Skip to main content

A brief update

So, I missed my post last week and I considered skipping a post this week.

Why?

We have a brand new baby in the house. Her name is Valkyrie and she's great.

Naming tiny humans is a much harder thing to do than naming characters, and I find naming characters to be one of the hardest parts of a story for me. But I know that if I'm at any point dissatisfied with a name, I can find+replace the old name and insert a new one.

With a kid, it's fairly permanent.

Valkyrie was on a long list of names and it's the one that seemed to match what we wanted the most and came out on top of the compromise. That's the other thing about naming characters versus children. Unless you're collaborating with someone, you have the final say in what your character's names are.

While I'm taking some time off from other forms of work because of the new baby, I'm not taking time off from writing and I've been chugging along on a new novel and short story, as well as continuing revisions on The Aeronaut.

As for some new things: my latest piece for Huffington Post is up. It's about why Star Wars: Rebels is Must-See TV. 

I also published the newest installment in my "Cinema Behind Star Wars" series, this time I drew the parallels between Star Wars and Citizen Kane.

That's about it for this week.  As far as my work outside of these things: I remain busy for Big Shiny Robot! and Full of Sith. 

As a reminder, you can get tickets to Stuff You Missed in History Class's first live episode in New York in October (which, coincidentally, will feature me) right here.

And don't forget to check out any of my books, drop reviews of them on Amazon or Goodreads, and follow me on twitter and Facebook!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 Schedule

It's time for another year of Salt Lake Comic Con and another hectic schedule for me. But! that doesn't mean it's not a helluva lot of fun. I hope you're able to join me at any of these panels. Especially if you like Star Wars. And please, please, please come to my signing and visit. Get some books signed. I'd love that enormously. Here is my Thursday schedule: Everything here is a highlight. That first panel about behind the scenes of the prequels is with Pablo Hidalgo and I'll be asking him questions about what it was like to be there on set for most of the prequels. Then I'll be asking questions of Michael Biehn, who I've been a fan of since I was a little kid. Aliens and Terminator were favorites. If you want to ask him a question, please hit me up on Twitter with it. I will ask it at the panel. And you don't want to miss Fauxthentic History's Infinity Gauntlet live episode. It's going to be soooo good. Here is Friday: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Missed Opportunities of Days Gone By

“Hello?” I said into the phone, accepting the call from a number I didn’t recognize. “Hey,” the feminine voice on the other replied, as though I should know the sound of her voice. At a loss, I said, “Can I help you?” “It’s Brooke.” Her name stopped me. It couldn’t possibly be her. We hadn’t spoken in years, a decade perhaps. “Brooke?” “Yeah, Brooke Baker. This is Mark, right?” Jesus Christ. It was her. “Yeah, it is Mark. Brooke. Wow. How are you? It’s been a long time since… well… since anything.” “I know.” “So, how are you doing?” “Okay, I suppose…” Her voice belied her words, though. Something was up. “I… It’s just been so long and I guess I wanted to hear your voice.” “I don’t think I had a number for you. Ever. I offered a couple of times, but…” “I was a brat back then.” And that’s how a random phone call turned into a two-and-a-half hour catch-up session. We spoke of everything under the sun: people we still knew, how different we were, h...
14 comments
Read more

Anatomy of a Scene: The Third Man

It's time again to break down a classic scene. One that's well-written and, in my view, a fine example of excellent craft. I've done some of these articles from books (like The End of the Affair   and Starship Troopers ) and other movies (like Citizen Kane , City Lights , Raiders of the Lost Ark , and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ), but now it's time to take a look at a scene from The Third Man . It blends the best of Orson Welles (as he's in the film and drives this scene) and Graham Greene, who wrote this particular screenplay. Before we get to the scene, we need some context. The Third Man is a tale of the black market in Vienna, just after World War II. It's about a cheap, dime-store Western novelist named Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) and his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles.) Lime offered Martins a job in Vienna, so Martins leaves America and arrives, only to find that Harry Lime is dead. Penniless, without a friend or reason to be...
Post a Comment
Read more