Great Friggin' Week

Sunday
November 9
2:20 a.m.

Holy shit what a week it’s been. Best one in several months in terms of one thing after another after another actually going right, and with the carryover going into this week looking even better.

First things first. Got a promo package and screener of The Bunker into the hands of a true, Hollywood producer, who also happens to be a big horror fan and indie film fan. Not some fly-by-night guy, either, not even close. Guy’s worked with a bunch of big-time directors, has a string of hits to his credit, and two of his last four films? Grossed about $160 mil and $450 mil, respectively. Only drawback is I’ve been sitting on my hands, waiting for my drive to travel cross-country so we could fix some minor sound problems, but since that hasn’t happened and this guy’s been asking for a package and screener for about a year, I said, “Fuck it,” and got it moving. We delayed on passing off this package first time because the film look wasn’t finished, then because of the sound issues, which have been addressed for the Euro broadcast version of the flick. But this guy’s been around the block more than a few times, and what we’ve got is all-but-done minus a few tweaks, so he’s getting a whole lot more than a rough-cut, which he also would’ve taken a look at. Even better? The guy likes looking for indie projects, and isn’t strictly limited to big-budget pics. So hell yeah, it’s not even time for the Giants/Eagles game, and the weekend’s already been kick-ass.

Bonus? One of the people involved in the middle of this handoff? Big time reader, loves to check out scripts, and also loves horror. How can you beat that? Not only is the flick in the hands of somebody who might consider giving it a quote, but can maybe open some doors. Holy Grail would be interest in talking to me one-on-one about who might be looking for a new idea or two, and a filmmaker whose story is so nutty and unique that Darin Scott (Waist Deep, Tales from the Hood) once told me, “Man, this story breaks, you ain’t gonna be able to keep the media away.”

Also, this same person is going to be passing along my press and promo kit to her talk show contact, so fingers crossed, sometime down the road they have a slow night, and I can fill a hole they have. Christmas Eve, anybody? Heck, I’d bust my plastic under the weight of two round-trip buy-at-the-gate-without-reservations plane tickets if the opportunity were to arise. At this stage, I really don’t care. I’ve missed out on too many opportunities to keep waiting around. We have the European broadcast coming up this fall (hopefully, no air date yet, and fall is waning), or maybe early in ’09; we have the tee shirts out (you can’t tell me you’ve ignored the images here, really, you and I both know if you haven’t eyeballed Tiffany sporting the Bunker attire you’re full of shit); Rob Granito is finishing up the artwork on The Soil’s Embrace portfolio, due out in April…across the board it’s full steam ahead. No looking back.

What else? Oh, last night? After playing soccer and wearing myself out with the nephews in the yard, I pulled an all-nighter and finished the crime novel. Yep, finis. In fact, I even wrote an epilogue that just wraps everything up perfectly. I’m sure the book is still too long for some publishers, and I’ll likely have to trim further if that turns out to be the case, but as it stands now the only thing left is another spellcheck to make sure I didn’t introduce *too* many errors, and then spitting out some printed copies for my growing list of test-readers. I’ve been pounding away the last six or seven nights straight on this, and I’m really pleased with where the manuscript is now. Of course, three drafts in, there’s undoubtedly work to do, but at this stage, I am probably too close to the thing to be counted on for any more revisions. Hence, the group of readers I am counting on to spot any glaring continuity errors, timeline errors, me mistakenly saying an event happened on a Friday and it’s only Thursday of the first week, that sort of thing. Once you’re *so* close to a piece of work, you get mental tunnel-vision, and I’ve already come up against that with some of the latter chapter continuity issues. While those have been fixed, my thought is, shit, if I missed *that* then, what did I miss after spending weeks revising several hundred (700+ first time through) pages and whittling the thing down by a couple hundred? Thus, time for others to step in and gimme a hand.

Okay, the other day I let the cat out of the bag on a project I have been invited to be a part of called the Winterlands. Well, I sent my rough (and I mean rough, it was pretty bare bones) pitch to the editor. Result? He freaked. Loved it. Didn’t have a negative thing to say or any change to suggest. Okay, it’s just a synopsis, not the full outline, but I’m not gonna lie and say it wasn’t a pretty good nite opening up his e-mail and finding that the editor on the book project was thrilled with the story I was planning to write, in a genre I have never really delved into (fantasy). True, there might be some things I need to rework to fit into the book’s parameters, after all, it’s his universe and I’m only getting to play around in it for a few thousand words, but knowing that the acorn that’s been picked is worth being planted kinda made the night.

There’s more, including Pam and I hitting the Cape Coral Coconut Festival and catching a pretty cool local band –The Mix, a hit-or-miss Journey tribute band (thank the music gods they didn’t totally butcher Wheel in the Sky) and, Survivor. Yep, Eye of the Tiger Survivor. Hey, for $3 we couldn’t pass it up. It was a night out we didn’t have to spend a lot of dough on (heck, one person can’t even go to a non-matinee movie for $6, and it was a helluva fun time. A buck a band for live music? Sure, I *will* complain next blog…but only a little, because the tribute band did quite well on a good number of the Journey tunes. Some others…?

Okay, enough gloating. Giants/Eagles tonight over at my parents’ place, some decent early games today on NFL Sunday Ticket, some time off I’m taking Monday to sit back and relax with an audio book (John Sandford’s Invisible Prey got here today, and I’ve been waiting for this one for a year).

Got no sleep last night, four hours this afternoon after catching my nephews’ soccer game (congrats to James on his first goal of the season), and then the festival, so time to grab some shuteye. Been working my ass off this week and the only breaks have been for football and when the fingers cramped too bad to continue at the keyboard.

But I think it’s gonna pay off now that I’m moving forward. Not looking forward to agent shopping with the book, but that’s something to worry about some other day.

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Currently listening to: Combichrist: Like to Thank My Friends/Enjoy the Abuse (Live)

As you can see, the tees are up, available for sale (hopefully, all the click-thru links work for each design, but if not, drop me a note via the Sightunseenpictures.com web site contact form or the ChantingMonks.com contact form and I will personally process your order and hook you up.