First draft of novel: Done, yay!

Second draft of novel: Working on it.

Beat sheeting out the rest of the novel to get the 147k novel under control and focus.

I'm moving away for posting to LJ.

I'll be posting directly to RKB Writes for the foreseeable future.

The cross posting between the two has been fine but overall, I think it's time to shift things.

Extant on CBS is SyFy’s Helix for women. Minus the vampire vectors and the black goo.

It stars Halle Berry as an astronaut, Molly Woods in space on a 13 month mission when suddenly, something happens!

Back on Earth she re-adjusts with her inventor husband and their robot child she until the NASA doc played by Camryn Manheim tells her some news: she’s pregnant!

But how can this be? She can’t have kids!

Meanwhile, her superiors have a shadowy boss played by Hiroyuki Sanada who played a shadowy boss on Helix.

Meanwhile, her hubby happily shows off his learning robot child until someone during the demonstration bluntly asks: And what’s the contingency if they all go Skynet on us? He blows a gasket since this robot isn’t a robot it’s a child.

But it turns out everything will be fine due to shadowy boss is going to fund the hubby’s research privately, shadowy.

Meaneahile, someone is lurking in the ever concealing shadows outside their home and it turns out to be . . .

Sorry, I won’t ruin the entire pilot.

Mostly due to we’re running out of tropes to use.

I didn’t catch The Astronaut’s Wife, so I can’t make comparisons . . .

Having said all this, I enjoyed Extant so long as I ignore the use of flashbacks the began and started with a iris in and out and ignore the fact they didn’t open the show with the inciting event that should have kicked off the show.

The space station set was nicely done. The rotating ring to zero-G was perfect. And the inciting event was very . . . Contact comes to mind.

Yes, I’m backseat writing.

Backseat writing meaning: Hook your audience in the first 5 minutes. You want edgy but not bloody edgy. You want fun without the technobabble.

I wanted a linear plot and I got a show with flashbacks that were completely unneeded.

Sci-Fi is my bread and butter. I’d watch a show like this, The Last Ship and Leftovers until the end even if there are clunker episodes because those shows are still better than what’s on network television.

If this show had been on AMC, FX or SyFy, Halle would’ve been in a rubber room ala E.T. or The Stand.

And that’s the widening gulf that shouldn’t exist between network and cable television shows.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

This list pretty much covers what’s been happening recently.

To give everyone an update on everything: I’ve been writing a science fiction/space opera manuscript for close to four years and I’m coming up on my 1 year anniversary of doing it full time while freelancing on the side as a graphic designer.

At the end of last year I figured out I needed to go back and re-write the first third.

Now, we’re at the second third which is already written.

I’ve been turning the train so to speak to straightening things out and at the end of one chapter Melinda disappears for a good three chapters.

Someone else takes the stage and before I got any deeper the alarm bells went off.

Three chapters wasn’t deep, they were already written so I just dragged them off into a folder in Scrivener.

I edited Melinda back in for the next three chapters and then she disappears which makes a ton more sense now because now everyone has something to fight for and she gets closer to what’s going on.

My daily walks have been helping plot things out. Besides burning through Writing Excuses, Self Publishing, Nerdist Writer’s Panel, Sword and Laser , Aisha Tyler and Children of Tendu podcasts it gives me time to think things through. The guys at Writing Excuses brought this ritual up this morning.

No word count due to shuffling chapters. I’ve been adding finished chapters one at a time into Scrivener so if the K count drops by 10-20k it’s because three chapters like those I mentioned above got pulled.

78k-ish is the count right now.

In non-novel news…

Last month, the Writing Group switched over to critiquing manuscripts. Bennett North did the honors and on Saturday we’ll see how that turned out. I think this is natural turning point for the group. A lot of us are working on long form work and I think we’ll have enough to last us until the holidays.

Weaver will be done in time for September’s meet up.

SDCC is next week and I’m not going. I’m 50% happy, 50% unhappy and %100 trilled I won’t be footing the bill for that week long trip to Nerd Prom.

Boston Con is the second week of August and I’m tempted on treating myself since my birthday is right around the corner.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

I spent most of yesterday plotting out the next twenty chapters of Weaver. Half of those twenty are already written and just need to be adjusted accordingly.

We’ve entered the middle third of the book that was already written before I went back to fix the first third.

I’m feeling good about the middle third.

I dropped enough foreshadowing in the first third to cover the middle.

The final third is a little squishy and needs the most help.

That brings the Where Weavers Daire K BAR count to:

My deadline is July 4th.

Camp NaNoWrimo begins in July.

My hope is to get Weaver done and work on the spin-off that the writing group liked.

It would appear neither myself or Bennett North got into the Amtrak’s Residency. Glad to see I’m good company.

Association of Rhode Island Authors is having a Meet and Greet at Warwick Public Library on August 9th.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

So as the E3 continues to roll on, the Ubisoft fallout over no playable women characters continues on blogs from Bennett North‘s to Chuck Wendig.

I hope James Therien isn’t the biggest whiner in the world because his sound bytes sure sound like he’s biggest whiner, ever.

Did some fact checking via the web*: Aveline de Grandpré from Assassins Creed III and Black Flag was a playable character.

So that means, all the code these whiners are complaining about is already in the computer.

And sure, it may take a while to “update” aka spend time but it’s already been done.

If the code for a playable female character is already in the computer why are we even having this conversation?

Instead of continuing with the playable female character that had been a plus for Ubisoft like it was for BioWare when female Shepard popularity shot through the roof, instead, we get a speed bump and negative traction on social media.

MMORPGs have been doing player customization for years while console games have struggled to catch up to make sure their On-Line version can be played out of the box. Patches come later.

Personally, I enjoy customizing characters. I’d rather get shot by someone different then just a different tinted Master Chief.

Why isn’t Cortana a playable character? It’d be fun to get killed by a giant blue naked A.I.. She’s a reverse Dr. Manhattan.

Hell, even EVE On-line got into it.

Downloadable Content (DLC), Season Passes and pre-order to play XYZ character is unfortunately the next big thing.

I say unfortunately for several reasons: 1. I want to customize and choose playable characters (like Harley Quinn) out of the box. 2. Oh, right, is this extra feature going to work next year when the iteration of the game drops? Question 3. See question 2.

Question 2 is big problem if like me you play Call of Duty Games.

Call of Duty has become a annual national holiday in upon itself. And none of the DLC’s or levels are portable.

Player customization for sandbox games like GTA, Saint’s Row, Watchdogs and Dead Rising is half the fun of these games. It should be half the fun of any game. Code and time be damned.

Tiger Woods’s golf games have character creation trees that put WOW to shame. **

Ubisoft should be able fix this problem by the time the next game launches. Ask for forgiveness and pledge that playable female characters will be on their to-do list going forward.

Hey, if Microsoft can dump the Kinect out of Xbox One then Ubisoft can do this.

If they can’t and if their upcoming game The Division has no playable female characters then it’s more than time to start a letter writing campaign.

Maybe get Aiysha Tyler to knock some sense into them…

* If I got my facts wrong, I blame the web. Move along.
** Yes, I’m repeating myself with that Tiger Woods line.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

Chapter 17.

I haven’t said that in a while.

Last week was good to me. First, I figured out how to fix Chapter 5.

Chapter 5 was supposed to be revealed throughout the book but I figured out how to use it as a chapter instead. It introduced Melinda’s supporting cast better than what I had done in Chapter 6.

So all the chapters got bumped up one then I hit the call to action for Melinda and then hit the old section of chapters I had written previously.

So all in all a good week.

That brings the Where Weavers Daire K BAR count to:

Now begins the task of writing the next chapter to bring all the characters together for the introduction of the big bad.

Once that chapter is done it’s back to the already written chapters.

In non-novel news:

Myself and Bennett North went to the book launch party for Rhode Island local author Heather Rigney for her book: Waking the Merrow.

I had met her at The Elephant Room a few months back when I was slogging through the re-writes of Weaver.

The place was packed.

For a self published book, Heather did everything right.

The cover looks good, edited and the price for the dead tree version is a perfect price and not bloated like some other soft cover books I’ve seen.

I highly recommend it.

And go see Edge of Tomorrow.

It’s a fun movie and not just a excuse to go and enjoy the air conditioned theater like The Lone Ranger was last year.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

Live. Die. Repeat.

Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s book with the title All You Need Is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow is directed by Doug Liman and stars Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and a cast of rememberable grunts fighting off hordes of alien spaghetti monsters called Mimics.
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Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

Scott Kurtz from PVP Webcomic covered a lot of the misgivings I had with X-Men Days of Future Past. I’ll try and find other things to complain about.

If you haven’t seen X-Men: First Class, I recommend watching it because it’s a breath of fresh air after X3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Read my review of it: here.

X-Men: Days of Future Past assembles both casts and directed by Bryan Singer who directed X-Men 1+2. The plot is bumpy because the movie doesn’t know what it wants to be.
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Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

Chapter 11 is done.

Chapter 12 is next on deck.

Chapter 13 should be where we last left off with Spence.

So, if the word count bumps up a lot it means we’re hitting chapters I’d already written.

It means my re-writes of the first 1/3 of the book are nearly complete. It feels nice to be able to say that.

That brings the Where Weavers Daire K BAR count to:

Since Kameron Hurley tweeted about it I’ll pass it onto you, it’s called The Spreadsheet of Shame. For those NaNoWrimo peeps, you probably already have a few copies of this lying around.

If you’re a spreadsheet time of person and if Scrivener’s word count window feels tame then this is for you.

My X-Men: Days of Future Past review will go tomorrow evening sometime.

Watchdogs will be picked up tomorrow and will have to wait until I’ve got more chapters under my belt.

In non-writing news: Any New England businesses looking to sponsor a local sporting event, 401 R.E.G.I.M.E.N. Classic Amateur Boxing Showcase taking place on August 2, 2014 in Providence, R.I. at the Bank of America City Center in the Providence Rink is looking for sponsors.

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.

 

I had one of those days at Empire Tea and Coffee where I just stared at my screen and nothing came out.

It happens to all of us. Writer’s Block. Your muse decides to up and leave you.

Happened during NaNoWrimo one year and I just hit page break and wrote something I knew.

A few nights later, the muse bonked me on the head and I threw up a 1st person POV Urban Fantasy take on the Weaver Verse set in Providence, RI.

It wasn’t the first attempt at this. I had been scurrying away ideas for a 3rd person omniscient urban fantasy / spy thriller for a while and came this close to posting a chapter on Wattpad.

But as Bennett North so eloquent put in a blog post: You cannot be a good writer without first being a terrible one. Followed up by making a good impression.

So, 8k later, the writing group said it was both fun and needed work (as all first drafts do).

I’ll be plotting it out better than Weaver.

I came back to Weaver and edited Chapters 2-9.

Shifted scenes around and in time came back to the end of Chapter Nine and feeling much better about it now.

That brings the Where Weavers Daire K BAR count is:

In other Weaver News: I kicking around the idea of a graphic novel adaption.

Going to Emerald City Comic Con got the idea rolling around that a graphic novel would be a good showcase of an artist/writer team since some of the bigs are looking for examples.

First must finish the novel then finish comic script.

Chapter Ten tomorrow…

Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.