Reflection, Rejection and Really Awful Reboots

The word of the week is repudiation.

May 14 ­- Thrice Happy

Today was an incredible anniversary:

Three years ago, I had my first date with the most amazing, awesome and astounding woman I've ever imagined I might fall in love with.

Three of the best years in my life, no comparison, and also the happiest - by a mile!

We went to dinner at Pizzeria Prima Strada, just down the road, and managed( thanks to my sister! )to get a quiet table in the back. My lady and I enjoyed our dinner uninterrupted, and as you can see, my pizza was WOW:

Pizza, Peter and Pretty Lady, and... not pizza?

Afterwards, we went down to Moka House to relax a bit more on the patio, and play the new boardgame my lady had thoughtfully got me as a gift for our anniversary. It's called Battlesheep, it's fun and fast and definitely doesn't resemble a pizza at all in the image above; a perfect gift we both will enjoy.

The evening ended too soon, as we both had to work in the morning, and I will say it again: I consider myself a lucky, lucky man to have my lady love in my life!

May 15 - We've been here how long?

Hard to believe, but it's been six years since I last moved.

That's somewhat of a record; though I don't have exact records to consult, mind you, I think the longest I've ever lived in one place was seven years, and that was my last place in ON before I moved out to BC.

I think we've done extremely well here in Victoria. Even though just today I received a notice that our rent will increase again this September, it's still many hundreds less than a comparably-sized place fetches on the current market. This is what our place looked like six years ago when my sister and I moved in( and hasn't changed much, save half the books are now safely being held at my parent's place ):

Two bedrooms, 1000 sq.ft and a dishwasher: perfect!

It's an excellent location, and even though I grit my teeth at the dozens( weekends: hundreds )of motor cycles that rumble by the windows from spring to fall, it's still a 9/10 for me, and would be a 10/10 if it was even a block back from the main road, instead of being just twenty feet from the 4-lane main road.

I think we'll be here a while longer, at least until I manage to get a jump in job status and the rental market sorts itself out to saner prices in a couple of years...

Damn, those are pretty... and the Pro has -3- camera lenses!

On a side note, I turned down the offer of a new phone from Telus today.

I got a call last week from a sales rep, eager to sell me a new phone upgrade "at no cost!" which rang alarm bells... and so I did a little research over the weekend on the excellent phone we were discussing, the Huawei P20( not the P20 Pro, which at $250 up front, wasn't a "no cost" phone ). Unsurprisingly, when I called regular-Telus to ask, I was told that my monthly plan would DOUBLE in price in order to 'qualify' for the "no cost" phone payment option... meaning that it would cost me an additional $1560 over two years!

Yeah, no thanks, sly sales rep: I'll keep my $60/10gb monthly plan for a while longer, while I search for a phone to buy outright - probably used. I'd love to have a new Huawei P20 Pro or the just-released OnePlus 6, but given that they're both in the $700+ CAN range and my budget's around 1/5 of that... not going to happen.

The search continues.

May 16 - Rejected

Today was the day: the Live Slush Reading of my first novel!

Not just mine, but 14 others, including one from my critique group and another from the writing group. Suffice to say, I was excited to get up today!

The first batch was read at 7am PST, and none of the three of us were in it... bummer. It was interesting and informative to watch though, and I took copious notes about little things I hadn't seen in the last few years of writing research, specific to submissions made to publishers.

The second batch went live at 10am PST, and I popped it on at work... despite being told just this morning that "it wasn't fair" to other people in the office that I was allowed to watch YouTube videos while doing my job, and they couldn't( even on my personal cell phone ). It couldn't last forever, I guess. Anyway...

The video passed the hour-long mark and finally, my book was up! I've tagged the video below to start at my reading( you can watch the full first video here and the second here ):

Right - did you watch it?

Not the results I was hoping for, and to be honest I was rather despondent for a few hours afterwards today... all that hard work blown in a mere 13 minutes, and the irony of that particular number isn't lost on me!

However, my incredible girlfriend met me for dinner right after work, and I was able to talk through things with her. She did mention that she thought it bad luck that my entry was at the very end of the second session, when the editors were both tired and grumpy( they even say so themselves in the video )and that affected their ability to 'get' my book's introduction. *sigh*

There's still quite a few positives to take away from today's session, not the least of which is that it's not 'official' yet: the publisher may still be reading through all of the submissions, as their followup email wasn't specific about how they'd treat any of the 'we will pass on it' submissions:

In the meantime, it's back to work: making the current draft better with more editing and by incorporating things learned from today's downer. At least I didn't have to wait 9-12 months for a form rejection letter with no feedback!

May 17 - In The Market!

This post is specifically designed to make myself feel better:

Scifi is hot these days!!!

From movies to TV to NetFlix to books and comics and all things media, the scifi market keeps heating up, which gives me hope that my own work will find a home. Given that I consume a fair bit of the scifi that's out there, I can say honestly that it surprises me that a good deal of it gets published in various forms, given the questionable quality of the product...

David Gerrold, writer of Star Trek fame with more than fifty years experience in the book and TV fields, has some excellent insight on the current hot state of scifi:

So ... in answer to a question that wasn't asked recently, but still needs to be answered. Yes, Netflix and Amazon are both aggressively seeking science fiction properties to develop. Other networks are also looking for properties. This is good news for SF authors with successful books and series. It's good news for the genre. It's good news for the industry too, because a lot of good people will get to go to work. And yes, some people are going to make some money — that's always good too. To sell a series, first you need a buyer who's interested. As per above, we now know that Netflix and Amazon are interested markets. Possibly a few others. So let's move on to step two. You need an agent to put the property in front of a buyer. If the studio/network likes the property enough, they'll offer an option. Low-ball is $5K. But if the property is a cult classic or a best-seller, the numbers go up. Generally a good price for an option is $25K or higher. But the option only gives them the right to hold onto the property until they buy it. If they buy it — well, that will likely be six figures, sometimes seven. Now, if you're just a person who sits alone in a room and writes books and stories, if you have little or no experience in the industry, you have no real power. The best you'll get is a nice check and a credit as "Executive Producer." You might get a few meetings. You might get to visit the set. You might even get invited to the premiere screenings. But once you sell the property, it's not yours anymore, it's theirs. So to impress a studio/network, you're going to have to spend some serious effort putting all the pieces together. Here's the bad news. No matter how good you think your project is — you're still competing with hundreds of other wannabes and aspirants and a lot of producers and show-runners with impeccable credits. You have to have something that no one else has, something so unusual or so compelling or simply so well established in another medium that the network/studio will see the immediate value in owning it. Science fiction and fantasy projects are expensive, but when they click, they click big. Game Of Thrones, Harry Potter, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek — they turn into franchises. One last thought. Generally, it's a bad idea to chase the market. If a vampire movie hits big, everybody is going to want to do a vampire movie. By the time your agent gets to the studio or network, they'll probably already have options on three other properties. Unless you have a best-seller, they'll pass. The trick is to be in the right place at the right time with the right property. That's not as hard as it sounds. It only requires a lamp and a genie.

So really, it's about not wasting time: I have to make my first novel the best it can be sans expensive-can't-afford'it editing, and send it out to agents, who will take things from there. That's their job, which gives me more time to write.

Because I have 1.5 more books to finish, and scifi won't stay hot forever.

May 18 - Eyes and Deadpool 2!

Man, what a PACKED day off!

Up early for my last swim at the Empress( back to the old pool next week )then breakfast, then a 9am appointment with my family doctor( for my eyestrain )and then visiting / driving my parents around on errands - whew!

Incredibly, I got a call before noon from an opthamologist( the reason for my morning appointment was a referral ): could I come in today at 3pm? I called them back and said HECK yes, because I didn't want to wait 4-6 months!

At the appointment, it took 1.5 hours until I actually saw the specialist, as I spent most of that time waiting after some initial standard eye tests, though thankfully no pupil dilations were necessary( more on that later ). The doctor put some coloured drops in my eyes and after a short examination, declared that I had extremely dry eyes: my 'eye lake' as he called it, was nearly non-existent. Yikes!

Otherwise, my eyes were fine, and so I was sent away with some eyedrop samplers to use 3-4 times a day... and hope that they do the trick!

Then it was home, where I ended up having a great Skype call with a friend back in ON that I hadn't 'spoken' to in a many years, though we interact on FBook: fun! Another 1.5 hours had passed before I knew it, and then it was movie time!

SPOILERS-ish BELOW!

I'll try to be brief: I loved Deadpool2, even though it had plot issues - which it actually called out itself several times during the film, totally in keeping with breaking the fourth wall.

The movie was hilarious, incredibly self-away, stylishly filmed with supportive CGI and solid casting. Ryan Reynolds was spot-on as the titular Merc With The Mouth for his second round on the screen, and Josh Brolin as Cable was an inspired casting: all through the film he seemed like he was on the edge of laughing, but it only showed as a tiny facial quirk now and then, as he and Reynolds had incredibly good chemistry.

Sure, the plot didn't make sense in many different ways( logic? who needs it? )but the overall story went from A to B in a breathless rush of fun and frolic that dragged the audience along screaming and laughing the entire way. Fun!

All in all, I found it an exhausting movie, a word I rarely use when describing entertainment that I'm not physically involved in. The sheer number of pop culture references, jokes, visual gags and non-stop action meant that it's highly rewatchable just to CATCH everything by the third or fourth viewing... but that also means there's no 'pause for breath' as you watch: it's a freakin' whirlwind!

Best of all, my lady, along with our friend Michael, had three of the best reclining seats in the house and my eyes( thanks to sunglasses )gave nary a tweak the whole time. Mind you, I got home well after midnight, so I was damn tired... but my face ached a bit from smiling so much, not just because:

They played an ENYA song at a critical spot!!! So: Deadpool2 FTW!

May 19 - ThunderWHAT?

As many of you know, I'm a huge old-school Saturday Morning cartoon fan.

There's a few dozen shows that I recall with great fondness, and easily twice that which I recall having watched and enjoyed for what they were, so I lament nowadays that Saturday mornings are no different for kids TV-wise than any other day.

Every few years, one or two of my favourite old shows will get bandied about for a reboot, mostly with mixed results: nostalgia can be a pain to overcome, when fans want the impossible duality of Same As The Old Show and Something New And Exiting... such as the Thundercats 2011 reboot, which straddled that line rather well, but still didn't catch on with fans: a shame.

Today, a new version of Thundercats was revealed:

Fan reaction was... less than pleased. On the official announcement trailer above, there's 1.2K thumbs-up... and over 20K negatives.

Ouch. Like I said: nostalgia's a pain.

I'll still give the show a try when it comes out( unlike the godawful ReBoot reboot from a few months ago )just to see if it's a fun watch for a few laughs. After all, there were shrieks from fans when Battlestar Galactica was rebooted in the early 2000's with a woman as Starbuck... so yeah, fans can be testy idiots.

As always, one has to recharge of a day, and today was perfect for my go-to Tea On A Patio In Sunshine:

As you can see from the image above, I don't ask for much: tea, a snack, a good book and a quiet-ish place to read it does me fine, as evidenced by many such same pictures I've posted over the years on this very blog. Having my Zik headphones helps immensely though, as they block out most of the louder nearby conversations, and the incessant blatting roar of motorcycles on Cook St.

The sounds of summer suck sometimes, but that's why there's books! And headphones.

May 20 - Small Successes

Life's messy, but that's okay.

Take today, for example: I woke up with a few ideas in mind of things to accomplish, got some of them done along with relaxing while reading, blog-writing, popping out for a few hours for poetry, and having dinner afterwards with my lady.

Pretty good, in my books.

Constantly striving for things that always seem out of reach is tiring, and I think this year I'm at the point where I'll keep walking... but I'm done running. Which is a good analogy, as I'm just back to being able to walk regularly and I don't want to try running even ten feet until I'm damn sure I'm not going to hurt myself.

Some of it's achieving an equilibrium: doing what I can about the things I can manage right now( new job? Editing my novels? Remaining healthy? )and letting other things( tiny house? Home business? Debt reduction? )backburner until I can get to them later this year - or next.

Keeping my life 'smaller' means I can manage it better, along with my own admittedly too-large expectations, while remaining my better self: less worry, meaning better health, meaning more accomplished in a day with less energy expended.

I think that's a pretty good plan for the rest of 2018.

And somewhere in there, I'll manage to get my life organized again.

The coming late spring-early summer's looking good: rising early and a semi-early bedtime seems to be working for me. Once I get this eyestrain under control, I should be able to catch up on my reading, at least, and while I don't see myself playing any video games anytime soon, I do want to watch a few shows of a week just for variety. Headaches and eye pain make those things harder to do, so for now it's a slow course towards seeing better without any strain whatsoever... and I'm getting there.