two movies: You Again and I Am Number Four

Being late with the movie post is more acceptable.when I gave two movies, right? right.

You Again

description from IMDb: “When a young woman realizes her brother is about to marry the girl who bullied her in high school, she sets out to expose the fiancée's true colors.”

You Again brings the star power - Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Betty White, Kristen Bell. I love seeing all these ladies together. They are awesome!

Of course the movie is very funny. There are actually two bully relationships in which the hurt feelings and competitiveness have been carried into adulthood. Girls (and women) can really make each other crazy. This story takes that over the top.

There was a character that I wasn't big on. That would be Will, brother of Marni. He's the one planning to marry the bully. I though he came off cheesy and annoying.


You Again gets an A-.

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I Am Number Four

description from IMDb – “Aliens and their Guardians are hiding on Earth from intergalactic bounty hunters. They can only be killed in numerical order, and Number Four is next on the list. This is his story.”

I read some bad reviews of this movie when it first came out. I actually thought it was awesome. The acting was fine. The story was interesting. Timothy Olyphant was in it. That's always good.

The special effects were amazing. Toward the end, there were some really awesome fighting sequences. Loved it, seriously.

Unfortunately, I don't think it did well enough in the theatre for there to be a sequel. It cost about $60 million to make and only made about $55 mill. Awww…that’s too bad. I really liked that movie. I Am Number Four gets an A.

Off the subject of movie reviews and on to new releases, had anyone seen the trailer for The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe? He's so grown up! You may remember him in the very small role of Harry Potter. lol. I want to see how he does with that role. The movie looks really good.

That’s all I have for now.

Friday 13

Today is Friday the 13th! I was trying to think of something interesting to slap up here for the occasion. The husband showed me these commercials, which were supposedly banned in the US. If you watch them, you will see why. Those kooky Brits. Gotta love 'em.

author vs writer

I read a post on another writer's blog yesterday about the difference between being a writer and an author. He started out with a bit of a, hmmmm, shall we say a 'superior' tone? but by the end of the post, I knew what he meant and I agreed.

He broke it down like this (my paraphrasing) - an author is someone who writes a book and focuses more on promotion than the next project. A writer is someone who is already immersed in the next project. They focus more on the writing activity than the advertising push.

Guess which class I'm in, or at least the class I think I'm in.

I do some extra things with the books like the trailers and the illustrations, etc, but the actual act of putting it out there for audiences to find, not my forte.

I would really like to write novels full time. I probably won't get there by ignoring my lack of promotional efforts.

So here's my plan. I'm going to finish up my edit on AnnaBeth 2, finish writing Llewyn's Faith, which I swear is thisclose to being done, and then I'm going into author mode for the next month or two. I have to. It's the only way for me to get what I want out of this next release.

Lair of the White Wyrm will be out 2/21.

book working and other stuff

Tuesday. it's like riding a bike with nails in the tires.

What is going on? Anything exciting?

I'm working on another read-thru on Devil (AnnaBeth 2). This time around is exponentially smoother than the last time. Today was day 6 and I'm almost done. That previous edit that was so tortuous was well worth the trouble. I'm actually enjoying it now, which is a good sign.

Other projects. I work on Llewyn's Faith a bit each day. It's going to round out to long short story length, if that makes sense. I think it's between 8 and 9000 words, and I have a couple of scenes left.

I'm also reading The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer. An author whose blog I read on a semi-regular basis recommended it. I like it so far. There's a lot of positive thinking stuff. I need that, being the die-hard pessimist/cynic that I am.

One of my favorite parts in the book was about reverse paranoia. Operate as if everyone is part of a plot to help you succeed; that was the advice. I thought that was kind of funny.

I'm posting less on Journey Reader. I decided while on holiday hiatus that I need to spend more time promoting my own books on other blogs. I like what I do there, but it's really time consuming. I'm still taking interviews and stuff though, so there will be posts, just not 4 days a week like I was trying to do before.

What else? Ah yes. I have been ungrateful, not intentionally, but ungrateful nonetheless and it's gnawing away at my innards. In my rundown of last year’s events, I forgot to thank my readers.

If you downloaded or purchased or even read one of my books, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Reading books takes time. I hope mine were worth the minutes and/or hours you devoted. And even if you only read the blog, that's okay too because I'd like to think I'm not randomly tossing out words that just float around in cyberspace with no one to read them. Lonely words are sad words.

I would write even if no one read my work, however doing so would not be as much fun.

movie: Green Lantern

I said I didn't want to see this movie. Husband put it on the Netflix queue, so it showed up in my mailbox. What was I supposed to do? Not watch it?

Here's the description from IMDb – “A test pilot is granted an alien ring that bestows him with otherworldly powers, as well as membership into an intergalactic squadron tasked with keeping peace within the universe.”

The movie has weird parts - surreal scenery and aliens and bizarro superpowers. I didn't think the movie was bad. However, the only people who would probably appreciate it to the fullest would be Green Lantern fans.

Personally, I'm not a member of that club.

The plot was interesting. The special effects were big budget Hollywood. Ryan Reynolds is still pretty. Its worth watching if you have nothing better to do. It gets a biased B- -.

tired

After running pretty much nonstop for the past few days, my brain is tired. I've been editing the Devil in the Branch manuscript and finishing out the rough draft of Llewyn's Faith.

I have a post planned for JourneyReader, but I can't spare the energy to write it at the moment. I should have it up tomorrow evening. Until then, please enjoy this picture of this morning's badass sunrise.

cover art

Here we go! This is the cover art for Lair of the White Wyrm. My starting point for the skull was the dorsal view of an alligator skull. I'm fancypants like that. Skull shading took a while. I did it by hand on my Bamboo.

I reserve the right to make minor adjustments in the future.

If you've been hanging out on my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I didn't use the original illustration I put up on the blog. I changed course, and I think this looks better and fits the book better. I put together a whole evolution of the cover art thing that will go up with other Extras on the media page for the book.