Blogs
Submitted by eruth on March 5, 2013 - 1:44am
Adventures in Making a Book Trailer
Let’s be honest; there are some really fantastic book trailers out there. There are also some dreadfully dull ones. When I decided to create a trailer for my forthcoming novel, Matadora, I gave some serious thought as to what choices I did, and didn’t, want to make through the process. After researching trailers online and taking notes, I set some ground rules for myself:
#1 Don’t “star” in your book trailer. There are numerous examples where the author is filmed reading from whatever work s/he wants to promote. Even when a writer is a great reader (a different set of skills is required for these two roles) the result is usually too earnest. If the writer is a weak reader the trailer is doomed.
Submitted by cbforrest on February 27, 2013 - 11:49pm
If the Skydiggers were a movie, they would be fawned over at the Sundance Festival. If the Skydiggers were a book, they’d be a well-worn paperback written by some revered and reclusive ex-pat living in a small village in the south of France.
If the Skydiggers were …
Well, you get the point: the Skydiggers are hip without trying to be hip because they simply do what they do for all the right reasons. As the iconic group celebrates its 25th anniversary with a cross-country tour and the seasonal release of four new offerings this year, lead singer Andy Maize took some time to discuss writing, the business of art, and the ebbs and flows across a quarter century of creation.
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 27, 2013 - 5:45pm
This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking to an English class at Ryerson, led my instructor Sarah Henstra. The course was about writing about the arts, an attempt to present becoming a (freelance) writer and critic as a viable career option. I jokingly titled my talk, "How You Too Can Work At Home In Your Underpants Covered In Cheeto Dust."
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 26, 2013 - 3:38pm
I've always had an addictive personality -- not for substances, but activities and subjects. When I was a kid, I watched my classmates drift through interests, picking things up and putting them down again. They'd be enrolled in multiple sports at once, quitting and starting new things constantly as they and their parents searched for something that would stick. Kids around me had phases, periods of intense interest that they would soon shed.
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 25, 2013 - 3:11pm
I started writing a novel this weekend. Even typing that sentence is enough to make me feel both giddy and utterly terrified.
I'd been nursing the idea for a while, at first just a word that gradually grew into a baby universe. For a long time, I was almost ashamed of the idea. Anything that you really love is always faintly embarrassing, because it reveals so much about you and what you care about. As time passed, even if I was a little shy to share it, the pressure of the idea, the solidity and realness of it, kept tugging at me.
Submitted by ssmith on February 24, 2013 - 4:44pm
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 22, 2013 - 8:47pm
Neil Gaiman wrote a fantastic post once about asnwering the question "Where do you get your ideas?" In particular, he talks about the resistance that is often offered to the only real answer he can give: "'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'" He has some great ideas about fielding these sorts of questions, but my absolute favourite part of the post is the bit where he addresses the problem of people approaching him, as a writer, and offering to share their Great Idea with them.
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 21, 2013 - 9:33pm
I've had a lot of jobs in my life. Many of them have been great, and a few of them have been hilariously terrible. I've been a bank teller, a research assistant, a copy centre employee a/k/a xerox whisperer, the managing editor of two literary magazines, a cheesemonger, the events coordinator for an incredible bookstore, a high school english teacher, a writer in residence in a Catholic school, and a copy writer for a porn company. I've worked in office environments, classrooms, refrigerators and outdoors. I've had bosses who were wonderful and bosses I was convinced kept a chest freezer stuffed full of torsos in their apartment. I've had co-workers who would be my lifelong friends and one who I detested so much that I once hid her phone in a pumpkin.
Submitted by NatalieZed on February 20, 2013 - 1:57pm
In my latest collection of poetry, DOOM, I include a poem about Penance. Penance is not, really a villain, or at least not a long term villain. The characters civilian name is Robbie Baldwin, and for most of his career he is known as Speedball. His powers are based in kinetic energy, and so the more energy he absorbs, the more powerful (and potentially destructive) those powers become. He's a middling hero, involved with the New Warriors, and then suddenly find himself playing a pivotal role in the Civil War storyline, one of the major shakeups in the Marvel Universe.
|
|
