The most exposition any film ever needs- but this film was so well crafted that even if this crawl had been left out, you could’ve easily followed the plot. Think of your favorite movie. Play out the opening scene in your head. You can see it now: there’s the protagonist, crossing the room to sit down on a chair in the center of the set. She/He faces you, then spends the next forty minutes explaining who s/he is, what her/his…
(Photo credit: David Niblack, Imagebase.net. Half-assed creepy filtering by me!) My stomach knots up. My chest constricts. I’m stuck in a permanent cringe of humiliation, and can’t bear to be in the same room. I seek distraction from a book or video game, but the horrid, I-could-just-die anxiety doesn’t go away until it’s over. Am I on deck to give a big speech? Standing trial? No. My spouse is reading part of my manuscript for critique. It’s ridiculous. The whole…
(Now witness the full spectrum of Ellis’ Editing Pens of DOOM!) I don’t know where my 24×7, hyper-critical inner editor came from, but I have some theories. I’m super self-critical with everything I do, for one. For another, I like spelling and grammar. Although I chose an academic path rife with proofs, derivatives, and computer programs, I always scored higher on verbal aptitude tests than math or science ones. Also, I grew up in a house where one parent wasn’t…
(Artwork by über-talented Chris Howard) …but it was a near thing! I’ve been talking nebulously about this novel I’ve been working on for years, but guess what? I finally have a completed first draft. It’s a thing! You can read it straight through (sort of)! It’s really rough in some places, but won’t be for long! Time to introduce it to the world. The book is called Blood’s Force, and will be the first of a series of books I’m…