New date format. I’m getting used to the little changes like that. I suppose I have to.

I’ve just more or less signed off (pending formalities like a final proofread) on my latest BW/DR essay, which this time is going to be in the app which you should download and subscribe to right now. $1.99 a month gets you around ten fantastic essays on film that you won’t find anywhere else, accompanied by brilliant illustrations and a gorgeous presentation. There’s also the fact that an active subscription gives you access to every previous issue, so here’s a suggestion: subscribe now, read the two issues that are already on there, and brace yourself for issue 3 next week. Do it for me. Do it for this face.
Book plans! I still have two more stories to write, and two redrafts to do (the big scary major one where I cut paragraphs for being shit and radically rewrite entire sections, and the more conservative one where I go through and pick up on spelling and grammar issues), but it’s close. I can feel it.
So I’m starting to think about formats. I don’t think I’ll go down the special edition route, but there’s going to be a large hardback, pocket paperback, ebook (obviously - without ebooks, I wouldn’t have made any money off my last one) and probably an audiobook. I’m also thinking that I might serialise the audiobook in the form of a podcast, provided there’s interest from one or two people. I’ve been working on this for three years. It deserves a decent payoff.
There’s the occasional thing on the side, too. I’m still podcasting with Casey, tweaking the format and improving steadily, and I’m slowly getting to grips with Twine with future projects in mind. So. Keeping busy.
I dunno. Doing good. I could be a lot worse off at the moment, but I’m busy enough that I’m staying fairly grounded.

Read/read/reading: Bright Wall/Dark Room, Issue 1; Up in the Air, by Walter Kirn; Drive, by James Sallis.

(Minor declaration of interest: I write sometimes for BWDR, though none of my work appears in the first or second issues.)

First off, the first issue of BWDR’s Newsstand app is everything I hoped it would be - excellently-designed, featuring illustrations like this and containing some of the best writing they’ve ever published. It’s an extremely solid start (and contains nothing like this tripe), and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. It’s a hallmark of an excellent publication when you’re a contributor who honestly doesn’t care if his work is included or not, so long as it continues to be good; that’s exactly what I felt reading this.

Up In The Air is an odd book. The film is decidedly different - the one entirely sympathetic character is missing in the novel, and the Ryan Bingham as written in prose is a lot more jaded and on edge than smooth-talking George Clooney ever could be. I’m hesitant to say too much about this - I’ll be saving it for an upcoming podcast - but I liked it a lot, despite a couple of issues with narrative voice that came up once in a while. Overall, though, Walter Kirn is a brilliant writer, and this ranks amongst the best of his work.

Drive is in-keeping with the film-oriented stuff I’ve been reading; oddly, I haven’t yet seen the film, despite the fact that it contains two huge crushes of mine, but I’m still interested nevertheless. Brooding, ultraviolent existentialism is how I got into reading in the first place.