Tuesday, July 16, 2013

marketing a book

Jul. 5 Marketing a book: Ginny Grimsley sent me this article about how to market a book like send it to a contest.  If it wins, you can put that award on the book cover so book stores will put the book out and people will read it.

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/07/article-marketing-book.html

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Uprising film/ Elementary/ raising kids

This is from www.badcb.blogspot.ca

Jun. 7 Uprising film: I was reading an article in the Edmonton Journal called "Young Edmonton filmmakers finalists in $1-million contest" by Jamie Hall.  There are 3 recent high school graduates who made the trailer Uprising, and they want to get it produced to a feature film.  They are in the final five:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Young+Edmonton+filmmakers+finalists+million/8489223/story.html
https://www.facebook.com/UprisingMovie?fref=ts

The trailer looks really good, so I posted it on my Facebook to check out the article and trailer.  It's an action movie of 5 vigilantes living in a dystopia world, and they have to survive.  It looks really professionally done.

I then joined Cinecoup and told them this: "I read about you in the Edmonton Journal today. I saw the trailer, and Facebook it. I hope you guys win, I love to see action movies.
Jun. 11 Memoir: Lorna Garano sent me this article "The Power of Your Story: Memoirist and Writing Coach Explains."   It was about therapist Linda Joy Myers and here is the quote that really stood out for me:

"Writing a memoir turned out to be the path to a greater and deeper healing than I would have ever thought possible. 


Writing my story and translating it from imagination and memory into words on the page allowed me passage from victim to healing, taking the separate bits and pieces of my history-my thoughts, feelings, regrets, and hopes-to weave myself whole again,"

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/06/the-power-of-your-story-memoirist.html

Jun. 19 Communications business: I was reading this 2009 Womanition magazine I found on the bus.  I only read it here and there, and then a few months ago I went and read it cover to cover.  I then see one of my Professional Writing classmates Jan Lowry has started her own communications consultant business.

Elementary:
I saw the pilot of this show when it first came out.  It stars Johnny Lee Miller (Dracula 2000) as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Lui as Joan Watson.  It's an average show. 

Comparisons: I feel like it's kind of been done before besides rebooting Sherlock Holmes into the present time, but also the fact that there is a quirky male character and his straight-laced partner solving crime together.  You can see that on other crime-dramas like Castle, The Mentalist, and Lie to Me.

Story:
It starts off scary with a woman being attacked.  Introduce Watson who visits Sherlock and she tells him: "I'm your companion/ babysitter to make sure you don't relapse once you got out of rehab."  Sherlock's dad is rich and can afford to hire a companion.  Sherlock is the consultant to the NYPD.

There is fast-paced dialogue.  They go to the crime scene at the penthouse and Sherlock notices the photos in the cellphones and frames.  The victim had plastic surgery.  There are 2 glasses that are broken, so she knew her attacker and lets him in.  The attacker made it look like a robbery.  There is no body.

The floor is sloped and there is a safe room.  They find a switch and find the body there.  The husband is a doctor and is interrogated.

Sherlock: I don't guess.  I observe and then I deduce.

Sherlock thinks the killer is a tall man because there needs to be big hands to struggle with her.  Sherlock and Watson sees that the Husband wears size 11 shoes by the shoe box so he didn't do it.

The next day Watson overslept and runs to find Sherlock and does a drug test on him to make sure he didn't relapse.  She gets his saliva and he's clean.  Sherlock says serial killers take trophies, but none was taken.  They go to interview a past victim who has red hair just like the new victim.

Sherlock: You probably saw his eyes. 
He keeps pushing her and the Vic tells him to leave.  He leaves and Watson apologizes on behalf of him.

Watson (to Sherlock): She knows, it's Peter Sodor, her brother's friend.

It turns out Peter Sodor is dead when they go to his home.  Sodor mixed his colors with whites in the laundry.

Me: He's color blind?

Watson: You wanted to find him.
Sherlock: I don't do it for the credit.

There's still time left on the show so there's more to the case.  Sodor's phone was used all the time except for the last 3 days according to cellphone records.  The phone's missing.

They delve into Watson's character. 
Sherlock: You were a surgeon and then you quit, because you made a mistake in surgery.  You're visiting a grave of the man you let die on the table.

Sherlock then uses Watson's car and hits another car in the parking lot on purpose.  Sherlock is in jail and Watson talks to him through the phone.

Watson: You can connect with people.

So who killed it and why?  Sodor was taking Xanax.  Watson investigates and learns that Sodor is allergic to rice, but he had a bag of rice in his home.  It turns out Sodor wrecked his phone in the washer so he bought rice so he can put the phone in it.  Rice absorbs water from the phone.

The phone was evidence of the recorded sessions with the Husband who was also Sodor's psychiatrist.

Sherlock (to Husband): You were Sodor's psychiatrist.  You took advantage of him by giving him steroids and making him obsessive to kill your wife.
Husband: I signed a prenup.  If I leave, I don't get anything.  If she dies, I get everything.

My opinion: That was very creative.  The Husband find a perpetrator and made his wife look like the victim that the perpetrator was interested in.  I don't believe I've seen that on a TV show before.

Jun. 20 Raising kids: Elementary also made me think about raising kids.  Sherlock has a rich dad who can hire a companion to supervise him so he won't relapse.  I was thinking about that out-of-control teenage girl on Jenny Jones.

JJ: So you got pregnant when you were 13?
Girl: Yeah.
JJ: And you got an abortion?
Girl: Yeah.

I asked you guys: "Is there anyone here who thinks she should have had the kid?  As in stayed pregnant and gave birth?"  I called up one friend about it and she said she wasn't sure if this girl is not going to smoke, drink or do drugs.  I would say if the mom forced her to have the kid, the mom would have to hire a bodyguard to watch her 24/7. 

Besides making sure she doesn't drink or do drugs during the pregnancy, the bodyguard would have to make sure the girl doesn't hurt herself.  The girl doesn't seem interested in having the kid at all so I wouldn't put it past her if she got someone to punch her or kick her really hard in the stomach, or throw herself down the stairs.  I'm not trying to be mean, but from what I saw on Jenny Jones, I don't see her wanting to go through with the pregnancy.

The girl had a single mom so she wasn't rich to hire a bodyguard.  Well maybe you could put the girl in some sort of facility like a juvenile detention centre to have 24/7 supervision.  However, she could still start a fight with someone so she could get beaten up and she can throw herself down the stairs.

I think I exercised my imagination and I couldn't think of a solution other than an abortion.

Jun. 23 Book sales: I read in the Edmonton Journal that ever since that news reports that the US govt. is collecting data from our phone calls and emails, that there have been an increase in some books.  They are 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  Coincidentally I'm reading 1984 right now.  I finished reading it the other day.  It was a dark and depressing book. 

Flashback:
I remember the first time I heard about Brave New World.  It was in 2006 and I was in my Research for Writers class and this girl Kirsten and I were talking about cloning.  I was doing an essay about therapeutic cloning.  She mentioned that book.