Review: The Thinning

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thethinning-001-1046x700The world is over populated, and the UN has decided every country on earth must lower their population by 5% every year to stop the worlds decline. Some countries enact legislation to prevent births, but the USA enacts another law, a far more deadly law. A law in which everyone is tested every year, and the bottom 5% are taken away to be executed.

That’s the premise of YouTube Red’s new movie, The Thinning. A distopian world where 5% of the population is killed because they are the least intelligent. Only what if someone was tampering with the test results? What if it was all based on a lie?

This reminds me of the made for tv movies from SciFi. Entertaining, interesting, maybe even thought provoking. But you look too deep and you tend to see the plot holes. There are a lot of plot holes, but they are small and only noticeable if you are looking for them. Usually they come down to things like “this character shouldn’t be able to do that so easily” sort of devices, so for a YouTube original movie I gave it a pass.

It was very thought provoking, and I have to admit I saw the ending coming. Even so, I quite enjoyed it. I hadn’t heard of Logan Paul before this movie, but I might check out some of his other work now.

If you don’t have YouTube Red to watch this then you could consider getting the free trial and checking it out. There are a few shows on YouTube Red that are pretty good, but I honestly just like the fact that I haven’t seen a commercial on YouTube in months. The extra content is a bonus.

If you like distopian movies, or sci-fi of the week novels, this movie might hit that spot. But just enjoy it for what it is and don’t pick at the plot holes.

Thankful

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It’s 2am the morning after Thanksgiving. I have left over turkey in the fridge, and my children are all safe and sound in their homes. It was a beautiful day with family, and I am forever grateful for it.

Thanksgiving is an odd holiday who’s origins aren’t exactly pleasant. I know a lot of people choose to not celebrate it, and I can understand why, but I think today, above all days, I was thankful for something approaching normal.

For the last few months things have been ugly in many places. Friends and family fighting and bickering over politics, a subject that use to be taboo. Even disowning, or refusing to speak to each other because they didn’t agree with each other. I know a few people have cut me out for similar reasons, which made me sad.

So having a family tradition were we sit together, enjoy good food, and talk about the pleasant things in life was an invaluable experience. We remembered that we had each other, no matter what happened outside the walls of our home. We could rely on one another, and be there for each other. We could be thankful for having that hope. Even in the darkest times you need that lamp post that guides you through the dark. Some visible sign that helps you keep on the path you choose for yourself.

I don’t know what the future holds. But I hold onto the light, and try to hope for a better tomorrow.

I am grateful for the people I hold dear, and hopeful for the future because I know there are so many of us out there who just want the best for our fellow humans. Even if we can’t always agree what “the best” is.

Maybe I’m a bit naive. Maybe I’m simplifying things. But the world has become very complicated in some ways, and a little simplification can help us understand our part in it all. I am one of 7 billion people in the world. My path is my own, and I can’t let anyone else choose it for me. Nor can my small thread make a huge impact on the billions around me. At least not yet.

Wherever you are, and whatever is happening in your life, I hope you find that light to help you down the path of your own life. A lifeline to keep you afloat even when the world is trying to pull you under. And I hope you find a way to see the good in those around you, even when you disagree.

Writing in a Maelstrom

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It’s NanWriMo, and my word count is the lowest I have ever had my wordcount in…so many years.

I tried to write, I tried to turn off social media, and ignore the elections, and all the horrible things being said on twitter or reddit, and my brain just keeps going back to it. Back to all the hurt and troubles.

I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t want Trump as the president. I didn’t want Hilary either, for a lot of reasons, but that’s no longer important. What is important is going forward, progressing as we always have.

I know people are afraid, and I am afraid for people as well. People who might not have health insurance after this year. People who are afraid that their marriage won’t be legal. People who are afraid of getting deported.

But I’d like to take a moment to remind people that we didn’t get here because of one president, or one politician. We don’t have legal marriage for same sex couples because some person in politics said we could. We have it because we, as a country, stood together against our legislators and told them we believe it is the right thing to do. We didn’t get the right to vote for women, or the desegregation of schools, or the help for those among us with disabilities because of any one person. We stood together, and we made it happen.

Yes, things have changed. Republicans have taken the house, the senate, and the presidency. And a lot of people don’t like Trump, for valid reasons. But we, the people, can still change things. We can still stand up for what’s right. We still have a voice.

BUT! to move forward we, as a country, need to do some healing. We need to be unified in order to do what’s right. To stay in control of our country. We can only do it together.

I know a lot of you are mad at the people who voted for Trump. I know a lot of people would have been just as mad if Hilary had won. And I honestly hope we don’t have an election with two candidates this polarized ever again. But…if we are ever going to make things right we need to know why this happened. We can’t fix things just by shouting slurs at people, you have to find common ground, and rebuild. There is a reason 59 million people voted for Trump. A reason that 20% of the population felt that he was the better candidate. If we don’t start talking about why this happened we’re never going to solve the problem that created it.

Some good videos for this: WheezyWaiter, and H3H3. A beautiful sentiment from Arnold Schwarzenegger. And something to remember from Conan O’Brien.

Review: Web Series

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I’ve watched a lot of web series online, and I thought maybe I could share some of my favorites, and tell you what I like about them. Maybe you can find one you enjoy as well. The only part I find fustrating about web series is that they are so short. But the good ones tend to get more than one season.

Sync– This was originally aired as a series, but now is available as a full length movie. A great scifi adventure where a man keeps replicating himself to infiltrate a facility.

Ren: The Girl with the Mark– Beautifully done fantasy series. A young girl, Ren, discovers that the marked ones aren’t as fictional as she thought they were. Such great acting, and good special effects. I really enjoyed it, and can’t wait for the second season.

Dragon Age: Redemption– Loved the video game, and this short web series inspired by the game is well done. A nice addition to the franchise.

JourneyQuest– This is a really funny series. It’s like a few friends did a really great D&D setting, making up their own paths, then recreated their characters. You have the terrible, and cowardly wizard. A bard with way too much courage. A fighter with more brawn then brains. And the companions just trying to keep everyone alive.

Star Trek Continues– Okay, so, I’m a Trekkie. I love almost all of the Star Trek series, including the original series where Kirk ran around with his shirt torn off half the time, and there was a moral to the story in a lot of the episodes, of not blatantly there at least in the background. So imagine my surprise when I found Star Trek Continues which had so much of that old charm of the original series. Some of their episodes are a bit more heavy handed with the morality, but otherwise I love these episodes. They are just as campy, and cheesy as the original.

Dr Puppet– An adorable stop motion series of Dr Who. Nothing more to say.

Neil’s Puppet Dreams– Still cute puppets, and kind of funny, but a little more adult in content. I love Neil Patrick Harris. He’s amazing, and always entertaining. And the set and puppet design for this are fantastic as well. Sad there were only a few episodes.

Convo’s with my 2 year old– As reenacted by the father, and another full grown man. This series has gotten more hilarious as the family has grown, now with their daughter portrayed as one man, and their son portrayed as another. The acting is fantastic, writing hilarious, and production so well done. But please….maybe I can have just one more cookie.

Mortal Kombat Legacy– This ones a bit harder to find on youtube. It is a Machinama series, and the first season seems to be available in various places, but the second season is not. It came out on blueray a while back so…who knows. But! It is a great series that takes off from the Mortal Kombat games/movies and has a fantastic plot. Incredible production value, and pretty good acting.

LARPs Season 1 and Season 2– This is the story of a group of LARPers, and how everything goes totally wrong. But it might work out in the end. Really well done series, fantastic writing, some good actors, and really funny moments.

Space Janitors– A couple of janitors working on the Death Star, and their friends. For janitors they a really do manage to mess things up a lot.

Of course there is also The Guild, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, but they are pretty well known, and you can find them on Netflix, too.

Hecktic week

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flightminiFirst, Flight of the Griffins is out for free this weekend! If you haven’t picked it up, now is a great time to do so.

This week started out fantastic. I wrote “Orange”, a 1700 word short story about surviving a tragedy… and then I got caught up in life again.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day items. There are times in our lives when stress just sucks the creativity away, and you have to deal with the harder things in life before you can deal with creative pursuits.

For me, this week, it was moving my daughters into their new apartment, and helping a friend move out of her parents house. We aren’t quite finished, there are a few more boxes, and they need a little more furniture, but the majority is done. Now I just need to switch my room with my son. That’s going to be a project in itself.

The short stories helped. Writing small bits, and completing them keeps the creative fire burning. A spark ready to go once life settles down for a bit.

Speaking of which, I think life has settle down some. It’s time to go finish “Red,” a short story about a young girl that steals a red cloak from a witch. What could go wrong?

Victim or survivor?

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I am a survivor. I was in an abusive relationship for fifteen years. I’ve been raped. I was molested as a child. I have had men, and women, sexually harass me, take advantage of me, and use me. Emotionally. Mentally. Sexually. (Yes, I was sexually abused by women, it happens.)

But you’ll notice the first thing I said about myself. I am a survivor. I am not a victim. I will not let myself be a victim again. I am a survivor, and I am using those experiences to make myself a better person. To step outside my comfort zone and be the best me I can be.

Do I have a lot of mental problems? Yep. Social anxiety, panic attacks, low self esteem. I’ve had depression, and I almost killed myself at the height of that depression.

Why did I almost kill myself? Because at that point in my life I was a victim. I had no control in my life. No options. No way to get out. There was no one there to help me. No one to reach out to.

That’s the problem with being a victim. When you’re in the worst of the worst and everything is piling up on your head you can’t see a way out. You can’t find alternatives. You wait for the knight in shiny armor to come rescue you and he never comes. Some of my favorite books during that time were about girls in bad situations who get rescued by some handsome guy who takes them away to show them the love they always wanted.

It’s a fairy tale. A fantasy. But it’s a hope the victim clings to in order to get through the day. I also clung to religion, and a few other things during that time to give me comfort instead of breaking out of the cycle of abuse.

I finally got out of my bad situation, and I did have a knight in shiny armor who helped me to do it. He didn’t whisk me away to marry me or anything silly like that, but he was a friend who saw me in a horrible situation who offered me a place to go and start a new life. I am forever grateful to him. I always have been. BUT! he is not the reason I started my journey out of being the victim, and on to being the survivor. I did that. I finally figured out that I had some agency, and I could make some choices on my own. I could be myself and live and love and thrive. I just had to get rid of all the bad people in my life and start over. Once I did that my friend was able to come in and give me that extra help to get started in the right direction.

And others have helped me. My boyfriend who pushes me to face my fears, but stands by me when the panic attacks come. My friends who talk with me when my mind won’t let go of a hurt and keeps spinning around in circles. My children who have always looked up to me, and encouraged me to be the best mom I could.

So I can’t be the victim anymore. And I don’t want to encourage others to be victims either. I want to encourage them to lift themselves up out of bad situations and find their own path instead of listening to all the loud voices around them. Those voices, the friends and family around me who kept saying I could fix my marriage, or I should be grateful I had what I had and stop wanting something better…those voices were lying to me. They are lying to you. You can ask for more. You can be treated with respect, and love, and caring. But you won’t get it by being a victim. And you usually won’t get the people who hurt you to admit they did it. You have to learn to find peace with who you are, and be yourself, not who they want you to be.

I guess this desire to stop being a victim and start being the agent of my own life slipped into my writing somewhere. Most of the women I write about are people going through horrible things. The world is falling in around them, and pushing them to go one way, to lay down and take it. But each and every one of them discovers they can’t do that. They have to make choices, they have to fight, they have to push forward.

I like that message. I’m going to keep spreading that message. I hope it influences others in that place of victim-hood to find their own voice and be a survivor instead. To stop believing the lies and start being the writer of their own life story.

The Half Blood Sorceress

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I got a description from Bryan Cohen the other day, and I thought I’d share it with you. I’ll be working on book two for NaNoWriMo in a couple months. I’ve already written out the plot, and gotten a few chapters in, but that’s okay. I have book three, and four, and five to work on if I need to. The point of NaNoWriMo for me is always to get as many words in as possible.

So, without further adieu, here is the blurb for The Half Blood Sorceress:

A tragedy. A secret. A journey to find the truth…

Sybel watches her mother burn on a funeral pyre. As she copes with her overwhelming grief, she never expects her father to push her into the flames as well. When Sybel survives the pyre without a single burn, she’s banished from the village for reasons she doesn’t understand.

With more questions than answers, Sybel’s only hope is to make a treacherous journey to find the wise mages of Kemore. As evil forces surround her, Sybel needs to fight tooth and nail to stay alive. When the attacks mount and winter approaches, the girl who would not burn must trust in unlikely allies to save her life and discover the truth…

Awaken the Dragon is the first book in a captivating new fantasy series. If you like rich, historical worlds, robust and believable magic, and captivating storytelling, then you’ll love Crissy Moss’ Half Blood Sorceress Series.

Buy Awaken the Dragon to get caught up in the journey today!

Review : Arq

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​First, the not spoiler review. 

Netflix original movie, Arq is a fast paced action adventure. I went in knowing nothing about the movie other than it was a Netflix original and sci-fi. When things started going I ended up glued to my seat trying to figure out what was going to happen next. I loved this movie! I hope it gets a sequel because I would love to see more of the world.

The entire movie takes place inside one house. You do get a feel for the world outside the house, but they manage to do a beautiful job of telling a story with this limited set, and only six characters. 

I honestly think I got more enjoyment of the story because I did not know what to expect. I came in blind and was able to take in the pieces as they were given to me, and got more interested the farther down the rabbit hole we went.

Now, for the spoilers: 

Arq isn’t a new idea. Time looping and sci-fi have gone hand in hand for as long as most of us can remember. I can think of several Star Trek episodes, plus movies like Primer, Looper, and Groundhog Day. All of which deal with people repeating a day, or week, or moment over and over again.

Arq is, however, creative in the way they do it. One person remembers. As they loop more people start to remember, and each new person who remembers causes new complications along the way. The fact that all of this is happening during a home invasion just makes it even better. 

The interaction between the two main characters is fantastic! And the fact that it keeps changing as they keep learning new things about each other through the loops is great. 

The ending was a bit of a OMG moment. I thought “fantastic, let’s go to the next episode, this is great.” That’s when I realized it was a movie, not a series. This would make such an interesting series!

Hoping they make a sequel to this. It really deserves one.

It’s all about the little things

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For the last week I’ve been setting up all the print files for my trilogy. I had to redo the one book I already had out because I rewrote three chapters, and the other two I had been putting off till I had “time.” You never have time. It’s just not there, never is, and I should just stop kidding myself. Something needs done? Do it.

Anyway, I got everything put in, ordered copies so I could see them, and then today I did the virtual proof just to take a look…and there was an error. Not like an error with the words, or with the cover. No, I was missing a page. A BLANK page even. But that one page made a huge difference. Without that one page right after the table of contents the rest of the book shifted. The first page wasn’t on the right hand side. The margins were backwards because they were formatted for being on the opposite side. And everything just looked WRONG.

I had to open the file, add one blank page, and resubmit everything.

Little things can matter, even blank pages. Sometimes you’re staring at that blank page wondering what the heck you should write, and you get an idea. Other times you stare at it, type a few words, delete them all, and try again.

I’ve had a lot of new ideas lately, but few of them get completed. That’s just another thing that gets in the way of following your dreams. But I don’t want to be just a dreamer. I want to be a finisher. I want a stack of books sitting on my shelf, all of them with my name on the spine.

So I finished editing the book again, and republished it. Now I’ll wait for it to be proofed, and order another copy. And it will finally go up on Amazon in a few more days. No big.

Because of one page.

It really is the little things that make your dreams into reality. I’m going to go write a page in my novel now.

Numbers

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This is a data post. Some of you have found the numbers interesting. For me the numbers are more about accountability to myself. If I’m doing better than last year I am hopeful. If not then I think I need to get my butt in gear and work harder.

graphSo here is the graph of each month for the last four years.

So far, this year, I have written 131k. May and June were my best months so far. That’s because I started writing The Half Blood Sorceress novels in May. Every time I start a new story, especially a series like this, the words just flow so fast and so free that I end up with three thousand words in less then a couple hours. I love it! That is always my favorite part of writing, the first bloom of an idea.

June was the month I had in between jobs where all I did was write, so of course I wrote a lot that month. A little bit less than May, which I was surprised about. Still, I wrote more in May and June than any other month except NaNoWriMo.

Then July I started the new job and my writing tanked. Not entirely surprising. I was physically and emotionally exhausted for the first few weeks of training. Then I started easing into the new job and had to figure out scheduling. Now I’m back into the swing of things with writing and balancing everything else and….my schedule is changing this weekend.

I’ve got a month and a half to figure out how to balance my schedule and writing with the rest of my life before this years NaNoWriMo. I really don’t want this to be the first year I fail NaNo in five years. I haven’t even figured out which project to write for this years NaNo. Will I do book two and three of The Half Blood Sorceress, or will I do a few more books in The Eternal Tapestry?

On average, after all of this, I wrote about 5-600 words a day. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but enough to chip away at the next series and get them ready for publishing.
As for the Bradbury Challenge which I started at the beginning of the year…I’ve completed ten short stories this year. That’s a little more than one short story a month. The trouble with short stories I’ve found is I keep getting shiny new object syndrome. I start working on a short story, then loose interest and go onto the next one. I have quite a number of short stories started but never completed, and a couple that I completed but decided to completely rewrite because they were terrible. But that doesn’t stop Shiny Syndrome from happening.

I love all the stories I come up with, even though I can see that a lot of them are terrible ideas. The terrible ones usually sit in an unaccessed file waiting for a day when they might jump-start a new idea. But then there are all of the stories that are good, publishable stories that I want to put out there some day, but fail to complete for whatever reason. I think I need to find a way to conquer my Shiny Syndrome in order to do that.

Worse, I have a lot of novels also slowly being worked on. Several of them are over 10k words. I have over 740k words written, and only 360k published. That’s a huge gap of incomplete works that I need to finish.

So….the next month and a half will go to figuring out my schedule, and hopefully finishing some of these short stories. NoNoWriMo is going to completing a novel or two in either the Eternal Tapestry world, or the Half Blood Sorceress series. Either way it’s 50k words into a new series and that will help me get the novels finished, and published, in the coming year.

I’ve got a long way to go, and I want to get back to writing 2k a day so that I can eventually get all the stories out of my head and onto the page. Of course then I’ll just have to dream up some new stories, won’t I?