October 2006

So, here I sit at my usual spot. No, not that spot, I moved away from there a few weeks ago because it was getting too loud and too crowded. No, I’m at at a new spot now. Anyway, this spot has even more comfy chairs and they keep the music down to a comfortable, non ear-threatening, level. I didn’t mind making the change because change is ok sometimes. Especially if it prevents injury or loss of life.

Or, just allows me a slightly quieter place from which to write all of my amazing articles and whatnot for Cinematical and Comic Book Resources. Yes, its true. I’ve been at Cinematical for a little over two weeks now and haven’t been fired yet. Kudos to me. It’s interesting working for a big company like Weblogs, Inc. (part of AOL, don’t cha know). Being a member of the “family” I am on several internal email lists where I get lots of stuff that I can’t talk about. I even get occasional emails from Weblogs honcho Jason Calcanis.

Well, not directly to me but to everyone in the company. But still, its kinda fun. Jason is one of those people who was smart enough to see a need for something (blogs) about a great deal of different subjects and then had the tenacity to see it through. It worked out great for him too because now that AOL is the owner of his company, I think he’s worth about a billion dollars or something. Not bad.

I’m not worth a billion dollars but I am worth a million in prizes. Or maybe that was a song I heard on the radio today? Sometimes its hard to tell. Oh, just to be clear and to justify the title of this post — I am enjoying the daily writing even if many of my posts at Cinematical are of the news variety. I did do a couple of longer pieces which I will link to below for your reading pleasure. I also did a few more longer ones at Comic Book Resources.

At Cinematical I have to do these news posts when starting out to hopefully prove that I am reliable and then be allowed to move on to other more in-depth type of articles. But you do have to learn to walk before you can run and its only been a couple weeks so I will stick with it and hopefully transition into bigger stuff at a later date. It’s not really a problem because I actually like doing the news posts and the more I do the more I get paid — so that’s nice too.

A recent CBR story:

Interview with Javier-Grillo Marxuach

And here are the links to my two bigger pieces at Cinematical:

Seven Tips for the Indie Filmmaker

Seven Sci-Fi Films You Should Be Watching

If you do that sort of thing, please feel free to Digg them at Digg or Scape them at Netscape. They are already submitted so your support would be much appreciated. Not that I get any kick backs or anything. it’s just nice to help bring traffic to the site you work for. That’s all.

Something interesting happened to me while I was writing here. I discovered that what I really want to do is not direct or produce or anything like that, it’s write. As in, writing has become my number one favorite thing to do. It’s odd because when I think about my life it makes perfect sense that writing has taken its place at number one.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that all through my life I didn’t make films just because I wanted to but I was always writing since I was a young. I did it because I liked doing it and not because I had to do it.

It started way back in history when I was in Junior High I think. i wrote a story and when I got it back the teacher had written some comments on it. She said that I had a great imagination and that my story was really very well done, especially for someone my age. She also said that I should seriously think about getting my stories published. Thinking about it now I should have taken those comments more seriously. I might be farther ahead.

In truth, things are going pretty well for me in the writing game. I get to write quite a bit. It’s actually pretty cool. And now I will be doing even more of it and getting paid for it too. What a deal.

Yes, its true. I can now let you in on a little secret. I have been hired to write for Weblogs, Inc. as a contributor to their site Cinematical. It’s a site devoted to movies so I think I should be ok and not run out of things to say. After all, I did make movies for several years. Some of that must have stuck with me. Plus, I am still writing for Comic Book Resources and LAist so I can’t complain. getting paid to do something you like to do is pretty nice.

I know what you’re thinking. Now that I have yet another site I am writing for this site is going to suffer even more from neglect. I can say for certain that won’t be the case. How can I say that? Well, now that I am actually making decent money as a writer I am going to spend more time writing and less time doing anything else. I expect that this will allow me to not only do my work for Cinematical, CBR and LAist but also give me some time to write here.

I will also link to my posts around the web here for all of you (yes you and you) to enjoy. But I really want to try to keep writing here as well. this is the only place where I can do it just for fun without an editor breathing down my neck. Although at Weblogs we have a virtual office so I can’t actually feel anyone breathing but you get the point.

So, to start us off, click here, here and here to see some of my most recent work. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the event I was at last week was a press preview for the new game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (the pic in this post might have given it away). Great game that looks really good on the Xbox 360. I also got to play around with the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii. Very interesting indeed but I think I’ll stick with my Xbox 360.

Ok, that’s it for now but stay tuned because I’ll be right back. You’ll get sick of me yet, promise.