I'm feeling pretty random tonight, so let's just rock some random paragraphs!
My oldest nephew is 9, and as an exercise in school once a week he has to do free writing. He has this journal where he writes like a paragraph long story. Well, he lets me read it the other day, and it turns out that everything he writes is food based. Here's my best attempt at recreating one:
Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts are amazing. They have salt and crunch in your mouth. Snack time is fun when you enjoy some of these peanuts.
The thing is, the kid starts getting really nutty in them, it's seriously some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. One was about his love of chicken strips, and at one point it says something like "Cluck cluck tasty!" HAHAHAHAHA. There was one about tea, pizza, root beer, pasta, pop tarts. One was about milk, and at the end he wrote "Keep mooing cows, keep mooing." hahahaha. There were like 20 entries, all of them about food. Reading that journal was the top moment of 2012, hands down.
Speaking of my nephews, we recently made a trip to the magic store, and all three of them have started getting into magic. It's been pretty awesome, they're really good! One of the twins, Matt, has really surprised me in how he's taken to it. His first trick was a chain escape where you actually lock a chain around his wrists, and he can escape it in like half a second. He's great at it, and he's super intense in his magic. They all say that we're in the magician's code together, so we share the secrets of the tricks with each other and work on techniques and stuff. They make me want to get back into card magic. At one point several years ago I was actually pretty good at it!
I released a new book recently, the sequel to Black Badge. I'm really proud of it, especially since it's my first ever sequel. It's a pretty violent affair, but if you read the first one that's probably no surprise. It's fun for me to write a book to just go all out in. With a lifetime love of action cinema, I've got a lot of inspiration to just pour into this guns blazing, bone crunching type of a book. It's also super cynical, just about society and politics and such, which is funny since I consider myself a pretty big optimist. Maybe my way of staying optimistic is to pour all of my cynicism and anger into a project like Black Badge, which is pretty cool to have such an outlet. I've re-read the book recently I think it's not too jaded. It's just over the top enough to not be too much of a downer. Anyways, if you're interested in picking up a copy here's a link to a blog post that tells you all the purchase options. If you do check it out let me know, I'd love to hear what you think. If you never read the first one, you can buy the new one bundled with the first for a discounted rate, which is pretty stellar.
Speaking of writing books, I'm over halfway done writing Scrolls Season 2, which is awesome. Scrolls is easily my favorite thing I've ever created, I think it's such an honest vision of my passions, the kind of things that I like, and the kinds of stories I love to tell. Season 2 is even better so far, and there's more relationship stuff as well, which I enjoy. A ton of people checked out Scrolls Season One on kindle, so I'm hoping that the sequel enjoys the same success. I know fans of the original will love the sequel, and I can't wait to get it finished and released.
Speaking of writing in general, I watched the movie Anonymous the other night. Now, as a deep lover of storytelling and as a professional writer, I'm taking a risk when I admit to you that I've always been a little lukewarm when it comes to Shakespeare. Yeah, yeah, his stuff is brilliant, no doubt, but I've never really been one of those "Shakespeare is the greatest storyteller of all time" kind of guys. But I have to admit, this film really moved me. It speculates on the true author of Shakespeare's work, but honestly it's just a testament to the power of storytelling. I'll admit to being very teary eyed in the end, and inspired to go and write something beautiful and meaningful.
Not sure what else I can give ya. I haven't cut or even trimmed my hair in well over a year. I look like the kid from Jungle Book now, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Work at the newspaper is good, as busy as ever. I'm due for a big story soon and I've got one in mind, so I'll probably go out and cause some trouble next week researching that.
Alright, I guess that's it. I hope all of you are having a great week, I hope your Valentine's Day was full of love and happiness, and I hope the rest of your week treats you right!
