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Not Dead Yet!

Hollywood Remakes

This isn't so much a rant about Hollywood remakes as it is about the recurring idea that sequels, remakes, and adaptations are some awful, overwhelming blight that's taken over Hollywood in the past few years.  Humphrey Bogart's version of The Maltese Falcon was a remake of an adaptation.  So was John Carpenter's The Thing.  Casino Royale was a remake, too.  Dracula is the most filmed fictional character in history.  Seriously.  How many remakes or adaptations are we talking about there?

Don't get me wrong--there are some God-awful remakes out there. Nightmarishly bad ones.  But there's a lot of God-awful original films, too.  And, hard as it may be to believe, they're the majority.

Hollywood studios released just shy of 200 films in 2011.  I believe the exact number is 194, but I might be off by two or three (that's based off Box Office Mojo's records, if you care).  This number does not include micro-releases that only played for a limited number of screenings or foreign films brought over by independent distributors.  If we were all inclusive, the number of films at the box office last year is closer to five hundred.

2011 had more sequels released than any other year to date.  There were 28--about one out of every seven films (14.2%) if we stick to that smaller number of studio releases.

If we're extremely generous with the term "remake" (counting, for example, Captain America: The First Avenger  as a remake of the low-budget 1990 film and Rise of the Planet of the Apes as a remake of the old Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) , 2011 had 13 remakes.  Not even one in ten of the smaller studio number (6.66%, actually).  And before anyone asks, there are overlaps between the remakes and sequels.

Which means, conservatively, that 80% of the films released in 2011 were original or based off new, never-before-filmed material.  Probably a little more than that.  Definitely more if we use all the numbers and not just the studio releases.  This isn't opinion, remember--these are cold, hard facts.  You can go to Boxoffice Mojo or The Numbers or even just IMDb, count up releases, and you'll get the same results.

I think what drives people nuts is that over the past ten years or so the average person has access to tons of news and information about the internal workings of Hollywood.  But the film industry is a very weird business.  There is nothing else like it and nothing to compare it to (from many, many folks, the closest comparison is life in the military).  Having access to all that internal information doesn't mean someone can understand Hollywood any more than having access to all the internal organs in someone's torso can make you a heart surgeon.

So, anyway, people hear about movies going into development, don't understand what that means, and assume these films are going to happen now.  In film terms, going into development means... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dozens of remakes, reboots, sequels, and original scripts are considered for development every day because that's how development people keep their jobs. They get nine or ten projects "in the works" and about 95% of them fizzle out and die. Some of them are remakes, a bigger bunch of them are original. But the vast majority of them don't come out. This is business as usual. Disney has had all of their sixties and seventies live movies in development as remakes or reboots for over a decade now. We've seen one make it out-- Race To Witch Mountain. One in over ten years.

It's not really a problem.

Just saying...

My First Espresso

             Two copies of 14.  How are they different...?

            I’m guessing most of you reading this have heard of the Espresso Machine.  Simply put, it’s an ATM for books.  You select the manuscript you want and the machine prints it up for you right there on the spot.

            In theory, this is cool on a couple levels.  For bookstores, it means they’ve got access to a much larger potential inventory.  I think for most of us, when we go to a bookstore and get told “we can order it for you,” that’s usually the signal to go home and order what we want on Amazon.  With an Espresso Machine, the bookstore gets to say “we don’t have it in stock, but we can print it up for you in fifteen minutes.”

            That’s just a few steps off from replicator technology.

            For writers, especially traditionally published authors, it means paperbacks never need to go out of print.  There are tens of thousands of books out there that aren’t financially viable for a publisher to bring back (last numbers I heard said a book needs to sell over five thousand copies a year to be worth keeping in print), but could still gather random sales.  And sales means income.  Authors with a large back-catalog could suddenly be getting regular checks again when a dozen books sell twenty or thirty copies each.  Not phenomenal money, but definitely better than the nothing the books are making when out of print.

            All pretty nifty, yes?

            Well, about six weeks back I was up at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, and I got to take their Espresso Machine for a whirl.  Not only that, their resident Espresso expert, Brendan, was willing to talk with me for about half an hour, going over the machine and the whole process from beginning to end.  So I decided to get a copy of 14 through the machine and see what came out.

            The Espresso Machine at Village Books is one of the first ones put out, and the first one on the west coast.  It’s about two years old (on a three year, rent-to-own lease), and Brendan’s trying to convince the owners to trade up to the new model in a year when the lease is up.  The newer one has worked out some small bugs and also goes a bit faster (most books are done in closer to ten minutes).  Keep that in mind as you read through this.

            First off, the machine is a bit more cobbled-together looking than you might expect.  The front is a terminal.  The back looks a lot like an oversized photocopier, the type you’d find in an office or Kinkos.  In between is a glassed-in section with robot clamps, hydraulic blades, and shifting platforms that assemble the book. It’s kind of like a computer and a printer having a threeway with one of the robots from Tony Stark’s workshop.

            So, Brendan ordered a copy of 14 for me.  It’s not a book that’s stored on the machine’s hard drive, so it takes a few minutes just to download that file (they’re kind of big). 

            It’s also worth noting that this download costs almost nine dollars.  This is where pricing comes into play.  The final cost of the book is based off download costs (if any), raw materials (the Espresso machine goes through high-end paper just like a copier, so big books cost more than small books), and the store’s profit margin.  In the case of 14, this actually means the final book ends up costing just shy of $19.00 through the Espresso (four bucks over the publisher’s suggested retail price).  There are lots of public domain books that are inexpensive, though, and it also works well for some of their more direct publishing relationships (local authors, local schools and colleges).

            The cover gets printed first.  It’s usually getting the most color and it’s on glossy paper.  It ends up face down at the bottom of the assembly area.

            Then the machine starts printing pages.  It’s just like watching a copier or high end computer printer.  And, just like these machines, sometimes there are mess-ups.  One page comes out just a little off, as does the next and the next and the next, and suddenly instead of a neat stack of paper there’s a broad fan.  This actually happened on the book the machine was printing right before mine.  Brendan had to pause everything and shuffle things back into place.  He does try to check on the machine while it’s working, but every now and then something sneaks by.

            Once the pages are all printed, the next step is the gluing.  The manuscript is squeezed together and the machine paints a stripe of hot glue along it.  Then the whole thing is pressed down into the cover, which is pressed down into a gap in the floor of the machine (again, all of it shifting and adjusting in a very Iron Man way).  The robot arm presses from above, the gap clamps tight from below, and the pages are glued into the cover.  On rare occasions the machine puts down too much glue and makes a mess of things, and if that does happen it could mean starting over.

            Once the glue’s been given a few minutes to dry, the machine moves on to cutting.  All of this is printed on 8 1/2” x 11” paper, so it needs to be snipped down to size.  The arm spins the book, a new opening appears in the floor of the machine, and a hydraulic blade shears off the excess material.  It’s kind of scary how effortlessly the machine cuts through almost 200 sheets of paper.  The book’s rotated and cut until all the page measurements are correct.

            And that’s it.  The arms carry the book over and drop it out a slot on the right side of the machine.  At the end, it took just shy of fifteen minutes from placing the order until the finished book pops out.

            For the record, the book on the right is one of the regular copies available through Amazon.  The book on the left is the one Brendan printed up for me.  They’re not identical, but they’re pretty close.  It is interesting to note that the cover on the Espresso copy has notably faded, just in the two months since I bought it (originally there was almost no difference).

            Final thoughts...

            The Espresso Machine’s pretty damned impressive, especially when you consider this is a first-gen machine.  It’s not as smooth, simple, and flawless as we were all led to believe, but it’s not far off from that, either.  I’d compare it, technology-wise, to the grocery store self-check out terminals, the ones that at first still needed a clerk standing right there to deal with the issues that kept popping up.  In just a few years, those stations have made some leaps forward, and it’s not hard to believe the Espresso Machine’s going to do the same thing.

Five... Four... Three... Two..

Counting down to the announcement of the new Doctor Who.

Or should it be, counting down to the screams of rage and wails of sorrow...? 

Comic Con Recap

The San Diego Comic-Con was pretty amazing.  My first year going as the guy behind the table—which really changes your view of it, I learned.  I crashed with friends in San Diego for a few days, and then Crown put me up in a hotel by the con for part of it.  

So here are a few of the random high points, as I remember them.  And a couple pictures of random folks/things, too, just so you’ll keep scrolling down.

  

Wednesday – I came down a day early so  there’d be no stress, so I woke up in San Diego.  My friends and I headed over to the convention hall around four to pick up our badges.  Then we killed time at the Spaghetti Factory bar until the doors opened.  I make my first attempt at a Webarella doll for my niece, but on preview night it turns out they’re only selling to people with regular badges—no pros or vendors.  Curse my professional status!  I drown my sorrows in model robots.  Check out Robot4Less—they’re cool.

Stopped by the Random House aisle and the Crown Publishing booth, where I finally met my editor and publicists face to face.  Chatted a bit.  Pre-signed a few books.  Then went back home with my friends to watch Sharknado.

Thursday—The first full day of Comic-Con, and I had free reign for most of it.  I wandered a lot.  Made another run for Webarella, but they’d sold out of their day’s allotment in under an hour.  Doubly frustrating when you saw all the folks walking around with shopping bags full of the dolls.

Checked out lots of booths.  Had lunch with Rick Marson, creator of ZOMS and Katie Cord of Evil Girlfriend Media.  Later in the day I met Bill Barnes who draws the Unshelved comic strip (they did a fun Ex-Heroes review in comic-strip form a few months back).

That night was the Random House party.  There’s an embarassing story about me changing for the party in my friends’ car, but it won’t be told here.  Met Peter David,  George R.R. Martin, and also fellow Crown authors Scott Sigler (Pandemic) and Peter Stenson (Fiend).  I also got free drinks served to me by a woman dressed as Daenerys Targaryen (the bar was doing a Game of Thrones theme for Comic Con) while pictures of my book covers (and several other people’s) flashed up on screens around the bar.

Friday – I got to check into my room at the Hyatt.  There are definite perks to being a big press author.  It was also nice to have a place to dump things.  And then I got to go find that Webarella had sold out again.  Saw a jackass offering to sell them at 400% markup right there at the con.

I did a panel with a few other authors, then a signing where I met a few folks.  Talked briefly with Max Brooks (World War Z) at the Crown booth.  Then I moderated a panel with several costume illustrators (who worked on some amazing stuff).  After I dropped off some stuff in my room, it was up to the Top of the Hyatt for drinks with friends while we watched the sunset.  And then down to Seaport Village for dinner with all the Crown folks, including Scott and Peter.  Much smaller than the previous night’s party, and we end up talking about books, publishing, and similar things.  Which led us back to the Top of the Hyatt for more drinks (drinking, you may notice, was a recurring theme). One of the publicists came up with the idea of trading badges so I could get into the hall before it opens and finally get the Webarella doll.  

           

It was very nice to just take an elevator back to the room after all that, kick off my shoes, and scribble a few story notes on my legal pad.

Saturday – My last attempt to get Webarella met in failure.  Con security finally decided to stop other vendors from lining up before the doors open , but they only did a half assed job at it so vendors just lurked in the area.  And then doors opened and Mattel announced they’d changed their criteria, too—no selling to vendors (so my badge is now preventing me from getting the doll).  I slink back to the Crown booth, broken and defeated.

After meeting a few more folks and signing a few more books, I head over to Nerd HQ for lunch and to hang out “off campus” for a while.  Met up with a few folks, had a great turkey sandwich ( I was ready to gripe about the price, but this thing was huge), and missed one die-hard fan (you know who you are) by about ten feet.  Then it was a race back to the Crown booth for my first official signing there.  Met lots of people.  Signed lots of Ex books (I think close to sixty or seventy in a two-hour period) and even a few copies of 14.

Finished up the day having drinks with my agent and editor, talking about future projects.  Then ended up having more drinks at the Top of the Hyatt until... way too late.  Again, thank God the hotel room was right there.

Sunday—One last visit to the Robot4Less booth and then I was back to Crown.  After listening to me grumble every time we ran into each other, Katie from Evil Girlfriend came through with some extra Monster High swag for my niece.  I met a bunch of folks, signed another few dozen books, and the con closed.  Final estimates said over 200 books signed, and both Crown and the nearby Mysterious Galaxy booth both pretty much sold out.  I helped pack up a bit, said my goodbyes to everyone, and then wandered to an undisclosed location downtown, where I was picked up by a man in a dark car...

I was so exhausted that when I got back to my friend’s house I collapsed almost immediately on the couch.  A few of us tried to hang out for a bit, but four days of very little sleep and too much going on finally caught up with me.

Monday –I watched a few countdowns on the Chiller channel with my friend Marc while we talked about geeky stuff, ate lunch, and then I drove home to Los Angeles. There was, thankfully, much less traffic than there was heading down

And now I can't wait until next year...

San Diego Comic Con 2013

I'm going to be there.  Are you?

(Technically, I'm there now)

Bonus Preview!

Just a quick note for those of you who are interested in such things.

There's a free preview of Ex-Communication up on Scribd right now.  It's the first flashback chapter, and it comes right after the preview in the new edition of Ex-Patriots.  Check it out.

So if you already bought that, you've got the first two chapters of the book.

Enjoy.

F A Q

        The ever-popular Frequently Asked Questions.  I can honestly say I never, ever thought there would be so many people here that I’d need to do something like this.  But here you are.  And much as I love getting to say “hullo” and chatting with folks, it gets really exhausting answering the same questions again and again every other day.
         So, rather than get annoyed with folks for asking the same question I just answered twice on the last status update, I figured I’d just put all the answers to the most common questions in one document and update it every couple of months or so.
                   That way, people can just ignore this.  It’s much more efficient for all of us...

When does Ex-Communication come out?

        Ex-Communication is being released on July 9th, 2013.  I know, finally...  It’s been done for ages, but then got caught up in the whole Crown deal and the usual publishing stuff.  Sorry for the long wait, but I really think it’s going to be worth it.

Is Ex-Communication the last Ex book?

        Nope.  I’m currently finishing up a fourth one which should be out in October of 2013.  I’ve also got very tentative plans for a fifth book, but that would all depend on Broadway Books and how well the series does for them.

        I’ve never really planned it as a trilogy or having a set specific storyline.  I get to leave some threads hanging for later things, and if all goes well I get to pick up those threads in later books.  There are some specific things I know people are hoping to see resolved in Ex-Communication, but there are a few things that may still linger.  The series could go on for a while.

What’s the fourth book going to be about?

        I’d rather not say at the moment.  I don’t like spilling too much in advance because people tend to latch on to a lot of out-of-context stuff and make a lot of judgments about it—despite the fact that it’s a snippet they’re seeing out of context.  I’m kind of like JJ Abrams that way.  Just without the fame, prestige, money, or power.

What’s the fifth book going to be about?

        See above.

Why are you so against people talking about your books? 

        I actually love to think people are talking about my books.  It still stuns me, to be honest.  What I hate are spoilers.  That's why I always delete it when someone posts revealing information from the back half of a book and why I try to avoid those questions in interviews.  It's fantastic that someone enjoyed it so much when XX found XXX and realized XXXX, but by talking about it (or posting or whatever) they're making sure the person they're telling can't enjoy it the same way they did.  It's like explaining how a magician does all his tricks and then taking someone to see the show.  It won't be as fun, and it's not how you're supposed to see a magic show.

         And, yeah, this is a page for folks who've read my books, but not everyone's read everything.  A lot of folks are here for the Ex-Heroes series, but a lot of people found this page because of 14.  It may be a stupid attitude in the information age, but I don't want to ruin the experience of these books for anyone if I can avoid it.

Will there be a sequel to 14?

        I don’t really have one planned.  14 was always intended to be a stand-alone book, which was part of the reason I was able to do so much with it, story-wise.  It’d be tough to do anything with it that didn’t feel a bit cheaty or expected (I hate prequels).

        That being said... I have had a few very loose, very faint ideas for a sort of side-quel to it.  Think of it as more of a Next Gen- Deep Space Nine relationship.  But I wouldn’t do anything until I had a good, solid story to tell, so that’s not happening in the foreseeable future (for at least a year or two).

Will there be a sequel to The Junkie Quatrain?

        Probably not.  I think a lot of the fun of The Junkie Quatrain was the interconnected-overlapping nature of the stories, and it would be tough to replicate that without feeling a bit forced and awkward.  I think we’ll probably have to draw our own conclusions about what happened to all those characters.  Well, all the ones that survived anyway...

        However, we may see some of the various characters again.  Quilt has been showing up in my stories, in one guise or another, since my first real attempt at a novel in college (sort of like Stephen King's Man in Black, Randall Flagg).  If you follow my ranty blog at all, Quilt’s actually a supporting character in The Suffering Map.  I think he’s just a creepy, badass professional in almost every reality.

Do you have any plans to attend XXXX—Con?

        I love attending cons and meeting folks, but it usually burns down to time (I do need to keep writing books) and money (airfare and hotels add up quick).  Driving distance has better odds than flying distance, west coast has better odds than east coast.  I’d love to do more, I just need to figure out ways to make them fit with those two factors.

Will you be my friend on GoodReads?

        Nope.  It’s nothing personal, I just really don’t like Goodreads.  To be honest, I can’t stand the site, I submit nothing there, I post nothing there, and make it a point to spend as little time there as possible (which fortunately works out to “no time” in an average month).  I understand a lot of people love the site and if it works for you, that’s fantastic.  I won’t be there.  No friends, no reviews, no messages, no comments, no nothing.  I’d explain why, but... I’m taking the Thumper approach.

Is there going to be a movie/ TV series/ cartoon/ graphic novel of your books?

          Man, wouldn’t that be cool?  Alas, there’s been a lot of interest (from a few big players), some talks, a few meetings, one lunch where I had a really amazing cheeseburger, but as yet no one’s decided to move forward with anything.  Believe me, if it happens everyone will know.  Everyone.

Are you really working on a remake of The Wraith?  That movie was awful (great car, though).

         Alas, no.  It was just a funny comment to end an interview and some folks latched on to it.  I had a clever idea a while back for how the story could be redone, but I think it’s very, very, very low on Hollywood’s list. 

        And I think that covers most of it.