Reb MacRath's Blog, page 25

Meet the Real Reb MacRath: Part 6

Let's continue our fearless revolt against authors who won't give you the time of day about their spiritual makeup--the very stuff, you might say, that fuels what they bring to the page. For today, here's a series of pet passions, things that ring my bells and sometimes curl my toes. I, Reb MacRath, am inordinately fond of:

READING
Mystery/Thriller Authors (*=ebooks)
Lawrence Sanders
Michael Connelly
James Lee Burke
Trevanian
Raymond Chandler
Dash' Hammett
Sue Grafton
*Brad Strickland
*Bill Kirton
*Valerie Laws
*D J (Debbie) Bennett

Ancient Classics
Ovid
Horace
Catullus
Tacitus
Homer

19th Century
Byron
Pushkin
Dickens
Oscar Wilde

Contemporary Literary (*= those I've read on ebooks)
Mark Helperin
Truman Capote
Gore Vidal
*Leverett Butts
*Catherine Czerkawska
*Roz Morris

Poetry--Modern
Yeats
W H Auden
Leonard Cohen

WRITING
In this order, I enjoy:
Research
Revision/editing
The mudpie phase of the first draft

FILMS
Directors
Sam Peckinpah
Alfred Hitchcock
Quentin Tarantino
Brian DePalma

Actors
William Fichtner
James Coburn
Gene Hackman
Brad Pitt
Lee Marvin
Richard Boone
Tom Cruise

Fave Movies
The Wild Bunch
Straw Dogs
The President's Analyst
Harry in Your Pocket
Kill Bill 1 and 2
North by Northwest
The Exorcist
Jaws

MUSIC
Rod Stewart
Leonard Cohen
Brian Wilson
George Gershwin
John Lennon
Amy Weinhouse
Eminem
Bob Marley

TV SHOWS
Prison Break
The Good Wife
Boston Legal
Have Gun Will Travel
Invasion (canceled after one season)
(Haven't seen Breaking Bad or House of Cards yet....so my list may expand!)

FOOD
Oh, I try to eat well and do love a good salad or Green Superfood smoothie, etc. But I must confess:
There is nothing I love better than:
CHICKEN PARMESAN!

Coming Sunday 2/9

An all-new edition of The Real Reb Macrath will go Live right here tomorrow. Learn a few surprising things that curl my toes and ring my bells.

Prison Break: The Brilliant Lost Fourth Season

Almost everyone loved Prison Break: namely seasons 1 and 2, by general consensus. From then on, you might conclude, it was all downhill--starting with the half-length season 3 and ending with a train wreck known as Season Four.

But, as I'm about to show, the train wreck really must be called the Final Season, not the Fourth. And by the time I'm finished, if you're a fan of 1 and 2, you'll want to view the real 4 in a hurry...and I'll tell you where to to see it. You may even see the flawed third season in a different light.

Prison Break began as the darling of viewers and critics alike. Though it made for brutal viewing, it offered great characters, production values, scripting and acting. Its real problems began with USA Today's TV critic, Robert Bianco, who took a vehement dislike to it and ridiculed it relentlessly as a bloated epic that should have been made as it was originally pitched: a five-episode mini series. According to Bianco, greed alone compelled the producers to stretch it out year after year.

Stop right there. Producer Paul Scheuring makes clear in the DVD extras that PB was pitched and always meant to be a five-year epic. And each season would have its own feel. 1: something like Escape from Alcatraz. 2: something like The Great Escape. 3: a dark riff on 1--with the cons re-imprisoned in a brutal new joint...to break out the mysterious Whistler. 4: something like Ocean's 11--with the re-escaped then captured cons forced by Special Agent Self to find and steal six Company cards. 5: something like the Bourne Idendity with the betrayed cons out to bring down the Company.

But by Season 3, cancellation rumours grew in frequency and volume. 3 itself was put on a short leash, the writers and cast scrambling to pull it off in only 13 episodes. Budget too seems to have been greatly reduced--the prison looks hopelessly fake. And the combination of second-rate effects and truncated length caused viewers to see it as a failure. It was not--but we'll come back to that in a minute.

Thank Bianco again for what happened next. Though viewer rebellion forced the network to grant the show one final season, the producers found themselves in a hopeless situation: under no circumstances could they stop the show at the end of season 4. They owed their fans a good deal more than that--and they also owed the show. What to do?

They cut the intended lengths in half, then spliced the two together.

And where is the real fourth season? Episodes 1 through 12, ending with 'Selfless'--in which the cons run headlong into the Big Reveal: Don Self is a murdering s.o.b., who's played every one of them and is now the proud owner of Scylla. But in the splicing of two seasons, the sensational impact is lost and we move on immediately from Ocean's 11 to  Bourne.

I've just finished watching the real season 4. At the end of the 12th episode, I set the disc aside, wanting a break--as I would have enjoyed if there had been a fifth season. I wanted a break to recover from the impact of what I had seen: a lost masterpiece, recovered. 12 episodes were all that were needed to give us one hell of a story:
--Six cards are ingeniously stolen.
--Alex Mahone hunts the assassin who murdered his son--and transforms from a strung-out villain to a sympathetic and heroic figure.
--At the same time, the assassin Wyatt hunts down Alex and the others, with orders to wipe out them all.
--Don Self proves as dangerous as the other villains combined--but with his own tragic back story.
--Greta equals T-Bag the show's star psycho.

This season also contains what I believe is its single most powerful moment. In episode 6, Blow Out, Mahone is caught and arraigned...but tracked to court by Wyatt. Not one line of dialogue. But not one line is needed. William Fichtner says it all with his face, conveying a dozen emotions--from rage to blood lust to fear to despair.

The producers and writers worked wonders in condensing 4 to 12 episodes. And in separating it from 5, as we should, the shortened season 3 no longer seems like a freak.

Do yourselves a favour and view season 4 as it's meant to be seen. Then let's all take a break and see if season 5 holds up.

The Day My House Was Set on Fire: Conclusion

Recap
When my laptop crashed on 12/8 I lost the near-completed but unsaved third Boss MacTavin novel. Luckily, I did find a second draft saved on a flash drive earlier last year. I'd gone through many drafts since then, but my decision was simple: abandon the book entirely--or try to recover the lost book through the miserable earlier draft. I donned my green visor, rolled up my sleeves and got down to work.

And now...
Nearly two months later I'm close to completing recovery. Much proofing and tweaking remain. But I want to share with you the process of recovery and tell the main lessons I learned. Here we go!

Key obstacles
1) Computer time was limited to free sessions in the library: two 1-hour sessions with occasional short extensions. Libraries here close at 8 p.m. weekdays, 5 p.m. on weekends. Within these sessions I also had to squeeze at least a little Web work so I didn't entirely lose my presence here or on Facebook and Twitter.
2) I could not afford to repair my laptop for about two months, so I had to make my free computer sessions count and devise a strategy to reduce my typing time.
3) Memory is imperfect. I had to accept the cold fact that I could never recall, word for word, the book I'd come close to perfecting. I could remember key changes in plot,timeline, character...good quips and memorable phrases...etc. But I'd still have a different book. I could only do my best to make sure the new version rocked.

Strategies
1) I printed out the second draft and worked as I had before there were computers: going through each page over and over again. In this way, I leapfrogged from second to sixth draft before I began to retype.
2) I took my time, removing any thought of deadline fever. I accepted a setback of four to five months, allowing for proofing and tweaking.
3) Using the hard copy, I worked anywhere and whenever I could--once again, as I had when a boy.
4) I put off repairing the laptop for now until I'd bought a Kindle Fire--using library computers for typing only and the Fire for online work and play in any place with free wi-fi.

Lessons
1) I prefer working, in the early drafts, from hard copies and will continue to do so.
2) I'm more resourceful and stronger than I'd thought. No whining. No cussing. I'd messed up and I did what needed doing to fix that mistake.
3) Recovering forced me to re-examine every word--something that grows harder as we go from draft to draft.
4) The freedom from deadline fever is a blessing I don't want to lose. Not ever again. I will never rush my work.

And oh, yes, the huge lesson:
5) SAVE THE BLINKIN' WORK!

Coming tomorrow! An Adventure Concludes.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 3, the conclusion, of The Day My House Caught Fire.

The recovery of my lost manuscript has nearly been completed and I'll tell you what I learned--besides the importance of Saving our work!

Reflections on a Photo Shoot: Part 1

You can find my account of the photo shoot--a two-year journey to the shoot--on Authors Electric, clicking on this link:

http://tinyurl.com/pppduwu

You'll find some classic author photos, plus one gross example of what not to do. Part 2 will describe the actual shoot and post the final pictures, selected from 200.

Cheers!

Reb MacRath, Action Manifester: Flash Bulletin #5

Two days after the last Flash Bulletin, my laptop crashed--resulting in the loss of a completed but unsaved manuscript. In two more days I'd planned to send it to my beta readers for their feedback and an early spring release.

Luckily, I did find a saved second draft on a flash drive. This would have been at least six months old and the novel would have gone through a half-dozen drafts since then. But, compared with the alternative--abandoning the book altogether--the blessing, to me, seemed rich beyond compare. I dried my eyes, rolled up my sleeves and got down to work.

Since then:
--I have sent the first 120 'recovered' pages to my beta readers--completed using library computers in 1 hour sessions.
--I have nearly completed recovering the remainder, working in long hand on a hard copy from the flash drive. Am typing 3-5 pages a day.
--With the loss of the laptop, I lost my online connections and my Kindle reader app, except for short library sessions. Decision: Before repairing the laptop, I'll buy a Kindle Fire on 1/24 to regain those necessary powers. And I'll continue using library computers to type.
--A long-planned photo shoot took place in December, thanks to a generous offer of help from a California artist who'd read of my plight. The 200 photos taken have been culled to six....which I'll use within the next couple of weeks to replace existing shots here and on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon.
--The artist repeated a suggestion from years ago: that I search for freelance proofing assignments with advertising agencies, etc. I have the background but needed the repeat nudge. I'll begin the search this month.
--This work, in turn, will help finance the move to Seattle later this year--and could be regarded as existing employment when I arrive there.

So I enter 2014 with rekindled faith and a strengthened sense of synchronicity: the crashed laptop, the photo shoot, the chance of proofing for excellent pay, the move--all of these things came together from what first seemed like total disaster.

Banzai!

Coming Here on Monday!

The fifth Action Manifesting Flash Bulletin!

The Day My House was Set on Fire: Part 2

When you've rummaged through the ashes, saving the little you're able to save, you're entitled to sit down and have a good cry.

Then you need to make a decision as quickly as you can: Do you have enough strength and material to rebuild where you stand? Or do you choose to move along and build a new house somewhere else?

I had lost the only copy of a completed manuscript ready to send to my betas. I still had the nearly illegible hand-written first draft. And if that was all I had, I believe I might have abandoned the book--because I was also without a computer for now, relying on one-hour sessions at the library.

Luckily, I did find a saved second draft on an old flash drive. The book had been through many drafts since then, but I decided quickly:
--I had the strength to work from this.
--I'd recover mentally what I could recall and re-imagine wherever I had to.
--I'd work the way I used to work before I owned a computer.

Strategy:
1) I printed out batches of pages from the flash drive. And since computer time was limited, I returned to the style of my youth: using various colors of ink to signal the different drafts of each page. Before typing anything I would do at least six drafts.
2) I would not obsess over total recall. I would begin by accepting that I could never recover exactly the version that I lost. In the end, life willing, I'd produce a better book.

Progress report: I'm now 1-2 weeks from sending my beta readers the first 100 pages of the Recovery Copy.

My spirits are high. And I will keep you posted!

The blog is still in business!

A recent laptop crash resulted in the loss of my book in progress--and restricted my online access. So though I'm still very much in business, my online time is shorter.
Drop by on Monday for an update on the manuscript recovery's progressing--and how I'm learning to sleep in the nude when my poor house is in ashes.
Till then, may the fours be with you--and the threes and twos!