Work Weekend

 

So everybody was counting on me to do something this weekend so that our environment would be ready for testing today. I told them I'd get on it--it's actually easier to work on the weekend when nobody's on, getting in my way or constantly pinging me.

BUT...

I didn't get far before a big error popped up in the processes. Nothing I can do about it. I forward it to OPS to try to fix.

Then I spend the rest of the weekend editing videos for the company trainer, who's recording them for self-training for all the testers/developers. That's right, I'm editing video for my real job now...

See, a while back they got me a license for a crappy video editor I'd never heard of. It's pretty simplistic so it didn't take me long to figure it out. This was because I'd created some videos to train testers and needed it to stitch some together. (because some of the processes I run take hours--so if I was recording a video of the process, the video would be hours long...nobody wants that...)

Anyway, I hear this will all be very good for my yearly review...hearing that a lot lately, but it does appear my raises have all been way above the norm. (like, I hear most people get a raise in the 3-4% area, but my raises have been averaging about 10%)

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Book fun!

Okay, I'll level with you but leave names out on this. We had one featured author turn in a story that was...well, bad. Real bad. First-draft bad, with some stuff happening out of left field that made no sense.

My editor reached out to me and said--go read this story and let me know what you think. So I did. And man...

My worst nightmare. How do you tell a pro writer that the work they turned in is sub-par. We got the impression, based on their email, that they KNEW it was bad.

The editor gave me some advice on what to say--I was hoping he'd do it, but whatever. I sent the author a note about it, and was super glad when I got their level-headed response that they'd write a new story. Fingers crossed this one is better.

Got my first open sub that I REALLY liked. Excellent writing. I may say yes to it right away, which I rarely do on open subs. The danger of NOT saying yes right away is if they subbed it elsewhere, it may get accepted and I lose the story.

This happened on a couple of the other antho's stories, but most of them were before I'd even read the story, so I'm not sure if it was a big loss or not. (Once I heard about the acceptance, I just deleted the stories--no sense reading them after that)

 I've got one artist working on a cover, and just reached out to my regular poster guy about doing one. He's asking me why I'm not asking him to do BOTH covers--do I like this new guy better, etc. Ugh, so tired of the drama. It's like, does Spielberg's regular DP call Spielberg and say, "Hey, why'd you use another director of photography? Don't you like me any more?"

Variety, man. Different people bring different things to the table.

And if I liked the other guy better, why'd I put my poster guy's cover as the regular and HC cover?

Tidbits

 

Man...work is KICKING MY ASS. It's gotten real bad, in that everybody and their mom hits me up constantly to help them. My laptop sounds like a vegas casino sometimes, with people pinging me. My boss says it's because I've now become known as a gap filler--a guy who actually gets stuff done.

Good for my yearly review, bad for my daily sanity.

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Went out and saw a movie I hadn't even heard of called Land of Bad. It's got some known actors in it like Milo Ventimiglia and Russell Crowe and Chris Hemsworth. Not sure why they haven't advertised it--it's like 53% rotten tomatoes, but like 93% audience score.

And yeah, it's a good movie. We all enjoyed it. Basically if you like war movies where someone goes behind enemy lines to do something, you'll like this. It's basically 10 minutes of setup, then another 95 of action.

Sad to see good movies get dumped this like one.

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Had just about the worst night of my life the other night. Started getting a migraine--I get them every once in a while. Usually when they get REAL bad...like so bad that ANY light is painful and I end up throwing up because for some reason when you're in pain for that long, your body just says "Hey, let's throw up for no discernible reason!"

Then the pain usually makes me pass out, and I wake up later feeling okay.

This time, I went through it all. The throwing up. The throbbing pain that won't stop. But I couldn't go to sleep or pass out. It just kept going. I was supposed to work at 9am, but I was still awake in bed at 3am in agony.

The thought even crossed my mind for a brief second--I have a gun...could make it stop permanently...

But eventually I passed out, went in a little late to work. 

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On the book front--man, not really sure how much to go into, but there's always some fucking shit going on. I'll have to figure out what I can tell ya.

Open subs have been pretty disappointing on the whole. One writer who I'm friendly with online sent a story, and it just wasn't good. I went into some details on the issues, and she's so defensive and like "My two readers loved it", but ignores all the extremely valid critiques I gave her.

So then she writes another story in ONE DAY. She tells me. I tell her--DO NOT send me anything less than a fifth revision. (there were spelling and grammar mistakes in the first story) I tell her to sit on the story for a week or two, then go back and take a look with fresh eyes.

This is VERY basic writing stuff. Every writer knows this.

But no, she sends it to me THE NEXT DAY. I try to tell her--hey, I won't get to this for a while, cuz there's a long line of stories in front of hers for me to read. No rush.

She makes excuses but basically says "Nah, I'm good."

I don't know what to fucking do--she doesn't listen. I like her, but FUCK, just LISTEN TO ME for once...

 

 

 

Four Day Weekend

 

There's a paid holiday on Monday, so when I saw it I immediately put in for the Friday off too--so I'd get a much-needed four days off in a row.

Work continues to suck. Whatever.

Keep trying to slog through the stories for this FOC anthology book. Man...SOOOOO many of the same story. Basically, it's like everybody's seen Clownhouse and they're writing their version of it. Kids go to carnival or circus, bad things happen that involve clowns.

The only good news about it is that three of the invited authors have turned in stories, and they're all very good and out of the box. 

I've actually invited a few more authors, because I'm starting to suspect that I'm not going to get enough open-call subs that are good enough to make it in. Got a couple of yeses already, so I'm actually up to fourteen invited authors that have said yes.

I'd only planned on getting about ten. The bad news with that is, gonna cost me a little more than I'd thought but here's what I'm starting to think now...

It doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to pay a relative-nobody eight cents per word when you can pay someone with an established fanbase ten or twelve cents a word for a story. Because the relative nobody isn't going to help you get any of the money back that you put into the anthology.

I know it sounds a bit cutthroat but I'm not kickstarting this book like most of these other publishers. They basically pre-raise a bunch of money from people and use that to pay their authors. Me, I'm paying out of my own money.

And on the Halloween antho, I put out about $13K and have currently only gotten about $8500K back. I'll probably at least break even by the end of this year if we see a resurgence when Halloween rolls around again, but that will be mostly due to the holiday and the known names in it.

Honestly, I can see why a lot of these little publishers offer stuff like $25 a story on open calls. 

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Went over Zig's yesterday with the kid. We watched My Bloody Valentine 3D on his 3D TV. It's a fun flick. I remember seeing it with the wife in the theater.

He fixed the awesome broccoli cheese soup. I haven't been over there since before Xmas--just been so busy.

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Got out to see Madame Web. Nowhere near as bad as the critics are making it, but yeah, still not a good movie. It's watchable. 

But Sony should really stop trying to make minor secondary characters a thing unless they start getting talented screenwriters involved. If the character involved couldn't make a comic book series happen, odds are a movie isn't going to work.

(Morbius had a short-lived comic series, Madame Web has never had one--hell, in comic books she's an old lady that looks a bit like Aunt May, but older). Venom has had a few series, so you can see why he partially works as a movie. Kraven--whose movie is coming--has never had a series.

Keep in mind, I'm saying all this as of post 2010ish, as that's when I stopped reading comics, after I closed my store.

We also saw Lisa Frankenstein cuz the kid wanted to. Fuckin' bizarre movie that seems super reminiscent of My Boyfriend's Back(I think that's what it was called). Wasn't a big fan of either movie, and my kid seemed mildly perplexed by the whole thing. 

But as usual when I asked him about stuff, whether he liked it, he said "Yes, I liked it."

I don't know whether he's just afraid to say he doesn't like something, or whether he just LIKES EVERYTHING. Oh to be him for a day...

 

 

Oh Boy / Happy Blog-Versary

Hey, first off, let me say a happy 19th year anniversary to my blog. Hard to believe it's that old, and that I've kept it somewhat regular. 

And hey, I have no idea who you are checking in, but thanks for checking it out, and also, sorry for boring you with my life. 

(okay, I know who a few of you are)

I can tell you, I really only do it now so that a couple of years down the road when I forget something, I can use the search button to go dig it up here. It's basically a diary at this point.

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Work continues its suck. I'm going to try to save more money at this point, because I'm not sure I can continue at this current pace and frustration. Not like they'd ever fire me--I'm one of the only ones there who understands some of the more complex stuff...but there's only so many weeks I can spend banging my head against a fucking wall while I watch other people's ineptitude get in my way.

BUT

I did mention that new book I'm publishing, right? That goes well--have 10 authors so far. Not sure how many I'll go with. I can tell you, the open subs have been pretty disappointed.

Seems like everybody has a clown killing people at a carnival/circus story, most likely near Halloween.

I'm trying to make it cost less than the first antho I published, but not sure that's gonna work out. Various reasons maybe I'll go into later.

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This is that book trailer I cut for one of the authors who was in my Halloween antho. It was difficult, to say the least, because most of the events in the book are pre-1990...good luck finding footage for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXBoownFWwU

I still haven't finished editing that music video--gave the footage to Malf's brother cuz he sorta believes it should be edited at a faster pace...even though the song is slow to start and then stays pretty medium speed for the rest. 

But yes, let's cut it like it's a thrash metal song...whatever.

I tire of it all. Last performance video I shoot, period. Don't care.