The second reason I started this blog was because I am an aspiring writer. Granted, I haven’t been published and my novel is in a perpetual state of “work in progress”, but someday I hope to get it to a point where I am comfortable with other people reading what I’ve wrote. That “someday” will be in 2012, or else. “Or else” what I do not know. This blog directly relates to aspiring writing career. I know times are changing and self-publishing your own e-book is becoming more and more common for authors. Just ask author Jonathan Selwood (I greatly enjoyed his first novel,The Pinball Theory of Apocalypse) who self-e-published his second novel, Die Like a Girl
. I’ve been brought up on the belief that being a successful author means landing a book deal with a major publisher. Yet over these past four years as I’ve watched the book industry evolve, I have been forces to accept the fact that I may never see any of my books in print, only in digital formats. I’m fine with this. I believe you can be a successful self-e-published author.

I got a Kindle Fire for christmas. It seemed like the time to jump on the e-reader bandwagon and the Fire appealed to me. I’ll properly review the Fire later on (you know, in about a month), but after playing around with it, I’ve become more OK with books moving to digital. I don’t believe print is going anywhere anytime soon. There will still be books and authors that I must have a hard copy of. But there are also books that I am fine only having a digital copy of.

Getting back to the second reason, this blog is marketing tool for my brand. I am my own brand: Colin Matthew, the book pirate. Aside from here I also have my twitter (@thebookpirate) and that’s it. I don’t particularly enjoy trying to market myself, but it’s become a necessity for all authors with the exception of Stephen King or John Grisham.

Now long ago I was contact by a representative from ooshirts.com pitching the idea of expanding my brand to include t-shirt. While I have nothing I personally wanted to put on a shirt, it is something I could see other authors doing to strengthen their brand. Artists in particular could benefit from featuring their art on shirts and selling them. With writers it’s harder since we focus on words, but we’re nothing if not creative and it would be possible to make some cool book-related shirts. In fact, in my closet I have a bunch of t-shirts that could be described as “literary” and I frequently get compliments on them when I wear them to Powells. I took ooshirts.com up on their offer to give them a try and had them print up a t-shirt featuring the artwork of Terry Blas (with his permission of course). The final result can be seen below. Overall, I like the quality of the shirt and the way it turned out.

The only other thing I can think of that I might make as a self-marketing tool is bookmarks. Everybody needs bookmarks! Well, unless you’re reading on a Kindle Fire.

Anyway, to sum up, 2012 will be interesting.

I’ve also been listening to the Discworld audiobooks while on my monthly roadtrip. I’ve listened to his latest, Snuff, and Making Money. Both turned out rather good, but more on that later I guess.

Next year there are a couple of books I am looking forward to. Amazon is currently listing The Wind Through The Keyhole, Stephen King’s latest book in the Dark Tower series, with a April 24th release date. There might be a new Pirates! book from Gideon Defoe. Amazon currently lists it as being intended for ages 7 and Up, so I’m not getting my hopes of that it’s a full-fledged sequel in the book series.  As i’ve mentioned before, his books are the source material for the upcoming Pirates! movie. Speaking of pirate movies based on books, I just finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides which, according to the credits, was “suggested by” the book from Tim Powers. How a book “suggests” a movie is beyond me but does give me hope of someday cashing royalty checks for something my novel suggests. Also coming next year is the graphic novel adaptation of The Girl Who Owned a City by T.O. Nelson and illustrated by Joelle Jones. I guess that’s coming out sometime in April. It’s not currently listen on Amazon.

However, what this letter neglects is all the awesome people I would run in to while working at Borders. I got excited when somebody asked me to recommend a book to them. Do you know what it’s like to be able to explain one of your favorite books to a total strange then have them purchase it just because they saw how excited you were about it? That was me! Watching customers walk away with the book I told them about was the best part of my job. Then there was the people I worked with. Sure, there were some jerks and a general manager who mysterious disappeared. But for the most part they were awesome, well read people. There was one lady who had seriously read a majority of the romance section. We worked there because we had a passion for books. We loved customers who shared our passion. This letter? It’s not addressed to those who love books. It feels like it was written by employees who are angry that they job that surrounded them with things they love, books, is going away and never coming back. Years from now, when I tell my kids that I worked at a bookstore, will they even know what I’m talking about? Bookstores are slowly coming to an end (sorry) and these employees needed to vent. They needed someone to blame.

So don’t get angry at them for getting angry at their customers. They’re the ones who are losing their jobs that surrounded them with books for eight hours a day.

It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy

I’m a little sad that she had to pay for the book tour herself. This is her ninth book, and she is hilarious. I love recommending her to my friends and family. She’s one of those authors who you lend a copy of her book to a friend who then goes out to buy one of her older books. Or your friend will simply keep the book leaving you to buy another copy for yourself.

The obvious answer is to sell them to Powells, Portland’s big’ol used book store. But I can’t help but think that’s wrong. Mayhaps I should donate them to the library or some other organization that likes having books donated to them. The option would earn me some Paragon points while selling them and pocketing the cash would earn me Renegade points. Maybe I should play less Mass Effect. It’s starting to influence the way I think.

Anyway, my question to you, how do you get rid of books?

In my personal writing I also write in short chapters with each chapter ranging from 800-1,500 words depending on what’s happening. In my mind I think this is where a lot of books will be headed due to the ADD nature of society where sitting down for an hour to do nothing but read is hard to do. We all get distracted by the Facebooks and Twitters. My phone is always within reach and while reading I admit that I will check it from time to time. Call me a product of the social media, but I think most people are the same way, constantly checking to see if somebody wrote on their wall.

Anyway, anybody have any thoughts on short chapters versus long chapters? I’d be curious to hear them.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game is based off of the popular Scott Pilgrim graphic novels (see previous post #1 and #2 if you don’t know what I am talking about). The story is your typical boy meets girl, boy lesbians girl, boy must defeat girl’s seven evil exes. In the book it is up to Scott to defeat the exes since he is the one dating Ramona. However, in the game you can play as Scott, Ramona, Kim, and Stephen. It’s possible to play the single player game as a character other than Scott but doing so completely destroys the story. Why would Stephen, the lead singer in Scott’s band, go and single handedly defeat Ramona’s exes. There’s nothing in it for him, nothing for him to gain. Same thing with Kim, drummer and Scott’s ex.

In order to make the game playable I made up stories that take the place of “defeat Ramona’s exes” in case I find myself playing as someone other than Scott. Let’s face it, without a story holding the game together it’s impossible to keep interested in this beat’em up game.

Ramona Flowers vs. the World: The Game
One would think that after an appropriate amount of time Ramona’s exes would have gotten over her. Instead they constantly send her friend requests on Facebook, are sending her Tweets, and have from time-to-time shown up at her work. She’s fed up with it. It’s time for Ramona to teach her exes what the meaning of “we’re through” is even if she has to beat it in to them. After beating all seven of the exes, Ramona enjoys to solitude. It might be a little lonely, not being the center of attention, so maybe she’ll get a cat. And one cat turns in to three or four and before you know, Ramona because that “cat lady” who lives above your apartment. Ramona will wonder why she can’t get another boyfriend, but you’ll know why. It’s the all of her cats and the smell that comes with them.

Kim Pine vs. the World: The Game
Kim comes from a broken home. He father left before her first birthday, and her mother refuses to talk about it. Her mom has dated other men, searching for a replacement father figure. But every time she got comfortable with them they left. After Kim’s mother passed away in a car crash one snowy night after being dumped again, Kim was forced to live on the streets and support herself. She learned to fight to protect herself from the scary hobos of Montreal. Life turned around and eventually was taken in to foster care (or the canadian equivalent) and started life over again. At last she had a family, but her anger towards men remained. Her violent outburst can not be contained and all of her friends are worried about her rage issues but are too afraid to say anything. Only after Kim’s seventh violent outbreak do her friends sit her down and tell her how worried they all are about her. There are tears and a lot of hugs. Too ashamed to face her friends after that, Kim retreats to the Chic-Choc Mountains where she manages the local tavern and is able to beat up the occasional drunk without anybody noticing.

Stephen Stills vs. the World: The Game
In what may be the least expected plot twist (and the least cared about) in the Scott Pilgrim books was that Stephen Stills is gay. He finally came out to Scott 10 pages before the end of Volume 5. Nobody saw that coming. The reason for that was because it took 5 volumes for Stephen to accept who he is. At first he was like “Oh dude no, I can’t be gay. I’ll date a girl or something to prove.” But that, naturally, doesn’t work out. His confusion turns to self-hatred and he becomes incredibly homophobic. To prove his manliness, he sets out to beat up the seven toughest people around, who just happen to be Ramona’s exes. As he defeats each ex, he learns a little about himself. Upon defeating Ramona’s final ex, he earns the power of acceptance and is finally able to admit to himself and his friends that he likes dudes. Stephen and his boyfriend go on to open a bed and breakfast in Saint-Georges.

Next time, I’ll explore the story’s of the two hidden characters in the game.

My goal for September is to hit the 35,000 mark before October. Possible? Sure, if I can type 1,000 words a day.

It was an incredibly cruel trick on Mr. Kings part.

Anyway, recently the Syfy channel has adapted The Colorado Kid into a TV series called Haven. Three episodes in and the story has differed slightly but the possibility of finally finding out what happened to The Colorado Kid is there. Haven focus on an FBI agent who takes a temporary leave of absence from the FBI to serve as a local police officer in the town of Haven, Maine where strange things are constantly happening. Please be careful not to confuse this show with Syfy’s other series Eureka about a street-smart cop who relocates to Eureka, Oregon to investigate all the strange things that are constantly happening.

Anyway.

In the first episode Audrey, the FBI agent, discovers an old newspaper article about The Colorado Kid and in the included picture is a person she believes to be her mother. It’s a bit of a stretch. Okay, it’s a huge stretch in my opinion. “Look, this women kind of looks like me and I was adopted. She’s probably my mother.” Really. That is the extent of the explanation we get from the show and what keeps her in Haven.

Another problem I have with the show is that all the episodes so far have followed the exact same format.

1) Weird thing happens.
2) Audrey accuses the most likely person responsible.
3) If the wrong person is accused, accused the next most likely person.
4) If Audrey is wrong yet again (and so far she has been), have it dawn on her that the person responsible is the person she least suspects.
5) Case solved!

Really, she made it in to the FBI with this type of deduction skills?

Is this show worth caring about? Probably not. I see a lot of potential in it. Haven could turn out to be really interesting if only is would drop this “monster of the week” format it’s following and take the time to build some solid mythology. They are only dropping hints right now as to what causes all these supernatural things to happen. It’s been made clear that there are characters who know something about what is going on, but it has not dawned on Audrey yet to ask them because she is too busy searching for this woman who she is convinced is her mother.

Anybody else have thoughts on this show so far?

At least i’m happy and that’s what counts the most.