Author Archives: Bob Evans

I’m not a writer I’m an actor

At the very least I am a film actor.

Let me explain. My novel, and my short stories, are written linearly I started at the front, write  the beginning, then the middle, and then the end. After that I go back and edit and clean up. Deleting bits that didn’t work, tightening passages and sentences until they go from crap and so-so.

What this mean is that the emotion hearts of the scenes are written as they occur. Love and Loyalty has me in some new territory.

I have a list of 13 new scenes that need to be written and inserted to expand the scope of the novel to fit my new vision. They are not being written in a linear fashion. That means one moment I’m writing a tender love scenes between two characters and the next scene is one of characters manipulating and deceiving each other, then to a scene of high-powered politics and office games with dangerous consequences. Emotionally I am being whipped back and forth as I write in a fashion to is alien to me, yet it has not been a stough as I thought it would have been.

I can see the end of the process. (thank god) I so want to push this out to my beat readers and see if this is working as well as I suspect.

I also want to get back to reading novels and to writing them. (I don’t read novels while I write one because if I did better writers would suck up all my time and I would get nothing done.)

 

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Movie review:Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

So this will be a fairly brief review, the hour is late and I need my sleep.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the 4th film in the franchise inspired by a ride at Disneyland. I’m a big fan of the first film, owning it on blu-Ray disc, but I did not like the two sequels. In my opinion the second and third films suffered from an over abundance of cynicism, while the first film frolicked in its love of fun and whimsey.

This 4th film, while not as good or self-contained as the the first is much better than the previous sequels. The sense of fun has been restored and that alone made this a watchable movie.

It suffers from being a bit long and having a few subplots that were better edited out at the script writing level, and characters that seem to have no real bearing on the story other than as macguffins.

That said I enjoyed the flick, was happy to see it and I may even see it again. I am told by my sweetie-wife it bears little resemblance to the novel that suggested the script. I have the book, On Stranger Tides. It is by one of my favorite authors and I look forward to reading it when I finish my own novel.

 

 

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Doing better

I was unable to post last night. A full day at my real job took so much out of me all I could do once I got home was watch Dr Who with my sweetie. (season 5 premier)

Tonight is the Myterious Galaxy Writer’s Group, so my movie review will have to wait again.

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Recovering

Well, the cold/bug that has bedeviled me and my sweetie-wife seems to be abating. She’s going back to work in the morrow and I’m starting to feel well enough to return to my chores and duties.

I am not well enough to stay up late watching movies tonight so there shan’t be a Sunday Night Movie Feature this week. However I will still talk film tomorrow with a  brief review of Pirate Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, whihc we saw this morning and enjoyed.

I also hope to return to editing and writing on Love & Loyalty tomorrow. This cold/bug has had me so fogged that I could not think creatively.

Speaking of my writing, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades has been submitting for distribution through smashwords. In a couple of weeks it should be available through all the major eBook sites, Amazon, B&N, Sony, Apple, etc, and today I made it available through Smashwords as a free download for part of their Operation eBook which supplies free eBooks to services men and women deployed overseas. Hopefully I can lift a few spirits and make tedium less tedious.

 

p.s.

My sweetie-wife has decided to wait until after Worldcon, in August, before getting herself a new pet bird, but I am happy she will get herself another pet. She does love her birds and I miss the little fellow too.

 

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Not a good couple of days…

Both I and the sweetie-wife have been sick. Started pretty much on Wednesday with a sore through for me, by the end of my work day I was feeling pretty low. Thursday we both stayed home from our job,  I spent like 13 hours in bed in one stretch.

This morning sweetie-wife still felt too ill to go to work and I am going to, but Barbosa her pet lovebird died suddenly this morning.

This is the part of pet ownership I have the hardest time dealing with.

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Making really good progress

So I am nearly 17 chapters into Love and Loyalty , out of a total of 30 chapters, so I can seen the end of the project. I am spending a lot more time writing and less blogging and gaming as I speed toward the finish.

I have also finished with the correction to Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. Now I need to format it, copyright it, and submit and I will have self-published my first anthology.

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Very Busy

No Sunday Night Movie this week as I was way too tired after spending the day at JPL to watch a film past 10 in the evening. No complaints from me on this score, the JPL open houses are always fun affairs for a geek like me.

I’m pretty busy tonight. The work on Love & Loyalty is going quite well and I hope to have a beat read copy of this version produced soon. Also my sweetie-wife finished the copyedits to my anthology Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, so I am working on that as well.

 

All in all, I am busy.

 

 

 

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