Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff's Blog, page 28
August 26, 2011
Increasing Your Writing Productivity
Sometimes people write to me and ask how to better their work. I'm always very flattered and most of the time, I'm very happy to respond with as much advice and/or brutal honesty I can muster. This one, from someone who has been kind enough to follow my work for a while, caught my eye. Given how much of a universal concern I feel this is for some writers, I thought I'd share both the question and response here.
I have been keeping a journal and am finding that the inspiration comes in jerks and sparks. Always writing a sentence here, a phrase there. I guess I need to channel it into a cohesive piece of work but, alas, there is the rub.
If you want to write in volume then you need to set aside a volume of time and make it a regular habit. You can't become a basketball player if all you ever do is shoot the ball everytime you walk past it in the driveway. It's tough work to discipline yourself to sit and write, which is why most people can't do it… but the only way to do it is to just do it… it takes time to get used to the routine but if you make it a regular part of your schedule to sit and just do nothing but write… even if the only time you can find is an hour on the weekends, then eventually you will find yourself connecting to that creative impulse for more than a fleeting moment or two here and there.
August 24, 2011
The Ten Commandments of Creativity
From composing music for TV and videogames to screenwriting/TV writing, producing, on-camera hosting, voice overs as well as penning and publishing books, I have been fortunate to have earned a living doing creative stuff my entire adult life. One thing I learned long ago was that you can strengthen your natural gifts of creativity with constant use and practice the same way an athlete gets stronger with exercise. A couple years ago I started this list as a reminder to myself how to mentally approach the game of being and staying creative. Today, I thought it was time to share it with you.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF CREATIVITY
Define your art. Don't let your art define you.
Slide head first. Commit and give it everything you got.
Sometimes the greatest achievements are accomplished by those who are not smart enough to know what is impossible.
The obstacles in your life do not prevent you from living your life. The obstacles in your life are your life.
Accolades are motivational annuities you cash in when life has you down.
An artist is someone who lives in a world of their own making. A businessman is someone who can make people pay to be part of a world. In order to succeed creatively, you need to do both well.
Enlightenment comes from stripping away the mental manacles holding you back and focusing deeply on something new that feels right in your heart and mind.
No detail is too small, but recognize when you've obsessed too long over the small stuff.
If someone tells you they absolutely hate your work, you're most likely doing something right to evoke that strong of a response.
And finally…. Never ever, ever give up, ever.
What do you think? Do you have any self-motivating axioms that you use to stay focused and creative? Hmmmm… maybe The Ten Commandments of Creativity will be the sequel to my previous book on creative focus: Go Forth and Kick Some Ass
August 23, 2011
Shadow Falls: Angel of Death now Available on iBooks
It takes a couple of weeks to get a book up in Apple's iBookstore but I'm happy to announce that finally, SHADOW FALLS: ANGEL OF DEATH is now available in iBooks for just $2.99.
August 21, 2011
Hobo with a Shotgun Mini Review
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN is a cinematic kamikaze mission that will delight fans of grindhouse revenge movies, violent camp and extreme splatterpunk. Flipping through Netflix last night and I came across "Hobo with a Shotgun". I had just heard of it, actually reading a short interview with star Rutger Hauer in Entertainment Weekly, so I didn't have high expectations this would be some kind of Oscar-worthy great film. All I wanted out of Hobo with a Shotgun was to be entertained… and boy, did it deliver in spades.
This is the movie I can imagine Quentin Tarantino making as a teenager, breaking into the Troma studios in the middle of the night after eating a whole bag of 'shrooms. There is lots of graphic violence (most of it way, way over the top) and totally deranged characters, but Rutger Hauer's completely sincere performance as the titular hobo is what drives this film. I'm not saying his acting is great in this movie, but it's no worse than Stallone in "Rambo" and much more compelling. Don't even get me started on the trio of villains, who may have been paid in crank to appear on camera. Other than Hauer, there's nobody else I recognized other than
Rob Wells, probably best known as "Ricky" from the raunchy hit Canadian TV series "Trailer Park Boys," who makes a cameo as a guy who gets decapitated with a barbed wire noose while imprisoned in a manhole cover fashioned around his neck for just such a reason.
Lovers of grindhouse will dig this movie and director Jason Eisener obviously knows his audience. The brilliance of this movie, and yes, I do mean brilliance, is that you just keep watching because you have to know what's going to happen next. Watching this movie made me wonder if I should write some grindhouse revenge novels…. hmmmm… something to think about. Chamber me another shell, hobo. Let's rip this town to shreds.
August 18, 2011
Get a FREE eBook copy of SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS over at Smashwords!
The SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS "Free-for-All" continues! For a limited time, you can get Badlands as a FREE ebook download over at Smashwords.com!
So that means that no matter what kind of eBook reader you have, Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, Sony… even straight up PDF… you can get a FREE copy of Shadow Falls: Badlands today!
But like I said, this free ebook offer won't last forever… so go over to the SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS page at Smashwords and download your copy today!
Christine O'Donnel Walks off Piers Morgan – PCH New Season Teaser with Mark and Mike
Mike and I, talking about Christine O'Donnell walking off of CNN's Piers Morgan. We're just warming up for the new season of PCH which begins September 14, 2011
Click to: LISTEN NOW
UC Radio – The best indie rock podcast on the fuckin' planet!
August 17, 2011
What is the "Angel of Death Chronicles" Series?
I always imagined the ANGEL OF DEATH CHRONICLES as a trilogy… but not in the sense that it would be made up of three books, but instead as three WORLDS.
Three concentric circles based upon the circle of life of a butterfly:
Larva. Pupa. Butterfly.
Let me tell you of a story about two brothers
Sons of the immortal demonic impulse known as Death
For centuries, groomed to succeed their father
One brother, the Wolf, is the judge of souls
The other, known as the Coyote, thirsts for the blood of the innocent and not so innocent alike
Time and again, across countless lifetimes, the brothers have battled
This is their story
A whole bunch of years ago, I was hired to write a feature screenplay for a producer of some note. That one action-packed script involving demons and monsters evolved into an entire trilogy and about a year and a half of my life working on this massive project. Long story short (no pun intended) the project stalled right around the time podcasting became my full-time career. I had immersed myself into the idea of demons for so long that I couldn't stop thinking about them… but this time it was more about the demons inside of us as opposed to the movie-monster kind.
And it was this idea about the unseen forces (and voices) that compel us to do terrible things that became the genesis for Shadow Falls. The original audio-drama was very cryptic on purpose and I ended up being very thankful that circumstances dictated changing to a novel format because I felt like I could finally fully explore this humongously epic tale that had begun to spin in my head.
So, as I currently see it the three worlds/stages/concentric circles of the ANGEL OF DEATH CHRONICLES are as follows:
Larva: The Shadow Falls series including Shadow Falls: Badlands, Shadow Falls: Angel of Death
Pupa: Diary of a Madman and the as-yet-untitled Diary of a Madman sequel (currently in development for 2012)
Butterfly: I've yet to unveil any details yet but there is a finished and polished full-length novel manuscript that for now I will just refer to as "Fallen 8".
A little crazy? Well, you be the judge. I've so far written 4 of the planned 6 books in this series and three of them are currently available for purchase. Stay tuned here for more details and if you want to see how the Larva and Pupa stages interconnect, you gotta read SHADOW FALLS: ANGEL OF DEATH.
Get Signed Copies of My Kindle Books Thanks to Kindlegraph
Saw this article in The Street about Kindlegraph and I was blown away. I'd heard about someone developing a way for authors to sign their eBooks and now Kindlegraph allows you to request signed copies of Kindle book covers that I get to personalize, autograph and then have sent directly to your Kindle! For those of you who have asked if there's a way for me to sign your Kindle ebooks, just go to my Kindlegraph page http://kindlegraph.com/authors/MYN and make your requests! Shadow Falls: Angel of Death signed cover requests go to the head of the line!
August 16, 2011
Re-doing the Badlands Book Cover… again.
So, not that long ago, I redid the cover for SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS. Well, yesterday I redid the redo. I was never quite satisfied with the last version and because I was so pleased with the way the SHADOW FALLS: ANGEL OF DEATH book cover came out, I went back to the drawing board and cooked up something that had more consistency with the SF:AOD cover and was more visually interesting. I've already uploaded updated versions of the ebooks and covers to Amazon, BN and iBooks so look for the new art to populate there… or if, for whatever reason, you want to have the old cover as a "collector's" type thing… grab the old version quick!
