Dead Projects, Revived Projects

I like to be writing two things at once. Something I'm concentrating on, and something else for a change. Eventually these all overlap, meaning I can end up with a lot of projects, some of them alive, some of them dormant, some of them dead. 

I've more or less finished my third book about Kalix, provisionally entitled The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf. It still needs a little revision. I don't have any date for a publication and I haven't signed a publishing contract for it yet. 

Thraxas lumbers back to life. I've also more or less finished a new Thraxas book, Thraxas and the Ice Dragon. I still plan to have this published as an ebook before the end of the year. Simultaneously I'll be republishing all the other Thraxas novels as ebooks. I'll need to try out the ebook publishing process with some of the early books first, to see if it works OK, before publishing the new one. While this should ene up being widely available in English, I don't know if any of the foreign publishers who published Thraxas will want the book. Will need to ask my agent to investigate that.

Manga play. Am writing manga play for young people. Confidently expect no one ever to be interested in publishing or performing this. But I like it anyway. It's a good outlet for my manga/anime enthusiasm. An enthusiasm that will spill over into my next book, I'm sure, possibly in a career-killing manga-based novel which no one will like. 

Graphic novel set in Ancient Athens. I wrote an excellent script for this. However, the artist was unable to come up with the goods, and that pretty much killed the project. Failing the mysterious appearance of a new artist or a publisher willing to back the idea with some money, I don't see that going anywhere. Still, projects sometimes do revive unexpectedly when the time is right.

Ongoing plan to write more fetish stories. No progress. Became discouraged by massive success of Fifty Shades of Grey. Nothing I wrote would be that successful.  Hum. Will do something about this some time. I have more good ideas for fetish stories.

Lonely Werewolf Girl Film - still negotiating its way through the Byzantine corridors of the film world. Not much to report, but project still alive. And indeed, there are currently film options in place for Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me, and Lux the Poet, but these are in very early stages. 

Four New Buffy Comics

Two Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics and two Faith and Angel comics to be precise. It's the new season nine, still overseen by Joss Whedon. I get these on subscription from Reed Comics, who do very good service for me in Buffy comics.

I'm unable to resist buying any new Buffy the Vampire Slayer produce, though I did say that I didn't love the last season of comics. I've never really enjoyed having hundreds of slayers running around, in a global organisation. It's a long way from the intimacy of Sunnydale. And I didn't like what happened to Giles. That episode didn't seem momentous enough, given what Giles means to the world of Buffy.

Still, Joss Whedon's Buffy remains a brilliant creation so I hope I like this series more than the last. I may even put on my Sunnydale High School t-shirt to read them. In fact I definitely will.

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Current Millar books under film option - Lonely Werewolf Girl, Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me, Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving. And soon, probably, The Good Fairies of New York, again.

I have sold plenty of film options in the past. No one has succeeded in making a film. Perhaps someone will manage this time. I'll send out positive thoughts while reading my Buffy comics.

Determined Game Playing

I've been playing Portal on my Playstation, at the expense of all other activity. The experience fits in very well with two characteristics I have. One, I tend to be far behind other people in discovering things. Two, I then become completely obsessed with them.

After a friend recommended the game to me, I bought it and then worked my way through it in a determined fashion, meanwhile thinking to myself 'This is the best game ever invented.' (I can become over-enthusiastic.)

So, I was some years behind millions of other gamers in playing Portal. But in a way this has turned out well because the second game has just been released. After finishing the first game I didn't have to wait any time for a new one, I just bought Portal 2 and kept on playing.

My obsession can also extend to merchandise. I've been wondering if I could justify buying myself a companion cube. I'd like one. They do look like they'd make good companions. And there are some t-shirts I'd like too. The Valve store only operates in America but they do do international shipping, so I could rush them an order.

On the related subject of video games made into films - which I also saw later than other people - I watched Prince of Persia but I was disappointed. There's something wrong with he film. Well, being based on a video game it's completely stupid, obviously, but that wasn't the real problem. I'm quite prepared to sit and watch a completely stupid film based on a video game, I'm not expecting the plot to be any good.

The problem was that in the original game, you get rid of your human opponents quickly and then move on to fighting the sand monsters, who are much more interesting. But this never happens in the film. I kept waiting for the sand monsters to appear but they never did.

Other films watched some time after their release - Kick Ass. I enjoyed this. It wasn't as violent as I feared. I'm not keen on gore or horror. However, though I thought it was a good film, I enjoyed the parts where the young girl with purple hair was fighting much better than all the other parts. So I kept thinking 'Where is the girl with purple hair? I want her to come back and start fighting again.' If they were to make another film featuring just her, fighting all the time, I'd like that.

And now, I could do my day's writing shift. Or I could get back to Portal 2. Well, there's only one winner in that competition.