Rachel Lynn Brody's Blog, page 14

Netflix, Comcast and Pay-for-Play in a Post-Net-Neutrality World

A few weeks ago, the courts struck down Net Neutrality, which forbade internet providers from throttling information coming from competing services in the interest of a free and open internet. People were, quite rightly, upset. As part of the overall response to the news, one beacon of hope shone out – Netflix issued a statement saying that they were committed to keeping their not-unconsiderable-clout-bearing eye on things. The impression their craftily-worded statement gave was that this company, who had gained so much from Net Neutrality over the years, was on the side of the American public and an internet where information was allowed to roam free. Here’s the relevant quote from that statement, issued in late January 2014:

“Unfortunately, Verizon successfully challenged the U.S. net neutrality rules. In principle, a domestic ISP now can legally impede the video streams that members request from Netflix, degrading the experience we jointly provide. The motivation could be to get Netflix to pay fees to stop this degradation. Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP, we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-net-neutrality-statement-2014-1#ixzz2uBpzqdyY“

This week, however, Netflix announced that they’re going to be paying Comcast to keep their data from being throttled – an about-face of pretty impressive proportions. IIn other words, they flipped the public the bird and dug into their coffers to keep the information flowing, rather than stick to the idea that a company shouldn’t be able to cut off their competitor’s information just because the competitor didn’t lay the fiberoptic cable that their data travels along.

I know. I shouldn’t expect more from major media companies when it comes to turning a profit over upholding ideals. I fell for Netflix’s PR stunt, and that was stupid. And now I’m angry.

Netflix has effectively thrown a wad of cash at the bigger issue here – and, one can only assume, will be abandoning the larger issue of ethics around an internet provider throttling the data their users get from other sources.

I think of Netflix’s move as something akin to paying of the troll who lives under a bridge. “Don’t eat me!” you shout, hefting a sack of gold coins at the monster so it will leave you alone – and setting up an expectation that it will be able to extort cash from future companies. The move is on par with negotiating with terrorists – Comcast apparently had Netflix over a barrel, and rather than raise the considerable clout of their millions of subscribers (as their original statement seemed to indicate would be their preference), Netflix reached into their deep pockets, pulled out some Benjamins, and made it rain in the land of Comcast.

I can already hear people asking, so what? Well, here’s so what: Netflix may have deep pockets, and Hulu may be owned by NBC Universal, but what about the burdgeoning media companies who don’t have mile-deep bank accounts lined with cold hard cash? How are they going to compete in a marketplace where it’s now established that charging for the privlidge of disseminating information is a reasonable practice?

And what about when we stop talking about straight-up entertainment? What about when it isn’t House of Cards that you have to pay to play, but citizen journalism from the middle east, or news of oil spills and water contamination in your own back yard? The information available online has been a boon to the average citizen, whose negotiation of a capitalist landscape is void of the transparent honesty required of vendors in order for them to be able to compete fairly. Without wanting to rush off a cliff in a tinfoil hat, when traditional media flat-out refuses to cover stories that indict the power structure, and alternative media is the only way for marginalized stories to spread, how would it affect our ability to know what’s going on in the world if the only efficiently-delivered journalism is what comes down the fiberoptic cables from FOX, MSNBC, CNN and other clearly deficient players?

By paying Comcast to permit them unfettered access to free-flowing information conduits, Netflix has set a terrible precedent. The action almost demands that Comcast now move to demanding similar payments from other media-banks, and in the process will further lessen the availability of quality information to the American public.

While the courts are to blame for striking down Net Neutrality and the FCC is to blame for the uncertain wording that let that happen, make no mistake – Netflix has just opened the door to pay-for-play on a scale that boggles the mind. So thanks for that, Netflix – good to know where you really stand on the issue of free and open access to information.

Not to mention protection money.

 

Read more on this topic:

Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast for Access to its Broadband Network
Comcast Deal with Netflix Makes Net Neutrality Obsolete


F.C.C. Seeks a New Path on Net Neutrality Rules

A Victory Lap

While there are obviously some things that aren’t going my way right now (hello, back injury!) there are some things that have happened this week that are nothing short of great. Here is a quick rundown:

Costumes are being designed for “Ace in the Hole”…

@girl_onthego started making costumes for Ace, what do you think? pic.twitter.com/mZW2fNYcna

— Amy Kate Keirl (@keirlywurly) February 11, 2014

And we announced that you can go to see scenes from the play at First in Three scratch night (Newcastle, UK): 

Performing a scratch of Ace in the Hole by R L Brody @girl_onthego at Young Person’s First in Three @northernstage on Wednesday #YPFirstin3

— Ingenius Theatre (@IngeniusTheatre) February 15, 2014

 

The niche Tumblr I run with @aboleyn got mentioned by a major online site:

I am freaking out a little that http://t.co/ekrYZX5DdI got mentioned in @BuzzFeed http://t.co/7yiuJSrGbj (Good freaking out)

— aboleyn (@aboleyn) February 13, 2014

…which resulted in our getting over 1200 new followers in a matter of days.

So yeah. The back thing is still a bit of a struggle, but at least there are happy things going on at the same time!

How HuluPlus and SyFy Lost Helix a Viewer

I don’t own a TV. I get my fix from internet TV providers – HuluPlus, some network sites, and until recently, Aereo.

Yesterday, in an effort to while away a couple hours, I tried pulling up the latest episodes of HELIX, a SyFy original show about some kind of contagin at the North Pole. I’d seen the first few episodes and it looked pretty cool, plus I follow/occasionally tweet with one of the guys responsible for making it.

I went to the Hulu page for HELIX and loaded it up, and added episodes four and five – which aired in January – to my queue.

Imagine my surprise when, instead of an opening commercial (because yes, even when you pay for HuluPlus, you get commercials) I got this:

I sent a couple annoyed tweets to both Hulu and SyFy, but figured I’d give it a day to resolve. So I went back this morning, clicked, and got…

Um.

A few problems with this.

1) Feb 6 is hardly “immediately after broadcast” for an episode that aired on 1/24.

2) The biggest selling point for using HuluPlus is that you can access shows the day after they air. Here we are almost two weeks later and episode 4 isn’t available yet? So I’m paying a monthly fee to access hundreds of hours of Korean soap operas and still have commercials in between acts, now? Er, no.

3) Why the HELL would Hulu Plus let me put this and a subsequent episode into my queue when they’re not available for viewing?

I could go on. But essentially this is some kind of bait-and-switch bullshit. I don’t subscribe to a cable provider because I watch my TV online. If I have to link a cable account to my already-fee-based Hulu Plus account, you know what suddenly becomes a lot less attractive? Paying for Hulu Plus.

Up to now I’ve been a defender of Hulu Plus, but with this kind of development I’m seriously considering cancelling.

This problem isn’t happening in a vacuum. If everyone will think back a week or two ago, you’ll remember the courts striking down net neutrality. You remember net neutrality, it was that thing that said that the companies that own the infrastructure of the Internet couldn’t slow down information sent from their competitors. You’d have to be an idiot not to see the connection between that ruling and the sudden lack of availability of quality programming via previously available channels (particulary in the case of Aereo, which suddenly started buffering every two seconds despite speed tests showing 10-14MBps download speeds and the lowest possible playback quality),.

Either way, I’m not wasting anymore time trying to get access. This is sad, because HELIX seems cool and I know these shows live or die depending on their audience numbers, but I’d rather watch independent web series or something on Netflix then have to keep checking back and being disappointed. If it makes the whole season and that goes to Netflix, maybe I’ll be able to watch it then. In the meantime, it’s time to seriously reconsider my subscription to HuluPlus and consider going with the unpaid version of the site: I may have to wait a week to see new episodes of shows I like, but at I’ll still be able to see them, and it won’t cost me 10 bucks a month.

While I hate to reward bad behavior, it may be that this sounds the death knell on my dedication to watching TV via the Internet. Then again, given that my alternative is Time Warner Cable, maybe it’s simply time to get out more.

Being Realistic: Of Writing and Scheduling

Realistic scheduling conversations: the perfect accessory for every writer. #amwriting

— RL Brody (@girl_onthego) January 25, 2014

One of the fun parts about being a writer is challenging yourself and your craft on a regular basis. Along with this goes the responsibility of keeping yourself from overworking (see previous posts about how I’m a BAMF with a back injury) and knowing how to work at a sustainable pace. How many projects have fallen by the wayside because people weren’t honest with themselves about their schedules and their abilities?

I feel fortunate to have had the bulk of my formal training as a writer in drama, where schedules exist and are respected because on opening night (usually scheduled well in advance, unless we’re talking SPIDERMAN: TURN OFF THE DARK) the curtain’s going up and the audience expects a show.* The ability to work to deadlines and plan long-term goals is vital when you’re writing a play – especially given the long lead times many comissioning theatres and companies work with.

When it comes to short films, schedules need to be worked out – but they can almost always be pushed, provided the parties involved are able to negotiate future shoot dates or changes to the production team.

Which brings us to novels and other forms of prose. In the past, a writer could set a personal deadline, but there were no real stakes when it came to needing to push those deadlines if life intervened. It might mean your query schedule got pushed back a bit, but other aspects of the “production,” so to speak, were so far removed from the process of writing that the two areas hardly had an effect on one another for the beginning novelist.

Not so, nowadays. Sure, the old paths still exist, but self publishing means a writer needs to be aware of all aspects of scheduling, strategy and more.

All of which brings me back to the importance of being realistic with yourself when you embark on a new project. It’s all well and good to plan a series and think you’ll be able to bang out first drafts one after another, but when you leap into trying to create quality work, this approach will exhaust you. And you will need to reconsider your original plan.

And that’s okay.

This is all at the top of my mind right now because of a very important conversation I had with a collaborator over the weekend. We have some grand plans for a series of novels, and made an aggressive-but-probably-doable schedule, but as we crashed into some of the new year’s harsher realities – my back injury, her work commitments – we quickly realized that the schedule we had planned was a little too aggressive to co-exist with our actual lives.

At this point, we could have done one of two things: pressed on, heaping pressure and guilt on ourselves as one deadline after another passed us by, or take a few minutes to talk about what looks realistic to us both now, nearly six months after putting our original plan together. (Okay, technically there’s a third option, but for now we’ll ignore that big red button in the corner.)

Given how excited we both are about the series, and how much we’re looking forward to telling the stories of our characters, their struggles and their world, it was a hard decision…but we stretched our schedule. Knowing that the first of the books we’d hoped to release late this year won’t see the light of day till at least mid-2015 is tough, but nowhere near as tough – and ultimately, I fear, destructive – as it would have been to drive ourselves to exhaustion with a plan we’d made so long ago and without foreknowledge of externally-imposed challenges and commitments.

What’s more, discussing our options not only put us in a place where we could both feel good about timelines and external commitments, it also means we’ll have an even stronger foundation as the project moves forward.

Being realistic about what can and can’t be accomplished in a given period of time is a vital skill for any indie artist, writers included. Process, output and pace may vary from one individual to the next, but as long as the lines of communication stay open and there’s room for flexibility, a major benefit to being an indie writer is this:

There’s always a way to complete a good project.

*TURN OFF THE DARK – I believe – walked away with a record number of previews and an opening date that had been pushed back multiple times.

Writers Beware: The “No Pay Partner” Exploitation

Earlier today I was reading calls for writers when I came across one that made me mad.

It had been posted by some yo-yo (yes, that is an insult that I am using) and said that he had written a screenplay and put it on some website and gotten a critique, but felt he was only a mediocre writer so wanted to pair up with someone. Since there was no guarantee the film (which he “sees” as getting made as a big-budget flick) would be made, it “wouldn’t make sense” for him to pay the writer selected as his “partner” (I use the term loosely), but he’s willing to offer a 60/40 split on anything he earns when and if the money starts rolling in.

The ad made me so mad I took to Twitter to vent my frustrations with this kind of bullshittery.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t think a 60/40 split is unreasonable for this endeavor, necessarily. What got my hackles up was the casual dismissal of the idea that it might make sense to offer *something* to the person ghostwriting/doctoring someone else’s pet project. The guy talks about the projects he has under his belt, admitting they aren’t large-scale, but there’s no mention of recriprocity or access or mentoring or anything else. Just two caveats: don’t have an ego, and don’t expect to earn off the work till it’s up on the big screen.

And then you get 40% of the writer’s fee. Anybody wanna look up WGA minimums for that? Bet it wouldn’t pay my rent for three months.

Now, I believe in profit-share, and I believe in it big time. But the idea that this guy expects someone else to throw down time for a project where he himself seems to have zero skin in the game? Writers, I recommend you run, not walk, away from ads like that. No thank you. There are professional ways to indicate a gig is a profit share, and this ain’t it.

Here’s the thing: if you’re running a straight-up profit share, then everybody has to have some kind of creative autonomy that they’re going to find fulfilling and that will broaden their horizons in a way they find significant. Taking someone else’s overwritten first draft and incorporating third-party notes with zero compensation until the guy gets it picked up be a studio? Is this an ad being posted undercover by Ashton Kucher? Then NO WAY. No way, no how, nothing doing.

This isn’t to say that writers shouldn’t get involved in profit shares. My upcoming play “Ace in the Hole” (YES, IT HAS A TITLE!!!) was commissioned under a profit share agreement, with my earnings coming off the back end. But a) I know who I’m working with, and we have a good previous relationship and b) the guidelines I was given meant that I could challenge myself as a writer and really take something positive from the process no matter what eventual level of financial success it attains.

The reason I get mad when I see ads like the one that set me off today is because people get taken in by that shit all the time. Some writer hoping for a break will probably pour blood, sweat and tears into that script – or any of the dozens behind ads just like it – and not only will they never see a dime, but they won’t be building relationships that will help them in the future, either. Because someone who actually writes “no egos” in their ad probably already has enough of one to fill a room on their own. Do you really want to write for someone like that, for free?

Earning money as a writer is hard enough without people thinking it’s okay to devalue the work we do. When someone tries to cast their exploitation in the light of partnership, be damn sure you know what non-monetary gains you’re going to take away from the table if the script doesn’t get made into a blockbuster.

Cuz unless Tyler Perry is looking for ghost writers, that 60/40 payday is most likely never gonna happen.

Keep Calm & Carry On

So. I went to the doctor yesterday and got my scan results, and they were a bit worse than I had been preparing for (I’ll be okay, nobody panic, I just hadn’t realized how serious this injury would turn out to be). It was pretty upsetting, and I’m glad some of my friends were around to talk with once I got the news. I’ve started physical therapy and will be trying my best to be a model patient while that’s going on.

This morning, in a wildly successful attempt to brighten my spirits, my friend @aboleyn from Twitter has set up a delightful tumblr which we’re populating with pictures of British actors whose work we enjoy.

In the tradition of Calming Manatee, and courtesy of the brilliant @aboleyn, I bring you:

calmingbrits.tumblr.com

Enjoy.

Raising Spirits – The Balancing Act

This has been a really rough ten days or so, and today it all got to me. A friend observed that I didn’t seem to be doing very well, and the dam broke, and I spilled my guts (and not a few tears) about just how not very well I’m feeling at the moment.

In about two hours, I’ll be going to see the doctor who sent me for scans on Friday, at which point I’ll finally have a better idea of exactly what happened at the base of my spine to cause the agonizing pain and aggravation I’ve been dealing with for the last week and a half. (Well, okay, the pain was agonizing for the first few days, since then it’s been unpleasant but manageable). And after that, at least I’ll have a better idea of what happens next.

Because it’s the not knowing that wears at you, worrying the corners of your mind like a baby gumming on the edges of its soggy, drool-stained blanket. How bad a problem are we talking about here? How long will it take to heal? What preventative measures are going to be necessary? Is this a good time to see if my insurance covers lipo? How much change is going to be demanded of my lifestyle going forward?

But seriously, that last one is tough. I’ve had a couple of major issues over the years – issues that have demanded lifestyle changes that, as long as I’ve put into practicing them, have never come to be completely natural parts of my routine.

The first time I had a major injury was in my mid-teens. Sure, I’d gone through the kiddie stuff – a baseball bat to the forehead as the result of a softball teammate’s carelessness after she struck out and tossed her bat away, more burns than I can count from campfires and roasted marshmallows – but the first long-term injury I sustained in my life as a writer was that pesky hazard of the profession, repetitive stress injury. Related to, but thankfully not, carpal tunnel syndrome. I had tendonitis in my hands and arms for a good four years. This was in the early ‘naughts, I don’t think people had realized yet what a scourge tendonitis was going to prove for kids who’d never learned either proper typing or proper posture.

Since then, I’ve run into my share of aggravations – I can’t wear high heels anymore thanks to tendonitis (AGAIN!) in my feet, and I’m more or less resigned to wearing sneakers and orthopedic inserts for the rest of my life. I have to be very, very careful about the foods I eat and their sodium content, and have been trying to keep my weight down for years by eating less, though my level of success with this typically wavers with such variables as the phase of the moon and whether my roommate asks if I want to order a pizza for dinner..

Having my back get fucked up is somehow beyond all of this, and yet it’s all related. I think about back injuries and slipped discs and I think about visiting my grandfather in the hospital after his back surgery, or my dad after his back surgery, and my stomach does a flip-flop. From what the osteopath I saw last week said, it sounds as if she’s hopeful that physical therapy will help me strengthen my core muscles and bring me back to a place where I don’t have to worry that sitting up in bed is going to cause major injury to my spinal column. Which, you know, is the kind of place I’d like to be.

I don’t know if you pay attention to horoscopes – I’m not a huge believer, though I find them interesting – but I’m a Libra. The scales. In other words, balance. One of my challenges in life has always been finding balance, whether it be in academics, a social setting, my work, the time I put into friendships and interests – that false dichtomy of “all or nothing” is something I fight against believing in with almost every decision and every course of action I make. I want to write a novel? Watch me put everything - everything – else in my life aside while I focus on that one goal and churn out a first draft in a month. I want to save money? I’ll go four days without spending a penny then suddenly lose it and blow $50 on knick-nacks and nail polish at TJ Maxx. I don’t just put all my eggs in one basket – I throw the kitchen sink in there, too. And then I get upset when the eggs get crushed and the kitchen sink gives someone salmonella.

This started out as a blog about feeling miserable and trying to pick myself up, but the longer I type the more I think maybe it’s actually about living with more intention, focusing on what I really want, making those things the center of my actions.

I want to be writing. To do that, I need to be healthy and strong and clear-headed and aggressive with my belief in my work and myself. But I also need to keep reminding myself that I’m only human, and I have my limits, and the pace I kept at 15 is of necessity going to be a much different pace from the one I keep at 32. I have to practice holding on to my successes, and not just working blindly to keep adding to the pile. I have to remember that I’m not going to a few classes then writing at night – I’m working a full-time job and then writing at night. And that the people in my life deserve at least a little bit of my attention, too.

I titled this blog “Raising Spirits” because I’m pretty down in the dumps at the moment, and I needed somewhere to write a bit about why, but also because this particular situation is inviting more than a few ghostly whispers back into my life: decisions from the past, questions about the wisdom of paths I’ve chosen to take, questions about blaming myself and my actions for what winds up happening when I get injured. Talking about it last week, I confessed that I was terrified of sitting up and having something else snap out of place, and moreover that I was mad at myself for being worried about something so irrational.

“But that’s how it happened,” said my listener. “So that isn’t irrational.”

It was comforting. And true.

One of the problems a person faces when anxiety is a part of their everyday life is figuring out what occasions actually warrant a certain level of concern or panic, and which ones don’t. In this case, I had convinced myself that my fear was irrational — wasteful, pointless to use energy being concerned about. To hear that this wasn’t the case was helpful to a point, but still didn’t solve the problem.

All that’s going to solve this problem is time. And physical therapy. And somehow finding a way to drop a few more pounds and improve my posture, both when standing and sitting.

Having a total freak-out is not going to solve the problem. But denying myself a small freak-out, letting off some steam before coming back to the situation with a clear head, isn’t going to help either. Somewhere in between, the right level of freak-out for this situation exists.

It’s just up to me to find the balance.

 

 

If you’ve made it to the end of all that, you deserve a reward. Here’s a scene from  Fight Club, with Tyler Durden digitally removed. Poor Ed Norton’s character. Talk about a guy in search of balance:

Fight Club minus Tyler Durden from Richard Trammell on Vimeo.

The Uncomfortable and Painful Consequences of Being a BAMF with Crap Posture

So. That image is, more or less, what’s going on in my lower back right now. I might have been joking about it earlier in the week, but now…well, when something goes from what you think is a pulled muscle to a pinched nerve to a herniated disc in a matter of three days…let’s just say the laughs become more of the “cuz if you don’t you’ll cry” kind of thing. Me and a physical therapist are gonna get real friendly over the next four to six weeks (or more, considering it will be at least a week before my doc even gets all my scans back.

As a friend pointed out when I joked about making a blog entry featuring the goriest photo of a slipped disc I could find (there weren’t any under the search terms I decided I could bear using), I can make this a teachable moment. I can advise other young writers to live a balanced, well-rounded loves that include copious rest breaks when typing and good posture and strong core muscles. So, everyone out there reading this, go do that.

Meanwhile, I will lie in bed wondering how the hell I’m going to get my laundry to the laundromat, because I’m pretty sure I’m out of matching socks and am into the phase of wearing stuff from my closet that hasn’t seen the light of day in ages.

I would start ranting about the costs of health care in this country, but given the medicine my doc has me on, a rant would probably be even less coherent than usual. I’ll spare you.

Anyway – goodnight, fellow BAMFs. Take care of yourselves, because otherwise, one day you too might feel a spasm in your lower back when sitting up and spend the next several days getting increasingly upsetting diagnoses. And then worrying about moving the wrong way and giving yourself lasting nerve damage. Or accidentally severing your spine. Or whatever.

And on that note, to sleep. Perchance to dream…and figure out where to get a lumbar support pillow before my next day at the office. Sitting at my desk. Using a computer. Tomorrow morning.

Sigh.

That really awful painful bulging one? That's mine!

PS – NYC is an awful place to be unwell if you’re single and not independently wealthy. Everything you could take advantage of – laundry pickup & delivery, grocery delivery, taxis…costs an arm and a leg. And that isn’t even counting copays. And if this is all such a problem for me – employed, insured, relatively young – I can only imagine what it list be like for anyone who doesn’t fulfil even those basic criteria.

PPS – if you came here from Facebook, no idea what image this will post with on my wall. Hope it was a good one.

The Unintended Consequence of Writing Like A BAMF

Last night I got home and lay down on my bed for some quality time with my tweeps. Everything was cool, everything was fine. About half an hour later, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I pushed up from lying down, I could feel something start to tweak in my lower back, and by the time I was standing up there was a full-on spasm taking place from my waist to my left hip. The rest of the night was spent prone with an electric heating pad and an aleve, mostly whining to anybody who’d listen on Twitter about just how much pain I was in. Got some great advice on stretching from some people over there, unfortunately when I tried it this morning I wanted to scream. So I think that’ll have to wait till after this strain/spasm/ache/pull/horror gets better.

 

BAMF cat is not quite as much of a BAMF as Samuel L. Jackson, but he’s trying so hard.

And here’s the thing: I know full well this is probably, at least in part, my fault. Because I’ve spent every spare minute of the last two months hunched over a keyboard, and because my day job requires me to sit at a desk at least 90% of the time. I felt the tension building in my back and shoulders – particularly over this weekend’s marathon playwriting session. I even went for a massage on Sunday afternoon when I’d finished, hoping to work out the worst of the kinks. The weekend may have resulted in a first draft, but it also resulted in me being crippled.

Lesson learned: a massage, my friends, does not core strength equal.

I’m consoling myself with the notion that I am a BAMF for having finished all that writing, and I am going to power through this, because that is what a bad-ass motherf*cker does when things get a little painful in the name of a good cause.

I’m also going to look at re-joining a gym when this clears up. Or finding some yoga classes. Gotta get back on the fitness train if I’m going to continue to churn out this much work. But I already know I’m a BAMF at the keyboard, so maybe being a BAMF at the gym is just the next step in the process to well-rounded BAMF-ness.

Wouldn’t you say?

 

 

 

Writing Rewards

I’ve been writing for the last two months. Big deal, I hear you say, you’re a writer. Writers write. Which is true, but some writers do other things, too, like eating and sleeping and talking to other human beings, and I haven’t done much of any of that stuff since the end of October. Well, aside from the eating.

The other thing – what makes the last two months really notable – is that I *finished* complete first drafts for two pretty major projects in those two months. Which, for someone who’s still trying to put together a short story collection about robots months later, is really what’s worth celebrating.

If you’d come to me last year and said by January 2014 I’d have finished a novel and a play, I’d…well, let’s just say I’d probably have snapped something at you about best-laid plans before skulking off to a corner and spitting fire in your general direction. (Creatively, the end of 2012 was Not the Best Time Ever, whatever that old blog entry says.) But here I am, and here they are, two stacks of paper staring back at me, only they’re not really staring back at me because they don’t have eyes. Also because they’re in a drawer. Also, so far I’ve only printed one out.

It’s been a little over six weeks since the end of writing the novel, and in two weeks I’m having an editing kick-off with Sare on that one. Until then it’s just me, my blog and the sense of self-satisfaction that comes from having two projects well underway this early into the new year.

Now, you might be thinking, wow, Rachel has really pushed herself. She really deserves a reward. Would you believe I agree with you? And here’s what I’ve decided would be the best reward for all that hard work: getting to meet a band whose music I’ve gotten a lot from in the past couple years.

See, there’s this band I like.

Twenty one pilots have a fast, lyrical, melodic style that caught me up from the first time I heard their singles “Semi-Automatic” and “Car Radio” (thanks, Spotify!). Their song “Heart of Gold” makes me go all mushy when I hear it. They make me think of what might happen if The Streets crashed into an awesome, practically ska-ish pile of indiepop incrediblity. They’ve played New York a couple of times since I started liking them, but a bunch of other people must like them too because their shows keep selling out.

Enter @aboleyn, musical tastemaker – and, very lucky for me, a friend of mine. She spotted their name on a festival bill – then spotted a contest for VIP tickets and meeting the band.

So that’s what I want, internet and faithful blog readers. I really really want my friend to win this contest so she and I can meet twenty one pilots, because I’ve been working really hard the last two months and cannot yet afford Rowling-style cash to hire bands for private performances. And this is where you come in.

The way we win this contest is by having the most people click onto THIS PAGE. Once a day, if you feel so inclined.

That’s it. No registration, no spammy emails.

Just click and move on with your day. If we win, I will come up with some kind of appropriate thank-you, probably involving embarrassing photos of me fangirling at the band.

All you have to do is click. And maybe ask your friends to click, too.

Which you and your friends can do – and I hope, will do – once a day between now and the 12th.

So that’s where things stand as of January 2014, folks. A commissioned play and a first novel, ready to be put through the rewrite wringer…and me, sitting here, hoping really hard that I’ll get to meet these guys:

And one last time in case you missed the link: click HERE once a day to help us win!