The Big Finish

I'm done with "And The Sky Turned White...". After a marathon of work sessions, it's off the printer! Can't wait to see how the proof looks. Ready to start on MIV3 and other projects!

After seeing it four times I want to say something clever and insightful about Star Wars 3, but I'm having a hard time coming up with the words. Here are some flashes:

-Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor/Chacellor Palpatine owns the film. You will never find a more wretched and scummy villian in all of the SW universe, or anywhere else for that matter.

-More Yoda! Yoda was great, would pay 20 million bucks ot see and all Yoda flick. You hear me Lucas?!

-Special effects: awesome!

-The acting. Well, uh...it's better, but what the hell are these people afraid of? Sure Lucas' dialogue sucks in most places, but...hey look, WOOKIES!!!

-General Griveous is cool. Very *cough cough cough wheeze* cool.

-A very nice tie-in to the Original Trilogy. It adds a lot more to the landscape that we grew up with, stuff that matters a lot more than Gungans, pod races and double-bladded lightsabers.

All in all, I liked it alot. Better than the first two to be sure. It's kind of a relief that it is all over. I'm done with SW movies for the foreseeable future. I know that there was talk of there being 9 episodes, but let's just leave sleeping dogs lie. No more lightsaber duels, no more planets and names that even I, a die-hard geek, have trouble remembering (whatever happened to cool names like Hammerhead, Walrus Man and Snaggletooth?) and no more intrigue. I'm sick of intrigue where it doesn't belong. Unless Episodes 7, 8 and 9 feature a cranky, old Han Solo single handely wiping out the entirety of the Rodian species, one blaster shot at a time, I don't want anything to do with it. It's just a....

....what's that? A t.v. series....uh...um...

Never mind, long live Star Wars!

Sky Nearly White...Finding The Other Way

AND THE SKY TURNED WHITE is off at the printers and we should be seeing a proof anytime now. It will be in the 7.5"x9.25" size, same as our catalog. It's a nifty size, nice and book-y.

From there, Carter starts on MAN IS VOX: The Other Way, our paean to Ian Fleming and Robert Heinlein. This time, I was the style switcher, telling a very conventional sort of story through the prism of events from Barracudae and Paingels. It didn't turn out too conventional, that's the truth.
I started writing MAN IS VOX: Let Freedom Reign the other week and had to stop. That's a riot I'll have to start a little later.

Hmm. Probably time to get that May newsletter out...

Lost and Found

Crazy week here. Carter's getting AND THE SKY TURNED WHITE done, so you'll be seeing that in June, maybe sooner. We'll let you know. I've been running around deciding what to work on next, but all my collaborators are gravid with script now, so nothing's pressing. It's a bit of a weird feeling. To pass the time I'm doing background notes and research on a few things at once, just to see if something leaps to the fore and demands attention.

I have my ceramic star-spangled cow bank, my guide to foot orthotics, my black angel painting, and a few old "big-box" horror movies; these are the talismans of what's to come. One of them's gonna blink.

Almost there

And The Sky Turned White should be done by the end of the week. I hope to have it back from the printers by Memorial Day weekend. So far it's turning out pretty good.

Exactly one week from tonight I, along with other geeks, will be witnessing the last installment of the SW saga. Am I excited? No....YES!!!

DUB TRUB 2 Review at Erasing Clouds

Tony Doug Wright calls it "a great page-turner" and more. Click here to see.

O I N J !!!!!!!!!

I no longer feel anger toward the world!

Well, at least not toward my co-workers.

Well, at least I retract calling them douchebags.

MY ORANGE BIKE HELMET RETURNED TO ME TONIGHT!!!!

As I finished up and was restocking my cart for tomorrow, I noticed a cardboard box sitting atop the lockers, where my helmet was stolen about three or four weeks ago. On its side was written "Found on 2nd floor". I reached up, pulled it down, opened it, and there it was.

I am grateful for its return, but this raises new questions. Who "found" it? Who delivered it (quite anonymously) to my locker? Why a month later?

Who cares?! THE OINJ IS BACK!!!!

yay

LOST IN THE WASH Complete!

What a great weekend! The script for Lost In The Wash is at last done and delivered. Now I can focus on a fuzzy future project and take notes and blurt random dialogue for three others (including Man Is Vox 4 and Zoo Force 3) until someone gets close to done with their current project.

I even found a writ-long-ago script for a companion piece to LITW that we may include in the same volume. The only copy I had of this script was printed out on tractor-feed paper--I had a hard drive death in the time of floppies that claimed a fair amount of stuff, so this was the only copy. It had survived many paperwork purges over the years, but somewhere two purges ago it was secreted away somewhere beyond even cleaning. It turned up in a crate half-full of horror VHS tapes at the bottom of a tower of crated horror VHS tapes behind a partition in my kitchen. Easy, right? When things really elude me, I usually start with the crisper and work towards saner hiding places. It keeps the search time short.

So now the script is in pdf, and spread around a bit. Have I mentioned I like pdfs?

Lost In The Wash design peek...

Here's a couple details from sketches I've been getting from Will Grant for LOST IN THE WASH. As you might guess, it's got to do with water. After a week of "Oh, I'm almost done", I really am almost done writing it. After swimming in this lovely warm pool of a story for a while, I'm reluctant to leave. But that's how it goes.

There's more to this book than I can say at the moment, but at least you can look at a little bit of the process.

We're also gearing up to do a special reprint edition of the very first comic that Jeremy and I did together, a story called "Absence", which was to be NIGHT ANGEL #1 back in the mid 90s. We'll have them available to cons and other places--they'll be printed by ComiXpress, a service we've been eager to try for a while. More on that soon, too!

God is my Clone Pilot

At last! Monday is here! Okay, here's a recap of the last 3-4 days:

1)Saw The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Friday night. I thought that it was very smart, very funny and touching. Anyone unhappy with the final result is just a big grump.

2)Worked. Alot. This brings me to #3:

3)I need a Clone.

4)Saw Kung Fu Hustle, again, after trying to see The Goonies and then HGTG again. Fell asleep. No offense to Stevie Chow, it was a combo of antihistamine and lack of sleep.

5)Worked some more.

6)Where's that Clone?

7)Went to a play last night at the Maibe Theatre located on the Uof I Campus. It was entitled Cell Cycle and it featured a young lady that I'm working with on a future project. She was very good, the play was very well done and interesting. I don't do a lot of live theatre, for varying reasons, but it was a nice treat and I hope to see more.

8)Finished the final shot of Dub Trub 9. Expect to see it sometime during the 2010's.

9)Okay, I quit. I'll settle for this dipstick.

That's all for now.