First a guy lives his life. Then a writer pens a screenplay about the guy’s life. Then the guy, with the writer’s help, turns that screenplay into an autobiography. Then the autobiography gets handed to two other screenwriters, who turn it back into a screenplay. Then the screenplay is made into a movie. Then thirty…
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Is Digital Self-Publishing Just a Bubble?
The Guardian ran an article last week titled “The self-epublishing bubble.” You might want to go read it, or at least skim it, before continuing. But because I’m guessing most of you probably won’t, I’ll sum it up. Ewan Morrison, a writer who confesses that “writing about the end of books generate[d] more income for…
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If Microsoft Wants to Kill Off Gamestop, They’re Doing It All Wrong
Kotaku reported a supposedly reliable rumor last week that the next generation X-Box would not be able to play used games. I try not to pay attention to rumors surrounding the development of new tech, since they are so often just rumors, but this one was a little different. It didn’t seem like the sort…
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Arizona’s Disgusting Book Ban
“We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” — From Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Have you heard of Arizona’s House Bill 2281? You can read the bill here, if you don’t want me to ruin the surprise….
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007 Baker Street: Making Action Stars Out of Classic Lit (Part 2)
Last week, I laid out three criteria necessary for adding not-in-the-book action sequences to a film adaptation: (a) it’s true to the character, (b) it keeps the most important details from the source material, and (c) it serves a purpose in the narrative. This week I’m going to pick apart a few specific action scenes…
007 Baker Street: Making Action Stars Out of Classic Lit (Part 1)
Over the weekend, I watched Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the second in the Guy Ritchie-directed Holmes films, known for adding a few more explosions and Robert Downey, Jr. eccentricities to Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. I know there are a lot of purists who loathe these films on principle, though I wonder how much…
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The Social Concert
I went back home for the holidays; in my case, just outside DC. I was invited at the last minute to a Jan. 1st concert by hip-hop artist Wale (pronounced wall-AY, not whale). Honestly, I didn’t enjoy his second album, Ambition, as much as his first, Attention Deficit, but I still really like the guy….
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A Diagram for Understanding Amazon’s KDP Select
A few weeks ago, Amazon unveiled a new option for self-publishing authors called KDP Select. I read it, scratched my head, read it again, leaned back in my chair and stared at the screen. Then I bookmarked it and closed it down. I’d need to come back to this after I’d had time to process…
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Business Isn’t Everything, But It Helps
Looking at the full lifespan of the internet, which started, believe it or not, in the ’60s, business is pretty new to the game. The internet was born out of a realization that computers might need to share information with each other once in awhile. Otherwise, we’d just have very large and very expensive calculators….