them. You key in the title of the book, the author's byline, the publisher, publication date and number of pages, then you shoot the request into superspace with the cyclotron, and get ready to "catch" the returning particles. They come blasting back through the fabric of space-time, and where they pass through, they leave micron-tiny fractures (the technical term is "holes") which, when scanned with an argon laser, can be read in binary code. The zeroes and ones of the binary are then converted back into numerals, and voila, you have your ISBN. But it's hellaciously hard catching the ISBN particles, and sometimes they have to fire up the cyclotron two or three times to get a result.
Anyway, all that lies in the hands of professionals. We don't profess to be in charge of the cyclotron, and the ISBN will be delivered when it's delivered.
In the meantime, here's the link to download 40% of the book, and -- enjoy!
ONE WORD OF CAUTION: these chapters and complete and uncut. There's some good, old fashioned raunch. Consider yourself warned! If you're underage, or if you're disturbed by gay relationships, you know what NOT to download, right? Everyone clear about the content of the PDF?!! Okay, here goes:
Download the first eight chapters right here; it's a compressed PDF, sile size is 1117k.
The sample readings will be up on the website in the next week, and the paperback will be about a week behind that. After which, my next project is to get my fantasy novel into the hands of DreamCraft, so it'll fill the temporal gap while I plot myself right back OUT of the deep, dark hole I'm in, with my haunted house novel.
I can't believe I did this to myself. I shot myself in the foot, and this is so rare, for me. The last time I did this was with SCORPIO. You remember the battle at the end of the book? I held hostage a pressurized city, floating in the air over an arctic wilderness ... and I had to get NARC riot troops in there, without punching a hole in the pressure skin, which would bust the city wide open and kill a quarter million people. Oof. I designed the scenario to be a page-turner; I didn't want a repeat of anything readers had seen in either DEATH'S HEAD or EQUINOX. It had to be all-new, and a king-sized challenge for Jarrat, Stone and crew. Visualize this, if you can: the fingers are flying over the keys, the scene is set, the Blue Ravens gather in the ops room aboard the carrier NARC-Athena for the briefing ... all eyes turn to Jarrat and Stone. "Okay, boss," says Gil Cronin, "what's the deal?" The silence was deafening. You could have heard a pin drop. Jarrat looked at Stone; Stone looked at Jarrat. They both looked at Keegan and Stone said, "All right, smart ass, what IS the deal?" It took me three weeks to get out of that one. Jarrat and Stone, and the riot troops? They had it easy. All they had to do was get in there and do what they were told -- by me. As for myself, I think I toasted about a billion brain cells, running scenario after scenario, while every one of them blew up the city.)
Let that be a lesson to me, never, NEVER to leave fine-tuning The End till I'm writing the middle. Ever after SCORPIO, I write the ending of the book in note form (maybe 10 pages which will be expanded out to 50 in the finished version), before I settle on what the fine points of the plot are actually going to be. In oher words, you don't just jot down, "The city is taken hostge, Jarrat and Stone lead the descant troops in there and liberate it." You figure out exactly (not approximately!) how it's going to be done. APHELION was another major challenge, but no real problem, and I've known for eons where the HELLGATE series ends...
All of which made me complacent. Did I get sloppy, planning the occult book? Or did I get too clever? I'm not quite sure, yet. Suffice to say, readers will be getting a full-on, full-throttle fantasy in the meantime, while I, uh, clean up my mess.
Anyway, enjoy the sample readings, and watch out for a newsletter from DreamCraft in the next day or two. There's a new screensaver uploading tomorrow, too. I'll put a link to it on the blog here, also.
All the best,
MK
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tropic daydreams, cold feet and ... so on
Editing a book set in a warm, balmy, tropical future ... and doing it in the middle of winter ... makes you feel COLD. I never noticed this before, but I'm working on the new version of AQUAMARINE (obviously), putting the final polish on the 2008 edition, getting it ready for the DreamCraft issue (due in August), and I have a four-bar, fan-forced halogen heater blowing on my feet. Of course, my feet are bare. They always are. (More information than you needed about Keegan's feet, right?) That's not the point.
I have a theory that our perceptions of temperature are comparative, and come the middle of summer, I'm going to test this out. The mercury will be reading 40 degrees C, and I'm going to put on something like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, or FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, or SECRET OF THE SAHARA, and see if the reverse-logic works. If editing a book about the tropics in winter makes you feel the cold more, then watching movies set in the blistering desert should make you feel the heat less. And if that doesn't work, I'll put on SNOW DOGS, and ASPEN EXREME, and THE EDGE, and see what happens.
The spirit of experiment is one of life's most piquant spices. We did a great experiment a while ago, to discover the compative sinking and floating properties of olives immersed in gin, tequila, or gin+tequila. It was a great experiment. I don't remember much about how it turned out, but I do recall it being great.
The good news is, AQUAMARINE is plain sailing. It'll be wearing a fresh layer of polish when it comes to you in its brilliant new covers, and we'll be having a book launch for both paperback and ebook. Stay tuned --
Speaking of which, we got the RSS feeds for the boog and the website up and running. You should be able to bookmark and get feeds at a click. Technology to the rescue yet again.
Strange, how reality catches up with science fiction. When I wrote AQUAMARINE (way back when, in the last century. Seriously, ten long years ago), the concept of an artificial island was fairly outrageous. Now? It's been done -- and of necessity. The islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans are perilously close to going under, and at least one nation -- Maldives -- has tackled the problem of keeping their lower lips above water. Their home island is a patch of sand, less than three meters above sea level at its highest point, and it won't be lasting much longer. Their solution is to build themselves a new island.
They've actually done it, and are in the process of building a new city for 150,000 people on it. Check out this website:
The Sinking Maldives Artificial Island. It's a slow-loader even with broadband, so be patient.
SF and reality in collision. Amazing stuff. Mind you, much of what's happening around us at the moment would once have been called SF. We don't notice it, since it snuck up on us ... the 'Boiled Frog Syndrome.' (There was a somewhat depressing gay novel of that title, if anyone remembers.) One of the SF concepts which has already become reality, which I like most, is the compressed air car engine. This comes as excellent news, since the long-range forecast is that gasoline will cost $36 per gallon in ten years. It'll cost a dollar to drive one kilometer. (There's a good feature article at CNN.comon this, but I can't get the page to load for love or money, so I can't give you a link. Go to Google and search on "pneumatic car engine," and plenty of results come up.)
Speaking of the comparative cost of things ... I noticed the exchange rate this morning. The Aussie dollar, which at one time used to buy .48c's worth of American currency (!) is now worth 98.1c. Like the rest of the world, I'm agog, waiting to see what happens next. This would be the perfect time for Aussies to visit the US. Not so good for US'ns coming down here.
One can't help wonderering how far the trend will continue. The last time the Aussie dollar was worth more than the Greenback was way back in the 1970s (we were worth about $1.10 - $1.15 at the time), but you have to remember, the Australian dollar was 'fixed' back then, not free to trade. In other words, it was worth what somebody in Canberra decided it was worth! So, in those days, being worth $1.10 didn't mean a hell of a lot, whereas the current exchange rate leaves one ... curious.
Got to go, folks. Thanks to all who are visiting here, and on the website. I do have your latest questions in hand, and will try to answer tomorrow.
Cheers,
MK
I have a theory that our perceptions of temperature are comparative, and come the middle of summer, I'm going to test this out. The mercury will be reading 40 degrees C, and I'm going to put on something like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, or FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, or SECRET OF THE SAHARA, and see if the reverse-logic works. If editing a book about the tropics in winter makes you feel the cold more, then watching movies set in the blistering desert should make you feel the heat less. And if that doesn't work, I'll put on SNOW DOGS, and ASPEN EXREME, and THE EDGE, and see what happens.
The spirit of experiment is one of life's most piquant spices. We did a great experiment a while ago, to discover the compative sinking and floating properties of olives immersed in gin, tequila, or gin+tequila. It was a great experiment. I don't remember much about how it turned out, but I do recall it being great.
The good news is, AQUAMARINE is plain sailing. It'll be wearing a fresh layer of polish when it comes to you in its brilliant new covers, and we'll be having a book launch for both paperback and ebook. Stay tuned --
Speaking of which, we got the RSS feeds for the boog and the website up and running. You should be able to bookmark and get feeds at a click. Technology to the rescue yet again.
Strange, how reality catches up with science fiction. When I wrote AQUAMARINE (way back when, in the last century. Seriously, ten long years ago), the concept of an artificial island was fairly outrageous. Now? It's been done -- and of necessity. The islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans are perilously close to going under, and at least one nation -- Maldives -- has tackled the problem of keeping their lower lips above water. Their home island is a patch of sand, less than three meters above sea level at its highest point, and it won't be lasting much longer. Their solution is to build themselves a new island.
They've actually done it, and are in the process of building a new city for 150,000 people on it. Check out this website:
The Sinking Maldives Artificial Island. It's a slow-loader even with broadband, so be patient.
SF and reality in collision. Amazing stuff. Mind you, much of what's happening around us at the moment would once have been called SF. We don't notice it, since it snuck up on us ... the 'Boiled Frog Syndrome.' (There was a somewhat depressing gay novel of that title, if anyone remembers.) One of the SF concepts which has already become reality, which I like most, is the compressed air car engine. This comes as excellent news, since the long-range forecast is that gasoline will cost $36 per gallon in ten years. It'll cost a dollar to drive one kilometer. (There's a good feature article at CNN.comon this, but I can't get the page to load for love or money, so I can't give you a link. Go to Google and search on "pneumatic car engine," and plenty of results come up.)
Speaking of the comparative cost of things ... I noticed the exchange rate this morning. The Aussie dollar, which at one time used to buy .48c's worth of American currency (!) is now worth 98.1c. Like the rest of the world, I'm agog, waiting to see what happens next. This would be the perfect time for Aussies to visit the US. Not so good for US'ns coming down here.
One can't help wonderering how far the trend will continue. The last time the Aussie dollar was worth more than the Greenback was way back in the 1970s (we were worth about $1.10 - $1.15 at the time), but you have to remember, the Australian dollar was 'fixed' back then, not free to trade. In other words, it was worth what somebody in Canberra decided it was worth! So, in those days, being worth $1.10 didn't mean a hell of a lot, whereas the current exchange rate leaves one ... curious.
Got to go, folks. Thanks to all who are visiting here, and on the website. I do have your latest questions in hand, and will try to answer tomorrow.
Cheers,
MK
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sledding down memory lane
Memory is a strange thing. I can quote you the lyric to the Maverick TV show, which was made in 1960, and was in reruns when I was a kid ... but I'll be damned if I can remember the fantastic plot I thought of at 2:00am this morning. It was a humdinger. The kind of plot that gives you goosebumps, despite the fact you're lying on an electric blanket ramped up to MAX because the bedroom is like a meat locker. I knew I should have got up, got the lights on, jotted the whole thing down, but it's the middle of winter, and cold, and ... yeah. I told myself I'd jot it down in the morning.
Who is the tall, dark stranger there?
Maverick is the name.
Riding the trail to who knows where?
Luck is his companion, gamblin' is his game.
(There's a lot more of it, AND I know it all, AND I recall the tune, even though some of you are probably about to get up and flatly deny any such show ever existed. Well, before you do, I can prove it. This here is a link to James Garner's page on IMDB, and in case someone says I made THAT up too, argue with the DVD cover. The DVDs are not available in Australia, which is probably a good thing, because I would probably feel like Methuselah.)
So, where the hell is the neural super-highway to get back to this plot idea that was going to make for a novel that would knock our your eyeballs? It's utterly
gone.
I've heard you can have yourself hypnotized to remember things. Let me think about it. I've no desire to be barking like a chicken. Or any kind of barnyard fowl.
I was about to comment that it occurs to me that blogging is a strange and even lonely passtime, but before I could type the remark I was deafened by the uproar from other computers around 'Mission Control' (there are four live computers and two dead ones, three live printers and two dead ones, plus assorted imaging devices, in the DreamCaft nerve center). Le Tour on a Footy Field was being read ... and if I do say so myself, it's worth a chuckle ... and it's nice to get feedback.
Headcold report: almost gone. The cold, I mean, not Keegan. Keegan is definitely still here.
AQUAMARINE report: I'll start the edit tomorrow. I swear it. Actually, I'm looking forward to it. I was going through old files and drafts on the computer I shut down a few days ago, and discovered a wedge of 'deleted scenes' which didn't make the final cut of the book for reasons of time and file format incompatibility.
When I did the book in 1999, I was working on a borrowed Mac, converting files over from a Windows format, reading from a 3.5" floppy that seemed to have been zapped by x-rays on its way through way too many airports (Adelaide; Sydney; Vancouver; Seattle; Anchorage; Fairbanks). The disk was being a little bastard, and even when I could get the files into the Mac, the only program that would convert them was an email client. Go figure. Time was of the essence (isn't it always?) and I remember just surrendering, in the end, and patching various sections together before they were emailed over to London. They were aimed at Prowler, which at the time had bought out GMP but not yet been bought by Millivres).
Now, if I can remember, clearly, wrestling a Mac to get AQUAMARINE off the disks and into some usable form, in a word processor called Claris Works, why can't I remember the plot which came to me at 2:00am? The human brain is a weird contraption. I recall the sharp sting of the cold outside, and the icicles hanging off the eaves over the back door, while I was working on the book. I'd take a break and go for a walk in the snow ... I'd walk over to the public library to do a little research if the internet was so slow it made a mollusk on valium look like Speedy Gonzales.
Fairbanks is a quite-small town on the edge of the raw, frozen wilderness, but they had (and probably still have) a great library. You walked inside, and the heat and humidity hit you in the face -- that, and the sound of (get this) budgies. As in, real, live budgerigars. (To US folks, think parakeets ... but take it from me, they're native to this neck of the woods, and they're actually called budgies.) The library had a small aviary and an array of tropical plants. And daylight fluoros which gave the illusion of sunshine, while outside the real sun was barely above the rooftops at noon, and the roads were being plowed out. Budgies and tropical plants, now. Just my speed. As you'd imagine, I spent some fair amount of time there.
So, Thursday finds Keegan on a sled/sledge/sleigh (depending on where you're from) ride down a long, cold, white memory lane, and wondering if I need some brain food. I've heard that sardines are good for the brain cells. I'm sure there's a few cans in the pantry ... but I'd rather have a gin and tonic.
Who is the tall, dark stranger there?
Maverick is the name.
Riding the trail to who knows where?
Luck is his companion, gamblin' is his game.
(There's a lot more of it, AND I know it all, AND I recall the tune, even though some of you are probably about to get up and flatly deny any such show ever existed. Well, before you do, I can prove it. This here is a link to James Garner's page on IMDB, and in case someone says I made THAT up too, argue with the DVD cover. The DVDs are not available in Australia, which is probably a good thing, because I would probably feel like Methuselah.)So, where the hell is the neural super-highway to get back to this plot idea that was going to make for a novel that would knock our your eyeballs? It's utterly
gone.
I've heard you can have yourself hypnotized to remember things. Let me think about it. I've no desire to be barking like a chicken. Or any kind of barnyard fowl.
I was about to comment that it occurs to me that blogging is a strange and even lonely passtime, but before I could type the remark I was deafened by the uproar from other computers around 'Mission Control' (there are four live computers and two dead ones, three live printers and two dead ones, plus assorted imaging devices, in the DreamCaft nerve center). Le Tour on a Footy Field was being read ... and if I do say so myself, it's worth a chuckle ... and it's nice to get feedback.
Headcold report: almost gone. The cold, I mean, not Keegan. Keegan is definitely still here.
AQUAMARINE report: I'll start the edit tomorrow. I swear it. Actually, I'm looking forward to it. I was going through old files and drafts on the computer I shut down a few days ago, and discovered a wedge of 'deleted scenes' which didn't make the final cut of the book for reasons of time and file format incompatibility.
When I did the book in 1999, I was working on a borrowed Mac, converting files over from a Windows format, reading from a 3.5" floppy that seemed to have been zapped by x-rays on its way through way too many airports (Adelaide; Sydney; Vancouver; Seattle; Anchorage; Fairbanks). The disk was being a little bastard, and even when I could get the files into the Mac, the only program that would convert them was an email client. Go figure. Time was of the essence (isn't it always?) and I remember just surrendering, in the end, and patching various sections together before they were emailed over to London. They were aimed at Prowler, which at the time had bought out GMP but not yet been bought by Millivres).
Now, if I can remember, clearly, wrestling a Mac to get AQUAMARINE off the disks and into some usable form, in a word processor called Claris Works, why can't I remember the plot which came to me at 2:00am? The human brain is a weird contraption. I recall the sharp sting of the cold outside, and the icicles hanging off the eaves over the back door, while I was working on the book. I'd take a break and go for a walk in the snow ... I'd walk over to the public library to do a little research if the internet was so slow it made a mollusk on valium look like Speedy Gonzales.
Fairbanks is a quite-small town on the edge of the raw, frozen wilderness, but they had (and probably still have) a great library. You walked inside, and the heat and humidity hit you in the face -- that, and the sound of (get this) budgies. As in, real, live budgerigars. (To US folks, think parakeets ... but take it from me, they're native to this neck of the woods, and they're actually called budgies.) The library had a small aviary and an array of tropical plants. And daylight fluoros which gave the illusion of sunshine, while outside the real sun was barely above the rooftops at noon, and the roads were being plowed out. Budgies and tropical plants, now. Just my speed. As you'd imagine, I spent some fair amount of time there.
So, Thursday finds Keegan on a sled/sledge/sleigh (depending on where you're from) ride down a long, cold, white memory lane, and wondering if I need some brain food. I've heard that sardines are good for the brain cells. I'm sure there's a few cans in the pantry ... but I'd rather have a gin and tonic.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Night of the Living Dead
...which is soon to be a major motion picture entitled Kreeping Krudd II: The Hacking. (For those who have tuned in late: Keegan came down with the head cold eveyone else has had, has, or is getting, and it's going the full monty, with the sinus pressure, sore throat, hacking cough, the works. This is day two.)
What I need right now isn't cough syrup. That's just delaying the inevitable (the cough will come right back). What I need is to get rid of it permanently. Something along the lines of a radical amputation at the shoulders. A nose-ectomy won't do the job: the throat has to go too.
Seriously, guys, if anyone knows how to contact the Headless Horseman, just give me his number, and I'll go stand in the yard tonight and watch out for him, make sure he doesn't miss me and ride on, by mistake.
Actually, Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorite movies. For some reason I missed it on the big screen, but it plays well on DVD, and one can only applaud Tim Burton for his fresh take on the old idea. The effects are fine; and the digital grading, which drops out virtually every color save the red of blood, is most effective. Johnny Depp is the acknowledged master of accents, and he does extremely well as Ichabod Crane -- ghost-pale and uptight, the exact reversal of Jack Sparrow. The humorous touch makes Ichabod strangely believable: he's squeamish, phobic about spiders, and terrified of the supernatural ... which also underscores his courage, in forging ahead anyway, and doing what no one else in the Hollow will. Full marks to the supporting cast too; it was cast in London, with veterans lieke Michael Gough, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffith, and that guy who played the Emperor in Star Wars, and whose name escapes me utterly at this moment. You know the one I mean. Ian MacD...something. Him.
You've probably heard that the movie of Sleepy Hollow is absoltely nothing like the original story, and this is quite true. However, it's just as true that Washington Irvine's classic story is marvelous: I don't think I've ever read a more beautifully written story. His prose has almost the sound of poetry, and his turn of phrase is inspiring. I don't think there's an in-print version of the story at this time, but I did manage to track it down.
Let me save you the trouble:
sleepyhollow.txt ... it's just a text file, download size is just over 88kb, and it's been virus-scanned by AVG. It's the Project Guttenberg file, plain text, and public domain. Enjoy. This is a great piece to read on a winter's evening, accompanied by whisky and the crackle of a live fire.
As you can guess, I'm not getting through too much work right now. Survival is close to the top of my priorities list. I'd get on with the fresh edit of AQAMARINE, but I can't concentrate worth a damn. Put it like this: when you're so sick you can lose the plot of SPACEBALLS (!) don't even think about trying to work. Sheesh. (Besides, who needs plot when you've got the young Bill Pullman looking so cute it ought to be illegal?)
And yes, I know: Keegan is making less sense than usual. Bear with me.
To answer a recent question: no, I don't actually take on freelance editing assignments ... for good reasons. If it's going to be done right, the work is amazingly time consuming, and I don't believe writers who are just setting out to work their way into the market should start out under the kosh of huge editing bills. (The other side to that statement is, nobody can afford to work for a few bucks on the hour these days. It's getting too hard to make a living! If you're not going to starve, you have to charge a reasonable fee per hour, and an in-depth edit can take 50-100 hours. The math works out horrifically.)
Also, I try not to edit for friends, because ... it's delicate, and it gets emotional. Even confrontational. Nobody actually likes to be edited; many new writers seem to take it as a personal insult. Yet an otherwise good story can need a VLCC-load of work at the copy editing stage to get it into professional trim. Now, if you pay an editor to do the work for you, you'll certainly get it done in one shot, but (depending on how much work needed to be done, and what the editor's fees are) the bill could be appalling. You could be looking at two, even three grand.
For this much, I'd expect the editing job to be so smooth and slick, the book should stand an excellent chance of winning a contract. However, the downside is, few first-timers are paid very much. It would be very possible to sell the book and have the royalties earned not even cover the editing bill. (Plus, selling a book can be a crapshoot. You could pay for the editing and not still get a professional contract. There are scores of sound reasons for failure to sell, of which the quality of the work is only one!)
The last snippet of logic I'd like to apply to this question looks beyond the first sale (which might have turned into a break-even situation). You're hoping to sell many more books than one. If you LEARNED to edit yourself, you don't have to pay editing fees on each subsequent work. If you outsourced your editing, you might have learned little (or nothing) from the experience. In short -- on your next book, you're looking down the double-barrels of the same shotgun. Until or unless you start to sell well, and earn big, the editors will be profiting from your royalties.
My advice to anyone just starting out? LEARN. Join a writer's workshop, if you like to work in groups. Take a course, if you have have some spare cash to lay down. Or else buy the books, and actually read them. For instance, start with a used copy of something along the lines of THE HARBRACE COLLEGE HANDBOOK, and puzzle through it. Apply what you've learned to your own writing. Hammer your typing, spelling, punctuation and grammar into good order. Get this out of the way, and next you can look at your writing STYLE, which is such a massive (and contentious) subject, people have written tomes about it.
Incidentally, I'll be writing on this subject myself in the near future. I've agreed to contribute to a new Internet-driven project, a kind of 'Want to write my novel' website, where every topic from getting ideas to getting published will be tackled. My brains are about to get picked -- and that's cool.
Right now, the best thing I could think of to give to a new, aspiring writer who needs quick editing results is another link to another little ebook. It's also a freebie, yours for the downloading. ELEMENTS OF STYLE is an old-ish book, but the vast majority of its info is never going to go past some use-by date:
Elements of Style is packed as a zip archive; inside is setup.exe which explodes a printable ebook. (Apologies to Mac users; I don't know of a version for your platform -- there probably is one, but you'd have to hunt it down for yourselves. Not being a Mac user, I guess I'm not so well versed in where to find your kind of executables.)
The zip file has been virus scanned, and it's another freebie (sometimes the best tools for the job are free), and you can LEARN. With this little book, and a good college handbook, you should be able to get your editing along to the point where a light, even superficial 'polish' from a pro freelance editor should do the job. You'll still be looking at $350-$600, something in that ballpark ... but not a ruinous bill.
Best of luck in your endeavors!
Now, I'm going to crawl off and find somewhere warm and soft to expire...
What I need right now isn't cough syrup. That's just delaying the inevitable (the cough will come right back). What I need is to get rid of it permanently. Something along the lines of a radical amputation at the shoulders. A nose-ectomy won't do the job: the throat has to go too.
Seriously, guys, if anyone knows how to contact the Headless Horseman, just give me his number, and I'll go stand in the yard tonight and watch out for him, make sure he doesn't miss me and ride on, by mistake.
Actually, Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorite movies. For some reason I missed it on the big screen, but it plays well on DVD, and one can only applaud Tim Burton for his fresh take on the old idea. The effects are fine; and the digital grading, which drops out virtually every color save the red of blood, is most effective. Johnny Depp is the acknowledged master of accents, and he does extremely well as Ichabod Crane -- ghost-pale and uptight, the exact reversal of Jack Sparrow. The humorous touch makes Ichabod strangely believable: he's squeamish, phobic about spiders, and terrified of the supernatural ... which also underscores his courage, in forging ahead anyway, and doing what no one else in the Hollow will. Full marks to the supporting cast too; it was cast in London, with veterans lieke Michael Gough, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffith, and that guy who played the Emperor in Star Wars, and whose name escapes me utterly at this moment. You know the one I mean. Ian MacD...something. Him.
You've probably heard that the movie of Sleepy Hollow is absoltely nothing like the original story, and this is quite true. However, it's just as true that Washington Irvine's classic story is marvelous: I don't think I've ever read a more beautifully written story. His prose has almost the sound of poetry, and his turn of phrase is inspiring. I don't think there's an in-print version of the story at this time, but I did manage to track it down.
Let me save you the trouble:
sleepyhollow.txt ... it's just a text file, download size is just over 88kb, and it's been virus-scanned by AVG. It's the Project Guttenberg file, plain text, and public domain. Enjoy. This is a great piece to read on a winter's evening, accompanied by whisky and the crackle of a live fire.
As you can guess, I'm not getting through too much work right now. Survival is close to the top of my priorities list. I'd get on with the fresh edit of AQAMARINE, but I can't concentrate worth a damn. Put it like this: when you're so sick you can lose the plot of SPACEBALLS (!) don't even think about trying to work. Sheesh. (Besides, who needs plot when you've got the young Bill Pullman looking so cute it ought to be illegal?)
And yes, I know: Keegan is making less sense than usual. Bear with me.
To answer a recent question: no, I don't actually take on freelance editing assignments ... for good reasons. If it's going to be done right, the work is amazingly time consuming, and I don't believe writers who are just setting out to work their way into the market should start out under the kosh of huge editing bills. (The other side to that statement is, nobody can afford to work for a few bucks on the hour these days. It's getting too hard to make a living! If you're not going to starve, you have to charge a reasonable fee per hour, and an in-depth edit can take 50-100 hours. The math works out horrifically.)
Also, I try not to edit for friends, because ... it's delicate, and it gets emotional. Even confrontational. Nobody actually likes to be edited; many new writers seem to take it as a personal insult. Yet an otherwise good story can need a VLCC-load of work at the copy editing stage to get it into professional trim. Now, if you pay an editor to do the work for you, you'll certainly get it done in one shot, but (depending on how much work needed to be done, and what the editor's fees are) the bill could be appalling. You could be looking at two, even three grand.
For this much, I'd expect the editing job to be so smooth and slick, the book should stand an excellent chance of winning a contract. However, the downside is, few first-timers are paid very much. It would be very possible to sell the book and have the royalties earned not even cover the editing bill. (Plus, selling a book can be a crapshoot. You could pay for the editing and not still get a professional contract. There are scores of sound reasons for failure to sell, of which the quality of the work is only one!)
The last snippet of logic I'd like to apply to this question looks beyond the first sale (which might have turned into a break-even situation). You're hoping to sell many more books than one. If you LEARNED to edit yourself, you don't have to pay editing fees on each subsequent work. If you outsourced your editing, you might have learned little (or nothing) from the experience. In short -- on your next book, you're looking down the double-barrels of the same shotgun. Until or unless you start to sell well, and earn big, the editors will be profiting from your royalties.
My advice to anyone just starting out? LEARN. Join a writer's workshop, if you like to work in groups. Take a course, if you have have some spare cash to lay down. Or else buy the books, and actually read them. For instance, start with a used copy of something along the lines of THE HARBRACE COLLEGE HANDBOOK, and puzzle through it. Apply what you've learned to your own writing. Hammer your typing, spelling, punctuation and grammar into good order. Get this out of the way, and next you can look at your writing STYLE, which is such a massive (and contentious) subject, people have written tomes about it.
Incidentally, I'll be writing on this subject myself in the near future. I've agreed to contribute to a new Internet-driven project, a kind of 'Want to write my novel' website, where every topic from getting ideas to getting published will be tackled. My brains are about to get picked -- and that's cool.
Right now, the best thing I could think of to give to a new, aspiring writer who needs quick editing results is another link to another little ebook. It's also a freebie, yours for the downloading. ELEMENTS OF STYLE is an old-ish book, but the vast majority of its info is never going to go past some use-by date:
Elements of Style is packed as a zip archive; inside is setup.exe which explodes a printable ebook. (Apologies to Mac users; I don't know of a version for your platform -- there probably is one, but you'd have to hunt it down for yourselves. Not being a Mac user, I guess I'm not so well versed in where to find your kind of executables.)
The zip file has been virus scanned, and it's another freebie (sometimes the best tools for the job are free), and you can LEARN. With this little book, and a good college handbook, you should be able to get your editing along to the point where a light, even superficial 'polish' from a pro freelance editor should do the job. You'll still be looking at $350-$600, something in that ballpark ... but not a ruinous bill.
Best of luck in your endeavors!
Now, I'm going to crawl off and find somewhere warm and soft to expire...
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Muddling through as usual
Back to work today. For the rest of the country it's Saturday, and a lot of people get to take one off; and in the States it's July 4th, and millions of people will be standing beside the BBQ, watching fireworks and parades.
I was in Anchorage for July 4th, 1998, and saw the parade ... another year (don't ask me which), I was in Seward, which is the deep-water port on the Kenai. Independence Day is quite the event in Seward; the inbound motor homes outnumber the local residents about 10:1, and they all park, side by side, nose-in to the shore, down Resurrection Bay. It's quite a sight -- I guess I need to upload the pictures.
It was 32 degrees F that day; I took a hike around the town while the rest of the company (having more brains) were below decks on the yacht, drinking something warming and laced with stimulants. The clouds were heavy on the mountains which guard the bay like fortress walls, there wasn't a patch of blue the size of your thumb, and the wind that was cranking was strong enough to hold you up if you leaned on it ... and cold enough (right off the hanging glaciers that never go away) to slice you to the bone. The wind chill must have been down around zero F. The pictures (optical; digital was a couple of years away, still) are 'soft,' because the lighting conditions were so dark.
Okay, let me dig out the prints and scan them -- I'll upload them in a day or two. (Gives me a reason to try out the scanner in conjunction with this new PC, too.)
Meanwhile ... as I began, it's back to work for me. I'll be dividing my writing time between the edit of AQUAMARINE and the in-depth, middle-section plotting of the haunted house tale. I'm just getting some very early, very tentative 'purple flags,' which I need to assess seriously. I think (mind you, think), I might have plotted myself into a deep, dark hole. This is, in itself, no bad thing, because (as any serious writer will tell you) by the time you've dug yourself back out again, the book has gotten much better, stronger (I won't say faster ... I'll wind up sounding waaaay too much like the Six Million Dollar Man. And I don't type that fast). The downside to having to dig oneself out of the bottom of a pit filled with mud and raptors is that it can take some fair time to escape --
Don't let this get you down: I have a fantasy novel, finished and ready to go, which DreamCraft can have in the meantime. A big, sprawling gay fantasy? How can you go wrong? So there will be a new title following on after the reissue of AQUAMARINE, even if the haunted house piece is giving me a hernia. And it looks like it might. Blast. (And that was a euphemism.)
Now, to answer a question which has nothing to do with writing. I quite understand that folks in the north will find it difficult to imagine how a tree can possibly hang onto its leaves year-round and yet shed its bark. It sounds bizarre. It sounds, in fact, like Keegan made it up. Not true. Would I do that to you? So here's a couple of images I shot just yesterday:
These are gums, two different kinds; and here they are in all their bark-shedding glory. The second of the two is a blue gum, which is a fast-growing, long-lived, flowering tree ... and just to make sure everything gets done backwards they (!) flower in winter. The trick is, they shed their bark as it's scorched by the summer sun, and the tree inside is protected. Blue gums are the right kind of trees to have in your yard if you want to attract koalas (the critters don't come into the inner suburbs, but in the hills, sure, you often see them, and hear them, especially at night. Incidentally, they have no road sense. They're delighted to step right out in front of the car and go waddling across the road while you scream your tires, come to a halt with the front fender dug two inches into the bitumen, and your heart jumping out of your chest). The last interesting thing about blue gums is that, like many gums, their limbs can and do get hollow as they get very old and big. They CREAK ... it's weird and spooky, walking through the woods on a still day, summer or winter, not a breeze moving, and there's just this CREAKING. And yep, the old, hollow boughs break off. They can weigh tons, and smash the roof in, on a house. A couple of years ago, one dropped a branch at a golf course, and there happened to be a woman standing underneath. She never knew what hit her.
So, there you have it: Shedding Bark 101!
Parting shot: the new website was spidered overnight ... Google has visited, and the engine seems to know what we're all about. I searched on 'gay science fiction,' and without any further work we're ranking page 37 on Google. Of course, there's also a hell of a lot more work to do, so we're hoping to rank in the top ten for gay SF reasonably soon.
Here's the kicker: it's the NARC page that's top of the gay SF rankings for pages on the Mel Keegan OnLine site. And that's great. There's a trick to this. You don't 'optimize' for search engines. You accomodate the buggers. They want you to roll over and wink, you roll over and wink. I do believe they call it search engine compliance ... and it seems to work.
Speaking of which, I have to get some done.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Riddle me this, Batdude --
Got a good one for you today: solve the riddle of this one, somebody! Last week I downloaded and installed Adobe Acrobat 8. The installation process took about 40 minutes (which I thought was a little excessive, since it was over a broadband connection), but seemed to go smoothly enough. The prog worked excellently for several days, and then --
Today I needed to read a PDF. I noticed that the usual icon had been replaced with the generic 'bitza,' '57-varieties' icon, but since this old computer tends to struggle these days I didn't fret too much about it. But when I clicked on the PDF to read it, the computer asked me to choose a program to open it with. Wondering if the system was having another hernia (it often happens), I rebooted. But no ... same thing: What would I like to open the PDF with?
Suspicious now, I noticed that the Acrobat shortcut had vanished off my desktop. Uh...huh. Then I troubled to look in the Adobe folder, in the program files ob Drive C:/, and --
Yep, you guessed. Acrobat Reader 8 had vanished without a trace. I'd been running the old version 6 till last week. It used to fall over a lot but at least it never vanished. The installation of 8 auto-deleted version 6; and then 8 ... vanished into the ether.
My question is, how in the hell is it possible for a program to uninstall itself? Because I sure didn't tell it to uninstall. Friday evening finds me wondering if I've picked up a virus that's doing the gremlin routine, causing mostly-harmless mayhem ... so as soon as I'm done for the day I'll be running my virus software, and if I do find a virus in there, which is making programs vanish, I'll let you know what it was.
Now, the virus software I use is the one recommended by DreamCraft -- AVG, by Grisoft. It's the best I've found; Norton wasn't too good, and Net Vet was a waste of money. I made the change to AVG after Vet failed to find the gremlins in the workings a few years ago, and have stuck with it ever since. It's never let me down to date, so here's my conundrum:
If AVG is so damned good, how did a virus get through? It takes over two hours to virus scan this machine and its companion harddrive, so by tomorrow I'll know if it's some kind of Trojan deleting programs at whim. If this is the case, it's an easy fix. What concerns me is the possibility AVG hasn't let me down, and I don't have a virus ... and Acrobat 8 just deleted itself. Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it?!
A friend-of-a-friend is grumbling lately about the condition of her computer. She's done some kind of a scan on it and found (get this) 150+ Trojans hiding in there. That's what you get for giving your kid license to surf the Net and download willy nilly, after the little twerp fried her own computer. With 150 Trojans aboard, it's a wonder any computer starts up at all.
Still on the subject of computers ... am STILL waiting for that dad-blasted monitor to arrive. It's being shipped from Victoria. You'd think they were bringing it from Mongolia by mule train. The new Dell system is just standing under the desk, waiting like me; and the gay cables are still languishing like so many wallflowers at IT Warehouse. *sigh*
On the bright side of things, my fingers are starting to itch to get back to work on the haunted house novel. As soon as I have the thorough proofread and light edit of AQUAMARINE finished (give me a week or so; the new covers have been designed, and are a source of inspiration. Serious wow factor), the haunted house story is my next
assignment.
And I've been viewing the new Flash animations for the NARC website. I'm amazed ... and yes, the website is done, finished. There are some new feature articles, including a couple from contributors, and the whole thing has a design 'feel' I like a lot. It goes up and is open for business next week. Very exciting.
There'll be a newsletter from DreamCraft next week to announce the new website, and at that time I should have more news about AQUAMARINE, which is going to look very handsome in its new covers.
The final proofs for NOCTURNE and TWILIGHT arrived today, and you have to hand it to the Australian digital printshop which has partnered with Lulu.com. The turnaround time, from placing an order to receiving it ... five days. That's great service, and cheers to Lulu.com for their efforts. Our font "issues" are solved, and shouldn't reappear in future projects ... sounds of profound relief from all concerned down here!
Today I needed to read a PDF. I noticed that the usual icon had been replaced with the generic 'bitza,' '57-varieties' icon, but since this old computer tends to struggle these days I didn't fret too much about it. But when I clicked on the PDF to read it, the computer asked me to choose a program to open it with. Wondering if the system was having another hernia (it often happens), I rebooted. But no ... same thing: What would I like to open the PDF with?
Suspicious now, I noticed that the Acrobat shortcut had vanished off my desktop. Uh...huh. Then I troubled to look in the Adobe folder, in the program files ob Drive C:/, and --
Yep, you guessed. Acrobat Reader 8 had vanished without a trace. I'd been running the old version 6 till last week. It used to fall over a lot but at least it never vanished. The installation of 8 auto-deleted version 6; and then 8 ... vanished into the ether.
My question is, how in the hell is it possible for a program to uninstall itself? Because I sure didn't tell it to uninstall. Friday evening finds me wondering if I've picked up a virus that's doing the gremlin routine, causing mostly-harmless mayhem ... so as soon as I'm done for the day I'll be running my virus software, and if I do find a virus in there, which is making programs vanish, I'll let you know what it was.
Now, the virus software I use is the one recommended by DreamCraft -- AVG, by Grisoft. It's the best I've found; Norton wasn't too good, and Net Vet was a waste of money. I made the change to AVG after Vet failed to find the gremlins in the workings a few years ago, and have stuck with it ever since. It's never let me down to date, so here's my conundrum:
If AVG is so damned good, how did a virus get through? It takes over two hours to virus scan this machine and its companion harddrive, so by tomorrow I'll know if it's some kind of Trojan deleting programs at whim. If this is the case, it's an easy fix. What concerns me is the possibility AVG hasn't let me down, and I don't have a virus ... and Acrobat 8 just deleted itself. Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it?!
A friend-of-a-friend is grumbling lately about the condition of her computer. She's done some kind of a scan on it and found (get this) 150+ Trojans hiding in there. That's what you get for giving your kid license to surf the Net and download willy nilly, after the little twerp fried her own computer. With 150 Trojans aboard, it's a wonder any computer starts up at all.
Still on the subject of computers ... am STILL waiting for that dad-blasted monitor to arrive. It's being shipped from Victoria. You'd think they were bringing it from Mongolia by mule train. The new Dell system is just standing under the desk, waiting like me; and the gay cables are still languishing like so many wallflowers at IT Warehouse. *sigh*
On the bright side of things, my fingers are starting to itch to get back to work on the haunted house novel. As soon as I have the thorough proofread and light edit of AQUAMARINE finished (give me a week or so; the new covers have been designed, and are a source of inspiration. Serious wow factor), the haunted house story is my next
assignment.
And I've been viewing the new Flash animations for the NARC website. I'm amazed ... and yes, the website is done, finished. There are some new feature articles, including a couple from contributors, and the whole thing has a design 'feel' I like a lot. It goes up and is open for business next week. Very exciting.
There'll be a newsletter from DreamCraft next week to announce the new website, and at that time I should have more news about AQUAMARINE, which is going to look very handsome in its new covers.
The final proofs for NOCTURNE and TWILIGHT arrived today, and you have to hand it to the Australian digital printshop which has partnered with Lulu.com. The turnaround time, from placing an order to receiving it ... five days. That's great service, and cheers to Lulu.com for their efforts. Our font "issues" are solved, and shouldn't reappear in future projects ... sounds of profound relief from all concerned down here!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Australian Graffiti
Thursday finds me wondering how much echinacea tea you have to drink to beat an ear infection. I hate echinacea tea; it tastes vile. It also works. One has to wonder if it would be effective used as a douche in the aural cannal, or if you HAVE to swallow the stuff. I suspect the latter.
To divert myself from the fact my left ear is killing me, I turn my threadbare attention to the few pages I have left to prepare for the upcoming website relaunch; and today I tackle the subject of gay science fiction. (It's either that, or proofread AQUAMARINE, and right now I think the virus in my ear is trying to get into my sinuses, and since I'm seeing double I wouldn't trust myself to proofread a laundry list.)
The gay SF I've ben talking about for the last hour or so is print-media ... books. I'd been wondering if I would take on the challenge of gay SF in movies and TV, but decided to leave it alone for the moment, because it can be such an aggravating topic. For example, don't get me started on Star Trek. It's very easy to blow breakers on that subject ... which is to say, how is it possible to do 28 full SEASONS of an *SF* show, and never have so much as a single gay guest character, never mind a series regular?! Then again, STARGATE is up to 14 seasons, counting SG1 and Atlantis, and if there's been a gay guest character, I must have blinked when s/he bolted through.
Speaking of Trek, cheers to George Takei, everyone's favorite starship driver, who is wedding his partner of many years, with the welcome shift in California's gay marriage laws. Wonderful stuff.
So, I stuck with novels for the Gay SF discussion; but the 'research' I did for the backgrounding did land me on some interesting websites ... which just pointed out how thin on the ground gay SF heroes are, because in order to get to Ten Favorite Gay SF Heroes, they had to count Frank N. Furter and Bunny Wigglesworth! Well, you could list them, I guess; but is ROCKY HORROR really SF? And I'm fairly sure ZORRO THE GAY BLADE is a comedy western. Will we stretch a point and call them fantasies? Hmmm.
All of which brings me around to wondering if any TV network in this state is going to be carrying the rest of TORCHWOOD, or if they've abandoned the show. It premiered in the 9:30 timeslot, migrated to past-midnight, and vanished without a trace. South Australia is notorious for this kind of reception of TV science fiction. Even STARGATE, which is smash-hit by local standards, is late-late-late-show fare. FIREFLY was marooned in the same slot, and most of STAR TREK VOYAGER didn't seem to air down here at all ...
I hear you asking what South Aussies actually watch. There's a lot of football (by which I mean Aussie Rules, VFL, NFL, that sort of thing). If you're lucky, they'll squeak in a rugby game between the endless tennis tournaments and the reality TV, but only if it's Rugby League. Heaven help you if you have an insatiable lust for Rugby Union. The All Blacks versus the Springbocks? Be still, my beating heart ... not that any such game is likely to be seen on local free-to-air TV. Because the Wallabies aren't on the field. Fishing shows. Cooking. Lots of cooking. And one show where they yank the fish out and cook them right there on the boat -- I kid you not. It's called OUT OF THE BLUE, 'starring' the senior brother in the big local private fisheries company. The longer, warmer, dryer days of October bring a welcome end to the Aussie Rules season, and the beginning of the cricket season; TV becomes the pixelic equivalent of the Sargasso Sea, with reality TV reruns, rained-off test matches which cause Channel 9 to rerun 10-year-old games, and reruns of old cooking shows.
Yes, Keegan owns a TV set. Also a DVD player. Thank gods for DVDs.
And now, I'm on my way to the kitchen, to brew some more echinacea tea.
To divert myself from the fact my left ear is killing me, I turn my threadbare attention to the few pages I have left to prepare for the upcoming website relaunch; and today I tackle the subject of gay science fiction. (It's either that, or proofread AQUAMARINE, and right now I think the virus in my ear is trying to get into my sinuses, and since I'm seeing double I wouldn't trust myself to proofread a laundry list.)
The gay SF I've ben talking about for the last hour or so is print-media ... books. I'd been wondering if I would take on the challenge of gay SF in movies and TV, but decided to leave it alone for the moment, because it can be such an aggravating topic. For example, don't get me started on Star Trek. It's very easy to blow breakers on that subject ... which is to say, how is it possible to do 28 full SEASONS of an *SF* show, and never have so much as a single gay guest character, never mind a series regular?! Then again, STARGATE is up to 14 seasons, counting SG1 and Atlantis, and if there's been a gay guest character, I must have blinked when s/he bolted through.
Speaking of Trek, cheers to George Takei, everyone's favorite starship driver, who is wedding his partner of many years, with the welcome shift in California's gay marriage laws. Wonderful stuff.
So, I stuck with novels for the Gay SF discussion; but the 'research' I did for the backgrounding did land me on some interesting websites ... which just pointed out how thin on the ground gay SF heroes are, because in order to get to Ten Favorite Gay SF Heroes, they had to count Frank N. Furter and Bunny Wigglesworth! Well, you could list them, I guess; but is ROCKY HORROR really SF? And I'm fairly sure ZORRO THE GAY BLADE is a comedy western. Will we stretch a point and call them fantasies? Hmmm.
All of which brings me around to wondering if any TV network in this state is going to be carrying the rest of TORCHWOOD, or if they've abandoned the show. It premiered in the 9:30 timeslot, migrated to past-midnight, and vanished without a trace. South Australia is notorious for this kind of reception of TV science fiction. Even STARGATE, which is smash-hit by local standards, is late-late-late-show fare. FIREFLY was marooned in the same slot, and most of STAR TREK VOYAGER didn't seem to air down here at all ...
I hear you asking what South Aussies actually watch. There's a lot of football (by which I mean Aussie Rules, VFL, NFL, that sort of thing). If you're lucky, they'll squeak in a rugby game between the endless tennis tournaments and the reality TV, but only if it's Rugby League. Heaven help you if you have an insatiable lust for Rugby Union. The All Blacks versus the Springbocks? Be still, my beating heart ... not that any such game is likely to be seen on local free-to-air TV. Because the Wallabies aren't on the field. Fishing shows. Cooking. Lots of cooking. And one show where they yank the fish out and cook them right there on the boat -- I kid you not. It's called OUT OF THE BLUE, 'starring' the senior brother in the big local private fisheries company. The longer, warmer, dryer days of October bring a welcome end to the Aussie Rules season, and the beginning of the cricket season; TV becomes the pixelic equivalent of the Sargasso Sea, with reality TV reruns, rained-off test matches which cause Channel 9 to rerun 10-year-old games, and reruns of old cooking shows.
Yes, Keegan owns a TV set. Also a DVD player. Thank gods for DVDs.
And now, I'm on my way to the kitchen, to brew some more echinacea tea.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Getting artistic on you
We're working hard to put the last finishing touches to the new website before it goes 'live' in a couple of weeks. This afternoon's endeavor was the 'send an e-card' segment, which works beautifully, is extremely friendly, and colorful. Check this out:
We did over thirty 'cards,' which use the artwork from bookcovers and the calendar. They're quite eye-catching. I'm impressed ...
...and this is also a chance to show around some of the very new artwork, such as the cover for the 2008 edition of AQUAMARINE. Oh, yes, I'm proofing it. Even after all these years I can't believe what happened with the Millivres edition. Put yourself in the writer's shoes for a moment (or his hat, if you prefer), and imagine that the manuscript you turned in was published just as-is, without even a fresh pair of eyeballs to proofread it and pick up whatever typos! I'd been waiting to get the galley back, so I could go over it myself, and what did I receive? A box of presentation copies! Jaw hit ground, heart stood still for a moment, and then I do believe I screamed. Hmmm. [sound of sighing]
The chance to go back into AQUAMARINE and take another crack at it is very welcome. This will be the next Keegan book online, and it'll be up in July. (I have a mammoth amount of work to do on other projects, but this one is easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. The last time I read this novel was about seven years ago, and I always liked these characters a lot.)
One of the jobs I have waiting for me is to sit down and talk lucidly (ha!) for an hour or two with the designers from DreamCraft. Subject: the NARC armor. The bloody NARC riot armor. Which has become another cause for screaming. No matter how the helmet is drawn, it's not right ... it's weird; I can 'see' it in my mind's eye, but the instant it drops to two dimensions on paper, it's wrong. Or at least, not right. What I see is something oddly graceful and yet deadly with menace.
A few folks have wondered if the armor from IRON MAN is close to what I see as the NARC armor ... and it is, and it isn't. (Incidentally, I liked the movie a lot. If anyone was asking moi, I'd have to say it's the best Marvel movie since the first X-MEN, and Robert Downey Jr. is so perfectly cast as that dissipated heap of debauchery, Tony Stark, the casting could have been done in heaven. If you haven't seen the movie yet: see it on the big screen if you can. It'll look great on DVD, but this is one film which really uses the massive screen, and is advantaged by it. And yes, it's a power trip. I get a very similar kick out of it as I do from the NARC stories ... and that's saying a lot. Kudos to Marvel on this one; cheers also to Robert D., who pulled a neat trick of acting with the character change in the middle of the picture. You really dislike him in the first reel, and the fact is, you don't have a lot of sympathy for him when he gets caught by his own weapon and taken prisoner. Rather than have him change utterly and become a moralizing goodie-two-shoes, the writers had him LEARN, and WAKE UP. In the last couple of reels, the character of Tony is still an SOB, still dissipated, but he's also a nice guy. I found the character very believable. As for the suit -- it's fun. It's only meant to be fun. Leave your grasp of physics in the bottom of your coat pocket, along with the turned-off cell phone and the cough candy (yes, it's mid-winter here. Cough drops. Donte leave home without them).
I'll paste in one more picture here, and leave you for today ... got to get some work done...
We did over thirty 'cards,' which use the artwork from bookcovers and the calendar. They're quite eye-catching. I'm impressed ...
...and this is also a chance to show around some of the very new artwork, such as the cover for the 2008 edition of AQUAMARINE. Oh, yes, I'm proofing it. Even after all these years I can't believe what happened with the Millivres edition. Put yourself in the writer's shoes for a moment (or his hat, if you prefer), and imagine that the manuscript you turned in was published just as-is, without even a fresh pair of eyeballs to proofread it and pick up whatever typos! I'd been waiting to get the galley back, so I could go over it myself, and what did I receive? A box of presentation copies! Jaw hit ground, heart stood still for a moment, and then I do believe I screamed. Hmmm. [sound of sighing]
The chance to go back into AQUAMARINE and take another crack at it is very welcome. This will be the next Keegan book online, and it'll be up in July. (I have a mammoth amount of work to do on other projects, but this one is easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. The last time I read this novel was about seven years ago, and I always liked these characters a lot.)
One of the jobs I have waiting for me is to sit down and talk lucidly (ha!) for an hour or two with the designers from DreamCraft. Subject: the NARC armor. The bloody NARC riot armor. Which has become another cause for screaming. No matter how the helmet is drawn, it's not right ... it's weird; I can 'see' it in my mind's eye, but the instant it drops to two dimensions on paper, it's wrong. Or at least, not right. What I see is something oddly graceful and yet deadly with menace.
A few folks have wondered if the armor from IRON MAN is close to what I see as the NARC armor ... and it is, and it isn't. (Incidentally, I liked the movie a lot. If anyone was asking moi, I'd have to say it's the best Marvel movie since the first X-MEN, and Robert Downey Jr. is so perfectly cast as that dissipated heap of debauchery, Tony Stark, the casting could have been done in heaven. If you haven't seen the movie yet: see it on the big screen if you can. It'll look great on DVD, but this is one film which really uses the massive screen, and is advantaged by it. And yes, it's a power trip. I get a very similar kick out of it as I do from the NARC stories ... and that's saying a lot. Kudos to Marvel on this one; cheers also to Robert D., who pulled a neat trick of acting with the character change in the middle of the picture. You really dislike him in the first reel, and the fact is, you don't have a lot of sympathy for him when he gets caught by his own weapon and taken prisoner. Rather than have him change utterly and become a moralizing goodie-two-shoes, the writers had him LEARN, and WAKE UP. In the last couple of reels, the character of Tony is still an SOB, still dissipated, but he's also a nice guy. I found the character very believable. As for the suit -- it's fun. It's only meant to be fun. Leave your grasp of physics in the bottom of your coat pocket, along with the turned-off cell phone and the cough candy (yes, it's mid-winter here. Cough drops. Donte leave home without them).
I'll paste in one more picture here, and leave you for today ... got to get some work done...
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