A book to vote for.

My friend Serena Cairns has written a wonderful book called Father of Lies.
If you like a little theological mystery with your paranoid conspiracy theories, you may be interested in reading it?
Lionel Fanthorpe said the story was "A thought-provoking narrative, superbly written, tense and challenging."

Please vote for it in The Book Awards.

thebookawards - Father of Lies

The Doctor's Wife

I love Neil Gaiman's brain.

'nuff said.

STORMHOUSE

Check out the teaster trailer for Jason Arnopp's awesomeness....
(er, well, it sounded good in my head)

New horror film, that I plan to see/own.

In 2002, the military captured and imprisoned a supernatural entity:


So when's it out on DVD/Blueray Jason? Huh? Huh? Hurry up!

PSYCHOVILLE

Thursday - BBC2, 10pm.

Psychoville (series 2) - If you like surreal, dark/black humour it is well worth a look see.

Also currently available on iPlayer, if you missed it.

Now that series 1 has already set up most of the characters and their flaws, - I enjoyed series 1 a lot. - series 2 promises to be truly outstanding! - - Mind you, this is just a guess (from half way through the first episode via iPlayer). But I'm extremely impressed. :) And had to blog about it!

EXILE

Exile - BBC1, 9pm.

It's running for three consecutive nights. If you missed the first one you can catch it on iPlayer, I expect.

I enjoyed it ... if that means anything at all to you.

It's advertised as a Thriller by the promoters ... certainly the drama is very good, with plenty of questions to ask yourself and encourage you to keep watching to find out the answers. :)
Great acting too - it's worth watching for that alone! But it has sooo much more. :)

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Doesn't matter how many eggs you've got - without a chicken to sit on 'em, you're unlikely to get anymore chickens ...

...

Unless you get one of those heat lamp type nest box thingies? And you've a got a manual to tell you what temperature won't turn them into meringues.


...

I may be suffering some insanity at the moment? ... Mind you, that's normal for me.

RIGHT! BACK TO WRITING!

Solar roads for electric cars

NOW THAT IS A CONCEPT!

Check out this post by Jim Henshaw which includes a You Tube vid that you need to watch.

I'll just try to.... - -



Woah! Neato! It worked! Sorry, I shall just pass out from shock.

Anyway, well cool - why ain't the UK leading the way with this? Huh? Huh?

UK Film Council to be axed

UK Film Council is falling under the axe? This is a huge mistake, surely? They are killing off one branch of an industry that stands a chance of getting us through the financial mess we are in by creating investment and, theoretically, profit.

If Tim Bevan thinks it's a bad idea, that's pretty much good enough for me. I suggest that Working Title have their finger on the pulse, so if he ain't happy....

Well anyway, what ever you reckon, in my book it's a bad move.

When they could save 2 billion (yeah, count those zeros) in the NHS per year, every year, by scrapping the Anti-cholesterol campaign - run by a bunch of nutters with no evidence but a theory they think sounds good? [Lower your cholesterol and the evidence suggests that you are wiping out one of your body's main defense systems and raising your chances of death, from all causes!] Well IMO, the powers that be are nuts for backing such madness.

Want to know more? Read: the Great Cholesterol Con, the truth about what really causes heart disease and how to avoid it by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, ISBN: 978-1-84454-610-7.

Or you could read the books on the subject by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov.

Or if you prefer a layman's take, you could read the works of Barry Groves - although you may find his Trick And Treat, Why Healthy Eating Is Making Us Ill a little too full of scientific references and studies, and disturbing information to be the easiest read in the world, Natural Heath and Weight Loss is a much easier ride.

Personally if you like a dark, mildly sick sense of humour with your science, Dr Kendrick's book is very accessible to the layman, and has a tonne of medical facts and references. This dude knows his stuff. Check it out.

Seriously!

We're are all being taken for a huge ride by big industry, who want to sell more statins - You think you suffer from paranoid conspiracy theories, check out the way these guys operate - It ain't paranoia, and it ain't a theory. They are the dudes that fund the flawed studies by organisations like WHO (not the band), that the government take their expert advice from. !? W.T.F.!!!

Sorry. Platform. GRRRRRRRRRR!!! Anyhow, read the books. Check out http://thincs.org/

I'm off to grind my teeth.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!


...............
EDIT: 27 Feb 2011
The need to rant some more has raised it's ugly head again, so, just to add to the who cholesterol debate - for passers by who may want to know:

The mortality tables show that low cholesterol is linked to a higher death rate from all causes.
You might want to think about that before tucking into your cholesterol lowering death-spread?

Sherlock

Bit like Doctor Who, but different. ?
I really enjoyed it. Gold stars to all involved. :) MORE, PLEASE?

And we were all thinking, "What you do not smell is called iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadlier poisons known to man...."

And the best thing is, we'll never know! (Unless they reveal it next time? I hope not.)

*evil laughter*

What? It's waaay passed my bedtime.

I'm busy doing nothing....

Jason has a great post on THINKING. Which I discovered just now while I was procrastinating as I tried to avoid that very subject - or even as I was immersing myself in it. Not sure which. They tend to be the same thing with me.
You divide your brain up into parts and trick the smallest part into thinking it is actively engaged in something, while the rest of it mulls over stuff. And then suddenly the main part of the brain derails the smaller part, and you put down whatever crap you were distracting yourself with and THE WRITING starts to flow ... At the start of a project this is ideas and inspirations (which I have to write down quick before they vanish); and then later in the project the sieving, refining, focusing, initial plotting; then later again reworking, recombining, replotting, deleting, refocusing, and finally; I start the typing/scribbling part of the process, during which I usually go through all the previous stages several times AGAIN!
Which maybe is why it can take me FOREVER to actually complete a story*.
However when the characters start talking to you it can really speed all of this up, because you already have a 'lock' on the story, whether you realize it consciously or not.
*Or sometimes less than two months (for a two hour feature), start to finish, when the writing really takes over and your active brain has vanished into the mist of creation. And the majority of that two months is thinking time.
Hmmm.

And now I must go write.

Screenplay by Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski

Ninja Assassin, never has a DVD cover seemed so unpromising, and yet....

SPOILERS!!!


...


Go watch it.







BIG ARSE SPOILERS!!!


Why does he not have his own school already? ... 8th level faces 10th level Master, then turns 9th right before he is split down the back. 10th level Master kills girly right before 9th level, who then spontaneous converts to 11th* level and twats the f*cker.

... And then I wonder how this film is so good, and the credits come up.
- - Oh.

That's why.

NEED TO GET THIS FILM.

...Seriously. ... If you ignored the spoiler warnings and read on, you need to go watch/buy this film. It fulfills the promise of the title - - when it could have so easily have fulfilled the promise of the cover and been crap.

Genius.**



*I'm using the Spinal Tap speaker scale here, rather than any martial arts official scale, because my knowledge of martial arts sucks. And lets face it, each martial art uses a different scale anyhoo.

**Mind you I am half way through an extremely good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon (which I usually say "meh" too, but this one is superb: Rockford Valley, Australia, 2003. They know how to grow a grape.) which may be colouring my opinion. But I'm fairly certain the film is going to be just as good on the utterly sober rewatch, tomorrow afternoon.

Really good wine, utterly great film. What more could you want?

By the by - "Bottle Shock" as recommended by Jim Henshaw is a pretty good 104 minutes, too.

Motivation and rewards....

Jim Henshaw has posted a really interesting short animation about productivity - by RSA Animate, called DRIVE.

I thought you might want to go take a look, if you haven't seen it already?

Need a stunt man?

Check out Vinnie Wilson's showreel.

He's looking for more hours on film to go towards his quota for joining the guild. So if you need someone to: set on fire, or throw off a building, drag behind a car, or just kick the crap out of Jackie Chan style, Vince is your man!

Enjoy the showreel!
(The 2008 showreel and the Year In China showreel are also worth a look see.)

You can also visit his website to find out more. www.VinnieWilson.com

MISFITS on E4

Misfits 4oD has previous episodes available on catchup here

It's dark and brilliant. If you are unaware of it, go check it out.

Girl Number 9

I'm taking a brief procrastination break from the final edit of the second Tarot book, to let you know that Danny Stack has a great post which reminded me about the internet sensation Girl Number 9.

So if like me you don't tweet - 'cause face it there are more than enough other ways to procrastinate, or you do but you missed it, then now is the time to check it out.

All the episodes are free to view on the Girl Number 9 official website until the end of November and after that you can purchase the DVD with lots of behind the scenes goodies on board.

YAY! :)

Do you really want to be a writer?

Michelle Lipton has a great post discussing what you might want to take into consideration if you decide you really, really do want to be a screenwriter. Or, alternatively, if you already know in your bones that you are a writer, and you think maybe script writing is for you, then you really should read what she has to say. IMO. (click on her name above)

There are plenty of other screenwriters out there posting on the net that you might want to familiarise yourself with too - check out the links, over on the right.

The key concept is SELF EMPLOYED. Which is likely to go hand in hand with full time, or part-time, work as an employee in a day job that pays for the roof over your head and the food on your table. Because writing takes a long time to bear fruit - Terry Pratchett told me he couldn't give up the day job until he'd published his 6th book. In the event he waited until he had 7 books out, to be safe. (I quizzed him briefly at a book signing several years back as he kindly put his signature on my latest prized purchase.)
Even Phillip Barron has a day job, ask him, go-on. He may kill me. LOL.

Phill has an excellent post on:

Format

If you've been having a rant about how scripts are supposed to be formatted, you should seriously go and read the above post. Follow the link you lazy writery types!

Happiness is the return of someone you really miss.

Philip Morton is back!

The future playground?

So how is the film/tv/internet story venue changing?

We are currently in the process of changing over to a new business model - from 'scarcity controlled' to experience based 'when you want it, where you want it, how you want it'.
Interesting times for anyone in the visual media business.

Barrett Garese has an essay on the subject you might find interesting, here.

Creativity comes when you call.

Steve has this gem in his current post:
"I think the most important thing here is something I've always known but it can be difficult to convince yourself: Making the decision to create is what actually makes the creativity flow. It's not the external thing that many people would like to think. It comes from you and your decision."

For years I've convinced myself I can't write poetry unless the Muse hits, but then I don't generally want to try writing poetry most of the time anyway. So not a problem.
When it comes to story writing though, I realise I've been doing something similar: somehow seeing the delay-time needed to get into character as an external factor working on me rather than being a fully internal process that I can control.

Getting in to the heads of the people that you are writing ...
Craig Mazin has a great post on this You Need To Be A Little Insane, go read it!
... while I definitely didn't have this under the same Muse-only category, I know I can force myself in to it; it is just hard work and serious concentration to put myself back in the correct shoes until I've got to know the characters well enough that they start talking to me.

Plot is also a sit down and make it happen thing for me, but generally so intimately linked to character ... I find I create both as I go along, and I generally don't get the story locked down in any real way until I'm about three quarters of the way through the story outline/treatment. And I find I can't start writing "good" dialogue until the characters are talking and acting/reacting of their own free will.

I think this is part of why it takes me so long to write anything on spec.
[Does this make me a method writer, rather than just a writer? No. Wrong analogy. ... Ah ha!*]
And I know that this is where the gap lies between being a professional writer whose career and money earning come from writing, and a writer who just writes.
And that is something I've been wrestling with for years.

I want to be a professional writer. I'm going to have to refine my approach even further. *sigh* At least I've twigged this part of it consciously now. *rolls eyes* Took me long enough.
Thanks for the inspiration Steve! :)

*The Ah ha! was me realising that I need to embrace my insanity rather than shy away from it. ... Which might make me even odder than I already am. Ah f*ck it! We're all unique in our own special ways, mine just might be a bit more special. ;)