ENTER THE JOLLEYVERSE

Not that anyone reads this anyway, but...

2010-08-24T15:19:00.001-07:00

...I'm redesigning my website, www.danjolley.com, and it's got a blog built into it. So on the rare occasions that I post anything, I'll be doing it there.

"REPO MEN"?

2010-01-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

I try to make it a policy not to say anything that could be perceived as negative about somebody else's creative work. I know plenty of people can get away with that, but I've never been one of those people; anything negative I've EVER said has invariably come back and bitten me hard in the ass.

But I have to say this.

Didn't they already make Repo Men? Wasn't it called Repo: the Genetic Opera?

I wonder if Darren Lynn Bousman feels about this the way Robert S. Fiveson felt about The Island?

GOOD GRIEF. SEVEN MONTHS? REALLY?

2009-10-31T09:47:00.001-07:00

Well. I've been gone from here for quite a while now, but I think I have a decent excuse, as my life has gone through a major upheaval, both personally and professionally.

I won't be going into details about any of this, but two things of note are that I'm no longer married, and have gone back to full-time freelance writing.

Things are good. :)

I've been hosting all my professional credits at www.danjolley.com, a site that I put together using iWeb for the Macintosh, but last time I tried to modify it the whole layout went really weird on me for no apparent reason. So pretty soon I'm going to create new pages on this blog, I'm thinking, and put all that stuff here, since I actually understand how this thing works. So at some point soon there should be some changes around here.

A (SOMEWHAT) TRIUMPHANT RETURN

2009-03-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

At this point I'm neglecting this blog to such a great extent, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just post things on The Redeemer's Law Project in between chapters and be done with it. Maybe I will.

Anyway. It took about a month longer than I was planning for it to, but I've finally healed enough from my torn ass muscle that I was able to go back to White Tiger last night. As I'd planned, I'm concentrating on Hapkido now, and it's just as much fun as I'd remembered it being.

Of course, I hadn't done any rolling of any kind, front or back, in those two months, and I basically had to re-learn the back roll. Marie was there watching, and she was gracious enough not to laugh at me as I floundered around on the floor before I got it right.

Floundering or not, Master Seo gave me another rank stripe after class, and on the 28th I'll be testing for yellow stripe (halfway to yellow belt).

THEN I'll be dangerous.

To myself. :)

POSSIBLE MIGRATION

2009-02-23T15:34:00.000-08:00

I put together my "official" website, at www.danjolley.com, using iTunes -- and now iTunes has let me down. It's doing really really weird things when I try to update it, and I can't begin to fathom why or even how.

I think I might just say "screw it" and move the entire content of my site to this blog. Working on The REDEEMER'S LAW Project has made me very aware of how customizable a Blogger site can be, and there's really no reason not to do it.

Maybe that'll be one of my projects this weekend.

DISTRACTIONS

2009-01-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

Well, clearly I've gotten distracted by The REDEEMER'S LAW Project, not having posted anything here in nine days. I didn't realize it had been that long.

But right now I'm waiting for some water to boil so I can make some tea which will, with any luck, further loosen the congestion that's plaguing my sinuses. (I've got a mild but persistent cold.) Seems like a perfect time for a relatively quick blog entry.

Reactions to REDEEMER'S LAW so far have been uniformly good; readers have made some great comments and observations, and given me plenty to think about as I make plans to revise the manuscript. Plus a reader named Stefan Blitz, proprietor of ForcesOfGeek.com, has whipped up a striking new cover and a great-looking banner. I'll be making ample use of both.

In other news, another deal that I had thought dead and gone, or at least indefinitely postponed, has risen from the dead this week. As usual, I can't go into any details about it, but it involves a form of media that I'm excited to delve into further. I should know more about it this coming week. :)

I'm about two weeks into my month-long break from White Tiger. I've been to see the physical therapy people several times, with several more sessions to go, and I'm showing marked improvement, but today I went and strolled around the walking track while Marie participated in a sparring class, and I wanted to be down there on the mat so bad it just about made me sick. I'm very, VERY much looking forward to my return.

Hey, the water just boiled.

POSSIBILITIES

2009-01-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

The first time someone you barely know contacts you over the Internet and says words to the effect of, "I like your writing a lot, and I'm in negotiations to do [INSERT AMAZING PROJECT HERE], and I really want you to be a part of it," your natural tendency, I would think, would be to get really excited.

That excitement, in my experience, really needs to wait until contracts are signed and, better yet, checks have cleared; I've had way too many amazing deals offered, discussed at great length, even promised to me by people with the power to back up those promises, only to have whatever deal it was pulled out from under me at the last minute.

But it's happening again, and this time I am, I will admit, a bit on the hopeful side. Of course I can't go into any details, because life is like that, but...we'll see. I feel good about it. In a tentative sort of way.

Marginally related: I've had a really rare experience, these last couple of weeks, just relaxing a bit. I'm between deadlines on freelance projects (not to mention that the discomfort from my embarrassing pulled muscle makes it painful to sit for too long), so I've just been, more or less, chilling at home. And it's been splendid. Tomorrow I start physical therapy, though, so I ought to be able to sit still for long periods of time again soon, and it's a good thing. I'm starting to get the irresistible writing itch again.

Just in time for the second half of the Death Knight book, the second book in the new Seekers trilogy, and the third issue of Toy Story. And maybe a children's novel adaptation for Lerner Books.

Tangentially related: I got to go and explain to the instructors at White Tiger tonight that I'll be in physical therapy for three or four weeks and won't be able to train (since I've been forbidden to kick, punch, roll, or throw, and that lets out more or less everything we do there). So I spent the class session lumbering around the elevated walking track, watching as Marie trained one-on-one with Master Kim and got her next rank stripe. She'll be ready to test for her green stripe (halfway to green belt) at the end of the month, and, well, I'll be ready to cheer for her.

SYNDROMES AND OTHER FUN

2009-01-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

I don't remember which story it was, but there's a Harlan Ellison story in which one of the characters, a writer, is based largely on Ellison himself. This writer refers to the nature of his own writing as, I if I recall correctly, "fiercely confessional."

Now, it goes without saying that I am by NO MEANS Harlan Ellison. (It's actually sort of a hope of mine that Harlan Ellison never becomes aware of my existence, as I only need the one anus, and I'm sure he'd find reason to rip me a new one.) I also don't know how fierce or, for that matter, meaningfully confessional this post is. But as far as personal details go, well, it's not bad.

Today I was diagnosed with piriformis syndrome.

What is piriformis syndrome, you might ask? Something congenital? Something contagious? Something fatal?

Nope. What it is, is an irritation of the sciatic nerve caused by inflammation of the piriformis muscle, through which it passes. What does this mean in layman's terms, you ask?

It means I sprained my ass.

Yes indeed, the piriformis muscle is underneath the gluteus maximus, far inside the borders of Bootyland. THAT'S what I pulled while doing a hip-flexor exercise at Taekwondo class. THAT'S why my whole hip joint and leg have been hurting to varying degrees for the last six weeks. THAT'S why I've been feeling like an old man.

Oh well. A few weeks of physical therapy and the judicious application of pharmaceuticals ought to have me back at White Tiger reasonably soon.

In completely unrelated news, The REDEEMER'S LAW Project has gotten off to a great start. The blog itself is up to Chapter 2, with a pretty solid amount of hits each day, and there's a Facebook group of the same name with 121 members and growing. (Join today!)

So that's all the news that's fit to print for a Tuesday.

It's turned out to be a little more anal-centric than I had intended.

CHAPTER 2 OF "REDEEMER'S LAW" IS UP...

2009-01-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

...and dyin' to be read, at

www.redeemerslaw.com

Plus the Facebook group is up to 107 members.

I guess now I have to create a MySpace page for it. :)

83 AND COUNTING

2009-01-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Well, the REDEEMER'S LAW Project Facebook group has been in existence for about fourteen hours now, and we've got 83 members signed up. I'm both gratified and grateful! I've still got several hundred invitations to it outstanding, and I know internet traffic takes a dip on the weekends, so I'm hoping that in the next week or so REDEEMER'S LAW will, y'know, take over the Internet. :)

In other news, I'm getting more than a little irritated at the various small, annoying injuries I've sustained while taking Taekwondo and Hapkido. Monday I'm finally giving in and making a doctor's appointment. It's my great fear that my doctor is going to say, "Yeah, knock off all that martial arts stuff for a month or so." I mean, realistically, as bad news goes that's pretty tame -- but I'm picking up the Hapkido techniques really fast (Master Seo seems to think I'm a natural), and he's got me scheduled for my first belt test at the end of January. If I have to sit out for very long it's going to drive me nuts.

Marie and I are trying out a new (to us) French restaurant up in Durham tonight with our friends Richard and Melinda. I hear the place serves sautéed beef liver, among other things. I LOVE liver. So I'm pretty excited. Chances are good you'll get to read all about it at Croall Under the Bridge.

NEW CHAPTER WILL BE POSTED...

2009-01-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

...on The REDEEMER'S LAW Project late Sunday night/early Monday morning.

Just so you know. New chapters will be available first thing every Monday morning. :)

SERIALIZED NOVELS AND OTHER DISTRACTIONS

2009-01-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

So the lesson I've learned this week is that posting a novel on your blog is A) more nerve-wracking than I'd expected it to be, and B) oddly creatively draining. My output on the fantasy novel has slowed to a crawl, much to my dismay. I'm thinking this is nothing to get too excited about; I've never published anything on the web before, so the whole thing is just something to get accustomed to.

If I don't get a couple more chapters of the fantasy novel done by this weekend, though, I'll have to take steps. I don't know what those steps will be, but believe you me, they'll be taken.

It's a week for firsts, I guess, as tonight I participated in my first-ever live developer chat for Fallen Earth. It went pretty well, I'd say, with only a minor error or two.

In light of that, here's our brand new teaser trailer.

The REDEEMER'S LAW Project

2009-01-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

The reason I was so peeved last night that iWeb seemed to be making a meal of my website's front page is that I was trying really hard to put up an announcement about this.

I've decided to dust off a novel I wrote twelve years ago, put it up on a dedicated blog, comment on it myself, and then see what other people think about it as I revise and update it. It's a sci-fi/pulp/action/horror/superhero novel called REDEEMER'S LAW, and you can find it, one chapter per week, at redeemerslaw.com.

I went ahead and posted my introduction, the prologue, and Chapter 1. For Chapter 2 you'll have to wait till next week.

iWEB HATES MY GUTS

2009-01-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

So I've got this website at www.danjolley.com, which I put together using iWeb and published through GoDaddy.com. Up to tonight, everything has gone swimmingly with it.

Tonight, however, I made some updates to the main page, and then the main page showed up on my web browser screwed up beyond belief. Objects had moved around and changed sizes, links were broken, a photo I had added just didn't show up at all, and other existing features had disappeared. The GoDaddy people confirmed what I was seeing, but let me know that it was an iWeb problem, not a GoDaddy problem, and good luck with it.

I'm not sure where to go from here. Apple support is counter-intuitive, to say the least, and closed after 6:00 p.m., but a friend of mine used to work at an Apple store and may be able to help. In the meantime, instead of writing tonight, I'll be reading a basic iWeb tutorial on Apple's site. If anybody reading this has any experience or insight that might help with this problem, please sing out.

AARRRRRGH.

WORD COUNT

2009-01-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

A long-standing rule of thumb about writing a novel is that you should try to do at least five pages a day. It makes sense; if you stick to that, at the end of a year you've got War and Peace. Of course, book editors don't care about page counts -- what they're concerned with is word count, which also makes sense, because the number of pages in a decent-sized manuscript will change drastically depending on what font you use. As a broad generalization, though, what you're looking at for a page of prose is about 250 words. So what you should be aiming for, at the minimum, is 1,250 words in a day.

The fantasy novel I'm working on, tentatively titled The Hawk Monarch, reached the beginning of the fourth chapter tonight, at a word count of 12,588. So, when I look at my outline and the number of chapters I plan to have, and do some math, what I come up with is a really freaking long book.

That's cool.

Of course, what I'm developing right now is a Crappy First Draft. Just glancing at what I put down last night, there are some real groaners in the dialogue. But that's okay. First drafts are always crappy. They're supposed to be crappy. The important thing is to get it done, because writing is re-writing, and more re-writing, followed by even more re-writing -- but re-writing is MUCH easier than filling up a blank page.

At least it is for me. Your mileage may vary.

RAMPING UP, PART 2

2009-01-02T22:16:00.001-08:00

Got another chapter done on my fantasy novel tonight, which brings the page count up to...not as high as I would like at this point. I had hoped to get a lot more done over the last two weeks, since I was off work from Icarus the whole time, but being out of town the first week and suffering from various muscle pulls the second week has really put a damper on my productivity. This coming week I've got to dig back into the 160-page Death Knight manga for Tokyopop and Blizzard, so I guess I'll have to set aside certain nights as "novel nights."

Below, in "Ramping Up, Part 1," is a cover for the novel I'm about to serialize. A co-worker whipped it up for me after I discovered that, somewhere along the way, I've lost all of my image-manipulation software.

RAMPING UP, PART 1

2009-01-02T22:11:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2008-12-31T18:53:00.000-08:00

In my typical all-out, wild-man fashion, I celebrated the new year tonight by having an excellent sushi dinner with Marie and our friend JJ. That's it. No parties, no watching anything drop, no drunken revelry. Now I'm home, at 9:55, about to start writing again. I'm out of control. I'm also too old to go out and act like an idiot anymore.

I've got the introduction written up for my internet publishing project; it's in the hands of my agent now, on whom I depend for making sure I don't say something stupid. It's going to feature a book I wrote a number of years ago called "Redeemer's Law." I think I'm going to call the whole thing The "Redeemer's Law" Experiment. More details to follow shortly.

NATURALLY...

2008-12-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

...one of the first things I do when I start taking Hapkido is hurt myself. One of the (very basic) techniques in tumbling and falling is this sort of modified hand-stand, where you support your weight on your hands for a second and then roll down to prone. It's sort of a variation on "the worm," or at least that's what it looks like. So I did that in class today, rolled down, and felt my right shoulder spasm all over the place. Great way to start a new discipline.

I'll be going to the chiropractor tomorrow.

Other than that, though, it was a great class, and the sciatic badness in my hip seems to have cleared up on its own. Plus for Hapkido I get to wear a cool black uniform. :)

Is it normal to feel this broken-down at age 37? Or is it just because I'm doing a whole bunch of fairly intense physical stuff that I'm not used to?

Anyway. Finished up the script for Toy Story issue 2 tonight, so I can send that off to my editor at Boom! tomorrow, though I'm pretty sure he's out of the office. Then the rest of the week I'll be devoting to my Internet Publishing Experiment as well as working on a fantasy novel I'm trying really hard to finish. I'm excited about that book; it's a fantasy story, but it's nothing at all like the standard Tolkien-based, Warcraft-flavored elves-orcs-dwarves-dragons stuff. Of course that probably means the world will look at it and say, "Huh? What is this new strange thing? We fear it! Get away! Get away!"

JUST DESSERTS

2008-12-26T19:16:00.000-08:00

Man, I think I've undone all the healthiness of the last two months in the span of about five days here.

Marie and I have had a fantastic visit with her family, but her mom cooks a lot of really, really good food...and when presented with a lot of good food, I sort of tend to eat it all. I can't wait to get back to Taekwondo, because we'll be getting our yellow belts presented, but at the same time I'm kind of dreading it, having eaten to excess and not exercised at all for a week.

The pain in my hip has resolved itself into what I'm pretty sure is a pinched sciatic nerve. It's not a problem with my back, thank God, but I've apparently mucked up one of the muscles that the nerve runs through. It's a lot better than it was, but it's still there, and I'm sore afraid (ba-dum-pum) that I'll just re-aggravate it by going back to class. Probably time to a see a sports medicine specialist after all. Especially since I plan to start taking Hapkido as well as Taekwondo pretty soon.

I've continued making plans to post my Big Original Piece of Fiction. I think almost all of it will be on a new blog I'll be creating, with links to it from here and from my website. Once we're back in North Carolina I'll start setting everything up, including a "book cover" image that I'll have displayed prominently on the front page at www.danjolley.com and on the new blog. That's been fun, because I've engaged in a tiny bit of graphic design, coming up with a symbol that will play a major part in the story and might serve as a sort of logo for the whole thing. I'll put the symbol here after I figure out how to render it as a piece of post-worthy art, instead of a scribble in my sketchbook.

CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY

2008-12-22T18:47:00.000-08:00

And there's more to come, but I got whopping big chunk today when Marie's parents gave me a shiny new iPhone. Marie already had one, so now that she and I are A) the same rank in Taekwondo, and B) both iPhone owners, apparently I've reached her level again. I was unaware until this afternoon that I was not on her level, so now I feel all edified. And such.

The iPhone is SO COOL.

/nonsequitur

I'm starting to ramp up toward my original-fiction-on-the-blog thing, putting out a few feelers here and there to people who might give it a little publicity. Assuming I go ahead with the work I have in mind, one chapter a week will take me through the next six months. I figure I'll write some companion posts along with each chapter, discussing influences and techniques and other informational doodads.

I also changed the name of this page you're reading, since, in the course of trying to research other web-based works of fiction, I ran across a blog by an Australian fellow which was titled, you guessed it, "Chained to the Keyboard." As far as I can tell, there is no other blog having anything to do with the word "Jolleyverse," so I think I'm safe.

And now...I go back to Toy Story. Turns out I really, really enjoy writing dialogue for Mr. Potato Head.

A NEW (TO ME) FRONTIER AHEAD

2008-12-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about actually publishing something original here.

Only a couple of years ago I would've laughed at the notion. Why would I put something up on the web for free when I could potentially sell it? But glance at a few articles about people like John Scalzi, and it quickly becomes apparent: publishing on the web has transformed into a viable model. It's free, it's immediate, and it has the ability to reach an audience of (cue Carl Sagan voice here) milllllions and millllions of readers.

So I've started talking to my agent about this, and I think I'm going to take the plunge, so to speak, and put something up either here or on a separate blog, heavily linked from this one and from my actual website, www.danjolley.com.

More details to follow in the new year.

My hip joint was still bothering me a lot today, so I sat out Taekwondo tonight and sketched out some notes on a new novel while Marie attended class. The pain and discomfort have died down to a dull roar over the course of the evening, though, and I'm hoping they'll be more or less gone by 3:30 tomorrow afternoon -- 'cause that's when I'm testing for yellow belt, pain or not.

Testing is not anywhere near as rigorous as a normal class, so my plan is to do the test, and then spend the next week letting whatever muscle I've offended get over itself and calm down. I'm pretty sure it's the roundhouse kick that started all this, and, sure enough, the one kick I have to demonstrate competence with tomorrow is the roundhouse, but I think I can throw five or ten of them very carefully and not mess myself up unduly. We'll see.

Marie and I will be spending Christmas with her parents, and we're considering taking our PS3 and Rock Band 2 up there with us, two guitars and microphone and drum kit and all. I've chuckled several times, picturing my somewhat laconic father-in-law's reaction to Marie singing and me flailing away on the bass to Billy Idol's "White Wedding." I'm predicting a subtle shake of the head and a weary sort of sigh.

OLD MAN DAN

2008-12-18T22:06:00.000-08:00

Marie and I both have the tendency to freak out, to varying degrees, whenever something medical goes wrong for the first time with either one of us. I guess that's pretty normal, and we're better about it now than we used to be, in that we no longer go diving for WebMD (or, as it should be called, "Hypochondria Online"). Still, the first time you get, say, a migraine, not only is it incredibly painful and pretty freaking inconvenient, but there's also the Fear Of The Unknown that goes along with the new experience, so you end up with thoughts along the lines of oh my God I'm dying I've got a tumor or some sort of rare disease my head's going to explode.

I didn't panic to quite that extent, but I did get reasonably freaked out when I suddenly developed a sharp pain in my right hip joint after Taekwondo a few weeks ago. I've never had pain in my hip joints before, and it's pretty unsettling. Is this a muscle thing? A tendon or ligament thing? Have I got some sort of freak case of arthritis? The pain went away after a couple of days, or at least mostly away, so I went back to class, because I REALLY enjoy Taekwondo. But then the hip got sore again, and it took another couple of days to recover...and so I did a sort of wash-rinse-repeat with the sore hip, until last night.

Last night it got so bad it woke me up several times, and I limped around like a 90-year-old most of the day today. It was somewhat improved by class time tonight, but not enough so that I could take part, so Marie went to class while I sat by in civvies and watched. Fortunately for me, Master Kim took pity on me, had me lie down on the stretching mat, and did sort of a combination massage/physical therapy thing that, I think, helped a lot. I'm definitely limping less. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

I'm hoping it did the trick, because I intend to go to class tomorrow night, and Marie and I are both testing for yellow belt on Saturday. If it doesn't get better, I guess I'll be seeking out some sort of sports-medicine thing.

Me and my hip. Jeez. "Get off my lawn!"

Anyway.

It's been a pretty productive week as far as writing goes. I'm in the middle of a 160-page World of Warcraft Death Knight story for Tokyopop and Blizzard, just put the finishing touches on the first volume in the new Seekers manga trilogy for Tokyopop and HarperCollins, and now I get to concentrate on issue #2 in the four-issue Toy Story arc I'm writing for Boom! and Pixar.

Christmas break is looming. I'll have two solid weeks away from Icarus and not that much comics work to do, so with any luck I'll be able to make some progress on a new novel idea I've been cooking up (with significant and highly appreciated input in the conceptual stage from both Marie and Richard Dansky).

I hope to come back from the break with at least a solid outline, if not a good first chapter.

BLACK & BLUE & YELLOW

2008-12-13T12:50:00.001-08:00

Well, it looks as if I'm going to be shamed into posting more often, now that Marie has her own blog up and running at this place. :)

Things have been moving right along; freelancing is the typical frustrating mix of getting exciting news, or the potential of exciting news, and not being able to talk about it. For now I'll just say I'm still writing an awful lot, and the audience for some of the things I'm writing may be expanding significantly. The key word there, of course, is "may." What else is new.

The last time I posted, Marie and I were about to test for our yellow stripes in Taekwondo, which is halfway between "just walked in off the street" and yellow belt. Well, that went pretty smoothly, and now this coming Saturday -- a week from today, I guess would be more accurate to say -- we test for the actual yellow belt.

Green belt follows yellow, and to get the green stripe on the yellow belt, part of the test is that you have to demonstrate some sparring skills. In preparation for that, Marie and I have both gotten our sparring gear and begun attending sparring classes; today was my second and Marie's first. In my first class, I worked with one of the black belts, who basically walked me through what I was supposed to do -- punch now, kick now, block, move back, very good -- and it was a lot of fun. Well, today I worked with a yellow-belt named Rob, and we went at it full speed...or, in my case, as fast as I was able, which quickly turned out to range from "not very fast" to "I can't hear myself think over the sound of my pained gasping."

Sparring is hard.

The difficulty level got raised sharply for Marie, who was paired up in the second round with a 14-year-old blue belt whose name I don't know. I was expecting -- and had told Marie to expect -- for her to work with one of the senior students or an instructor, the way I did my first time, and in her first round that's exactly what happened. In the second round, however, the much-higher-level girl apparently decided to show off or something, and proceeded to beat Marie black and blue. This irritated Marie to a degree that surprised even her, and she wound up sitting out the third round, for fear of losing her composure completely and ripping the 14-year-old's head off.

After some consideration, we're going back Monday night, at which time Marie will, with any luck, have a better experience, and I will, with any luck, come less close to dying. Rob assures me that the almost-dying I did is perfectly normal, and that it will become easier. I'd like to believe him.

In an interesting convergence of freelance writing and Taekwondo, I found out that one of the instructors, Master Seo, is a HUGE World of Warcraft enthusiast, with a level 80 warrior and a 74 hunter and a 72 death knight. So, in a sort of hyper-geek version of bringing an apple for the teacher, I gave him a copy of WARCRAFT LEGENDS #2 today, and pointed out my name on the cover. He seemed impressed. That won't stop him from working me half to death, but hey, I got myself into this.

"OF STRIPES AND DAN"

2008-11-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

Things are pretty much on schedule. I finished the Twisted Journeys book tonight and sent it off, and then spent the rest of the evening running around in Northrend with my level 70 shaman, which I've been doing off and on all weekend.

WARCRAFT GEEK WARNING: BEGINNING GEEK SPEAK

There are a lot of really cool places and things to see in the expansion, but it's not the environment that's intriguing me the most. I'm sort of puzzled -- albeit in a good way -- at how phenomenally over-powered my shaman seems to be these days. He's all Enhancement, and what with the Feral Spirit talent and being able to summon a couple of big honkin' elementals, there are few reasonable challenges he can't face. I wandered into Zul'Drak tonight and got attacked by two level 75 bad guys at the same time, and didn't have too much trouble killing them both. Blizzard has upped the awesome on all the classes, and just like when Burning Crusade came out, the low-level common items in Northrend are a LOT better than many of the powerful uncommon ones in Outland. I haven't gone into PvP since about level 59, so I don't know how painful that's going to be, but as far as running around in the world, it's fun and satisfying and mildly embarrassing, and I hope they don't nerf shamans too quickly. :)

END GEEK SPEAK

The Taekwondo yellow-stripe belt test went really well, I think. They're not telling the students if we passed or failed till we come in for our next class, but I'm pretty confident. I know I messed up once, when I went to a low block instead of a middle block, but other than that, both Marie and I did good jobs. I guess we'll find out Tuesday.

And, now that the Twisted Journeys book is put to bed, I just have two more comic projects to do this month, totaling a paltry 160 pages between the two of them.

Who needs sleep?

"...NO PRESSURE"

2008-11-10T21:39:00.000-08:00

Haven't been posting much lately because, well, first and foremost, I'm a terrible blogger, but also because I've got more than a heaping helping of work on my plate right now.

The latest of the Twisted Journeys books is due Monday, and it's a handful as usual, but it's coming along. Marie and I are sharing writing credit on this one, as she came up with the scenario and I'm executing it, so to speak. I'll have it turned in Monday morning. My brain will likely resemble a wrung-out dishrag at that point, but it'll be done.

I'm also doing the first book in the new Seekers manga trilogy for TOKYOPOP this month, but the outline they gave me is clear as can be, and lends itself to the manga treatment at least as well as the Warriors stuff does. That shouldn't take more than a few days, God willing.

The bear this month is the new World of Warcraft manga I'm doing -- a full volume, 160 pages, rather than the 45- or 60-page shorts I've done for them before. It relies heavily on material from the new expansion, which hits stores on Thursday. I've played the beta, but not as extensively as I would've liked, so this coming weekend I'll be steeping myself in Northrend, with an eye toward learning all the locations and environments so I can figure out exactly where the hell this story is set. I mean, I know the places Blizzard wants to see, but part of the reason I've been able to do these stories with relative ease is that I know the game pretty well, and I can jump in and run around in the exact locales where the stories take place. Northrend is still new to me, so I'll get to do some exploring.

To paraphrase Buzz Lightyear, "To authenticity, and beyond!"

:: ahem ::

Marie and I are testing for our yellow stripes in Taekwondo this coming Saturday. I'm pretty sure I know all the moves needed for the test, but a lot of them still feel sort of sloppy, so I'm hoping to fine-tune those this week.

I'm still about as flexible as the average pine board. Well, okay, I take that back, 'cause I have made some progress, but we were practicing high roundhouse kicks in the last lesson, and the instructor said, "Don't lean back so much! Your upper body should stay straight up-and-down." And I was thinking, "But if I don't lean back, there's no way my foot's going to go that high..."

It'll come with time and practice.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Pretty soon the question will be "to spar, or not to spar."

UPDATES

2008-10-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

And, once again, I prove how lousy a blogger I am by letting better than a month go by with no posts.

So, here are a few bullet points summing up what's been going on.

• Fallen Earth is content complete now. It's a great feeling as the game continues to ramp up and up.

• Got final approval on the Transformers junior novel, with only a few minor line edits to the manuscript. That whole experience was fun. I hope I get to do another.

• Finished the first of four Toy Story scripts for Pixar and Boom! Studios, and will be moving on to the next one very shortly.

• Just began work on the first manga trilogy based on Seekers, a new YA novel series from the same people who created Warriors. This is great. I love bears almost as much as I love cats. :)

• Got a few conversations going with Hollywood about a couple of my properties. This kind of thing is extraordinarily nebulous and can take for freaking ever, so I won't be going into any kind of detail unless something much firmer happens. Still, it's a couple of first steps.

• Took a week-long vacation to DisneyWorld with Marie and our friends Wes and Karen and their fourteen-year-old. Marie and Wes posted some great photos of the trip on their Facebook pages, including a couple of embarrassing ones of me.

• Might have some big video game-related news involving a licensed property that I've become VERY familiar with. Should have more news next week.

• Doing more and more World of Warcraft manga work for TOKYOPOP, now moving from short stories to a full volume. More details on that as I can release them. It's a kick, being told to go play an MMO for research.

That's all I can think of right now, but it's late and I'm sleepy. I guess if anything else occurs to me, it'll be impetus to do another post, right?

BACK TO THE BUGS

2008-09-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I returned to a project I'd been putting on hold for awhile: "Giant Insects" (working title), the next in an increasingly long line of Twisted Journeys books I've been writing for Lerner.

This one is unique, because I'm collaborating with Marie; she's gone through and outlined the plots for all the story branches, and now I'll be following behind and fleshing things out. I think this'll be the first time both our names have been on something since we did Voltron for Devil's Due Comics.

Also, over the course of the weekend, I got my second-ever Level 70 character in World of Warcraft. (He's a blood elf mage -- arcane with a side of fire -- joining my undead fury warrior.) I like to tell myself that I play it as much as I do because of my professional interest in it. The truth is, I'm just a big geek.

R & R

2008-09-12T19:20:00.001-07:00

Got the outline and character descriptions done and sent off late last night, so I'm taking tonight and tomorrow off. I'll be digging into an upcoming Twisted Journeys book on Sunday.

Marie and I have been to two tae kwon do classes so far, and it's a lot of fun. I'm not even (that) sore after this last one. Of course, I'm also about as flexible as your average pine board, so I don't know if I'll be throwing kicks above my head anytime soon...but then, I don't really need to.

WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

2008-09-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

Working on the outline of a novel I wrote a number of years ago. The book was never published, and I shelved it, until I heard from a friend that editors were looking for just this sort of thing now. Well, that does indeed seem to be the case, as it's in the hands of three editors at three different major publishers, and now a fourth editor wants to see the outline and character descriptions.

I didn't have an outline and character descriptions. I just had a finished 106,000-word novel. So I'm scrambling to get this stuff done before the weekend. It's a little harder than I'd hoped it would be, but it's coming along.

OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM

2008-09-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

Well. The Transformers book is done, at least the first draft is, and without that daily impetus to keep up with this thing my terrible blogging habits have returned.

Having a little trouble focusing this week. I've got Book 3 of the new Ravenpaw trilogy to write, along with a new Twisted Journeys book that I'm splitting labor on with Marie. On top of that my book agent wants me to do up a chapter-by-chapter outline and character description list for my sci-fi/superhero novel, I'm generating original comic book ideas for another outlet, and it looks as though Blizzard is about to give the go-ahead on my first full-volume (160-page) World of Warcraft story. I'm splitting the writing chores on that one with Troy Lewter; ordinarily a 160-page book wouldn't be any kind of chore, but right now I'm glad of the help.

We're going on vacation in slightly over a month, but I think getting everything done beforehand might kill me before I can enjoy the time off.

ON CARDIO, AND THE LACK THEREOF

2008-09-04T21:58:00.001-07:00

Marie and I joined a martial arts gym last night, and attended our first-ever tae kwon do class tonight.

I took aikido, briefly, long ago, and then kung fu for about a year. But I only ever got to yellow belt, which only meant they thought I was ready to start the actual learning. So I might as well not have ever taken anything. (Though the whole reason I studied to begin with was so I could write better fight scenes, and that part worked.)

I'm aware that tae kwon do is not exactly the discipline you want to rely on in a bar fight. (I've heard it described as "the Croissanwich of martial arts.") But they also teach hapkido there, which is the kind of discipline you want to rely on in a bar fight; and besides, if I sweat in every class the way I did tonight, I'm going to drop these extra ten pounds I've been carrying around in short order. (Not to mention my single-minded determination never to get into a bar fight.)

Two things I learned tonight: A) there's a move called an "axe kick," and B) I can actually DO an "axe kick." No one was more surprised by that than I was.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY FOURTEEN

2008-09-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

That book is DONE. Done, done, done and sent to the editor.

I actually did a low-key little victory dance when I clicked on "word count" for the final time, too: the manuscript came in at 19, 914 words.

I feel just a bit invincible.

Of course, it's possible that Hasbro might come back with extensive notes, and I might end up with a few more grueling days fixing things, but I don't think that's going to be the case. I think they're going to give it a big fat stamp of approval.

And tomorrow night I'm not writing ANYTHING.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY THIRTEEN

2008-09-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

Other freelance work popped up again today, further derailing my plan to have the book done by now. I got notes back on one of the World of Warcraft manga stories I'm doing for the TOKYOPOP anthology, so I revised that tonight instead of plowing through the last twelve pages of the screenplay.

I don't feel too bad about missing my personal deadline on the Transformers book, since the editor wasn't expecting the manuscript until sometime in early October. Still, I plan to have it done tomorrow night, so I can turn it in on Thursday.

This has been fun. With any luck I'll be able to do it again soon.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY TWELVE

2008-09-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

Today was better.

I'm on page 120 of the screenplay now, which, with some judicious whittling, has put me at page 114 of the manuscript and 17,900 words.

Twelve pages of screenplay to go, and 2100 words to get there. This is going to be sort of squeaky. I might have to go back through and see if I can use more efficient language in a few parts. Or, maybe the HarperCollins editor won't mind if I'm a few hundred words over. My word count on the Iron Man book wasn't exactly on target, but they were fine with it.

So, tomorrow's the last day, at least of the first draft. I'd like to think I can finish writing it AND proofread it tomorrow night, but that might be asking too much. We'll see.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY ELEVEN

2008-08-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

The best-laid plans...

I got my first set of ten pages done today, relaxed for a while, hung out with some friends, sat down to get started on the second set, and immediately developed a sinus headache.

When it comes to sinus headaches, I don't usually do things half-way; they're day-killers, and most of the time all I can do is go to sleep. I took some Excedrin, but so far it hasn't helped.

So I might get more pages done tonight, if I'm lucky...or I might try to get thirty pages done tomorrow...or I might concede a minor defeat and get the book done on Tuesday.

The word for tonight is "ow."

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY TEN

2008-08-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Today was great. I got the twenty pages done that I needed to, and even condensed a bit more, ensuring that my word count will be okay. So I'm on page 90 of the screenplay, which puts me on page 88 of the manuscript, at 13,800 words. And on top of that, I found a decent amount of time to just relax.

If every vacation were like this from now on, I don't think I'd mind at all. :)

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY NINE

2008-08-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

In light of the three gloriously uninterrupted days I have ahead of me -- and because I hadn't seen much of my wife for the last week -- I took tonight off, relaxed, hung out with Marie, and then played some World of Warcraft.

Tomorrow (Saturday) begins the Final Stretch, over the course of which I'll be doing about twenty pages each day. This will be a lot like the way I used to work, during the eight years in which I freelanced full-time; before taking the day job I could output an enormous volume of work in a very short amount of time, so this weekend will revisit that.

I'm looking forward to it.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY EIGHT

2008-08-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

I had hoped that I might put on a burst of superhuman speed tonight and get up to around page 80, but that didn't happen. I am up to page 70 of the screenplay, though, which puts me at page 72 of the manuscript and 11,200 words. I certainly won't be finishing it before the weekend, but with three uninterrupted days coming up (thanks to Labor Day), I ought to hand it in on Tuesday with no trouble.

In other news, I got the Toy Story mini-series for Boom! Studios. Work starts on that in a couple of weeks. Now I wait to hear about my Cars pitch.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY SEVEN

2008-08-27T18:44:00.001-07:00

Got the ten pages done this morning that I had planned on, but this afternoon another part of the whole freelance writing thing showed up while I was at work: I got notes back from the editor on Ravenpaw 2, the second part of the new Warriors trilogy I'm doing for TOKYOPOP. So instead of getting another ten pages written tonight, I revised an 80-page manga script.

I'm now one day behind the schedule I had set for myself, but since I spent the evening working on another paying project -- rather than blowing work off completely -- I'm fine with it.

And the Big Phone Call finally happened! Now, though, before I can say anything definitive about it, I need to send some relevant material to the people involved. I'll call it a "good thing in progress."

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY SIX

2008-08-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

My brain is full. I'm taking the night off.

This is something I can do guilt-free, 'cause I have a window in the morning I can use to get caught up. So, before I go to sleep tomorrow night I should be at least at page 70. Probably at 75. With a bit of good fortune, 80.

Speaking of good fortune -- and more cryptic information -- I got a call tonight from a guy who's close to getting an animated series picked up by a major network. He's interested in having me do some work on it. Of course nothing is set in stone, no promises made, nothing like that. It's still pretty cool. (And, at the very least, flattering.)

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY FIVE

2008-08-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

Up to page 53 of the screenplay, which translates to 55 pages of prose at 8,500 words. So I'm not quite halfway through the script, and I'm not quite halfway through my allowed word count, and it's still looking pretty good. Doing a bit better than ten pages a day, too, so with any luck I can wrap this up before the weekend.

I've had a couple of fanboy moments, working on this. I never saw the screenplay for the first movie, so I don't know what it was like or how close it was to the actual film. But I'm REALLY digging this one.

In other news, of course the Big Phone Call this afternoon got postponed. Now it's set for Wednesday evening. Oh well -- this way I won't have to take any time away from the day job.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY FOUR

2008-08-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Put in about six hours at the day job yesterday, so I took last night off to let my brain cool down.

Settled in to work today and did two sessions at eleven and twelve pages each, putting me at Page 42 of the screenplay and Page 42 of the manuscript. I'll probably have to condense some more scenes -- and there will be more to condense, given that this is the junior novel of a movie not strictly intended for little kids -- but word count looks to be just about right.

In other news, the Big Important Phone Call that was scheduled for Friday of last week got re-scheduled to tomorrow. Of the other two that I mentioned previously, one went off in a different direction that doesn't involve me yet, and the other never happened. I'm not terribly surprised. I don't know...when things are this nebulous, and I'm unable to provide details, maybe I shouldn't mention them at all.

Time for some sleep.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY THREE

2008-08-22T20:30:00.001-07:00

I did some further calculations regarding page count, looked back over the first Transformers junior novel, and then chopped my way through the twenty-five pages I had written with a literary weed-whacker.

Now, instead of ten pages of screenplay equalling twenty-five pages of prose at 4200 words, I've got nineteen pages of screenplay equalling nineteen pages of prose at 3600 words. (Word count goes down real quick when you've got a lot of dialogue with short, punchy lines, rather than dense blocks of description.)

If I do roughly ten pages of screenplay per day, I ought to wrap this up around the first of September, about a month ahead of schedule. This is more of a new experience for me than I was expecting, but I think it's gong to work out just fine.

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY TWO

2008-08-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Slow start on the book last night, but I worked on it some this morning, and now I think I'm getting up to speed. I'm ten pages into the screenplay, and that's translated to twenty-five pages of prose.

The problem? At this rate, I'm going to have about twice the number of words I'm supposed to. So I'll either have to figure out how to condense as I go, or just write the whole thing and cut once I'm done.

Right now I'm leaning toward that second option; Alex Unlimited 3 was supposed to be 40,000 words, and my first draft came in at about 75,000. The book eventually shipped with about 47,000 words, if I recall correctly. It can be a gleeful thing, deleting whole chapters that you realize aren't strictly necessary.

Of course, it can also feel like a knife in the gut, but I'm not thinking about that yet. :)

TRANSFORMERS JUNIOR NOVEL: DAY ONE

2008-08-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving the script format once again and delving back into prose tonight. It's a nice change of pace -- and different from the prose I usually do, since this is the Transformers sequel "junior novel," aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds.

This is Day 1, writing in the evenings and on the weekends, as usual. Now I get to find out how long it takes me to do a fifteen- to twenty-thousand-word book.

Annnnnnnd go.

IN CASE ANYONE EVER THINKS THE LIFE OF A WRITER IS GLAMOROUS

2008-08-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

I spent the day today in a room with my cat, Mr. Gert, waiting for that fuzzy, uncooperative little bugger to pee in a special kind of litter so I could take his urine sample to the vet for tests. Did he ever pee? No. Did I spend a day locked in a room for nothing? Pretty much. At this point I'm just glad no one could see me as I sat there like an idiot, trying to get my cat to understand what he was supposed to do.

On the plus side, I finished up some tweaks to a Warcraft script and wrote a few mission groups for FE. A pretty productive day, all things considered.

TROPIC THUNDER!

2008-08-16T21:18:00.001-07:00

Time for another Super-Shallow All-Positive Movie Review:

Tropic Thunder! See this movie! I laughed till it hurt. Plus Tom Cruise is freaking hysterical.

A POTENTIALLY BIG WEEK AHEAD

2008-08-15T18:46:00.001-07:00

There will definitely be one phone call next week, and possibly as many as three phone calls, that could mean big things for me. Like, potentially life-changing things. One is supposed to happen but may not, another is scheduled sort of tentatively but might get pushed back, and then I have an appointment for the third on Friday.

So much of freelance writing is "hurry up and wait." Jobs and deals and opportunities exist in this sort of nebulous realm of maybe, and if they happen, great, and if they don't, well, them's the breaks. You have to be prepared for either outcome. I was talking to Richard Dansky not long ago at a party about the ups and downs of freelancing, and our friend Mike said, "Man, I don't know how you guys do it. That kind of thing would kill me." I shrugged and said, "After a while your nerve endings get worn down." Richard laughed, but he agreed with me.

So next week might be huge. Might not. I'm not getting excited.

Yet.

PULLING TEETH

2008-08-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

I'm finishing up a pitch-writing session tonight. Four pitches are due tomorrow, I've got three done, I'm trying to get my brain wrapped around the concept for the fourth one, and all I want to do is go to sleep.

Sometimes stories just present themselves to me, fully formed, beginning, middle and end, and all I have to do is type them up.

This is not one of those times. I think if Marie hadn't offered some brilliant input on a couple of them I'd still be stuck.

At this point I can't tell if these ideas are decent or not, but then, it's usually like that. My editor is really good. I guess I'll just wait and see.

MORE WEIRD, PLEASE

2008-08-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

Started on a re-write of a Twisted Journeys book tonight that I've been putting off for...at least weeks. Maybe months. Months sounds right.

I was afraid it was going to be the kind of undertaking that results in the pulling out of hair and the gnashing of teeth, but it's turned out not to be too bad at all. I should have it done tomorrow night.

Minor bit of excitement at the day job today, as a public deadline we were supposed to meet got snarled up by things that were completely out of our control. Should be better tomorrow.

I chatted with the head of our QA dept. this afternoon, and he told me that if I mention the name of the game we're working on in this blog, that rabid followers of the game were liable to descend upon me like a swarm of wasps, thanks to some sort of Google alert that pings them whenever any mention of the game is made. So that brings up a sort of interesting question. The whole purpose of a blog is for people to read it, right? Therefore, maybe it would make sense to mention the name of the game, as well as other hot-button key-word goodness such as, say, Angelina Jolie or the new season of Heroes. But do I want a swarm of wasps to descend upon me? Or am I content with the six people who read this blog currently?

I mean, I know that if you choose to become a public figure, like an actor or a politician or, to a much lesser extent, a writer, you're willingly giving up a portion of your right to privacy. And any publicity is good, right?

What the heck.

FALLEN EARTH. That's the game I spend eight hours a day, five days a week (sometimes six) writing content for. You can see more about it at FallenEarth.com.

And for any swarms of wasps that decide to check this place out... BUY MY BOOKS! :)

GOOD-ISH NEWS AND BLAH NEWS

2008-08-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

The blah news: a script I turned in about a month ago came back from the licensor with extensive notes. It's basically a start-from-scratch situation, and on a stupid-tight deadline. On the plus side of blah, the notes are pretty good.

The good-ish news: a property of mine has garnered some significant interest from some people that could make great things happen with it. I'm not going to say anything more specific for fear of jinxing something.

Hurray for cryptic information!

NOT A BAD WEEK

2008-08-07T20:47:00.001-07:00

I've been 37 for not quite twenty-four hours now, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Two things of note going on:

1) I'm pitching for a couple of the Pixar properties that Boom! Studios are doing comics for. I feel pretty good about my Toy Story ideas. But that's not set; there's plenty of competition and a hefty approval process to go through.

2) What IS set is that I'm writing the "Junior Novelization" for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This is aimed at a lower age group than my Iron Man "Teen Novelization," and should be about half as long. I now know what I'm doing alllll through September.

(Blatant self-promotion time: Iron Man and Transformers fit right in with my original YA novel series, Alex Unlimited. Give that a look if you haven't yet, eh?)

The rest of 2008's going to be busier than usual.

ABOUT TO GET OLDER

2008-08-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday, and Thursday is my 37th birthday. Since I have an agent now, I was thinking, "Maybe I should start lying about my age," since I think I could pass for about 30. But I guess I messed that up by admitting just now that I was about to be 37. I'm a bad liar.

In other news, my intention to review a bunch of movies over the summer went down the tubes completely. Part of that is because HOLY CRAP do I not have any free time, but the other part is me being sort of cautious BECAUSE of the whole agent thing. Y'know, like, if I write a review of a movie and I really hate it, and I say lots of things about it that are sort of clever but also really mean-spirited, and the six people who read this blog get a big kick out of it -- but then one of the movie's producers does a Google search for opinions on his movie, and he reads my blog. Then six months later I've busted my hump coming up with a brilliant screenplay, and that producer is the one my agent calls. Would that producer then want to pay me lots and lots of money to produce my screenplay, when I just crapped all over a project he probably spent years of his life developing?

So the question is, do I make six people laugh? Or do I engage in highly unlikely but admittedly possible career sabotage? Quentin Tarantino would probably say, "Who cares what those $%@# think? Be a #$@@%&# man! Tell the @%##%&*# world what you have to say!" But then Quentin Tarantino has a successful movie career and seventeen hundred kajillion dollars in the bank, and I don't.

Therefore, I give you the brand-new Dan Jolley Super Shallow, Totally Positive Movie Reviews.

The Dark Knight was freaking brilliant, but then you already know that, because you already saw it.

So was Wall-E. I'm making plans now to see it again.

Mamma Mia! was very cute. My wife LOVED it.

Did I already review Kung-Fu Panda? How lazy am I that I don't look through my own blog enough to know? In any case, it was awesome. See it.

The End.

WORK, WORK, WORK

2008-07-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

I'll be updating my comics section this week, as enough new things have come out or are coming out that I can add some blurbs and artwork.

I've got World of Warcraft stuff going on, and more Warriors stuff going on (Amazon left my name off again), and some Twisted Journeys books that I need to get done, assuming I can find the time. This having two jobs thing can be a little challenging now and then.

HALF-DAY

2008-07-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

I started feeling pretty crummy today around noon, so I came home and crashed. I think I was laid low by a combination of allergies -- some plant around here dumped out a metric ton of pollen this morning -- and the sort of general metabolic weirdness I experience every time I start working out seriously.

You'd think I'd be smart enough to just work out seriously all the time, but noooooooo.

AND THE WINNER IS...

2008-07-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

...Apple.

Marie stood in line for five hours today at the Crabtree Mall in Raleigh, and emerged victorious, clutching her new iPhone 3G. I stayed with her for two of the five hours, but had to get back to work, so our friend Nick -- who also got an iPhone -- gave her a lift home.

After watching her playing around with the thing, it's become inevitable now that I'll get one. Yes, they're that cool. Plus we'll never get lost again, thanks to the on-board GPS functionality.

I hate getting lost.

AND NOW...I COMMIT BLASPHEMY

2008-07-10T17:59:00.001-07:00

I, Dan Jolley, do not get the appeal of Harvey Pekar's work.

Clearly I am deficient in some fashion. I mean, the guy wins award after award and gets a movie made and is beloved by millions. Or at least thousands and thousands. In other words, he's vastly more successful and popular than I am, so, y'know, you'd think that would demonstrate that I should just shut the hell up.

And yet the stuff of his that I've read I find...well...really boring. Somebody explain this to me. Have I not read enough of it? Is there some context I'm missing?

While I'm at it: I also think My Dinner With Andre is kind of a snoozer. I mentioned that in a creative writing class in college and, after my classmates all heaped derision on my head, my professor said, "You know, it's sort of brave not to like that film."

I'll be over here, wearing my Philistine hat.

BLOGGING INADEQUACIES

2008-07-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a lousy blogger. I know this. It's been something like three weeks since my last post, and it's not as though I don't have any movies to talk about.

Marie suggested posting little snippets throughout the day. That might be the way to go. It's just that, after working on the game all day, then writing scripts and/or prose all night, at the end of it all I've just got no words left.

I suppose I'll need to build up my "word cardio." Maybe I could call that "wordio." Except that sounds really dumb.

THREE DOWN, ONE TO GO

2008-06-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

Turned in the first draft of my third World of Warcraft manga story to TOKYOPOP today. It's a pretty serious piece, as opposed to my first two, which were very lighthearted and involved gnomes.

The first volume in the anthology comes out August 12, with the other three following bi-monthly, it appears. I have a story in each volume.

So, while I wait for Blizzard's revisions on that, I'll switch gears and start on a re-write of my latest Twisted Journeys book for Lerner. One of the main branches is set on an alien planet, and I didn't push the weirdness envelope far enough the first time, so now I get to weird the story up some more with some funky alien-ness.

I've been trying to figure out when I can finish writing an original fantasy novel I started about a year ago. Maybe once all these revisions are done. If I'm lucky.

Here's the cover of the first volume of the Warcraft anthology:

JUST ANOTHER SESSION

2008-06-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

One of the more frustrating things about having a public forum like this, when you do what I do for a living, is that the most interesting things going on in my life are the things I'm not allowed to say anything about. Usually that's for contractual reasons, or just common-sense business reasons; it wouldn't do any good to talk about a writing job I just got, for example, when the project won't hit the stands for better than two years. Not only would any marketing buzz I generate now be long forgotten by then, but there's also the possibility that someone else could take the idea and put something like it out there before mine sees the light of day.

Then... there are the almost-deals. The things that come so close to happening, and then don't. There isn't much point in talking about them, either.

Very recently Marie and I went through something that made me think a lot of a short film I saw years and years ago, called Session Man. (SPOILERS AHEAD) It stars James Remar as a session musician who gets the offer, after a great session, to join a rock super-group; one of the regular band members has flaked out for the umpteenth time and gotten kicked out of the band, and they want Remar to take his place.

Remar's character is stunned, ecstatic, seeing a lifelong dream fulfilled...but while he's in the bathroom, dealing with the enormity of the situation and telling his reflection, "You did it! You finally did it!" the flaky band member shows back up and is accepted into the band again. So the offer of membership is rescinded.

Remar goes home to his wife. She asks him how work was, and he says, "Oh...just another session."

The thing we went through is not exactly like that, but a lot of the emotions involved were the same. And I can't talk about details.

I guess that's why I usually write about movies Marie and I have seen.

Speaking of which, I loved loved LOVED Kung Fu Panda, and thought The Incredible Hulk was...okay. Much better than Ang Lee's movie, but still not as incredible as it should have been. I look forward to seeing the uncut version, which includes about half an hour of Edward Norton-scripted, character-focused material that apparently also features an appearance by Captain America.

I can't say enough good things about Kung Fu Panda, though. It's Jack Black's best role ever, and had me belly-laughing through most of the film. I'm very much looking forward to owning it on Blu-Ray.

ENCORE

2008-06-05T18:18:00.001-07:00

Marie and I saw Iron Man tonight.

Again.

This makes the third time. It's still very, very enjoyable.

And MAN, I cannot wait to see The Incredible Hulk! I mean, I think The Dark Knight will be excellent and all...it's just that I'm so very much looking forward to seeing the Hulk actually get angry and cut loose. Plus I have huge faith in Edward Norton. That guy's awfully smart.

INDIANA...HUH?

2008-06-03T18:24:00.001-07:00

I have a bad habit of seeing a movie, expressing an opinion about it as I walk out, then taking some time to think and changing my mind. Half the time I forget to tell anyone that I've changed my opinion, so then I say something like, "I'd like to get that on Blu-Ray," and Marie looks at me as if I've gone nuts.

Because of that, I've waited a few days to say anything about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I love the first three movies. LOVE. Seriously. And I wanted to love Crystal Skull, too, honest I did.

But I didn't. It was sort of ridiculous.

I mean, yeah, the Indiana Jones franchise is hardly about realism, not with the Ark of the Covenant and faces melting and glowing rocks and bare-handed heart removal and immortal Knights of the Grail. But COME ON...the Flight of the Refrigerator? The rubber snake? The freaking Tarzan scene, for crying out loud? I was even disappointed with Cate Blanchett's performance, and let me tell you, it takes some doing to make me disappointed with Cate Blanchett. She's from the Planet of People Too Beautiful to be Real, along with Tyra banks and Nicole Kidman.

Crystal Skull, I'm very sad to say, turned out to be exactly what I was afraid it was going to be: a caricature of itself. It was nothing like the putrid bile-pile that was the Star Wars prequels...but it was a disappointment.

Ugh.

CHRONICLES AND LITTLE CAPES

2008-05-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

Had an interesting movie-viewing experience this week, as we took in Prince Caspian at the theatre and then rented Underdog.

Why this particular combination, you might ask. Why Underdog at all, you might ask. Neither one a bad question.

We saw Caspian because I read the books as a kid and loved them, and because Marie never read the books but LOVED the first movie. The sequel was...okay. I don't even feel like getting into a detailed critique, because nothing about it excited me enough to want to take the time. I mean, it wasn't bad, exactly. I won't be seeing it in the theatre again, though, and at this point a rental for me is questionable. Marie will probably end up buying it in on Blu-Ray, though.

Underdog was something else altogether. I watched the cartoon as a kid, and loved it; in fact, my whole family loved it, and my older sister and I used to sing the theme song to my little baby niece. The cartoon was goofy, but joyously so, and I recall it poking fun at a lot of superhero conventions, especially Superman's. (The exploding phone booths, the "It's a bird" parody, etc.)

The movie was ill-conceived from start to finish. I don't know exactly what went on in the editing process, but at several points the ultra-clunky Underdog voiceover seemed more like a band-aid slapped on the hemorrhaging plot than anything else. Bad acting and a story that made no sense whatsoever actually made me say, out loud, "Man, they weren't even trying."

The whole experience was made worse because the super-talented Peter Dinklage -- one of the bright spots in Prince Caspian -- somehow got roped into portraying evil scientist and Underdog nemesis Simon Barsinister. He did the best he could with what he had to work with.

So. Verdicts. Prince Caspian gets a thumb more or less up. Underdog should be avoided by everyone older than about five.

REDBELT

2008-05-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

Went to see David Mamet's film "Redbelt" night before last.

What an AMAZING movie.

I was skeptical at first; I mean, Mamet's hardly known for his martial arts epics. But it's not an action movie, per se -- it's a drama that involves a lot of martial arts. And while it takes a while to get going, by the end I was in awe and my wife was actually moved to tears.

Also, Chiwetel Ejiofor should be in every movie.

See this film.

LFG

2008-05-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

Got the revision notes back yesterday on my latest World of Warcraft manga story, "Miles to Go." It's 45 pages, and will appear in Volume 2 of the upcoming Warcraft Legends manga anthology from TOKYOPOP. I just finished up the revisions and shipped it back off to my editor, Troy Lewter.

Apparently Blizzard likes what I'm

doing. The notes were brief and few in number, and pretty soon I'll be starting on the third story, a revenge tale called "Blood Rivals."

It's a real treat to be able to run around in the environment where my stories are set. :)

This is sort of what my current character in World of Warcraft looks like, except mine's nowhere near this fancy:

Schedule Change

2008-05-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I've traded the giant insects for more talking cats.

Tonight I began work on the latest manga trilogy spun off of Erin Hunter's Warriors YA novels. I've done two other trilogies and a one-shot in this series, so when the current project is done, that'll make ten Warriors manga books under my belt. Here's to many more. :)

This latest one is about a cat named Ravenpaw, for those who keep up with such things.

What's YOUR sign?

2008-05-05T18:52:00.001-07:00

My life feels like a horoscope reading today. "Opportunity thought lost rears its head again. Be open for new possibilities."

Cryptic, I know. Best I can do for now.

Iron Man - AFTER

2008-05-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

I'm awfully, awfully pleased.

Since screenplays are often radically different from the movies they're eventually turned into, writing the Iron Man "teen novelization" was maddening in many ways; the screenplay frequently gave no description whatsoever of the characters or the settings, just referring to them as, for example, "Agent Coulson," or "Raza's tent." It was more or less up to me to fill in the blanks...which is why, in my novel, one character is a woman with a long blonde ponytail, and in the movie the same character is a pudgy bald guy.

That's just the way it is. Screenplays are not complete reading experiences in themselves. They're meant to serve as a guide to the filmmakers, and are not designed to supply every last bit of information you need to understand what's going on; the way a place looks, for instance, or the way a character acts, is more the purview of the art director or the actor than the screenwriter. Because of this, I was very curious to see how the movie handled some scenes compared with how I did.

I'm left feeling a little envious. I was hired to translate the screenplay into a book; Favreau and his film editor got to take the screenplay and refine it. Some scenes got cut, some got altered or rearranged, but the whole thing wound up generally improved. It's a leaner, meaner machine because of their influence, which is how the whole "collaborative medium" is meant to work, I suppose. :)

I really enjoyed this movie, and I'm glad I got to be involved in it. Plus, now, if you want a story that's very much like the movie Iron Man, but with a few small, interesting differences, you can pick up my novelization (or Peter David's, or Stephen D. Sullivan's) and get a slightly different perspective.

And the advance reviews were right. Robert Downey Jr. IS amazing in this movie. I wouldn't have enjoyed it half as much if not for him. He's just about the most perfect Tony Stark you could get. :)

Iron Man - BEFORE

2008-05-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, tonight's an interesting night. In about three hours I'll be going to see IRON MAN, for which I wrote the Teen Novelization. That means I got to read the screenplay last year, and was of course sworn to utmost secrecy about it. So tonight I'll get to see how closely the actual movie sticks to the screenplay -- and I'll finally be able to talk about it.

I hear Robert Downey Jr. is just freaking phenomenal in the film. I'm looking forward to it.

Giant Insects...and you!

2008-04-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

I just recently got this really cool book, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. You can guess what it's about. Equations aside, it explains in relatively straightforward terms why a whole lot of stuff that happens in movies is utter nonsense. Most of it is common sense, really, but I like the way the author gets into specifics about exactly how a bus trying to jump across a gap in a freeway bridge would act, among other examples.

Which, of course, brings me to my own latest project, which involves giant insects. I already knew giant insects didn't work in the real world, but now I REALLY know, in much greater detail.

It's a children's book that I'm writing, though, and it's heavily illustrated, and I think even the author would let this one slide.

On a completely unrelated topic, I just got the schedule for the next trilogy of Warriors manga books that I'll be scripting for TOKYOPOP. Who knew talking cats would be this popular?

...Well, I guess Erin Hunter probably suspected.

The word for today...

2008-04-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

...is "procrastination."

I'm currently in a period not too uncommon in the freelance world, that of Too Many Potential, But Not Official, Projects On The Horizon.

Right now, on top of three projects that I'm currently contracted for, there are about seven others that COULD take off at any time. I have no doubt that the number that actually WILL take off is much lower than that, but the fact remains that I have to be able to talk intelligently about any of these, in fairly great depth, at a moment's notice. So they all have to stay "loaded" in the part of my brain that's easy to access. That's not easy, at least not for me. To paraphrase a lolcat photo I saw on ICanHasCheezburger, "I can't brain anymore."

The answer to this? Well, the answer tonight is "play more World of Warcraft." Probably not a great reaction, but it's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Here's a random cover from a comic book I wrote. (Yes, that's Charles Gunn, from Angel.)

Reaching out and touching some people

2008-04-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a little bit late, but I'm finally writing to everyone I met at the New York Comic Con today -- basically going through the stack of business cards I collected. :)

I've also finished the preliminary work on the next Twisted Journeys book, so this afternoon I'll be digging in to the creative part. As I write this (on my laptop, in my zero-G recliner), my wife's cat Mr. Gert is sprawled across my chest. I think he thinks he's helping.

Movin' on up

2008-04-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

After bungling my way through my website setup (at www.danjolley.com), I somehow managed to make it so that the blog either wouldn't or couldn't allow comments. So I'm moving the whole blog shebang over here.

More to come.