The Personal Effects Experience
I mentioned Personal Effects: Dark Art in my previous post. As part of his promotion efforts for the novel, JC Hutchins has produced a number of "vlurbs" from people in the realm of horror/paranormal film and fiction.

Inspired in part by this, and wanting to contribute something of my own to this whole thing (aside from buying the book itself), I recorded a few minutes of video to capture some of my first impressions and thoughts about the book and my exposure to it thus far.



It is my first real attempt at working with video. I dabbled in audio production with my short-lived Vampire: The Requiem podcast "The More Things Change" (which is still available here). Video is a bit harder to work with, and a bit less forgiving when it comes to editing stream-of-consciousness material.

Anyhow, I hope to make more of these, and get better at it as time goes by.
- posted by Josh @ 9:21 PM (0) comments

 
Holy crap, he's still alive?!?!
Why yes, yes I am.

It's been several months since I last posted anything here. Life has been busy, and there hasn't really been anything worth talking about.

Until now.

Two cool things are coming from a pair of talented authors very soon. First up, the latest (and last) chapter of the Heaven series from Mur Lafferty launches on Monday. If you haven't encountered this wonderful fantasy audio-novella series, you should really check it out. It starts with a premise that could be considered a bit cliche -- a pair of friends die and start exploring the multitude of mythoogical afterlives. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for Mur to put her own stamp on things, displaying a brilliant creativity and spinning the familiar into the unique.

You can get caught up on this series over at podiobooks.com. Here are direct links for the first four chapters:

1. Heaven
2. Hell
3. Earth
4. Wasteland

The other cool thing is coming from the pen of J.C. Hutchins, another pioneer in the world of podcast fiction. I recently finished his Seventh Son (also available at podiobooks.com), and it is a solid techno-thriller. It starts a little bit slowly, but once the action starts, it doesn't let up.

Anyhow, J.C.'s print debut comes out this upcoming week as week. Personal Effects: Dark Art is a collaboration with Jordan Wiesman (yes, that Jordan Wiesman). More than a a simple supernatural thriller, this is a multi-media experience. Clues and inserts in the book connect to a larger experience that will give readers a deeper insight into the events of the novel, learning things that the main characters never encounter.

J.C. has a free 'prelude' novella available, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood serves as an introduction to the main protaganist, and if the first two chapters of that work are any indication, Dark Art will be a mind-bending ride. You can get Sword of Blood at jchutchins.net.

Is this post an indication that I will be blogging with a bit more regularity? Perhaps. I can't say for sure, and I'm not going to promise anything right now, but we'll see what the summer brings.
- posted by Josh @ 1:00 AM (0) comments

 
BlogMo 12: The Guild and New Media
The lovely and talented Felicia Day (probably best known by my readers as Penny from Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) is the creator and writer for a great little web series called The Guild, available at www.watchtheguild.com. If you haven't caught this groovy little series about a group of MMO players, you should give it a look, especially since the second season will be starting up on November 25th.

Because of her success with The Guild (and, peripherally, Doctor Horrible), Felicia gave a talk at NewTeeVee, talking about New Media, web content, and how many of the people in Hollywood (or at least, those in charge of things) are vaguely interested, but don't really 'get it'.

I find it interesting, but not terribly surprising, that this is the case. If you recall the distant past of 2007, when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, one of the lynchpins of the WGA's stance was that writers should receive some kind of compensation for online content they produce for the studios, but also that online 'broadcasts' of material should be taken into account when it comes to residuals. It all hinged on New Media, and while there are clearly a number of people who do get it, clearly the people with the big money (and looking to make even bigger money), don't.

Web-based content is fundamentally different than traditional studio content (even niche studio content). There's been a lot of discussion on various fora about how you no longer need to get millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of people to consume your product to be successful when it comes to the web -- all you need are a couple thousand devoted fans. It takes work to earn them (you can't just slap up a site and expect the masses to come), but they are invaluable to the success of any 'net-based project.

The advantage is, with the internet, you are truly pulling your audience from a global community (at least, the global community with internet access). You're not restricted by licensing deals, region restrictions, or any of the rest of that. In this environment, niche marketing, and niche targeting are the keys to success. The goal is to find your specific audience and hook them in. This is, in so many ways, the antithesis of traditional media marketing, where the idea is (generally speaking) to throw material out there on as broad a distribution as possible and hope that enough of it sticks to make a profit.

People like Felicia are on the leading edge of a revolution, and it's really cool to watch this sort of thing develop.
- posted by Josh @ 5:54 PM (0) comments

 
BlogMo 11: Welcome to Northrend
So I stayed up way too late last night. The wife decided that she would go out to the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King after all, and brought home our copies of the game (collector's edition for her, standard edition for me).

After about 20 minutes of installing and reloading the patches, I logged on, made my way to Stormwind Harbor, and caught the boat to Northrend.

I haven't done more than poke around the landing area, pick up the next level of training in my professions (and picked up a bunch of new recipes in the process), and do some of the 'running errand' quests. I haven't ventured inland, or killed anything yet, in large part because my wife would be very upset if I started advancing and killing things without her (bloodthirsty little gnome that she is).

Within about 20 minutes of logging on after installing Wrath, we had three Death Knights in the guild. I know a lot of people were really grooving on the ability to play the new class, but I want to explore the new zone, level up my main character, and take the fight to the Lich King! I guess part of it is that I don't really play my alts that much, and I can't think of any pressing reason to add another one to my pool -- after all, the Death Knight starts at level 55, and I wouldn't be able to get to Northrend until after I did all the Outlands stuff that I did not that long ago with my Warrior.

So it's hitting the beach with my main. It looks really cool so far (what little I have seen of it) and I can't wait until later this evening when I can get back in there.
- posted by Josh @ 5:51 PM (0) comments

 
BlogMo 10: The experiment so far
Kind of a meta-post today. As I said back on Nov 1, this month is a bit of an experiment, to see how successful I can be if I try and write one blog post a day for a month. So... eleven days in, how is it going?

Well, as the counter on this post indicates, I'm one day behind at this point. Other than the "one post a day" objective, I didn't set myself any particular creative agenda, and I think that may (in part) be something of a problem. Of course, it's a problem in my fiction writing as well.

You see, I have a nasty internal editor; this little imp holds me back by making me feel that I need to do something substantive, that my posts (or my writing in general) need to be about something, it can't just be a little toddle for my own amusement. Of course, one of the more common pieces of writing advice out there is to write something that you enjoy, and the audience will find you (provided you do some sort of promotion... while some people may stumble across your work, you can't expect to get numbers without a little bit of work).

One problem I've found thus far is the matter of topics. The first part of this month, leading up to and right after the election provided plenty of grist for my brain-mill. It did that for a bunch of other people as well -- this political season was different in so many ways. But the political slant is kind of out-of-flavor for the tradition of this blog, which has largely been focused on fantasy gaming and fiction, with splashes of my life thrown into it.

I don't know... I find that in some respects I've been rather unfocused when it comes to my creative works. After a long day at work, I would rather flop on the couch and veg out watching TV or play computer games for a few hours before heading off to bed. It isn't that my job is especially taxing -- in fact, other than the general stress of being in customer service for eight hours (minus lunch) each day, I don't get much brain work as it is.

We'll see how this continues... no doubt when Wrath of the Lich King comes out later this week, and I get hip-deep in the snows of Northrend, I'll have more to talk about. We'll see what happens.

(Of course, the whole reason I'm writing this post instead of playing WoW is because the servers have been down all day, and I'm more or less caught up on my TV watching. Kind of a sad commentary, really.)
- posted by Josh @ 8:52 PM (0) comments