I was fortunate to be invited to Google+, the new social media dealy-bobber that everyone’s talking about. Why is everyone talking about it? No idea. I haven’t seen one article that says why the big deal, besides that it’s Google. But it doesn’t matter, I know the reason: everyone’s wondering if it’s going to be a Facebook killer. People are wondering if the Facebook king can be toppled. Facebook permeates everyone’s lives these days. It’s a genius app and it’s making Markie Z a ton of money. (Can you imagine what a kid with that much money now is going to be like in twenty years?) Anyway, the big debate…
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Graphic Novelists Make Good Writers
I have discovered something quite interesting. Actually, I discovered it a long time ago, just haven’t written about it. Graphic novelists make really good writers. I mean really good. All of my favorite authors, the ones with books I could read over and over again, started off as comic book writers. Those authors are Richard Kadrey, Peter David, Neil Gaiman, and Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash was originally going to be a graphic novel, and it sure reads like one). There may be others that I don’t know of. I don’t know what it is about the comic style that makes good novelists. Maybe you learn a lot about pacing and…
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Authors I Would Like To Have Dinner With
Neil Gaiman – We could go out for tea (authentic British tea that doesn’t suck like American tea, or so he says) and real sushi (which I never get because my wife is afraid of raw food, so I have to get the kind from the supermarket). I could ask him about all the cool stuff he’s done, like movies and have a panda on his lap. And how he did his writing with his kids around and what it’s like living a public life as a writer and private life as a parent. I want to talk about how he plots, because he has a talent for making every…
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Kaiju Story Being Dropped
I’ve made a decision to drop Kaiju Story for now. I’ve read the reviews. Some were favorable, some were not. There was a lot of conflicting information. But it pointed there were many fundamental problems with the plot and characters that couldn’t be resolved in simple revising. It’s like three stories in one – documentary, science fiction, and horror. The beginning does not match the end. And moreover, I just got annoyed with the story itself. I didn’t want to waste time polishing a turd when there were more interesting things to write. And it’s not because I’m done with Black Hole Son, because I started on Old Dragonslayer Story…
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The Books I Read: January – March 2009
While I’m wool-gathering brain-storming researching develop the background for Mermaid Story, let’s take a look at the books I read this past quarter. Coraline by Neil Gaiman I discovered this online for free shortly before the movie came out, although that’s not really relevant since I haven’t seen it yet. It’s a good book, good children’s story. Like Alice in Wonderland if it was directed by Tobe Hooper. There’s something about the “Person falls into Magic World” that’s still appealing, and Gaiman’s done it thrice now (Coraline for the kids, Mirrormask for the teens, and Neverwhere for the adults). He does a good job of starting out as mundane, moving…
