Erica Lindquist's Blog, page 12
December 23, 2014
The Interview update
So��� Sony is releasing The Interview again. That’s good news, I suppose. I just wish I believed they were doing this because silencing (shitty) art and satire is bad, but I’m afraid that it’s just because some executive somewhere��thinks that the movie will make an assload of money now.
Maybe that’s cynical of me. I don’t��credit Sony with this whole thing; some have suggested the GOP threats were a PR stunt to begin with. I doubt they would put that much work and potentially criminal activity into publicity for a crap movie. But��I also find it hard to believe that they would make the decision to release The Interview for the sake of free speech.
I’m don’t think I’m going to see The Interview. I don’t know how I feel about this resolution.
December 17, 2014
The Interview
Fine. Let’s talk about The Interview. I didn’t want to, but now this shit matters.
I’ve been seeing previews for the new Seth Rogen/James Franco movie for months.��The last Rogen movie I saw was Green Hornet and that wasn’t by choice. Aron rented that piece of crap and put it on while I was in the room. So I sure as hell wasn’t in a big hurry to see The Interview.
Do I think it’s probably a crappy movie? Yes. Was it worth Sony’s money? Probably not. But now I want to see that damned thing all over the movie marquees. In case you somehow don’t know what’s going on,��the major theater chains have all yanked��the Interview ��� which was supposed to be released on Christmas ��� after hacking and threats by GOP (that’s “Guardians of Peace,” not the Republicans) of terrorist attacks on any theaters showing the movie. Later this afternoon, Sony cancelled the movie entirely. There are currently no plans to release it in any form, DVD or otherwise.
Now, as of this writing, it’s not clear if GOP is North Korean in origin (though it’s certainly looking that way), but that’s not why I’m furiously bashing on my keyboard. As a freedom of expression��issue, it doesn’t matter if GOP is a domestic or foreign group. Canceling Rogen and Franco’s crap-ass creation out of fear isn’t exactly a First Amendment issue. This is Sony’s property. They’re a private party and cancel whatever the hell they feel like. But I really, really wish they wouldn’t.
Movies like The Interview are important.��Even shitty satire is an important way we criticize and critique what’s going on in the world, in our own nations and abroad. I sure as hell don’t agree with the message of America: Imagine the World Without Her, but damned if it doesn’t have just as much right to be seen��as Team America: World Police��or The Interview. Everyone is entitled��their own dumb-ass opinion. We’re even entitled to getting in screaming arguments with each other.
If we’re too scared to make fun of the shit we see wrong with the world, how the hell are we supposed to be brave enough to change it?
Sony, you’re not the government. You’re not required by law to protect Rogen and Franco’s��freedom of speech, but I and a lot of other people would encourage you to stand up for the right of this shitty piece of cinema to exist.
(And, to be fair��� if I do ever get to see The Interview, I’ll probably laugh a lot more than I would care to admit.)
December 16, 2014
20 posts
Congratulations to me. I posted 20 times on this blog! Wait, this makes 21.��Fuck. There goes my nice even number.
Does 21 posts mean my blog can drink?
Don’t hyphenate your ebooks
Seriously. Readers will take care of spacing and line breaks. They may not do so gracefully, but don’t try to anticipate how they’ll reflow your text. If you do, this might happen:
Apparently Amazon had received a complaint from a reader about the fact that some of the words in the book were hyphenated. And when they ran an automated spell check against the manuscript they found that over 100 words in the 90,000 word novel contained that dreaded little line. This, apparently ���significantly impacts the readability of our book��� and, as a result ���We have suppressed the book because of the combined impact to customers.���
So��� yeah. Don’t hyphenate.
December 14, 2014
Print edition rant
Being a self-published author can be a tedious pain in the ass. The print editions of all our books are almost finished. Most of them are back up on Amazon, but three of them are having huge issues. About 1/10 of an inch, to be precise.
But Erica, I hear you type, how can a tenth of an inch make any difference? Well, it’s on the outer margin of every page, which is shoving the rest of the text a tenth of an inch into the gutter, IE the book’s own asshole. It matters! I’ve made sure the problem isn’t on my end and sent a politely pissy email to Createspace to figure out where this terrible tenth of an inch is coming from.
Okay, maybe I’m being a little neurotic.
December 13, 2014
Some quick reviews
I’m way, way behind on reviewing movies. As I understand it, that’s one of the things I’m supposed to do on my official author’s blog. For some reason, you’re all supposed to care what I think of movies. I’m not really sure why, but let’s catch up.
Mockingjay, part 1: 3.5/5
Better than the book, but that’s not hard. I really loathed The Hunger Games by the end. The pacing is a little stilted, but it manages to get through its content. That gorgeous costume Katniss is wearing in the posters, that they work so hard on in District 13, she wears precisely once. Get used to gray jumpsuits.
Big Hero 6: 5/5
Loved it. So much fun, so much Baymax.
Interstellar: 4.5/5
Good acting, music and basic store. The robots weren’t Baymax, but I loved them nonetheless. A bit thin in places, but that might just have been because I couldn’t hear the dialog over the booming dramatic score.
The Maze Runner: 2/5
Ugh. Science and logic fail. I guess it could have been worse, though. At least it wasn’t Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.
The Book of Life: 3/5
Considering how visually stunning Book of Life was, the story was a big pile of meh. And considering what lengths the writers went to in order to strengthen the leading lady, ending it with her inevitable marriage to a guy she’s spent only a couple weeks with is almost Disney-esque in its absurdity. I really wanted to like Book of Life, but it fell pretty flat.
Exodus: Gods and Kings: ???
Not even going to bother seeing it.
December 12, 2014
December 10, 2014
Stop the presses!
All of our print books are down for the time being while I learn to format a print-ready format properly. They’ll be back, but I’m not exactly sure when.
Here’s the deal: I’ve always used Microsoft Word to format our print editions. And I’ve always been annoyed with the lack of control I have over the output PDF. It just isn’t professional-looking and I take this shit seriously. So I’ve finally grabbed a copy of Adobe InDesign and am learning to use it. If you’re not familiar, InDesign is an actual layout program so I can make these books look exactly the way I want them to.
So bear with me while I learn the program and then put these books back together. I’ll let you know when each book comes back up for sale. Ebooks are unaffected by this outage.
December 9, 2014
Genres and my porous imagination
Or why I really, really can’t stick to one kind of book. And why you don’t want me to.
Authors and publishers talk a lot about genre. Some call it an artificial construct. Others say that genre is a great marketing mechanism and reader funnel. But most agree that the “smartest” sales move is to stick to a genre. If your readers love you for fantasy, keep writing fantasy for them. Thats how you get rich. And a not-insignificant portion of writers – especially self-published ones – call bullshit. They write whatever the hell the want.
You may have noticed – at least I hope so, since that means you’ve read more than one of our books – that Aron and I never stick to one genre. We’ve written on sci-fi trilogy, a fantasy novel, an urban fantasy serial and a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel. The next two books are a weird western duology, with a kids book and then erotica novella series waiting in the wings. We do have notes for another sci-fi novel, but we probably won’t get to that for a coupe of years.
The point is, we’re all over the place. This wasn’t a marketing choice or even a conscious “fuck you” to genre borders. Our imaginations just wander like squirrels on crack.
But there’s another reason for me (Erica, not Aron): I have what I tend to think of as a porous imagination. It’s easily affected by other stuff I’m reading or writing. I have to be careful about my media consumption when I’m deep in working on a book, or else it’s going to be a problematic influence on the novel. I can’t watch Star Trek when working on fantasy or else there’s going to be a wormhole in the sky. I can’t read The Dark Tower when I writing shiny sci-fi or else a gunslinger is going to wander through the middle of Axis. The same goes for writing. If I were to write two fantasies back-to-back, they would end up feeling almost identical. The first novel would bleed right into the second and make the waters so muddy I wouldn’t be able to see anything.
On the plus side, this means it’s easy for me to absorb influences on my writing. Anyone who has commented that the Reforged books reminds them of Firefly… Guess what I watched over and over? I’ve been reading a lot of The Dark Tower for The Hangman’s Cross and The Burning Noose. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was a huge influence on In the House of Five Dragons. And the Blood Elf zone in World of Warcraft. Those stupid ostrich mounts absolutely inspired the kajjas in our book.
I hope you don’t think this means I rip off my inspirations. I sure hope not, at least… But that leads me to another dumb-ass facet of my particular brain. I really need help from those sources because I have a hard time imagining things I’ve never seen before. Every single place or person in any of our books has one foot in the real world, in some photo or movie location I’ve seen. Richard Mazrem’s house is based on the Getty Museum (as I saw it some years ago, while it was being worked on). Angel City is not just based on but actually set in downtown LA, where I grew up. Axis – odd as it may sound – takes a certain amount of inspiration from Ironforge, again from WoW, which I was playing at the time.
So the more I see, the more sources I have to draw on. If I have any hope at approximating originality, I need a lot of material to recombine. It can make preserving my own voice difficult, sometimes; it’s not just set pieces and characters that seep into my work, but the voice, too. It doesn’t help that I spent years trying like crazy to write just like Tad Williams. As a result, I really have to jump from genre to genre and keep things mixed up to keep my own imagination from just melting away into pop culture goo.
And if something you read reminds you of a movie or place you’ve actually visited, ask me – I may actually have based it on the very same thing.
