Jason Brant's Blog, page 19
May 24, 2019
Day 3 – My Writing Process
All I did today was write. Guess it would make sense to describe how I do that, although I’m not sure how many people actually give a shit. Time to find out.
First of all, I’m a pantser, not a plotter. I don’t write outlines. I don’t know the endings of my stories. I come up with an idea, like a living darkness that swallows people whole, conjure some characters, and toss it all together to see what happens.
The story unfolds as I write it. I usually don’t know what will happen more than a few pages ahead of time and sometimes not until I’m actually writing it. This keeps me from getting bored when I’m working on a book. If I already know what’s coming next, I don’t enjoy the creative process. At all.
Pantsers can often meander too far off course. Sometimes we get stuck and don’t finish a story. That’s happened to me more times than I care to admit. But I don’t get bored with my stuff, so there’s that.
With that out of the way, I can tell you a bit about my actual daily writing process. It’s simple, but effective when I actually sit down and do it.
First, I go into my office so that I’m alone. I can write with other people around me, but I’m a lot slower. Being alone makes a big difference for me. If I’m not hearing something about plastic surgery nightmares from the show my wife is watching, I get a lot more done.
Second, I put on music to drown out background noise from outside. It’s not something that I actively listen to while writing, but it does seep in during lulls when I’m contemplating things (procrastinating). Lately, I’ve been trying to listen to one album through the creation of an entire book. Sometimes it works, sometimes it gets really old. When I write Asher Benson books, I exclusively listen to the album Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Black Stone Cherry. The ups and downs of the album, the equal parts sad and fun lyrics, really resonates with me and the Ash character. It’s a perfect foundation for writing such a broken person. (Don’t ask what I’m writing Decayed to, haha.)
Third, I reread the last page or so of my manuscript. This helps me remember exactly what was happening in the scene and place me there. I visualize the setting, the characters, and everything else before I start up again.
Fourth, I set a timer for 35 minutes. It’s just a little cheap one I stole from the kitchen. Don’t tell The Tall One. While that timer is ticking by, I don’t do anything else but write. I don’t check my phone. I don’t look at Facebook or Twitter. I don’t let my dogs outside to piss. For 35 minutes, I write my ass off. In that amount of time, I average 1000 to 1200 words. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
Then I take a break. I aim for 15 or 20 minutes. Sometimes it ends up being a couple of days. Hey, that’s why I wanted to use this blog for accountability. After I sit back down, I rinse and repeat. 80 sessions later, I’m done. Ravaged took a month to finish. Asher’s War was almost a year.
Now for the good stuff. Today, in two different sessions, I wrote 2681 words in Decayed (The Hunger #5), bringing the total to 62116.
Oh, I also draw a pentagram in the middle of the road outside my house and conjure a demon to help with my creativity. Almost forgot to mention that part.
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May 23, 2019
Day 2 – An Author’s Website
Today I realized that some of the work I’d done for the An Author’s Life segment on my website was done incorrectly. I’m nothing if not a genius. After getting my writing done today, word count at the bottom of this post, I had to go back and fix what I’d done. It wasn’t a monumental task or anything, but the way I’ve set up my website, and its navigation, makes updating it with future posts a breeze.
Let me explain.
If you navigate to the Final Guys section of my site, you’ll see all the posts I’ve made regarding the podcast there. I didn’t add those to that section. When I create a new post on my site, I get to pick what category it belongs to. When I do that, my site automatically drops it into the right section. It looks pretty good and it makes my life easier. It should also make it simple for everyone to find the different projects I work on without having to scroll through dozens or hundreds of blog posts. If you want to read all the posts in An Author’s Life, you just follow the link on the homepage.
I don’t want to pretend that I have the best site in the world, but compared to most authors, this place is a home run. I get it – most of us are artsy types and don’t know much about webdesign. I don’t know a lot either. But I think a nice site can help you sell books. It definitely helps me.
Without going into a ton of details and step-by-step crap, I’ll give you an overview of what I’m doing here. I use a self-hosted WordPress site. This is something you can set up through GoDaddy or a lot of other hosts. It isn’t that difficult to get going, but there are tons of guides online to help if you feel lost.
The WordPress theme I use, which is what customizes the site and makes it look purdy, is Themify Parallax. The theme is what allows me to have the categories automatically drop in different sections of the site in a purdy way. Getting everything looking the way I wanted took a lot of time, but I had a lot of content I needed to move around. If you’re just starting out, it probably wouldn’t be that bad. I’m sure there are newer themes that make it easier too. I built this site several years ago.
My website is also where I host my newsletter signup page. I’ll go more in-depth on this at a later date. This page has made a huge difference in my business. Every author needs a newsletter. It’s a game changer. I use Mailchimp, but I’m sure there are cheaper options out there.
That’s an awful lot of information without providing much actual help.
Enough of that boring stuff. Readers want word counts. Today I wrote 2042 words in Decayed (The Hunger #5), bringing the total to 59435. That’s one more word that I put down yesterday. That wasn’t on purpose, but it’s a product of the process I use to write. More on that tomorrow, probably.
So there you go. Lots of useless drivel about why my website is decent.
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May 22, 2019
Day 1 – An Author’s Life
I’ve decided to blog my daily activities around my job, writing crappy horror and thriller books, for an entire year. At the end of each work day, I’ll post what I accomplished as far as my career goes. There will be posts about word counts, formatting, editing, advertising, mailing lists, websites, blah blah blah.
Blogging is still popular right? No? Great. This won’t be a waste of my time.
Why am I doing this? Several reasons. First, I need a kick in the ass. My productivity has spiraled for a bit and I need some accountability. Writing in public for an entire year will hopefully provide a lot of motivation. I also get a ton of questions about indie publishing from aspiring authors. I’m hoping that posting what I do and why I do it will provide those people with some answers.
And I want to reconnect with a lot of my readers. I stepped way back from social media because of how toxic it became a few years ago. This little (big) project will hopefully push me back to social media and blogging in a way that I’ve shied away from for a long time.
With any luck, some readers will enjoy watching as the books are created and get excited for each new release. Hopefully. There will be tons of typos and errors in these posts because I’m not going to proof read them. At the end of the day, I’ll bang these out, post them on the site, and move on to talking to all of you in the comments and social media. You can comment on each of these using your Facebook or Discuss accounts, so have at it. I’ll respond as best I can.
So let’s get this puppy started. Today I wrote 2041 words in my manuscript for Decayed (The Hunger #5) bringing the total to 57393. I’m sure some of you are wondering what that really means.
With my writing style, 2000 words equals roughly 8-10 pages in a paperback copy of one of my books. Typically, my novels range from around 70k-85k words. If your math is all gooder and stuff, you’ll see that I’m getting pretty close to finishing this one. Finally. The goal is publish this one and really fly through the sixth book in the series to wrap it up. I’ve got a lot of stuff on the horizon I need to get to.
I also spent quite a bit of time setting up the website for this series and the other projects I have on it. All the links to my podcast, and So Bad It’s Good, are much easier to navigate.
That’s about all I did as far as my writing business today, but I’ll have more to update tomorrow. There will be other ramblings and rants thrown in here too, depending on what I’ve got going on. Let’s kick some ass this year.
(My wife is the bomb-diggity. She might have edited this part in.)
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May 13, 2019
So Bad It’s Good – Cyborg Cop 2
We found an absolute gem of a movie. Though Cyborg Cop 2 might look like it was shot in the ’80’s it was actually made a decade later. And we love it. Cheesy effects, terrible acting, and the worst music ever put to film make this a classic.
Grab a copy of CYBORG COP 2 here ▼
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May 7, 2019
Final Guys #103 – Bad Ben: The Way In and Black Summer
Nigel Bach returns with the sixth entry in the legendary Bad Ben Cinematic Universe with Bad Ben: The Way In! Does Bach keep the humor high and swearing flowing? We also watched the Netflix original series Black Summer, even though we’re sick of zombies. But our reviews of it might surprise you!
Our weekly horror reviews are Dog Soldiers, What We Do in the Shadows (TV), The Seventh Curse, The Brain, Down a Dark Hall, Sometimes They Come Back, The Last Drive-In, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.
Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.
The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.
Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn
Web ► https://www.finalguys.com
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguys
Jason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.com
Hunter ► http://www.huntershea.com
Monster ► http://www.themonstermen.net
Twitter ► @finalguys
Jack ► @backinjack
Jason ► @jason_brant
Hunter ► @huntershea1
*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.
The post Final Guys #103 – Bad Ben: The Way In and Black Summer appeared first on Jason Brant.
May 2, 2019
Final Guys #102 – Avengers: Endgame
The Marvel saga has reached its zenith, for now, with Avengers: Endgame, the biggest budgeted movie ever with the largest box-office opening. But we’ve seen other Marvel movies open huge that weren’t that great. Does Endgame live up to the hype?
Our weekly horror reviews are Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Pet Sematary (1989), Diablero, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Demon Wind, The Last Drive-In, and We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix.
Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.
The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.
Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn
Web ► https://www.finalguys.com
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguys
Jason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.com
Hunter ► http://www.huntershea.com
Monster ► http://www.themonstermen.net
Twitter ► @finalguys
Jack ► @backinjack
Jason ► @jason_brant
Hunter ► @huntershea1
*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.
The post Final Guys #102 – Avengers: Endgame appeared first on Jason Brant.
Final Guys #101 – The Silence
We’re back to the Netflix horror grind this week with a review of THE SILENCE. The movie is based on the 2015 horror novel by Tim Lebbon. Does the film rise above its obvious similarities to A Quiet Place or is another subpar Netflix original?
Our weekly horror reviews are Blackenstein, Hands of the Ripper, Blood, Boobs and Beast, Hellier, Lords of the Deep by Tim Meyer and Patrick Lacey, Infinity Chamber, The Last Drive-In, Zombie Army Trilogy, and Endless Night by Richard Laymon.
Get free books and stories by signing up for Jason’s Newsletter or Hunter’s Shea’s Dark Hunter Newsletter.
The Final Guys: The Final Word in Horror–A horror podcast hosted by Jason Brant, Jack Campisi and Hunter Shea.
Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn
Web ► https://www.finalguys.com
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/finalguys
Jason ► http://www.authorjasonbrant.com
Hunter ► http://www.huntershea.com
Monster ► http://www.themonstermen.net
Twitter ► @finalguys
Jack ► @backinjack
Jason ► @jason_brant
Hunter ► @huntershea1
*Anything rented or purchased through the links above gives a small percentage to Final Guys which helps pay for our beer and poor movie choices.
The post Final Guys #101 – The Silence appeared first on Jason Brant.
Final Guys #1-100
Against all odds, we’ve crossed 100 episodes on Final Guys! To listen to the episodes, hop on over to the Final Guys website. We have tons of movie and book reviews, recommendations, top ten lists, and more there.
Also available on iTunes – Stitcher – Google Play – TuneIn
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May 1, 2019
Drinking with Jason #32 – Mark Gunnells
For some reason, Mark returned to the show to pound some more non-alcoholic beverages. We talked about his writing schedule, his love of short stories, movies, books, and a whole lot else. Mark has multiple works coming out soon, so check him out on Amazon here!
Listen on – iTunes – Stitcher – RSS – Direct Download
http://authorjasonbrant.com/podcasts/DwJ32-MarkGunnells.mp3
Follow Mark here ▼
http://www.tommybsmith.com
https://twitter.com/penofchaos
Buy his books ► https://amzn.to/2UmgvI5
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April 29, 2019
So Bad It’s Good – Cobra
The Cannon Films Collection continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. After loving OVER THE TOP, we just had to delve into the other Sylvester Stallone movie in the set… COBRA.
Grab a copy of CANNON FILMS COLLECTION here ▼
https://amzn.to/2WZpct4
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