All the Billion Other Moments

Got a bit more done, pushing me officially over the 50% point. Whoo hoo!

Gotta get to sleep now. Brom will be here at 7 to give me a ride into work tomorrow since one of the cars is in the shop.

Took the kids to The Big E yesterday with my mom and Howie. We had a great time. Rachel really enjoyed the rides and both kids loved seeing all the animals. It was pretty late by the time we got back home. I managed to carry both kids to bed from the car without issue. Good thing, because I was ready to get some sleep.

After getting the kids off to bed tonight Denise and I watched the season finale of Life on Mars. It’s a great show and I really recommend it. The main character is a modern day police officer who is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He believes he’s in a coma and everyone else thinks he’s crazy when he tries to explain. Not your average cop drama. Very well done.

After that I headed up to the office to continue on with the revisions. I think I made pretty good progress.

Today didn’t go at all to plan. We had a pile of places to be today, but Rachel isn’t feeling herself, so we ended up staying home. On the plus side Denise was kind enough to give me time to work on the book (thank you!), so here I am posting an update. Some of the chapters look a bit shorter that I want them, but I’m going to finish the type in and think about what to do afterwards (if anything).

The first time I saw YouTube I knew this day would come. It was only a matter of time. Dursin the Firestarter is online (well, so far just the first scene).

“What is Dursin the Firestarter?”, you ask. Back when I was in high school Dursin and John used to make a lot of movies. The greatest of these was Dursin the Firestarter, a feature length remake of the original trilogy of earlier shorts (Matt Dursin the Incredible Firestarter, Dursin the Firestarter Part 2, and Dursin the Firestarter Part 3). It may not be a great film, but it is amusing. I have a small roll in there somewhere (in fact you can see me in the movie poster), and I provided some of the sound effects in the latter half of the film. Check it out. Be warned that the film would definitely get an R rating for language, so it may not be work safe.

Saw this over on Del’s site. I haven’t watched a music video in quite some time, but it’s nice to see there are still some folks having a good time.

Ok Go

Wahoo! I’ll write more later, but I need to go spend time with the long ignored family now.

I’ve spent almost all of my time since my last post getting ready for, traveling to and from, or participating in Jon and Nicole’s Wedding. Jon’s been one of my best friends for twenty years. I was honored to be asked to participate. The ceremony was amazing (if a bit hot), and the reception was a lot of fun. It was great to see some people I haven’t seen in some time (including Jon’s family), and meet some really fun new people. I even managed to give my toast without choking too badly. I wish Jon and Nicole the very best, and hope they’re having a great time on their honeymoon.

The drive there took forever, but coming back things at least kept moving. Denise and I listened to the amazing unabridged reading of Ender’s Game (I’d heard it before, but it’s great to be able to enjoy a good book with your wife). The full-cast unabridged readings of the Enderverse books are some of the greatest audiobook productions I’ve ever experienced. I can’t recommend them highly enough (available for download from audible.com as well).

I need to thank my Dad for spoiling… er… taking care of the kids while we were gone. I also need to thank Edna and my grandparents for helping him survive the experience.

Now it’s time to clean the desk off (it got a bit cluttered during the search for the GPS serial cable), and get back to work on the book.

Amazingly I managed to get started today even though many things conspired against me.

I completed the discovery section of the One Pass Revision with little issue. I had pretty much done all that stuff before starting the story, and some of it even still applied. I worry that it may have been too easy. Maybe I did something wrong? We’ll see.

So I started the slog. I managed to be brutal. I hacked the entire first chapter right out of the book. It was a tough choice, but I think it was the right one. I’m holding on to it, because it could easily be expanded into a short story on it’s own, but the book doesn’t need it. Do I think the book is better without it? I’m not sure, but it’s not the solid start I want, so it had to go.

Chapter 2 Scene 1 didn’t need too much work. Chapter 2 Scene 2 wasn’t bad, but I rewrote most of it. Chapter 2 is light on dialog. Chapter 1 wasn’t. Since it’s gone, I needed to get some more dialog into the book earlier. This removed a bit of infodumping, and allowed me to improve some weak characterization.

Not a bad hour and half’s worth of work. Special thanks to the kids for letting me get it done.

Denise took the children out shopping after dinner, so I was able to spend some time on the desk before heading out to training for the night. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to use now.

As usual, I’m pretty busy, but my goal is to have the revision done by the end of July.

Dave Sim was inducted into The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame on Saturday. After his acceptance speech he sung an a capella version of all three verses of “My Way”.

brief clip courtesy The Beat.

His introduction was given by J. Michael Straczynski, who in a recent interview had the following to say about Dave:

When he first started out, the idea of telling one story of that magnitude and that duration, over a period of over 20 years, without a publisher behind you, is insane. But he believed he could do it. Even though reason said you can’t do it, his faith said ‘I can’. And, by gosh, he did.

The funny thing is, that’s how society changes. There’s those of us that just want to get along in the world and we try to blend in with and fit into the world around us. And there’re those who either believe in themselves a great deal or are insane who say ‘No, no, I will change the world to match me’. And those are the one’s who do change the world.

Dave Sim changed the world of comics because of what he did with Cerebus.

What Dave did with Cerebus has always been an inspiration to me. Because of him, and others like him, I always took it as a given that self published comics were a viable choice. Even today when the market is flooded with titles I think it can still be done, at least if it’s approached in an intelligent manner. Sure the facts seem to say otherwise. Independent books have quite a struggle today. There was a brief boom in the mid to late eighties, but that’s long past now.

But part of me still believes that there is still a market out there for well told stories. I’ve dipped in and out of comics for the past few years, and the market seems to be flooded with garbage. I don’t think this is just grumpy-old-man-syndrome on my part, because the stuff I see today is the stuff I hated in the early 90s. While the market may never turn around, at some point i think it will become viable again for new independent works.

Without Dave Sim, I would believe none of this. When all the other books I followed disappeared from the shelves Cerebus continued to show up, mostly on time, for it’s entire 300 issue run. That’s pretty damn impressive, and it shows what can be done by two guys (Gerhard really deserves some more public recognition, which should be obvious because I only mentioned him once) who commit to something.