The Hunger Games

A Quick Post

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Just a quick post here this morning because I’ve got to get into work early today.

I’ve had a pretty good Bank Holiday weekend in which I finished reading The Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. This hit my expectations and wrapped the trilogy up really well, I’m kind of gutted its all over now as I enjoyed reading the books. Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy is out as a movie some time this year so I’m looking forward to that 🙂 I’ve now started reading The Umbrella Conspiracy. This is the first of the Resident Evil novels. I’ve also made a start on volume 1. Of the Judge Dredd Case files. A collection of all of the Judge Dread comics.

Writing on Project Apollo is going okay and me and Owen are working on developing the surrounding universe this is set it.

Right, I’m off to get ready for the day job. Have a good and productive day everyone 🙂

A Quick Post To Start The Day

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Good morning on this beautiful Wednesday, I’m just going to get a quick few words written here before going to work.

Yesterday I started on ten audiobook of World War Z and must admit if it wasn’t an audiobook I would have given up early on. I don’t like the format at all and the early stories were incredibly slow and didn’t really grab my attention. I guess I’m about a third of the way through it now and it’s slowly beginning to get interesting.

The third Hunger Games book, The Mockingjay is a different story, I’m about forty pages in and I’ve been gripped since page one 😀

A Quick Update 25/4/13

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Morning all, this post was meant to be written last night but after I finished a bit of planning work I read the end of Catching Fire, The second book in The Hunger Games trilogy. It’s good people, definitely worth a read. The ending is amazing and has set the third book up perfectly. This is definitely a 5-Star book. Once I finished that I read a short story by Cinta Garcia de la Rosa (http://www.cintagarciadelarosa.com/) called A Foreigner In London and this one blew me away. if Catching fire is a 5-Star book due to its epic story line, it’s amazing characters, fascinating universe and awesome writing then A Foreigner In London is a 5-Star piece of work because looks at one persons struggle and we, the reader, feel that struggle. I’m lucky enough to know Cinta, I consider her a very dear friend, but I say this as a reader, she is an amazing writer. To get an emotional response out of me like this book did then she has to be. Please go over to her website and check her out, it’s worth a little of your time.

I started writing lasts night but I got about five lines handwritten, and that took me half an hour, I just could not get my head into gear with writing new fiction so I dived into a bit of planning for the story that I’m planning on writing during NaNoWriMo. I know that’s a few months away but I’m seriously beginning to think that I loose momentum when writing because I’m not getting outlines down on paper before I start so I’m giving this a go.

Project Apollo Outline Is Done

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After a fair bit of work I’ve got the outline for Project Apollo done! Well a rough outline at least. After reading through what I wrote during NaNoWriMo I’ve realised that it is not as bad as I thought. There is bits that obviously need reworking but its not going to take as much effort as I thought it was going to.
Now I’m going to type up the outline and notes and send them off to Owen to see what he thinks. Then i think it will be maybe a little more of a detailed outline and then hopefully we’ll be back on it within a couple of weeks 🙂

I’m making good process with Catching Fire which is the second of the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins and I’ve been listening to Apocalypse Z: The Beginning Of The End by Manel Loureiro at work. I’ve got about two and half hours to go on it and I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends.

Now I’m off to type it up and email it off to Owen as I watch Star Wars 🙂

Today’s Post 17th April, 2013

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I’m slowly getting there with working out a plan with Project Apollo. What I did during NaNoWriMo (2012) is about 20% of the size of the story, so there’s a lot of work to be done and what I’ve done tonight is really only looking at that first 20% and see what’s working and what is not. I’d say I have an idea of about a third of how I want the story to go and hopefully tomorrow ill get another third loosely mapped out and then the final third on Friday. Then ill talk to Owen and we can add his notes and so on and see what we have left over.

I’m feeling quite productive at the moment. I am trying out a few things to get me to get more writing work done. To set the scene a little let me just say that I work a five and a half day week, the other half a day is normally taken up with little bits and pieces, cleaning out the hen house etc. Saturday nights and Sundays are when I tend to spend as much time as I can with Tracie. So that leaves me with weeknights, about three hours if I get cracking and don’t faff about on Facebook (easier said then done) So what I’m trying at the moment is have a list of things that I want to get done of an evening. So far tonight I have done one, but once I’ve done this blog post that’ll be two 😉 lol the other two items on the list are to check out two writers that have popped up on my radar today. I’ve moved them over to tomorrow’s list as neither are a high priority, I think at the moment getting my own writing stuff sorting is a much more pressing matter.
Come the end of the week anything left on my list will be done Friday night, well, that’s the plan anyway.

As for what I’m reading, I’ve just started the second Hunger Games book, Catching Fire. Check Goodreads to follow my progress with it. That link, and Facebook and Twitter are on the right hand side of the screen.
Speaking of Hunger Games, I’ve just watched the movie of the first book again, as a quick reminder of some of the key points of book one and each item I see a certain actor who’s in this movie I can’t help but think want an amazing actor he is. That is Donald Sutherland. I’ve seen a fair few of his movies and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where he is bad in it. Sutherland is not only one of the best actors of his generation but, in my humble opinion, he is one of the greatest actors ever.

Taking Insperation

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While at work today I have been listening to On Writing by Stephen King(I have the audiobook not the paper edition). This is his book on the art of writing, but its also a bit of an autobiography. I’ve got about an hour and a half to go of it and it is an amazing listen. King himself narrates it and this gives it a much more heartfelt feel. He is direct and honest with his words and the advice he gives and its Stephen King! The man has written a shed load of books and short stories and is arguably one of the greatest writers of his generation. So it’s not like someone who has only had a couple of little sales here and there.

In the audio version King is also very easy to listen to and I would recommend that people get hold of this version because, as I said earlier it is a very heartfelt reading. What I have taken from it mostly though is inspiration. I will learn many things from this about the craft of writing but it is the sheer love of writing that we get from King that has struck a cord inside of me.

Despite my personal doubts I have been told that I can write and listening to King makes me feel like I am wasting what may be talent but not getting my arse into gear and getting the words on the page. Getting editing done and getting published.

I’ve asked Tracie to tell me to listen to On Writing whenever I feel down about my writing because I think it will inspire me to get cracking once more 🙂

One thing that King said was that writers need to read, this I know but I really need to get into gear and get more read. I’m going to get more audiobooks which will help me get some more good fiction read/listened (see previous post about audiobooks). That said I’m just about to start reading the second Hunger Games book, Catching Fire 🙂

On a more sober note, as I am writing this I am watching news reports about the Boston Marathon bombings. Words fail me when these things happen and my thoughts go out to anyone who is affected by this terrible act.

Looking Back At My Week

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Firstly I’m just going to say that I know I haven’t blogged much this last week but I’ve been struck down with a cold,again! And something has sprung up this week which has thrown me off my pace a little. Hopefully though ill be able to get back into my stride this coming week.

My writing has been non-existent this week. I’ve been at work all week so with this God damned cold I’ve been getting home and all but passing out. Work has been very busy so I’ve been saving my energy for that.

I have done a lot of reading though. I finished Haywire by Justin R. Macumber (http://www.justinmacumber.com/) I really enjoyed this one, it got a 4-Star review from me. There are some really good characters, the story is interesting and fresh. I’ve not seen much like this before. I found it slowed just a little in the middle a bit but not enough to pull out of the story.
I would love to see more from this universe because I found it really fascinating.

I was going to read the second Hunger Games book but I might dive into the first collection of the Judge Dredd Comics that Tracie brought me 😀

Movie wise I watched The Smurfs movie, which was a lot better then I thought it was going to be. In fact I laughed a hell of a lot watching it. The Exorcism Of Emily Rose was a totally different kettle of fish but what a movie! And last night me and Tracie went and saw Scary Movie 5, it was okay but nothing special. There were laugh out loud moments but nothing that was memorable, it was a very throw away movie.

I got hold of the Mass Effect Trilogy for Xbox 360 last week, I started playing it and got a little bit of the way through but then got that cold back but hopefully I’ll find a little time to dive into it again this week. It seems like it has a really deep and engaging universe to play in.

A Little Target

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I’m not going to reveal my writing goals this year like I did last year, because I missed each one of them, but I am going to let you all know that I am aiming to read twelve to fifteen books this year. So that’s about one a month, I’m currently about a hundred pages off finishing The Hunger Games (yes I started reading it last year, but im still counting it 😛 )  I would also like to knock out as many audiobooks as I can too. This is going to be a little more difficult as I do not really have the money to buy the audiobooks at the moment.  Paper books are different because I have about forty on my book shelve waiting to be read.  Audiobooks are great for me because I can listen to them while I’m at work.  So to save myself a little money I’m going to raid the books on Podiobooks.  If you love listening to fiction in audio form then I’d recommend checking their site out http://podiobooks.com/ You can also find them on iTunes.  Podiobooks basically allows writers to release thier stories in podcasts for free.  Personally I’ll only download a completed story as I like to hear it all in one go. It is a great idea and I have listen to many great writers works from there.  Scott Sigler, J.C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty and a fair few others.  The most recent is Jeff Lane.  I listened to his story, Crush Depth, today and I really enjoyed it.  Here’s the link to his site http://jefflaneaudiobooks.com/

A few of the books I’m aiming to read this year are; The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, Dauntless by Jack Campbell.  That’s part of his The Lost Fleet series. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.  Haywire by Justin R. Macumber, Dunne by Frank Herbert and The Man In The High Castle and Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep, both by Phillip K.Dick

Movie Monday: My Top 5 Movies Of 2012

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I have seen some very good movies this year, and some very bad ones too, but lets not focus on those but let’s look at what was good.  Some of these movies may not have been released this year, but if I say the movie for the first time this year then it is eligible.

I’m going to start at the top;

  1. The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble here in the U.K.):  This is by a long stretch my favourite movie of the year.  It had everything, action, drama, plot, great characters, humour, breath-taking CGI.  Joss Whedon put an amazing movie together here and I’d go as far to say this is close to being my favourite movie of all time.
  2. The Dark Knight Rises: Christopher Nolan’s epic conclusion to this Batman Trilogy was not perfect, but it was close.  It felt rushed in places and some of it felt a little strained but that is easily forgotten as the drama and the enormity of the plot gains pace.
  3. Dredd: I have a dirty confession here, I actually quite like the Stallone version but I can see the cheese factor of the movie.  This version felt a lot more raw and I loved the fact that it was a simple storyline and not Dredd trying to save the world. I’ve never read the comics that the film is based on, but I doubt that each episode has Dredd saving the world or something as grand.  It was just two cops trying to solve a crime, and stop a wider crime wave.
  4. The Hunger Games: I have just started reading the book, but I saw the movie when it first came out and it did really impress me. The changes that I have noticed have not bothered me and I’m looking forward to the next movie, although I am disappointed that Director Gary Ross will not be returning to direct the second film. Dredd only just pipped it to the 3rd place.
  5. Rise OF The Guardians: This is a late comer to the list as it only came out a few weeks ago and gets in by the spirit the movie had. It’s a really great family film which I think deserves its place here.

I’ve got a couple of honorary mentions here.  The first is The Rocky Horror Picture show, Dead Silence, Sinister, Ted and The Women In Black.  All good movies which I wanted to mention as they left a lasting impression on me.

Movie Monday

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I love movies, I mean I absoluetly love movies and if you have been reading my blog for a while you’ll have noticed that I talk about movies quite often so (hopefully) each Monday I’ll be putting up  a post about the movies that I really want to see or am about to watch, or have just watched.

Resident Evil:Retribution

 

I saw this one when it came out and have been thinking about it here and there.  It’s not bad, but it’s not anywhere near as good the previous four films.  It left me feeling a little unsatisfied if I’m honest.  Nothing was tidied up from the last film, no answers were given to questions from the last film, or how Jill Valentine ended up where she was.  The best part of the film was the ending because it set up the next film.  Although it did create a lot of questions but hopefully the producers will answer them in the next film.

 

Prometheus

 

I saw this one when it came out and found that I was annoyed at how it’s meant to be an Alien prequel, but they had better technology.  If there was no Alien element to it then it would not have made any difference to the movie.  It’s the simple thing of technology though.  In this film the technology the crew have is far superior to that of the original film, but I’ll see how it plays out when I watch it sometime this week.

 

And has anyone seen the images of the new Robocop? is it my imagination that it looks like a cheap knock off of Iron Man? I’m thinking that it might have been an idea for the producers to have kept it under wraps for a while because a still picture never shows how it will look in a movie.

 

Top three movies of the year so far:

  1. The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)
  2. The Hunger Games
  3. The Dark Knight Rises