Dart Publishing

Dart Publishing, Ltd. is the official name of the business I’ve been trying to get started with my friend for a while now. We’ve made huge leaps recently, thanks in part to having some extra time due to the Crispy Gamer implosion. I’m very nearly done with the first draft of the business plan, and will be sending it out to a few folks I know with way more business experience than I have, in order to get their feedback on it. From there, it’ll be revisions, and then probably applying for some local grants. Investor money is good, but free money is even better. Might as well look for that first, right?

Writing

Last month I finished not one, but two novels — my NaNoWriMo projects from 2007 and 2009, “The Broken God Machine” and “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters,” respectively. If anyone out there wants to read the first draft of The Broken God Machine, it’s ready for criticism. Just get in touch. I still need to make some tweaks to Monster Hunters before I open it up for critique from the outside world, but that should be happening soon. I’m also making some progress on the second draft of the sequel to The Blood That Bonds, currently titled “Blood Hunt.” I expect work on that to speed up significantly once I’m no longer spending my coffee shop time filling out competitive analysis forms and burn-rate spreadsheets for Dart. Speaking of TBTB …

The Blood That Bonds

I haven’t had too many responses in my agent search, and so far the responses I’ve had haven’t been positive. I’m not particularly discouraged — people are still reading the eBook and sending very positive feedback — but I’m beginning to wonder if I should revise the first chapter a little to make it a bit more attention-grabbing right from the start. There’s a little too much opening exposition and I think it’s turning agents off. We’ll see.

Photography

Unfortunately, the broken 18-55mm lens that I fixed with superglue for a while has broken again, so we’re stuck only using a distance lens on our camera, which is a pain in the ass, so we’re not taking many pics at the moment. I need to get off my ass and either re-fix the lens using a better piece of plastic (and more superglue), or just cough up the ~$140 it costs to buy a new one. Why does everything have to be so damn expensive these days? Blargh! Rotten kids … GET OFF MY LAWN!

Cocktails

I went on a bit of a beer kick the past few months, trying lots of craft beers and really strengthening my understanding and appreciation of the different types available (turns out I am way more of an ale guy than a lager guy, with a particular fondness for brown ales, porters, and stouts). I’m coming out of that now though and getting back to crafting new cocktails. I’m still experimenting right now, but when I come up with something good, I’ll post it here.

Video Games

I went out and picked up BioShock 2 the other night at my wife’s urging (one of many reasons why I married her!) and have been playing through it. I’ll post a full review here when I’m finished, but I’m pretty far in and while I’m enjoying it, I’m kind of disappointed in how much more they’ve chosen to focus on combat. You’re constantly being swarmed with enemies, and while I’m not dying a lot, it’s just not a whole lot of fun to be in non-stop firefights. After BioShock 2, I’ll be picking up Mass Effect 2, and Assassin’s Creed 2 … apparently it’s all about the sequels right now.

Reading

Sadly, given how many activities I have going on, I haven’t done much reading since Christmas, when I burned through Bill Simmons’s Book of Basketball in a week or so. I’ve got three novels and a short story collection all waiting for my attention, not to mention a non-fiction book on real estate investing that I really should finish

French

Mon francais n’est pas superb … but it’s getting better. I do a half an hour of studying per day almost every weekday, and Charlotte and I are beginning to try to speak to each other more in French. We’ve also found some French cultural events to go to around town, and I’m about to start in on French grammar in addition to speaking/listening. It’s still a halting, frustrating process — I don’t like being bad at things — but all these little steps should hopefully add up to me being able to hold something of a coherent conversation with her friends and family back in the homeland, sometime within the next couple of years. Hopefully!

Travel

Speaking of the homeland, Charlotte and I will be making another France trip in May. Her sister is getting married in the south of France, which gives us the opportunity to fly into Barcelona in Spain, and spent the next week driving to Toulouse (actually, the nearby town of Albi), where we’ll attend the wedding, hang out for another day or two, and then I’ll fly back while she goes to Paris to take her finals for the French Lit program she’s working on. We’ve also got a trip to Florida happening in March, to visit my parents and sister, and a trip to Syracuse happening … sometime. Then as summer rolls into fall, we’ve got a wedding in New York City and a wedding in New Hampshire (I think) to attend. Yeesh!

… So that’s what’s up with me, in case anyone was wondering!

Yes, that’s right. For the second time in my life, I decided to join in and try to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. I succeeded, hitting 50k on the 28th, and as of this post I’m over 53k. What’s pretty amazing is that I missed four days at the beginning of the month due to my New York trip, and three more over the course of the month due to preexisting social obligations. So I actually wrote 50,129 words in just 21 days, which is an average of 2,387 words per day … which is a lot! Big thanks to my lovely wife for keeping me on track and spending a lot of weekend mornings at the local coffee shop with me.

I think the story’s actually pretty good, too … definitely worth a second draft. It’s about a young girl who is attacked by a werewolf but manages to kill it and is subsequently recruited into a school of monster hunters. You can read an excerpt over at my NaNoWriMo Page if you’d like.

Unfortunately, all the writing and paperwork (not to mention Thanksgiving and our one-year wedding anniversary!) hasn’t left me a whole lot of time for other activities, like updating this blog or promoting The Blood That Bonds. Both of these things will be addressed in December, although I’m also going to try to keep writing on a regular basis, AND we’re celebrating Christmas in LA FRANCE this year, so there will be traveling and such getting in the way as well.

There’s just not enough time in the day, week, month and year, you know?

Much ado has been made over the current “vampire trend” and its potential longevity. People are curious: why and how have vampires become so popular? What has caused them to capture the fancy of the mainstream public after years of being appreciated mainly by fans of the horror genre? The answer to that question lies in the slow move from terror to sympathy that people have made over the past few decades, due in large part to the efforts of many authors, screenwriters, directors, and other artists.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, vampires were the bad guys. Remember those days? Dracula bending menacingly over a delirious Lucy Westenra; Kurt Barlow and his servant Mr. Straker slowly bringing the town of Salem’s Lot to ruin; Keifer Sutherland and his cronies menacing Corey Haim’s family … vampires were nearly always portrayed as voracious, evil killers …

If you’re interested in reading the rest, you can find it at Reading with a Bite. I think it’s a pretty solid essay, and of course I get to plug my book, The Blood That Bonds, as well! Thanks very much to Lindsay for the opportunity.

Oh, and the control to turn off the music that starts when the site loads is over on the right, a little bit down the page. ;)

]]> http://www.cerebraldebris.com/2009/09/29/the-blood-that-bonds-is-live/feed/ 0 http://www.cerebraldebris.com/2009/08/28/updates-on-my-projects/ http://www.cerebraldebris.com/2009/08/28/updates-on-my-projects/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:45:14 +0000 chris http://www.cerebraldebris.com/?p=1412 It’s been a bit since I talked about the various things that I’m doing, so I thought I’d give some updates. It’s been a very busy couple of months since I got to Indy (though I’ve still managed to find time to waste on a replay of Fallout 3!).

Dart Publishing

The personal business project that I moved here to work on is coming along — I’m working on a business plan, which is just about my least favorite thing in the world to do, but I think it’s a good exercise for me. Not only does it force me to think about the long-term goals of the company, but it also forces me to power through something I don’t love doing … which I’ll probably have to do a lot of if we ever get the company off the ground.

The Blood That Bonds eBook

Coming along! A lot of the art is finalized, and I’m beginning a project to also turn it into an audio book (read by yours truly). Just bought a really nice USB microphone for that exact purpose. I’m hoping to launch the site in mid-September. Here’s a sample pic to whet your appetite a bit!

The Fatass Project

Not coming along as rapidly as I’d like, but it is coming along. Down to 208, from a start of 213.5. Last couple of weeks have seen consistent loss tho, so it seems like I’ve reached a point where I’m paying enough attention to what I’m eating. Now to see if I can motivate myself to accelerate that with a gym membership.

Project Asimov

Oh, I don’t know … do you think this counts as “outrageous” yet?

The sideburns are long enough that I can now twist them into three spikes (on each side) using hair goop … tho I haven’t actually left the house looking like that. Maybe if I still have them at Halloween.

On a highly related note, I don’t mind the sideburns at all but I utterly despise the long hair. I cannot wait to shave 90% of it off at the end of September. Might keep the chops tho.

On a semi-related note, be prepared for pictures from the New York State Fair’s demolition derby, coming after labor day weekend. I’m going to dress up like a hick, drink cheap beer, and watch cars crash into each other. Should be ridiculous and awesome.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling really begins to embrace the darker tone that she first begins to explore in the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the result is a book that I found more engrossing than any of the first three. I like a little darkness, and I like that Rowling is unafraid to show that Harry exists in a dangerous world where people, both good and bad, are in possession of powers that can be extremely physically punishing to those at the receiving end.

Rowling continues to expand her compelling cast of characters, introducing new students both from within Hogwarts and from two other schools of wizarding, as well as several members of the Ministry of Magic. Two other new characters of note include the highly enjoyable “Mad-eye” Mooney, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and the highly obnoxious Rita Skeeter, an invasive journalist who’s not above making up large chunks of her stories.

We also get to hear from many old favorites, not the least of which being Potters’ inseparable friends Ron and Hermione, although the former proves at least semi-separable for a while as he battles with jealousy over Harry’s constant position in the limelight.

All of this is nice, but kind of expected by now. What’s impressive though is the deft way in which Rowling wraps many of these characters’ stories together and ties them into the central Goblet of Fire storyline. In this storyline, we learn that (as is par for the course), someone is trying to kill Harry. The assumption of course is that his premature entry into the extremely dangerous Tri-Wizard competition was orchestrated to accomplish this goal, and in a way it was … but not how Harry or anyone around him expects.

The book culminates with a confrontation that results in the first “on-screen” death of a character in Rowling’s universe and sets up some extremely important threads that will carry through the rest of the titles. It’s also the first book in the series to end with no indication of who won the house cup (or if it was even given out given the tragic circumstances of the Tri-Wizard competition), and no indication of who won the quiddich cup. I thought it was nice and realistic that these issues – so seemingly important in the earlier books – have taken a back seat to the life and death concerns that Rowling is introducing into the books.

I think this is the best of the Harry Potter books that I’ve read so far, and I’m looking forward to Order of the Phoenix.

View all my reviews >>

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really didn’t expect that it’d be so easy to find a book that’s even more depressing, startling, and at times outright uncomfortable than Requiem for a Dream, but all one really has to do is look to Selby’s earlier work, Last Exit to Brooklyn. Selby’s novel – itself more a series of novellas featuring related characters – is populated with drug-addled drag queens, prostitutes, thugs, and a particular union organizer who is an awful man in nearly every respect. That you end up feeling sympathy for nearly all of these characters, even said union organizer, is a testament to Selby’s remarkable ability to invest his characters with realism and humanity. These are deeply flawed people, all, but they’re still people, each with their own set of wants, needs, and dreams.

As in Requiem for a Dream, Selby’s writing style is light on punctuation and grammar, near stream-of-consciousness, and at times extremely difficult to read (the scenes near the end of one drag queen’s night out with “the girls” are borderline incoherent … an intentional effect). This makes it a bit tough to get into the book at first, but once your brain adapts, reading becomes pretty easy.

It’s easy to understand why this book caused so much controversy when it was released in the sixties. It contains enough sex, drugs, and profanity to ruffle many feathers today. That said, it never felt to me like Selby was trying to be exploitative. Rather, he was trying to paint an accurate picture of the kind of underworld that forms in cities, and was particularly prevalent in New York through much of the second half of the twentieth century. He brings you into these peoples lives and, without sentiment or sensationalism, shows you the world that they live in.

In all, I found the book engrossing and at times moving. These are not people you want to spend time with, and often not people you can identify with, but they are nonetheless human, each with their own tragedies, big and small. Like no other author I’ve ever read, Selby is able to express this without ever stating it outright, and for that his work demands respect and attention, no matter how vile its subject matter sometimes becomes.

View all my reviews >>

I’m not giving up on my dream of print publication for The Blood That Bonds, or my other work. I’ve wanted to have a book published since I was eleven years old, and there’s no reason to stop trying until it happens or I’m dead. However, I’ve decided to use the skills I possess that other authors perhaps don’t in order to help the people who might want to read it, find it. There are a lot of people out there who’ve written a vampire book … but how many of them are professional web designers and developers with over a decade of experience? Probably not too many. Why not leverage those abilities to take a route less-traveled to getting the book out there and noticed?

Which is why I registered TheBloodThatBonds.com and have spent my free time creating an entire website to promote the upcoming free release of the novel, in eBook formats (PDF, Kindle, iPhone and more), to whomever wants it. The site’s not quite done yet and is still locked down under a username and password, which is why I didn’t link it, but it’s very close to finished and I anticipate it will launch in mid-August. I’m really excited about this project, as I think it’s a chance to get my writing out to a much wider audience than it’s previously seen (I’ll be doing heavy promotion of the site and the book, trying to get blogs and sites all over the internet to link it, review it, etc). Hopefully some of that audience will be people with ties to the print industry who might want to publish the book in print … but if not, hey, at least people will be reading, and that’s the goal, right?

It’s time to get this thing out there. :)

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m going to go ahead and guess that my review of Twilight is going to sway neither the book’s legion of fans, nor its serious detractors. In all honesty, I’m kind of torn about reviewing the book at all. Its first-person protagonist is a seventeen year-old girl, and the book is very clearly angled at girls in their early-to-mid teens. I am a thirty-two year-old man, and thus am not exactly what one would call the target demographic.

I read the book because my wife advised me to, because I am author who is trying to get his vampire novel published, and she rightly figured that it couldn’t hurt to check out the book, and see what it does well. There ARE things that it does well, despite what some negative reviews might say. There are also many things that didn’t work for me, but may be right for the target audience. Then there are a few things that I think it does legitimately poorly … we’ll get to those.

So. What I liked:

I think — and again, I was never a girl, so I can’t be sure — that it does a good job of expressing the all-consuming strength of a young woman’s first love. Bella’s absolute obsession with Edward is driven home over and over (to the point of tedium for me). Less well-explained is why Edward feels so strongly for her, other than that she smells good, but you still at least get a strong sense of his desire both to love her and to chomp down on her neck, which creates some fun dramatic tension.

I also liked that each vampire had a special little power of their own, something they brought with them from their human lives. I thought the book got stronger as it went along, with the last sixty pages or so of the book, not counting the epilogue, being legitimately exciting and fun to read.

What I didn’t like:

The first 350 pages of the book are nearly a straight teen romance novel, and the first 100 pages or so are brutal even accepting that fact. There’s absolutely nothing happening, action-wise. Bella comes off as bitchy and unlikable. The writing is stilted and hasn’t yet found any sort of voice other than said bitchiness (few sentences have anything resembling stylistic flair). Again, this improves as the book goes on, almost as if Meyer is becoming more comfortable with her characters and the world she’s creating.

I also felt that Edward was too perfect. I realize the novel is more a romance than it is anything else, and this is a common approach to romance novels, but it makes him a less-likable character because basically his only flaw is that he can’t accept that he’s in love and just deal with it. I don’t mind him being gorgeous, or powerful, or intelligent, or charming, or witty, or sensual, or telepathic, or even some combination of these things, but all of them together create a character so flawless he’s hard to relate to.

The epilogue is hard to believe. I find it midly improbable that Bella’s dad would be easily forgiving of either She or Edward after what he had to go through. Also, Bella returns right back to being oblivious and kind of bitchy, as if she’s learned essentially nothing from her experience. I was hoping for a bit of character growth for both of the leads, but there’s little to be seen.

Overall, I think the book does a decent if unspectacular job of conveying a fairly typical first love story with a rather important twist. The last sixty pages or so, where the real meat of the action is, are better than the rest of the book. I have no plans to read the other three in the series, so I went ahead and read their synopses on the internet, and doing so basically reconfirmed that I’m not interested enough to read more. It seems, though, like Meyer understands her audience and has put together a series which they clearly enjoy.

If you’re old enough to drink — and not an aspiring author of vampire novels who likes to keep abreast of what’s happening in that genre — Twilight’s not terrible … but it’s probably not the right book for you.

View all my reviews.

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

While not quite as brimming with homoerotic undertones as the first in the series, Throne of Jade nonetheless presents the reader with plenty of repressed man-dragon love to go along with a few aerial battles, a murder plot, and an interesting encounter with a sea serpent. Also, there are some Chinese people.

Ok, that’s a bit of a glib summary, but I’ve never been a huge fan of spending my entire review giving plot details. It’s worth noting, however, that the book is somewhat less action-oriented than the first. It spends a good deal of time focusing on the infuriating nature of diplomatic relations with wildly disparate cultures, and does some interesting and applicable pontificating on the treatment of dragons and its comparison to the slave trade. Some of the latter is spelled out a little too obviously, especially near the end, but one doesn’t typically read fantasy series for their subtle political metaphor.

Novik seems to have done her research on the era she’s set her books in, and the story is peppered with references to the actual politics of the time, including England’s struggle to establish strong diplomatic ties with China, and to prevent the French from doing the same. The slavery comparison is also tied nicely into the book as the dragon Temeraire and his captain Will Laurence travel to China and witness the level of freedom given to Chinese dragons, comparing it against the treatment of European breeds.

I enjoyed the book enough to give it three stars, although I thought the first one was better. I found the sea voyage section of Throne of Jade a bit interminable, and I was surprised by how little of the book was actually set in China (well less than one third). I did enjoy the further revelations about dragon breeding and the interesting ways in which Novik interweaves dragons into every-day Chinese life. I found myself wishing that more of the book had been set in China, not so much because of the foreign setting as because I’m interested in the back-story and breed specifics of Novik’s dragons, and it’s in China that the most information about them is known.

Overall the book is an interesting, if somewhat less action-oriented, successor to the first novel. It’s a good “airplane novel” with a unique setting, solid plotting, and enjoyable dialog. I look forward to picking up the third installment in the series.

View all my reviews.