Hello, Space Crew!

I know it’s been too long since I’ve kept you in the loop, but I’ve been working hard to put a lot of things in place. Couldn’t sit through the day without this reminder though.

Podcasting Tonight! 

Yep, time is going that fast. Tonight I’ll be making a guest appearance on the SciFi Geeks Club podcast with the guys from Galactic Netcasts. I’m extremely pumped to be doing this. It’ll kick off at 9:45pm EST, but I’ll send you the link for your listening pleasure after it’s been posted on the site. 

And your backer prizes will be announced tomorrow! Had some last-minute details to work out, but I am looking forward to hitting your inbox with awesome.

Your Exuberantly Excited Space Emperor,
-AC

He and I game a lot together, but in the past we have only been able to watch previous Internationals on Twitch so we are stoked to be able to go in person this year! I’m already hard at work on my cosplay, too! I dropped a huge hint in my last update (OK, not a hint, I totally gave it away) but over on my blog I’m going to be doing a complete costume construction run down as the date approaches, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, feel free to hit me up for a game of DOTA! Friend me on Steam, my Friend ID is 65253934 and here is a direct link to my Steam profile. For those wondering my MMR is 3.5k and I have 3,050 hrs on record. Yeah, I’m addicted...

For those of you who do not know how amazingly awesome DOTA, the International, or Major League Gaming is, last year there was a CROWDFUNDED Prize Pool of $18,429,613. Just let that sink in for a second... Yeah, pretty wild. I will end this update with the below picture to put professional DOTA into perspective for non-gamer folks! 

Happy reading, gaming, and doing all the other awesome stuff that inspires you! Also, for those new followers who have not checked out my book (gasp!) take a look at the Prologue (it’s pretty amazing) and then snag a pre-order. For only $8.99 You will not be disappointed! Enjoy!

I haven’t forgotten about my writing updates, four more to go! Also we’ve finalized a cover design for the book, one that I am VERY fond of. Excited to show you all down the line. Here’s my favorite writing tip to celebrate, hopefully the tough love will inspire you to go start a project yourself.

SCREENWRITING TIP #4: WRITING HABITS

A note about writing habits – don’t have any.  Well, one – write every day.  Now writing can be research, outlining, thinking about what you have to write, re-writing, but immersing yourself in the process is what really counts.  Still, I try to crank out at least a page a day.

Now I’ve heard it a few thousand times – “I don’t have the time to write.”  Bull.  There were times I was working 50, 60 hours a day.  But I still wrote.  Every damn day.  Too tired at the end of the day?  I can empathize.  I was beat.  So, I wrote on my lunch hour.  Or, at one company, lunch half-hour.

A page a day.  If I was able to put down one page each day I was working toward my ultimate goal – to be a full time writer.  If you write a page a day at the end of three months you have a feature script.  If you re-write it at the same pace at the end of six months you have a better script.

If you can’t write a page a day then you just don’t want it bad enough.  I used to pick the worst restaurant near my work place, where e-coli and hepatitis were selections on the menu.  I picked it because I knew nobody from work would show up and lure me into a conversation.  Don’t bother me, was my motto, I’m trying to work my way out of this soul sucking job.

I wrote every day at lunch, occasional evenings, weekends and holidays.  For six years.  Then one year I made more money writing than as an accountant and I quit.

Here is a little trick I used to make that lunch hour as fruitful as possible – I would check my outline every morning before going to work.  Then I thought about the scene I was going to write all morning.  On the drive to work, during boring meetings, adding columns on a calculator, paging through computer print outs.  By lunch I had written and re-written the scene a half dozen times.  After lunch I would study the next section and let my brain work in preparation for the evening pages -  if I had the energy. 

I still do this.  Every night, right after turning off the lights, as I lay in bed before I go to sleep I run through what I intend to write the next day, concentrating on any particular problem I anticipate.  And surprisingly upon awakening the problem is often solved.  It may be my subconscious helping me out.  Or I’m delusional.  I don’t care.

As for habits.  Besides writing every day, I repeat – have none.  I know some writers make a ritual of their work. “ I must have quiet.”  “A window facing the rising sun (or a wall).”  “A cup of Honduran coffee, Mozart on the stereo, twelve sharpened number two Ticonderoga pencils and a thin lined tablet (white with green lines) and the smell of rotting apples.”

These are all just setting up excuses for you not to write.  It is hard enough to do this, you don’t need any more reasons not to do it.  I write anywhere, anytime.  I have produced pages in a hurry, under duress from directors, executives, actors, in a tent, in the rain, in the cold, at four in the morning with a full crew standing by.  You don’t here a cobbler saying he’s not in the mood to heel your shoes.  A car mechanic never stops because it is too noisy.  Teachers don’t take a day off because they are not inspired.

No excuses.  You write.  Say the writing isn’t going very well and all you can think of is crap.  Write a bad scene.  You can’t re-write a blank page.  But a bad scene often can tell you what’s wrong with it and where you’ve gone awry.

Write.

THANK YOU

OH HAI.

Most of you have received your copies of the book and are reading like your life depended on it (BECAUSE IT DOES). That or you’re enjoying a new piece of clutter on your desk. Either way, thanks for supporting us.

Speaking of supporting us, don’t forget to leave a review once you’re done reading on Amazon (open for reviews starting 4/19) and Goodreads (open for reviews NOW), or anywhere else that allows customer reviews. If you pre-ordered a book but have yet to receive yours, please contact Inkshares.

Now that we’ve got the obligatory “please review our book” reminders out of the way, we would like to cordially invite you to our BOOK BIRTHDAY PARTY. We’ll be having a reading/Q&A/signing at The Wild Detectives in the Bishop Arts District on Tuesday, April 19th at 7:30PM. We assume that it will look, like most literary events, something like this:

So please join us for a night of no-holds-barred drunkenness, hilarity, decisions you’ll regret in the morning, and get your books signed! For more information check out The Wild Detectives website and be sure to RSVP via the Facebook event.

Also, enjoy the headshots that The Wild Dectectives must have found in some dark corner of the internet.

We’ve haven’t gotten a ton of requests for interviews, but we did get invited on some show called Book Talk. Despite not being able to find anything about it anywhere online, we agreed to go on be interviewed by the show’s host, Feel Landsburg. Here are the results: Book Talk w/ Feel Landsburg.

Hope to see you at the book party and if we don’t you’re dead to us,

Nick & Noa

For interviews please contact us at noagavin@ohnoa.com