Waiting For Hall H

(I typed this outside, waiting for the Saturday show to begin . . . twice)

So, here I am in the Hall H line at Comic-Con.  Again.

I predicted that the line would be longer this year than last, and I was right.  It was so much longer that, if I recall, where I ended up at 4:45 in the morning was about where the end of the line was last year at 9:30 or 10:00.  The line begins at the sidewalk before the Convention Center, then loops around and around there on the grass, then goes across the street and down the sidewalk there, then takes a sharp left back toward the dock (which is where I sat last year at this time), then loops around again just alongside the railing, then goes past all the boats as far as you can go, then takes a left, goes down that sidewalk, and onto the grass there (this is where I ended up today), and loops again on the grass, and keeps going to where only Rod Serling knows for sure.  But ah well.

 

It was dark when I arrived, and I was tired, so I laid down and closed my eyes.  A minute or two later, something tiny crawled over my arm.  It was an ant.  I flicked it off and tried again.  After five or more minutes, the line suddenly started to move.  I can't explain it (as it was about five am when this happened, and still dark), but everyone stood and walked slowly forward, until the line stopped again about half a mile upward.  My new spot was against the pier railing, where the water meets the land, about seventy people from where I started in 2012.

People talked all around me, and I never really tried to sleep again.  The family directly behind me in the line were jonesing for coffee, and when Starbucks opened, their dad volunteered to go get them some.  He never returned.*

 

After a while, when the sky got grey, I got out this laptop, and began to type.  There's a cold breeze blowing off the water onto my back, as I am three feet from the ocean.  That breeze felt awesome yesterday and Thursday, but this morning, it's really chilly.  I'll try to be a man about it, though.

This is my first year using my brother's laptop (instead of my own--deceased--craptop), and I worry about the battery.  My craptop might not have been very useful, but it had a battery that lasted for four or five hours (that was instrumental in my decision to buy it, despite it having absolutely no other features).  This one seems to last about an hour, maybe ninety minutes.  We'll see.

So, I have to admit that there were a few minutes on Thursday morning when I thought I shouldn't come back next year.  Mostly, it's just the crowds, the incessant sea of sweaty, shoving humanity.  I thought it would be fun if Joss Whedon would make a short film about Bruce Banner being at Comic-Con, saying, "Excuse me, Please don't shove.  Uh, please stop shoving me.  I'm warning you, please don't shove me anymore."

Maybe I'm the only one who would dig that.

But yesterday was pretty darn satisfying, pretty darn fun, and I walked back to my car feeling happy to be here.  There was a parking ticket on my windshield (despite the section I was in having no posting time limits), saying I'd been there too long.  I'm not sure if I'll pay it or not, but I won't dwell on it now.

I have been getting up early each day, and so I'm tired, but all of this is by choice, and I'll not complain. 
 

Oh my god.  This fucking program.  I've been typing for nearly an hour, putting down my thoughts and ideas, and writing a story even . . . and it deleted it all.

F**k you.

So, let me start again, god dammit.

I guess I was saying I was here by choice, and then I started talking about writing.  I write a lot, and then it gets deleted for absolutely no reason.  In fact, fuck this program.

I’ve started again in a new word processing program.  I cannot believe it lost everything but my first half-page.  I feel like a kid again, and am about a second away from throwing this against the wall.

But I’m going nowhere, and unless my battery dies, I have time to start over, type it all again.

So, I was saying that it's my choice to come to Comic-Con, so I shouldn't complain.  I hate the crowds and the long, long, long walks (I probably got the kind of exercise this weekend that Big gets in a normal day, the runnin' bastard).  And everything costs a fortune, and yes, it's pretty much impossible to park.  I found that they'd built a Mexican supermarket in the area where I used to always park my car (which is still about 1.3 miles from the Convention Center, but at least it was free), and after driving around frustrated, I just parked there.

 

I did all the stuff you do on the first day of the con (fight your way to the doors, be told you're at the wrong door, fight your way to another one, be told the first door was actually correct, get your badge, try to buy or see something only to be told that the line was capped hours before anyone would've been allowed inside, see someone in a cool costume, stand in a line, be shoved by someone who has no reason to touch you, admire a display only to be told not to look or take pictures of it, discover that San Diego is hot in July, realize there's no God, etc.), and after I'd loaded up on purchases, I wandered back to my car.  There's a Mexican eatery (not really a restaurant as I typed the first time) attached to the supermarket, so I decided to eat lunch there, to reward them for letting me park there.  It was really heavy food, if you know what I mean, and sat solidly in my stomach for hours.  I went back to the con for a couple hours, saw a panel or two, then decided to duck out early so I could go get my motel room, have a bath, change clothes, check my email, and lather some aloe vera all over the sunburn and groin chafing I'd received.

 

Again, to be decent, I went into the supermarket to buy sunscreen and aloe vera, only to discover that everything was in Spanish.  The announcements over the intercom, the price signs, and the employees.  I realized I had no idea how to say "sunscreen" in Spanish, but luckily, found a manager who spoke Spanglish to me (they had aloe vera, it turned out, but in *drink* form rather than something to lather onto burns).  I also bought a Pepsi from them, feeling I'd earned my day's free parking there.  So when I got the parking ticket the next day, I was a bit disappointed, but hey, I hadn't shopped there that day.

But despite adversity, I was in a much better mood on Friday than I had been on Thursday (Thursday was hard simply because I'd spent the whole previous day driving, got almost no sleep, and despite rising at pre-dawn, I still ended up arriving to the Convention Center late.  And then, there was the chafing, the less said about it the better).  And despite this laptop's best attempts, I refuse to be in a bad mood this morning. 

 

The line up and moved again at around seven.  Last year, they told people to clear out their tents and sleeping bags at eight o'clock, so the line moved incredibly after that.  This year, they did so earlier, and once all that space is compressed (there were people sleeping on those huge air mattresses this year, which would be really nice), a couple of literal blocks of the line disappear.  When it closed up, we were on the grass next to Hall H, which shouldn't be possible, but it happened.  I typed a lot, and then, the program just froze.  When I reopened it, everything but the first few paragraphs had gone.  I've gone through and tried to recreate that, but I did despair for a minute or two.

 

So, the other thing I wrote about, besides Comic-Con, was how I wish I could write more.  Even though I write more than anybody reading this, and wrote today, yesterday, and the day before, I know I can do more.  For example, yesterday, I had an idea for a story while walking down the street, and I was too busy to sit down and write it, but sat down to do so in the afternoon . . . and it was totally gone.  No clue what it was about or how complete an idea it was.  How could my mind think it up and then toss it out like that? 

 

It pisses me off, and to think of all the hundreds of projects that I’ve started and then abandoned, it makes me wonder how many of those would have been better than the ones I actually managed to midwife into completion.

I tried to think of what the story might have been, whether it was a horror story or a comedy or what, but it didn’t come.  This morning, I thought about writing a superhero story set in the Wild West, of maybe a telekinetic living in the frontier or something, trying to make a difference in a rugged land, but trying also to keep his abilities a secret.  I also thought about a story set in the future (or a parallel now) where everybody born has superpowers, and a kid is born who is just a normal human, and how much that sucks for him.  I thought about writing about some kind of virus that makes every child between one and five go insane and want to kill adults, and how at night packs of murderous children run rampant through the city, killing and raping, and whatever else a four year old would do if allowed.  My friend Ian loves the idea of feral children that run on all fours, so if I wrote the story maybe I could dedicate it to him.

Then I thought of a man, traveling somewhere, maybe lost, and he sees a sign that says “Murdertown 1 mile.”  He is curious, and a motorcycle cop pulls him over and asks if he’s headed into town.  “No.  Why, will I get murdered?”  “If you go cross into town, you’ll have to kill someone, so don’t enter unless you have to.”  The guy laughs, and asks for directions.  The cop tells him to make a U-turn and where to go.  The man considers turning, but is curious, and goes into town, seeing a gas station ahead.  There’s a billboard that says, “Do Unto Others.  Kill Humanely.”  He is worried.  A couple of old men watch him drive by, but they’re not armed.  At the station, it’s all full service, and a kid comes out.  Twelve, maybe.  “You here to kill me?” the guy asks.  “No.  You want to kill me?”  “Not today.  Not when you’re pumping my gas.  Haven’t seen that in a while.”  The boy explains that this used to be Indian land, and through a loophole, one murder is legal here.  People kill their wives, kill their friends, kill strangers.  “Have you ever killed somebody?” the man asks, thinking this is some kind of hoax or publicity stunt.  “No,” the boy says, "but I don’t want to leave.”  He explains, if you kill, then you must move away.  He thinks the boy might be telling the truth.

An old woman comes to him, asking if he’ll kill her husband, who’s real sick.  He declines.  A farmer asks if the dude has killed yet, and if not, if he’ll kill his teen son.  “He don’t like girls, you see.”  The man is disgusted and heads out of town.  A pregnant woman actually lays down in the road and he goes around her.

 

I wrote this story in a bit better detail, to the end (or at least until the point where the man makes his decision and runs into the policeman again) before my "mishap" with the computer.  I didn't use MS Word before because there's all these irritating hoops to jump through because it's not a registered version, but I've got to jump through them from now on, to avoid losing it all.  When I think about the extra half hour or so that I wasted rewriting all this, when I could have been fleshing out "Murdertown," or working on synopses for the other two ideas I had, or talking about the things I saw each day at the Con, I just feel tired.

 

They have started letting people into Hall H now, so those hours flew by.  I ended up sitting toward the back (but still far enough up that I know five or six hundred people behind me also got to go in), next to a couple of heavy-set ladies who were here about the HUNGER GAMES panel.  I ended up not liking them in the end.  I had no internet access, for some reason, which was disappointing, since this is a better computer than the one I've previously had, but the chaps in the row behind me told me theirs weren't working either.  I saw several panels I wasn't particularly interested in, but only one did I truly hate.  A better man might have used that time to read, write, or blog, but I didn't for some reason (I kept thinking, I'd better keep this laptop with a little bit of charge in it, in case of an emergency, but ended up not using it again before going back to the car).

 

I'm not sure how much I'm going to blog about SDCC2013, as Big and I usually talk about it on our podcast, but I imagine I would've gotten more done, had--

 

Nahh, I won't say it again.

 

Rish Outfield

 

 

*This is an exaggeration, but two hours later, he called his wife on her cellphone and said he was about to order.  He asked her if that guy in the line with her wanted anything.  I really appreciated that, but wow, I can't imagine any coffee, Starbucks or otherwise, being worth a wait like that.  And the saddest part is, that family was from Seattle.

SDCC: Who's Who

Every year, besides the endless lines, unrealistic walks, and fury at the maddening crowds, I have a Comic-Con tradition of taking really lousy pictures. This is the third camera I've owned since starting my yearly visits, and is by far the best. However . . .

I have still compiled a selection of really awful photos of celebries, and will once again make a game of identifying them. Each one is numbered, see if you can recognize them all!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Back From San Diego

Every summer, I make an effort to go to the San Diego Comic-Con, where I must spend a great deal of money, and suffer either a little or a lot.  I've considered not going a time or two, but I've made it a tradition to head down there every July, whether I can afford it . . . or not.

This was the first time I ever went when I was broke.  So I reaaaally need to do some work now that I'm back.  But I'll try to post a couple of pictures and a few words about it when I get a chance, because this was a pretty great trip, despite the heat, ants, and crowds.

Driving into San Diego, I was surprised (and delighted) to see a huge bank of fog coming in.  For about five miles, visibility was suddenly limited, and traffic slowed down for an actual reason instead of it just being Southern California.

There were a bunch of protesters all around the Convention Center again this year.  This time they had megaphones and were mostly preaching instead of screaming hate at the passersby (like the Westboro parasites did the last few years).  Even so, I didn't really understand why they were there, and holding up scripture signs that said, "Judgement Is Coming" and "God will Utterly Destroy Those Who Reject Him" (which flies in the face of a lot of the hellfire threats you usually hear, though I've no doubt it too is in the Bible).  The megaphoners would talk about the emptiness of what we were doing there and that without Jesus, nothing else would matter, though they did it more eloquently than the Phelps clan had.  One of them--on the last day--was really young and pretty, and that made me sad for some reason.

As is tradition, Comic-Con attendees brought their own signs.  Reading, "Frank Castle Will Punish the Wicked" and "Galactus Is Nigh" and such.  Those always amuse me, simply because they're usually clever, and less hateful than they easily could be. 

There are, of course, some protests I can get behind.

Audiobook Adventures: Post 22

I finally finished editing the book I'd been dragging my feet on.  I submitted it, and the rights holder only had one change they requested.  It blew my mind that there would only be one overlooked mistake in an entire reading (I said "passage" instead of "package").  I fixed that, and the book is now approved.

I really ought to get to work on the second book in the series (this is the one where I'm contracted to do five, but there are thirty-three total), but I'd prefer to concentrate on other, smaller projects, and then get to work on Book Two.  What would be nice is if the first book sold so well, right out the gate, that I felt a big adrenaline rush to push me through the next one.  Time will tell.

For the Fourth of July week, my uncle and his daughter were staying here (as well as my sister and niece), so there was much noise, commotion, and lack of toilet paper every time I went into the bathroom.  But as soon as they left, I decided it was time to record the first fifteen minutes of the new novella I got hired/contracted to write.*  I set up my microphone, turned off the fan in here . . . and then my two year old nephew knocked on my door.

He didn't feel good, and wanted me to hold him (he spent the next day throwing up, so there must have been something to it).  I told him to lay down on my bed and I was going to read a story.  So, I started the microphone recording, and began the new project.  I'll admit that there were a couple of times when I forgot that I was narrating an audiobook and spoke like I was reading to a child, but I hope those are few and far between.  Within ten minutes, the boy was asleep, and I continued reading until the end of the first chapter.

It was a painless and pleasurable process. 

But it is always more fun to narrate than to edit, as you can imagine (the auditory equivalent of throwing a party then having to clean up afterward), and today, when I sat down to edit the segment, I worried that I would once again find no joy in Mudville.

But I was wrong.  In forty minutes or so, I had the whole fifteen minutes edited and ready to submit.  There was almost no irritation, almost no unnoticed stammering or background noise, and only one moment where I struggled with the narrative enough to want to save the outtake.  I've just saved it, and will upload it as soon as I'm done typing.

Now, there's a chance the author will be displeased, or think the volume is too low, or tell me I have to re-voice the main character, or wonder why it sounds like I'm reading his post-apocalyptic survival tale as though to a toddler, but barring those obstacles, this has been the smoothest and most-refreshing project I've had in months.  It's this sort of thing that can help fella get his groove back.

We'll see, I suppose.

Rish Outfield, Audiobook Guy

*The fact that its deadline is next week contributed, I'll admit.

My story "Unreleased" on the Horror Addicts podcast

                So, last year, after my story “The Scottish Scene” failed to win the Masters of the Macabre contest at the Horror Addicts podcast, its host, Emerian Rich, asked me if I’d like to be a featured artist on their show sometime in 2013.  Basically, a story of my choosing would be run on their monthly show, pretty much sight unseen.  I happily accepted, and she gave me the July 13^th spot, which happens to be my birthday, coincidentally.

                I knew I had months to choose a story, and tried to figure out what I had that would both work well in audio and read in under fifteen minutes, and considered a story I wrote a couple of years ago (one that slips my mind right now), which might work alright.  But then I thought, this is an opportunity to write a new story, and that’s always good.

                They also asked me thirteen questions for a pre-show interview, and I tried to give each one attention and the weight that being a real featured author would deserve.

                You can go over to www.horroraddicts.net and listen to my story “Unreleased” now, and then read my write-up here, or you can go ahead and have the story spoiled here.  Basically, I have always wanted to write a story about a group of college students that go into the forest and unleash an evil spirit, or a demon, or a Great Old One, or something, and have to do something about it.  I started to write a story like that four or five years ago, but decided it was more of a screenplay idea than a story or novella (basically, the guy or guys that survive go back to campus and try to get their Ancient Religion or Paranormal Studies or Cthulhu Mythos professor to help them undo what they have done, and though he’s reluctant, he knows it can be the last great thing that he does before he dies).

                I figured that was the way to go, but then I discovered that I was more interested in the old professor’s story than that of the young college students (about as anti-Hollywood as you can get nowadays, unless the old professor is--gasp!--a woman).  I decided that I wanted to write about an old man who has been broken (emotionally/intellectually/physically) by an encounter in his youth, and at the end of his life, he decides to confront it again.  He could have been the young man that let the monster/demon/creature escape, and have regretted it all his life.

                Wow, it grabbed my imagination.  Imagine someone who never lived the life he wanted because of being shown something in his youth, something that ruined him to religion, or hope, or . . . love?  I thought the neatest thing would be if he saw a fairy or an angel or a goddess, and she ruined him for romance for the rest of his life.  I’m a bitter, lonely individual, and I imagined what it would be like if I lived to a ripe old age with my current streak.  How bitter, how depressed, how pessimistic would I be?

                Like I said, I was really excited about this story, one that had a pretty awesome idea behind it (if I may be so bold, sir), and the heavy lifting is to bring that idea to its best light.  I ended up deciding the monster in question would be a qarin, the Arabic version of a djinn or genie.  I started it with the old man in the desert, having hired a young man to dig up the magic lamp equivalent, and then flashing back to his youth and encounter with the shape-shifting denizen of the lamp.  I thought I was maybe the smartest guy in the world, calling the story “Unreleased,” since it could apply to the trapped creature or the old man who never shook the memory of the girl he encountered.*

                Ultimately, the story ended up around five thousand words.  And that was 2 2 2 big.  I knew I had a big task ahead of me, and part of me thought, “Why not just cut out all the parts with him as an old man, and just tell the young man part?”  But see, that’s not why I wanted to write the story.  To me, the old man segments were the important parts, and the encounter with the qarin was the backstory.  I did my best to cut it down.

                Ultimately, I axed the first page (gone is the kid the old man hires to unearth the relic), and tried to streamline the language and cut back on dialogue.  It made a difference, but not enough.  So, I shaved down some of the description, the desert, the forest, the girl, the old/young man.  I lost a bit of the melancholy, and chose to focus on what the Horror Addicts listeners would appreciate (even though that’s only sort of what the story is about).  I had my “final draft,” and sat down and recorded it.

                Even then, it was still five minutes too long.  So, I had to combine dialogue and lose, pretty much, all of the personality of the story, any nuances that aren’t moving the plot along.

                I hate doing the shaving for time or word length.  It bugs the crap out of me that I have to decide which word describing “the ugly, ancient, evil, deformed old woman” is the most important one, but it’s a bed I make over and over again, then have to sleep in it.**

                I’m not competing with anyone this month on Horror Addicts (though there is currently a writing contest on there, and I will be participating), so I invite you to go over there and listen to my reading of “Unreleased.”  It’s possible someone will want to read the original double-length version, to decide which is better, but even if nobody ever mentions it again, I’m glad I got to be a featured artist, and grateful for the chance to write another story I might not have written without it.

Rish Outfield, Featured ___

*Of course, one man’s “Unreleased” is another man’s “Tangled” or “Brave” or “Frozen,” so what do I know?

**I had to do the same with the story I submitted for the Dunesteef’s own Triple Word Contest, though not so drastically.  Only once, in the many stories I’ve written, have I ever been encouraged to EXPAND the writing, and it was a hell of a lot more fun than cutting things down.

My story "Outgoing Transmissions" on the "Journey Into..." podcast

Or perhaps I should have typed it, My "Story" on the "Journey Into..." podcast.

When I sent Marshal Latham my short piece "Outgoing Transmissions" months ago, I had no doubt he would get a kick out of it.  I also knew he wouldn't run it on his show, because it's not really a story, it's two terrible things: 1) a joke, and 2) fan fiction.

But Marshal did accept it, and this week, he's run it on his podcast.

And he was totally right to do so.  You know how I know?  Because it somehow inspired him to make his already rad theme song (by Man In Space) even MORE rad.  When I heard the opening, it made me glad to be alive . . . or what passes for living in my experience.

Basically, "Outgoing Transmissions" is a not-at-all tongue-in-cheek epistolary tale of a Stormtrooper writing home to his young son.   I'm sure there's at least one inaccuracy in there somewhere, but it ain't the part about the timeline; that the Prequels got wrong. 

I think it turned out well.  Here's the link: http://journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2013/07/journey-74-outgoing-transmissions-by.html

Fan fiction is a funny thing.  Just yesterday, I saw on somebody's website the original artwork for what became the novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," featuring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.  A lot of folks say writing fan fiction is non-creative and unprofessional, but a lot of other folks (maybe some of the same folks) say it flexes your creative muscles and is fun to play in another writer's sandbox.  A friend of mine talks about writing stories about Harry Potter's parents and Sirius and Snape and Wormtail when they were students at Hogwarts, and I'd rather read that than ANYTHING ELSE EVER WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MAN OR WOMAN.

But that's just me.

MTFBWY,

Rish Outfield

Horror without end

Besides being alone with a barking, whining dog, I started watching a horror movie a day (this is instead of working, as a sort of informal protest), trying to see if I could do it for a week straight.  I'm almost tempted to blog about them. 

1.  HATCHET 2.  Hopelessly gory sequel to an alright throwback Slasher film.  The story/premise was excellent (the lone survivor of the first film goes back to where it occurred, this time with a group of armed men, none of whom end up prepared for what's coming, Copyright 20th Century Fox, 1986), but the budget and the priorities (slow, mean-spirited splatter effects, including castrations, debrainings, beheadings, and debreastings, rather that scares and trying to make the best out of the script) kept this from reaching its potential.  But I understand that the target audience would hate a good story getting in the way of all their gore.
2.  THE DARK.  Nice ghost story with Maria Bello and Sean Bean.  Scary, with interesting Gaelic backstory.  Unfortunately, the ending was a head-scratcher, that I still don't entirely get (par for the course, kids).
3.  OPEN WATER 2.  A bunch of pals end up stuck in the ocean outside their yacht because the ladder wasn't lowered.  One by one they succumb to drowning or each other.  Unfortunately, the ending was so confusing as to ruin the whole rest of the movie.  (I looked it up and the director claims he couldn't decide whether to have it end happily or sadly, so he shot both endings . . . and included both.  Motherfucker)
4.  SLAUGHTER HIGH.  A delightful Eighties Slasher done by an English cast and crew, but with American accents.  Fun, kind of clever, and starring the then-35 year old Caroline Munroe, playing a high school student.  Unfortunately, the ending was a big cop-out, revealing everything to have been in the imagination of the institutionalized killer.  Or maybe it wasn't.  Except that it was.
5.  NEEDLE.  Well-made Australian film with a great premise and the best-looking girls possible.  There's some French mechanical device (probably designed by Clive Barker) that can kill your enemies from afar, except when the script decides not to.  It sort of didn't work, but compared to the others, the ending was actually alright.
6.  RISKY BUSINESS.  I saw this as a kid and never forgot a couple of the images (yes, naked Rebecca De Mornay was one of them).  Watching it all these years later brought back some nostaligic Eighties memories, and had me cognisant that you couldn't get away with some of this stuff today.  I know it's not a horror movie, but I watched it anyway, and enjoyed it more than all of the above.
7.  DAUGHTERS OF SATAN.  This was one of the (hundreds of?) movies made in the early Seventies dealing with demonic possession and/or devil-worship.  It starred Tom Selleck (looking as he always did, leading me to wonder if he might not be one of those Immortal dudes from HIGHLANDER), who buys a painting at a flea market featuring the burning of historical three witches, one of which bears an uncanny resemblance to his wife.  This decade was amazing in both the pessimistic endings of its movies and gratuitous nudity, and this flick had both, except they end up having their cake and eating it too by having a miraculously happy revelation at the end, only to undo it one second before the credits roll.*
8.  Three episodes of "Tales From The Crypt."  I stopped watching the show after the second season, and was surprised to see that these were from the seventh.  Apparently, they moved the whole damn production to England, and shot with British casts.  The first episode was so hard to follow, I suspected it had been an hour long show cut to thirty minutes.  The second was pretty good, but only had story enough for ten minutes.  The third had Ewan McGregor doing an American accent . .  ish.  I decided about halfway through that two episodes would've been enough.
9.  DETENTION.  If I described this movie to you, you'd be as excited to see it as I was when I read the description.  Basically, it's a high school movie, but the students are made up of characters from other high school movies.  It's really snarky and starts out quite hilarious, but something went wrong somehow and it becomes a disjointed, confusing mess.  By the halfway point, I had forgotten that there's a SPIDER-MAN parody, a SCREAM parody, a BREAKFAST CLUB parody, and a DONNIE DARKO parody, and simply struggled to figure out what the filmmaker was trying to pull off.  There were some funny parts, but a lot of the jokes were not delivered well, or were thrown away instead of given their due.  This one was more disappointing than all the others, simply because it seemed to have the most potential (at least from reading the synopsis).  Also, it had Dane Cook in it.
10.  THE DEVIL WITHIN HER. (aka I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN, aka IT'S GROWING INSIDE HER, aka THE MONSTER, aka SHARON'S BABY [despite the main character being named Lucy])  This was the last one I watched (though I did start a Korean horror flick and gave up on it because I'm a terrible, small-minded, racist person).  It starred Joan Collins as a woman who gives birth to a baby who is cute when onscreen, but when offscreen is able to kill and maim and lift a grown man into the air.  She seems confused as to how this child could be so evil, but then flashes back to when a dwarf cursed her firstborn child to be a demon, and then she continues to disbelieve.  In the end, the baby has killed pretty much every single character in the film (including the doctor who birthed him, played by Donald Pleasance), and is undone by the world's longest exorcism.  If it really took that extended a shrieking invocation to un-possess a person, the world would be nothing but demons . . . unless it already is.

I have no idea why I wrote all this up, except that I used to love watching horror films, and watching ten in as many days would not have been extraordinary for me.

Also, I have editing to do and have not worked on it in almost a week now.  So there.

Rish Outfield, One-Time Horror Afficionado

P.S.  Blogger tells me this is my 800th published post (sixteen are still floating in the ether).  That's a lot of words.

*I met Mister Selleck when I first moved to Los Angeles, and it would have been great to pretend I recognized him only from DAUGHTERS OF SATAN.

Audiobook Adventures: Post 21

Very small post for you.

So, I got my first paycheck today.  It was pitifully small.  Maybe it was better that I didn't get one of these before now, since I had these pie-in-the-sky hopes about making a living with my voice, and I didn't get discouraged until recently.

As I said last time, I wasn't paid for March or April, and finally, I called to ask why.  I didn't get a satisfactory answer, but was simply told that the check would be issued to me, and would arrive right after my check for May.  So, that's good, I suppose.  But wow, my check for May is about what I expected for February or March, when my work wasn't out there so much.

On the bright side, the check was accompanied by a breakdown of my sales, as far as projects and markets, and I made $1.60 from the UK in month of May.  Thanks, United Kingdom, but I still love you.

Even so, I have obligations and need to continue working on this stuff, up to me whether I take on new projects.  Which reminds me, I got another job offer yesterday for a project I mentioned once before.  I haven't click Accept or Reject yet, and probably should get on there to see if it's for Royalty Share or actual pay.

I have been really slow in working on those two current books, recording about two chapters a week on one (I'm on chapter 19 of 24), and editing about one chapter a week on the other (I'm on chapter 8 of 15).  At this rate, by mid-August, I will have completely abandoned all these projects.  I need to get excited about it again somehow.

Not sure how, but maybe something will come to me.

Rish Outfield, Slacker

P.S. Okay, I went ahead and accepted the offer that came in to me.  It was for a book I auditioned for back in February or late January, and it's neat that I still got it, after it sat fallow for so long.  There have been a couple of projects I've auditioned for where they asked for a lot of work rather than just a couple minutes to show what I can do, and one where the guy corresponded with me a few times before giving the part to someone else.  I know I can't expect to bag every job I go after, but I sort of do still expect it, you know?