TV

Changing My Viewing Habits

Peter Germany Movies, TV , ,

I am a big movie and TV fan, but something I am guilty of is not watching enough shows and movies that I haven’t watched before. Especially with movies, I’ll throw one on I’ve seen more times than I can count for ease. So from here on out, till the end of the year I am not going to watch anything I’ve seen before.

There are exceptions to this, if I’m at a movie night with friends. If I haven’t seen the movie/TV show within the last five years, or if I’ve only seen the movie/TV show once. A prime example is the movie, Stargate (which I’m watching now). I haven’t watched this movie in many years. It’s not a favourite of mine but it’s a movie I like all the same.

I don’t re-watch TV shows as much as I used to, mainly because it’s a bigger investment of time to commit to multiple seasons of a TV show than it is for a movie that may be a couple of hours.

Now I’ve decided to do this, I’m quite excited by the prospect. The next couple of months are going to be fun.

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Peter Germany Editing, Outlining, Planning, TV, Writing , , , , , ,

A little wrap up for the day. I’ve followed the routine I mentioned in my post earlier and done some work on outlining at lunch time and then this evening another chapter on The Space Watch. I did it a little differently tonight though; I watched some TV and then started work at about nine this evening. I’ve wondered for a while that if I have a time restraint that I’ll be more productive. Tonight it has proved to be the case, but I’m also on a high from wrapping up season two of Sense 8. This show really blows my mind away. It’s so beautifully written, acted, directed, and produced that it’s a true emotional commitment to the show. There have been times during this season that I have been on the edge of my seat, that I have been jumping up and down and fist pumping and cheering the characters on. It’s very few shows or movie that get this response out of me, and Sense 8 is absolutely one of the ones that does and it’s near the top of my favourite all time shows. I cannot wait to see where they take the show from here on out.

I’m calling it a night now, I’m going to read a little before bed and then hopefully do it again tomorrow.

Perspective 

Peter Germany TV, Writing , , , , , ,

Since last weekend I’ve been watching Hells Kitchen on Netflix. There’s three series on there and I’ve got to admit, I wish there was more. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy this show. I think I probably watched the first three, maybe four seasons of the show before drifting away from it, as I do, and as I was watching it last night while I was doing a little editing I realised that to the people aiming to win, Gordon Ramsey is what Dan Abnett and Scott Sigler are to me.

When I used to watch the show it used to amaze me how often they screwed up something they’d claimed to have done countless times before. This time round though, I can Appreciate the pressures they’re under. I’m not going to say I understand it, because I’m not there trying to reach these goals, but I feel I can see how much pressure they have in those kitchens. As I was walking to work this morning I realised that for the contenders working with Gordon Ramsey is a dream come true, and would I be any different if I was working with someone like Dan Abnett or Scott Sigler? I’ve been lucky enough to have met both of my writing idols, and I wasn’t quite a gibbering wreck when I met Dan Abnett but I don’t think I was far off. I would probably have been the same with Scott Sigler but we were in a pub, his business partner A Kovacs was there, along with twenty to thirty other Junkies (that’s what us Sigler fans call ourselves).  And what would I be like if either Abnett or Sigler asked me to work with them on a story! I think I’d be a gibbering mess till it had sunk in, and then I’d be second guessing myself half the time.

If I’m honest I’m not expecting that to happen, but if I am not writing and trying to get my work out in the word then I stand no chance at all. You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.

A Quick Update

Peter Germany Editing, Music, TV, Video Games, Writing , , , , ,

I know I said I wasn’t going to update here daily about my attempt to work for one hour a day no matter what on my writing but seeing as today was the first day I’ve tried it I just thought I’ll let y’all know how it went. It went quite well, I managed to get twelve chapters of Earth, After Liberation read through in an hour and fifteen minutes, which I’m quite chuffed about. During that time I did pause the timer and grabbed a drink or replied to a comment on Facebook and then just stated the timer again and got going once more. I didn’t have the TV on or any music or the radio on in the back round, I literally just cracked on which proved to be very productive, not only in getting a lot of pages worked through but I’ve figured out how to make Earth, After Liberation work a lot better. I’m going to have to cut a lot, re-write a lot more and add even more but I can see quite clearly in my head how it needs to be structured.

Now though, I’m going to play some Xbox and chill out as I’m back at work tomorrow but I’ll be making sure I get my hour in no matter what. As I’m reading through Earth, After Liberation on screen I’ll probably get the hour made up in the evening but once I’ve done this read though and I have a paper copy printed I’ll be able to be a little more flexible with when I’m working on it 🙂

A Quick Update

Peter Germany Books, Editing, Horror, Reading, Sci-Fi, Short Fiction, TV, Writing , , , , , , , , ,

What have I been up to in the last week? Not a lot unfortunately. The words have not flown quite as well as I have been hoping for. Until I can get down to Owen to go through his notes on Project Apollo I don’t really have a lot to do on it so I thought I’d start on what would be my next novel, which in hindsight was a bad idea because I’ll be needing to get back onto Apollo before I’ve finished a first draft.
I’ve only written a few pages of this next novel, Project Sabre, so I’m going to put it to one side and work on tidying up a short story that I’ve had written for a while and I’m going to work on a new short story as well. This one I’ve got a good idea for so I’m going to make a start on that this weekend.

Reading wise I’ve made a good dent in Stephen King’s The Drawing Of The Three. This is an interesting novel and quite different from the first book in the series.
I have also started reading Dark Spaces by Dionne Lister. This is a collection of short stories which are of the darker side of humanity and its really good. I’m about halfway through and these stories are damn creepy!

TV wise I finished watching the first series of Falling Skies and Oh My God what an ending! I can’t wait till I get paid so I can get series 2 😀

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Heat Wave 2013

Peter Germany Books, Movies, Sci-Fi, TV, Writing , , , , , , , , ,

Last year we here in England had maybe two weeks of decent weather. I can only think of one really hot day that stands out but this year we’re in our forth week of a heat wave and people are complaining! come on really? I can understand that it is affecting certain aspects of life. My dads a farmer and its not helping the harvest. I’m unable to run my three year old laptop for more then half an hour because its gets too hot and the heat makes my day job just a little more challenging.

Am I complaining? No. I’m getting on with my job. I’m writing with a pen and paper and limiting my time on my laptop because complaining isn’t going to change the weather and give it a few months all the people complaining about how hot it is now will be whining about how cold it is.

Enough about the heat wave, here’s what happening with me. Project Apollo is going well, I’m on the final straight now and give it a couple more days of writing I think I’ll be seeing the finishing line. Reading has again dropped off again. I’m still on Redshirts by John Scalzi and I’m loving the direction he’s taking with the final third of the book but between Writing and Falling Skies I don’t seem to be finding the time to wrap this one up.
As I just mentioned I’ve been watching the TV series Falling Skies. I’m only a few episodes into it but this is right up my street and I am absolutely loving it. I knocked out three episodes last night when I was only planning to watch one episode. I’m only on series one so I have a lot of catching up to do.
I also saw Pacific Rim on tuesday, wow. I’ll elaborate on that further in another post but I loved it 🙂

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Falling Skies: Episode One

Peter Germany Sci-Fi, TV , , , , ,

*****Very Minor Spoilers*****

This is not the normal sort of post for me to write. I rarely focus on an individual episode in this manor but I’ve got high expectations for this show after a close friend recommended it. I don’t watch much tv so it’s easy for me to miss things but once I was told about this one I was immediately intrigued.
The show takes place a few months after the alien invasion and The episode starts with a kids drawings and a child telling the story of the invasion by the aliens, which I found really creepy (which is always good) and it then leads into a bit of an action sequence which is always a winner if you ask me 😀 and you do see the aliens here. Not much but you do see a little of them moving about. I’ll leave the rest of detailing the story there, but you obviously get an insight into main characters, the show is lead by Noah Wyle, Will Patton and Moon Bloodgood (that’s a great name by the way).
What I’ve liked about this is, aside from the fact that the characters seem quite grounded. Bloodgood especially looks like a women who is very tired. But I like the fact that the producers have actually created an alien species that looks different to just some guy in a suit. The aliens are smaller then us but more agile and have tougher flesh. I am really hoping we see some of the alien culture, some of how their society is set up.
Stephen Spielberg is part of this series which is generally a good thing in my opinion and from this one episode it looks like there is some heart to the show.

I just want to thank my friend Louise for recommending the show and Jordanna East (journeyofjordannaeast | From Ava J. Easterby, the person, to Jordanna East, the author…
http://jordannaeast.com/) for telling me how good it was also. This may be the alien invasion story that I’ve been looking for on TV or in movies for a while.

Managing Time

Peter Germany Editing, Sci-Fi, TV, Writing , , , , , ,

A couple of weeks ago I blitz through season one of A Game Of Thrones in about three days. I’d get home from work and get stuck straight in. I am one of those people who will watch a couple of episodes of a series and if I like it I’ll wait for it to come out on DVD and then watch the series over a couple of days. I’d imagine studios hate me because I never stay the course for a series when it’s on tv (I’d just like to point out that I did not discover Firefly untill three or four years after it had been cancelled 😦 )

So this is my problem, I really want to get stuck into Series Two which Tracie brought me for our 1st year together anniversary, but I don’t want to lose the entire of the next week through watching this. I get home from work at about 6:20 each night. Now after shower, dinner etc. its anything between 7pm and 7:30pm so what I’m hoping to do is get some writing stuff done and any other bits and pieces (drying dishes etc.) by 9pm so I can watch two episodes a night and still get a good nights sleep.

Earlier this year I did a Battlestar Galactica marathon (Should really write a post about that) and I lost almost all my writing time because of this (I am easily distracted!) and I really don’t want to lose that amount of time again if I am honest.

That is my aim for the next two weeks or so. Tomorrow night I’m off to the cinema so tomorrow nothing will get done but from Wednesday I’ll be trying to stick to this until I’ve finished season 2, but then I start of the next season of Spartacus! 😀

A Quick Update

Peter Germany Movie Review, Writing , , , , , , , , , , ,

Most of the last week I have been fighting an irritating cold. Nothing serious but when I do get a cold it gives me a fuzzy head and doing anything creative is thrown out of the window. This annoys me because I had a little momentum going from last week and that’s just gone out of the window. I’m past the worst now so ill be back on creating soon. Probably after the easter break as I seem to have a lot on this weekend.
A lot of today has been spent trying to get a blog post written or a little bit of fiction done but that was not happening so most of it has been spent on Facebook, Twitter and over here at WordPress and watching a lot of TV!

So have you seen that Amazon have brought Goodreads, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing just yet. I’m willing to wait and see how it all plays out. Tobias Buckell wrote a very interesting post about it, here’s the link http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2013/03/29/amazon-has-acquired-goodreads-huh/

I’m going to change how often I write my Movie Monday posts. They are not getting the response I was hoping for so I’m going to change it to a monthly post as opposed to a weekly one.

If you’d like to Follow me on Twitter or Like me on Facebook you can find the links on the right hand side of the page 🙂

To end tonight’s post I would like to say a few words in the memory of British actor Richard Griffiths. He passed away last night and I, like many around the world, will miss seeing him on our screens. I remember him mainly from the TV series Pie In The Sky and the movie The History Boys. Mr. Griffiths was an outstanding actor who also came across as a intelligent and good person as well.

R.I.P. Richard Griffiths