I have too much free time

Or, how I choose to spend my time being unproductive. Let's face it. I'm a bit of a procrastinator. A tiny bit. A touch. A smidgen. Ok, a lot. Like really, just an enormous procrastinator. In college I'd wait till the night before to write a paper, dribble some vague nonsense on a page, turn it in. I went to art school so really, they weren't exactly looking for prize winning essays. It worked. However it also instilled in me a sort of conditioning that causes me to only work when the deadline is right freaking now. Unfortunately, when you're editing your own book and have no one giving you those deadlines, you're supposed to do it yourself. Keyword supposed to.

I have a lot of free time currently. Why, you ask. Well because I am currently mending from surgery (for future reference, the spine is the biggest asshole of all the body parts. Including the actual ass itself). If I was a productive type of person I'd have finished editing, published it myself, and moved on to book two by now. And believe me I do in fact have plans for a book two. I have plans for upwards of a book four. I just...have to get around to writing them down. Again, procrastination.

I have a process. Really. It involves basically throwing up all the word vomit ideas in my head onto a word document, leaving it alone for a few days, and then going in and editing. And by editing I mean rewriting basically the whole damn thing. The original book started out in a plain document and ended at 80 pages. The version I have now comes in closer to 170. I did my rewrites in red font because I'm just a touch crazy like that. By the end, there was more red font than black. For just that extra touch of crazy, I printed it all out then (hey, office laser printers were made for just such an occasion) and edited it again with red pen. a bit like grade school, but effective. Except I would write strange notes, just circle a whole chunk of a page and write "fix this". But I didn't note down what exactly I was supposed to fix, so now I have to go back and pretend like I know what I was thinking of at that time. Effective, no, but still a process.

A slow process because of those 170 pages, I only have 50 that are fully finally finished being edited and are all set to publish. The reason why it isn't all 170 pages? One word: Skyrim. Because honestly, given the choice of fixing grammar or killing dragons, which one would you choose?


Oh don't give me that, I'll finish editing. Just as soon as I kill this dragon...

It starts...

Yup, that's right. I wrote a book. Why is that strange, I hear you asking quietly even though you're not actually anywhere near me so I can't possibly hear your physical voice. It's strange, friend (we're friends now by the way. I just decided that.) because I am not a writer. I'm a filmmaker. More specifically, I'm an editor. As in, the one who sits in the dark room hunched in front of a computer clicking a mouse while a director says that a shot is a tenth of a second too long. Fun times.

Right but anyway, I wrote a book. And then I sent it to a bunch of friends to read who generally decided they enjoyed it. Which got me to thinking, why not try and get published? And that is where I find myself: in the spiral of insanity that is the world of trying to make it as a writer. As in, impossible. Well, I am just that particular brand of crazy to try and do the impossible so, instead of finding some sort of agent to...persuade (read: sleep with) to publish my book, I decided I'd go the good old do-it-yourself kind of way.

So, for anyone interested in how exactly to go from finished book to maybe someone paying you for said finished book, or anyone interested in reading the strange ramblings of a semi-writer and her stream of consciousness narrative, then congratulations! You hit the jackpot! If you're looking for insight into the fine craft of writing, ah no. Sorry. This is not the place for you. I have a film degree which means I can tell you exactly how terrible the movie "The Immortals" was but not necessarily how to fix it (hint: change everything). If I had a literature degree that entitles me to sit in Starbucks with a cappuccino and a Macbook and scoff at everyone else but sadly, I do not. I don't even drink coffee. And if I did I definitely wouldn't pay six dollars for it because seriously, who does that?

But I digress. This blog (I hate that word by the way) is about the book I wrote. Which is titled, easily enough, 'Witch Bloom'. Because the book is my response to the 'Twilight' phenomena and as such has to have, not necessarily in order: witches, werewolves, vampires, liches, naga, necromancers, and a psychic because why not. Did I mention I was a supernatural and mythology nerd? Yeah. So I wrote a book for the person too old for "Twilight" but just a bit too jaded for any of the multitude of vampire novels available now. Heavy doses of humor, cynicism, action, adventure, horror, a touch of romance, and a reoccurring Fedora joke. Wait no, take out that last bit, that's Indiana Jones. But everything else is there, I promise.