So, you’ve written a novel and you want to get it published. Fantastic! You now have some important choices to make. Will you to try your luck with a conventional publisher, or will you forego that path and its potential rejection letters and venture down the self-publishing route?

Why not try both?

Traditional publishers have undergone mergers and downsizing, and demand for electronic media has risen, with more
books (particularly in eBook format) being sold than ever before. With so many books on offer, it is an enormous task to get yours noticed, and sold, in such a competitive, fluctuating market. You are not alone in trying to get your book picked up. There are hundreds upon thousands of authors, all vying to get their books seen, both on- and offline.

If you want to compete, your offering needs to be the best it can possibly be before you put it out there, which means you will need to invest in your own work. Even on the self-publishing route, your book needs to be edited, a cover needs to be designed, and it needs to be promoted by professionals, if you want it to be taken seriously – by both your peers, and your potential readers.
But many professionals from the conventional publishing world are right now finding themselves being made redundant. Our skilled editors, cover designers and other industry people are finding themselves without the security of a full time job; risking their invaluable skills and knowledge being lost, simply because those who need their skills can no longer find them.

Creatives Unite was built to make it easy for writers to find the people they need to polish their book, launch and publicise their work, and as a vessel for now-freelancing publishing industry professionals to list their skills and be found. With an ever-growing directory of professional editors, agents, artists, audiobook producers, marketing consultants, researchers, video trailer creators, and even other writers, Creatives Unite enables you to build your own book finishing team. Work with only who you need, and who you want, and negotiate directly with the freelancer of your choice.

A year in the making itself, Creatives Unite was a collaborative project between Brisbane web developer Min Dean and Australian author, Isobelle Carmody, who both wanted to devise a way for writers to find the professionals and the advice they needed to get their books sold at the highest quality possible. During its beta phase, the site had significant input from Australian author (and Australian Society of Authors chair) Sophie Masson, during which the ASA Membership discount was implemented. Creatives Unite has a yearly maintenance fee of $10 (or $5, if you are an ASA member), to ensure the site can be constantly expanded with additional functionality, with the additional security ensuring that all personal contact information is protected from the eyes of the public.

So whether you are a writer seeking to be published conventionally, a writer going it alone along the self-publishing path, or a professional who wants to advertise their skills to writers who need them, head over to Creatives Unite, list yourself, and start connecting!

Visit http://creatives-unite.net for more information.

BEC STAFFORD INTERVIEWS LISA RYE

To what do you attribute the resurgence in retro-style games?

I believe the resurgence of retro-style games is coming from the gamers who grew up playing games, and wanting to make their own. I had classics when I was little, like Commander Keen and Chrono Trigger, which I must have finished twenty times or more over the years! There’s a strong nostalgia with those games, that brings you straight back to the feelings you felt when playing those old games you loved.

The first Beta version was publicly previewed at a games showcase. How nerve-wracking is that experience & how much testing and feedback preceded the release?

Presenting a new game is always nerve inducing, but we had fantastic responses at the first public showcase. If you have confidence that your game is fun to play, that helps a great deal!

What was your model in the creation of the ‘down scrolling’ retro style?

When the idea came to me, it brought up images of a fast, free flowing and tricky game play style, and I just wanted to play that! I’m not sure that there’s any particular game that inspired it, there’s plenty of vertical climbing games and side scrollers, but not so many falling games.

I’m a huge fan of American McGee’s ‘Alice: Madness Returns’ & the story that accompanies the game play. How difficult is it to incorporate a narrative into a gaming environment?

Bringing in a strong narrative to the game was very important to me. One of the aspects that made me fall head over heels in love with games was the way you could sink into another world and experience the story unfolding. But yes, you do need to approach story telling in games in a different way to how you’d approach a short story or film.

I know many indie developers just go the easy route of using a stereotypical story or not having a story at all due to time or budget reasons, but if you think creatively, there’s always a way.

Freedom Fall has been created for multiple platforms. Which are users predominantly downloading for and have you been any shifts in this trend over time?

I’ll have to answer this one after release!

What are some of your favourite retro games and why?

What counts as ‘retro’ differs from person to person, but I grew up playing games like Jazz Jack rabbit, Final Fantasy, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure, Sim City and pretty much anything I could could find!

GOG, Humble Bundle, & the like offer gamers bulk games for incredibly low prices. How difficult is it to compete in this market and what do you need to consider in terms of promo work?

Right now, the indie market is doing wonders for small developers! Of course, this also means there are more and more people making games, so you do need to work hard to reach your audience. Indie groups don’t often have a large marketing budget, so you need to use every avenue you can: social media, conventions, personal blogs and websites, even supportive friends and family helping to spread the word can make a lot of difference!

Can you tell us how your idea for a reverse Rapunzel story evolved and why you elected to make the princess creepy and dark?

For Freedom Fall, the story emerged naturally from the game play style. The falling mechanic needed a set-up that suited it, so I created a prison tower that reaches the sky, then worked from there to develop a world and characters around it. I also wanted a story that would work without cut-scenes that take control away from the player, so the idea of the creepy little princess in her ridiculously tall tower, writing on the walls, just fit.

Which games are you currently playing in your spare time?

Spare time? What’s that? I do have a pile of games I’ve been dying to play after the release, but I did find the time to play Evoland the other day (that’s certainly a romp through some of the games I grew up with!) and replay Bastion, which I can also recommend a great deal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmOFow-LzZ0

Most of you probably aren’t even aware that I have a number of children’s publications to my name. Indeed, writing for primary school children was my first love. I’ve also written a number of children’s picture book manuscripts and had a dream to publish one of them but it never happened as I got sidetracked into writing for adults.

My dream has finally been realised when Books To Treasure publisher, Adrianne Fitzpatrick gave my story Serious Sas and Messy Magda the nod. This was made all the more meaningful by the fact that Adrianne taught me most everything I know about children’s writing over a decade ago, back when she ran classes.

She’s gone on to have a long career as an editor in Australia and the UK and now has her own publishing house.

In the coming weeks I’ll be able to share the cover with you, but for now please join me in a cheer that when dreams do come true, it feels as good as you imagined it would!

I’ll update you with release date and buy details in due course. I’m so excited that I’ll be able to share the book with all my new great nieces and nephews.

Some of you will have seen my posts on Facebook, but for those who haven’t, I’ve just had three weeks in the USA with so many highlights including seeing Rock of Ages on Broadway, and a New York Knicks play-offs game at Madison Square Gardens. I met a bunch of wonderful people and now have a raft of memories that have made my life much richer.

And now it’s back to work. Normal posting will resume, plus some updates on where my writing is headed.

Hope you’re all well and happy. It’s good to be back!

Reviewed by Jamie Marriage

If given the opportunity to avoid extinction would you take it? Even if it meant abandoning or even destroying everything you know?

This is the major question that David Brin’s novel Existence doesn’t so much try to answer as investigate from every angle.

During a routine space-junk collection mission astronaut Gerald Livingstone goes against protocol and lassos a crystalline object that has been drifting in Earth’s orbit for longer than anyone imagined. And when the crystal egg begins to speak with the voices of alien entities, welcoming humans to join them, the already precarious balance of Earth society is thrown into chaos.

Existence is a complex entity built primarily CyberPunk and Hard Sci-Fi components, but they aren’t the only elements that have been crafted together to tell this tale, and with stunning cohesion.

Hamish Brookeman, acclaimed novelist and director, is tasked with unravelling a plot that risks the plans of his secret society. And in turn exposes far more than he expects.

Hacker, an eccentric playboy, ends up in an extreme sporting accident that results in falling into a world of strangeness and grants him a new sense of purpose.

And Tor Pavlov, pop-culture reporter extraordinaire, prevents a terrorist bombing and becomes immersed in an online culture of unimaginable proportions.

But these are only a few of the many varied characters intertwined within Existence; each of whom have a vital part to play in the overall scheme of things. The tangle weave of betrayal, suspicion and subterfuge is constantly tinged with the hint of hope and progress. Especially when a second egg is discovered that refutes the grim tale of the first.

The writing of Existence is amazing, the characters flawless in their scope and the setting a fascinatingly erratic ride through worlds often difficult to comprehend, but never hard to picture with this level of storytelling. But be warned, this is a dense parable; filled from end to end with twisting points of views and narrators-a-plenty.

It isn’t a fast book, but it is a great book. And one worth taking the time to enjoy.

In this new series hosted by Charisma Carpenter, we get to hear  stories from women who’ve survived violent attacks.

The series begins with Charisma’s own personal recount of fighting back when she and some friends were attacked in San Diego by a then police officer.

You only have to spend a moment speaking with Charisma (and her wonderful mum) to know that she’s a woman with enormous spirit and perfect to host this kind of show. I wish her the best of luck with it, I have a feeling it will be incredibly successful …

SURVIVING EVIL (from TV Mole)
Featuring dramatically and emotional stories of women who fought back against their attackers and survived against
amazing odds, SURVIVING EVIL is hosted by Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel.) Carpenter is the survivor of a real-life incident that she endured more than 20 years ago and the series begins with her story. The actress and two friends were swimming at San Diego’s Torrey Pines State Beach in 1991 when they were violently attacked by an armed, rogue police officer. Carpenter fought for her survival after being held at gunpoint, but her two friends were both shot by the attacker and seriously wounded. The police officer was sentenced to 56 years in prison for the attacks in addition to a series of rapes and robberies.

Charisma tells TV Line: 

“It’s about empowerment, about victims who take fate into their own hands and rescue themselves, or seek justice and find it,” Carpenter says of I Survived Evil‘s mission. “It’s about heroes, stories of survival. And happy endings.”

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

One Small Step is the perfect title for this anthology of stories by some very prominent Australian speculative fiction authors. It offers hope for the future and suggests the possibility of things that mere years ago seemed impossible. When taken in context of the famous quote ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, there is the sense that though the hope may only be a glimmer, it will grow.

Given the original context of the title, I was expecting an anthology of sixteen science fiction stories. Instead, it is a more eclectic mix of the many genres under the speculative fiction banner. Fantasy and sci-fi dominate, but some of the stories might be classed as horror. The genre differences keep this anthology refreshing as each story is very different in content and context, even if they uniformly take a small step towards something better. There are some incredible stories in this selection and while some are merely a good read, I can’t imagine anyone who would not find that many of the stories in here will stay with them.

The steps that are taken are not only within the stories, I am glad to say. The anthology itself is taking steps away from the comfort of its usual perceived market and target audience. All of these wonderful tales are by women writers and many of them revolve around a female character. The ones that don’t are still markedly female-centric. For a genre that is improving but still lacks women-centred tales, One Small Step is a welcome addition. Stories with people of colour as main characters also feature heavily in the anthology, and not in a way that makes race the central or only focus.

There are too many stories that I loved to discuss them in as much detail as I would like, but Morning Star by DK Mok was one that I wished would go on forever. I would want a whole novel out of it; and then perhaps a trilogy. After that; a movie franchise. Two robots and a boy on a ship, searching for any other sign of human life should not be as hauntingly, achingly beautiful as Mok has made it. While the writing is simple and understated, the story is raw and painful yet almost lovingly gentle. It took me hours after that story, to pick the anthology up again; and I needed every minute of that process time.

Aside from that, you can expect stories of time-travelling party hosts with one very unusual trick up their sleeves, dolls that change the luck of the village they come from, and a new way to greet death within these pages. The ideas are fresh and intriguing; and without fail, incredibly well written. For anyone who loves fantasy or sci-fi or is trying out the genre; One Small Step will be a welcome addition to your library.

One Small Step: and Anthology of Discoveries – ed. Tehani Wessely

FableCroft (May 1, 2013)

ISBN: 9780987400000

Thanks to October Coast, we had the chance to interview american filmmaker and writer David Mickey Evans, best known as the director of the iconic “The Sandlot“ movies, as part of the celebration of the first film’s 20th Anniversary.

In addition, Mr Evans is also promoting his book “The King of Pacoima“, which is the full, unedited story (his story) told in the film Radio Flyer, which he also wrote.

David’s other credits include The Sandlot 2, The First Season with actor Sean Astin, Ace Ventura Jr and Barely Legal.

1. David, how did you originally get involved in children’s film and what are your favourite aspects of working for that demographic?

I have very strong memories of my childhood and so I suppose that makes childhood and adolescence fertile creative ground for me.  Having said that it is not the only thing that interests me.  I write stories that interest me, I have scripts that range from a true story epic western, to a drama about a reclusive writer.  I get associated with family and kids movies because ever since I sold RADIO FLYER, every family-oriented or kid-oriented script that gets written by anyone, comes across my desk.  I love working with kid actors because I’m still 12 years-old on the inside.

2. Could you tell us about your latest book, The King of Pacoima and your experience writing it?

The King of Pacoima is actually the novel I wrote, upon which I based the script for Radio Flyer.  After the film was released, I put the manuscript away promising myself someday that I would return to it and get it published.  I think it needed to age or season or something, like a good whiskey.  When the e-book thing started to happen it seemed like a good time to publish it.  So I edited it somewhat and included photos, storyboards, old kodachrome slides and paintings I had commissioned to illustrate the book, and hopefully add a depth of authenticity to it for the reader (it’s autobiographical to a large extent).  Legacy Publishing is dying, and since the reach of publishing in the e-book formats is worldwide, you’re only limited by how either good or bad the book is, I think.  And I think the book is good.

3. You’re currently undertaking the 20th Anniversary Sandlot tour. Can you tell us how it’s going? What’s the energy been
like at screenings and how has it felt to revisit that time of your life?

We had the first screening of the tour last night at Arm and Hammer Park in Trenton, New Jersey, home of the Trenton Thunder and the staff there told me they had never seen anything like the response to the screening.  It was a double header – game first, then screen The Sandlot.  Attendance was about 5,500.  And no one left after the game, so clearly they all came to see the movie.  The line for SANDLOT posters and t-shirts started out about 400 people long and never got any shorter.  I signed probably 2,000 autographs.  I didn’t get out of there until about 11:30 PM.  So I’d say it was off the charts.  And honestly, it didn’t feel like revisiting anything in my life – because The Sandlot is ever present, it’s always with me, it never went away into the past and it never gets old.  There’s hasn’t been a single day in twenty years in which I have not received a note, a thank or 100 emails thanking me for the film.

4. You collaborate on a number of writing projects with your colleague, Paul Jaconi-Biery. What most appeals to you about co-authorship, and what’s your collaborative process like?

Paul and I have a writing partnership that most writers would probably kill for.  There isn’t a solitary molecule of ego anywhere in the room when we write together. The only thing that matters is the story and the question, “can we do better?”  In a practical sense, having a writing partner forces you past any proclivity toward writing-death, which of course is procrastination (you can’t get the work done unless you get the work done).  Creatively, having another brain that is symbiosis with yours, making for a single voice on the page, allows us to throw ideas, dialogue, jokes, anything back and forth, always trying to find the exact best way to go structurally or emotionally or dialogically.  Can either of us do it alone?  Yes.  You can’t collaborate with another writer unless you’ve got the chops to being with.  And listen, writing is fucking scary.  It’s essentially playing God.  And I’m pretty sure he gets annoyed if you’re taking credit for stuff you shouldn’t be taking credit for.  Having a partner keeps the terror quotient down to tolerable levels.

5. Fans know that you’re an avid baseball fan. What do you love about the sport, which is your favourite team, and what are some of your favourite sporting films, baseball-related or otherwise?

I bleed Dodger Blue.  Clemente is my all time baseball ball hero. I love baseball because it’s a meritocracy, like life, that can be summed up in one word, “Hope.”  I’m not a fan of sports movies in general, although Raging Bull, Rocky and Cinderella Man were beautiful pieces of work.

6. Speaking about ‘The Sandlot Kids’, can you share with us something about the process while filming that iconic film and also maybe some funny stories behind the scenes?

The whole production was like one big summer camp for the kids.  They gelled really fast as friends on and off screen.  That made the “Herding Squirrels” thing much easier.  Working with them wasn’t so much “working” or directing as it was guiding them like a big brother or a camp counselor.  They were all great mimics too, so when we would get stuck (which wasn’t very often) I could say “Try it like this…” and then line-read them and they would mirror me and we’d get it done.  The scene that probably took the longest to shoot was the “S’mores scene,” in which Ham instructs Smalls in the fine art of making a S’More.  Pat Renna was so damn funny saying “You’re killin’ me Smalls!”  That all the other guys busted up laughing every time he said it, and essentially rendered the take unusable because they were in the background.  And when kid actors get the giggles, forget it, day over.  They simply cannot stop laughing.  Eventually (after hours and hours) I had to use a take in which I told the guys “look if you can’t stop laughing, just laugh with you r mouth closed!”  The take used in the movie, if you look at Benny in the background, poor Mike Vitar is actually biting his lip to keep from ruining the take.

7. You graduated from Loyola Marymount University with degrees in film and screenwriting. How significantly did your studies affect your career and would you recommend formal study to other creative artists?

College gave me the opportunity to study lots of different things.  Sort of soak up a bunch of information I might not otherwise have been exposed to.  So for that, yeah, it’s good.  But college didn’t teach me to write, no one can teach anyone to write.  But if you want to write, you have to live a life, in other words you have to experience things, and learn things.  What you do with that stuff creatively is what makes you a writer, so tangentially yeah, it was valuable to my becoming a writer.  But it did not teach me to write.  Film production wise if I had to do it over again, I’d bypass the college thing altogether and work on as many film productions as I could and learn it all on the ground.

8. How important are blogging and social media to your career and how much interaction do you have with your fans?

Hugely important.  In the movie business everything is people.  Social media is people.  The two are now, I think, inextricably connected forever.  If you’re a writer or a director and you don’t have a FB page you’re an idiot.  I have direct contact with my fans through a public FB fan page and my Blog.  It is the doorway through which anyone, fan or producer, can contact me.

9. What’s next on your creative agenda?

A Christmas movie called MIRACLE AT PALMER HOME, in Memphis, TN this fall.  A film I wrote that takes place in Hawaii called THE HAOLE SUBSTITUE, another script Paul Jaconi-Biery and I wrote (for Peter Fonda) called HEMINGWAY’S HERO,  And the initial few movies adapted from the great Matt Christopher Sports Books for kids.

Thanks a lot for your time.

My pleasure!

Interview courtesy of our creative content partner Jorge Duran and The Spotlight Report

I watched two recent TED talks last night, one from Amanda Palmer and one from Bono. In a sense both were asking for help. Bono was touting stats to show the difference we’re making towards global poverty and essentially begged us not to flake on the final hurdle. Amanda talked about forgetting the sell, and asking people for help, and how it had worked for her career.

So what troubled me?

Well, why is it that I couldn’t engage with Bono’s talk at all, whereas Amanda’s captured me? Bono’s is indeed a noble cause, and he’s a person who I’ve followed for years and respected, musically. Amanda Palmer, on the other hand, is not someone I’ve followed. My understanding of her is limited to a few data points: singer, married to Neil Gaiman.

I took this unease to friends on FB and Carl Lenehan made a salient remark:

“IMO What he [Bono] is talking about is more uncomfortable for us, as we can only relate to a limited number of people at once (120-150) and Bono asks us to care for the whole world and most of them we naturally feel to be ‘the other’. Amanda Palmer asks us to care for one person at once and communicate with that person. That is natural for us. 

In addition, we also have a degree of cynicism and overload with his subject matter and he is an icon using established communication channels. She is iconoclastic and is asking us to create a new paradigm of contact.”

I absolutely agree with Cary’s viewpoint, but still there is more. And it goes way past this present example. What I’m saying is, that these two talks are really a glimpse into where we are failing as a species – and where we are succeeding. Amanda is talking about a paradigm shift, don’t SELL – try ASKING. But her shift is based on the most basic and most essential of human needs – to engage, to genuinely communicate.

Although my upbringing probably wouldn’t have allowed me to take my host’s beds (see Amanda Palmer TED talk), I can see her point. Barter at the most basic level. You give to my family, you value my family – I give to yours, I value yours.

So simple and yet so overlooked by commerce, politics and religion.

What troubled me was that Bono wasn’t operating at that level. Jokes about his own God complex and flipant remarks about Brazilian models, though witty, were not real. They were rehearsed and delivered that way. 

It makes me want to shout … while we continue to paractise not speaking from the heart, we will continue to struggle as a race. It’s only when we genuiniely engage that there is room for change and growth.

You can see Bono’s TED talk here: http://on.ted.com/BonoNews

You can see Amanda’s TED talk here: http://on.ted.com/Amanda

I would welcome your thoughts …

For a few years he’s been known as the Maintenance Evangelist, consulting in all kinds of industry about the maintenance crisis that the world faces as we lose our technically skilled workforce to the lure of the IT industry. What that means, in the bluntest of terms, is that we’re not going to be able to fix our own equipment and transport in the coming years. We’re rapidly becoming technically dumb. Not only that, but we’re shooting our own economies in the foot.

This taken from the Marhsall Insitute website:

Over 12.8 million people are out of work in the United States, but there are an estimated 3.5 million unfilled job openings, with over 40 percent of those openings in the skilled trades. Companies need highly technical, capable resources to manage and operate today’s complex equipment, and agile minds to adapt to the newer complex equipment technologies on the horizon.

Joel is on a mission to see that we don’t end up in some post-apocalyptic scenario where we can’t take care of the civilsation we’ve built ( IOW, we’re living in our own dark science fiction story!).

You can read more about it here and download the app.

Among the PR tools Joel uses are the two songs he has written; MAINTENANCE WOMAN and the maintenance_crisis_bluegrass. You can explore the nuts and bolts (pun intended) of what Joel’s been doing by starting with his YouTube channel.

Also, Joel talks about his latest alliance with Reliabilityweb.com over at UPTIME magazine and it has a contact for him for anyone who would like to learn more.

Somehow I think Joel is going to be an inspiration to me for many years to come!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP2XjIiZusI