Author Archives: Bob Evans

Curiouser and curiouser

So this past Saturday I hosted the beta readers of Love and Loyalty to a lunch on my dime where they could give me their feedback. This is the fourth such feedback dinner/lunch I have hosted for one of my novels.

For The Mark Of Cain, it instigated a pretty deep re-write of the manuscript.

For Love and Loyalty 2009 version there were moderate edits.

For Cawdor it put the project on hold until I can find a plot that works. ( I love the universe but trying to shoe-horn in MacBeth had failed because I followed the original text too closely.)

That brings me to Love and Loyalty the heavily revised version. What makes this feedback dinner different is that in fact there are two groups of people providing me with a critique of the work. The people at the dinner are friends and co-workers, causal readers and little writing aspiration among them. The second group is my writers group at Mysterious Galaxy.

If I drew a Venn diagram of the two groups critiques, there would be a spot where the two circles touched and no more overlap than that. More interesting is that the two groups have totally different takes on the same subject matter. (I’m not getting into the details of their review as some are still outstanding.) One group might have said I dislike the characters while the other liked the characters.

I’m very curious to see what the remaining readers have to say.

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Moday Morning Mirth

I had to take my sweetie-wife into the hospital for an exam so I’ve got a few hours at home to kill this morning and no Sunday Night Movie to post about. (I went to bed early.)

I saw this over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog and just had to share…

 

 

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Politics and Rocky Horror PIcture Show Memories

Way back in the 1980s, when life was rough and fun at the same time, I got involved with a local Rocky Horror Picture Show group. For those not in the know The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a campy failed musical film that found a second life as a midnight movie. During the presentations fans would dress up as the characters and mime out the film in front of the screen, while the audience participated with MST3K style lines shouted back in response to dialog and events in the story. The story is one of mad science, aliens, Rock and Roll, and of course, Sex. The costumes for the film are outlandish, daring, and ignore normal gender roles. Continue reading →

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Busy Week

I’ve been hard at work this week on my writing thang. I’ve complied a list of nearly 50 agents that look possibly suitable for representing me as a Science-Fiction author, I’ve been busily making notes on my next novel which I hope to start serious outlining within a few weeks, and I mailed off a non-genre story to a print magazine. This was a first for me. Odds are it will not sell, but surprises do happen.

 

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Sunday Night Movie: Amazon Women On The Moon

If you are a youngster there’s a curious aspect to cable TV you may have never been exposed to; Movies Until Dawn. Back in the pre-history ages, 1980’s, local television stations ran movies all night long, generally starting about midnight and running until the morning shows the next day. These early morning hours were hard to sell to advertisers and so cheap programing was needed. after de-regulation got rid of the requirement that only so many minutes our of each hour could be advertisements, these movies until dawn were replaced by the dreaded infomercials. (No programming ALL advertisement, what an advance.)

In 1987, just before they were to vanish from the screen, Movie Until Dawn were immortalized in the movie, Amazon Women On The Moon. The premise of the film is simple. It is a sketch comedy movie, and the frame that ties the sketches together as if channel surfing. There is a blast of distorted video and audio between the sketches as you are surfed from one channel to another.

The sketches in this film ranges from the freaking hilarious, the titled sketch ‘Amazon Women On The Moon,” is a lovable lampoon of those late 50’s early 60’s low-budget Sc-Fi pictures, to the truly bizarre, “Did you know every seven minutes that is a black person born without soul?” (I swear that’s Herman Cain in that sketch. And if you think I’m serious you need to get your sarcasm detector fixed.) I had not watched the film for a few years and I was concerned that the humor might have become dated, or simply lost its punch from too many viewing, but such fears were misplaced. Video Pirates, though dated in the technology it references, was still funny, and the cast of stars doing small insane bits were just as pleasing.

This is a movie worth seeing, but like all comedies I think it plays better with groups than with a single viewer. Though it did lift my spirits and gave me the exact mood I was looking for Sunday night.

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This is your official ‘I told you so’

Sarah Palin announces she will not run for President. 

All those weak-kneeded sister who quaked and quivered at the though of President Palin can calm the frak down. This woman is in her happy spot of celebrity and money, she’s not budging from it.

It looks to me like there are no more Great Right Hopes left to save the Republican Party from itself. I suspect the base will hold there nose next November and vote for Romney, just like they did for the hated McCain.

 

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Not sure if this is good or bad

Last night I finished my query letter (off to my sweetie for a prrof read) and got the first draft done of a 1 page synopsis. (495 pages boiled down to 1, that was tough.)

During the day I re-read the very first attempt I had made at writing a Seth Jackson story, Assuming Command written about 1992. While I used far too many passive sentences and glossed over too many things that needed their own scenes, the core story and characters still worked out very well.

So I liked, in part what I had written more than 20 years ago. Not sure if this says that the core is strong or that I haven’t grown enough.

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