5min – Movie review – Split

I started this morning with checking emails, and going down the rabbit hole of reviews and twitter messages. Not a productive morning. Or maybe it was. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Social media is a necessary evil of trying to get people to notice you, so there is that.

Last night we watched Split finally. It is a movie about three young girls that are kidnapped by a man with multiple personalities. They talk about how a person who has to go between personalities will sometimes have physical differences depending on which personality s/he is in at that time, and they describe it as “taking the light” from the others. being an M Knight Shyamalan story we were waiting for the twist. But there really wasn’t one this time. It lays out the movie from the beginning, and I could see the ending coming. I don’t know if this makes it better or worse for that. The “twist” might have been the cameo at the very end from an earlier movie.

I liked the story, and the ending made sense. I am glad they were very subtle about the abuse of the main character in her past, but you knew it was there. Not good. But integral to the story. Split was a little slow for my taste, taking a very long time to get to certain things. But that’s normal for a Shyamalan story. Signs, the village, and lady in the water were the same way. Slow. Meticulous Calculated. That’s Shyamalan for you.

But overall I enjoyed it.

And that’s my five.

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A new platform?

There’s too much social media out there? Blogs, twitter, facebook, tumbler… the list goes on and on and ON!

I’ve tried to limit my time on social media. I do use several of them for different things. I post my book reviews and book reads on Goodreads, and some for booktube on youtube, I have a Facebook and a tumbler but I just push things to them, I don’t really interact there much. I have a G+ that I use to use a lot, but less so lately as my feed has gotten more like facebook and less like the community I loved. Twitter is where I tend to communicate with people, and my blog is where I share things, behind the scenes and such.

So why did I just get into Medium?

My blog is fun, and I love it, but it is a catch all. I use my blog to sometimes discuss things that are incredibly important to me, like welfare, or politics, or TPP. I also use it to talk about things that bother me, and the trouble I have with writers block, or even just the twit that cut me off while driving the other day. It’s a place to be me! I chat, I show who I really am, and I share it with you.

But if I am doing all of those things at once then anything I have to say that is remotely important get’s lost in the background. It quickly gets pushed down under mini rants and questions of “what the heck was that.” And I actually love essay writing. Argumentative, evaluation, comparative, and descriptive. That’s basically what article writing is: an essay.

So when I saw Medium articles posted by some of my favorite people on twitter and youtube I thought I’d check it out. Then I decided it was a perfect place for me to share my essays and articles without them getting lost under my more personal writing here.

So…the first article is up. It’s called “Where do ideas come from?” I probably won’t add articles there very often, but I might go back through my old posts on here and pull out the best ones to be updated and used as articles over there.

 

“What’s on your mind?”

overflowing-closetEvery time I log into Facebook, which isn’t often, it greets me with that mantra. I very rarely answer on there because FB, for me, is less about broadcasting what’s going on in my life, or even keeping tabs on my friends, and more about communication. I will send messages to friends on there, or upload pictures sometimes, but otherwise want very little to do with it. I’d rather talk to friends about what is going on in my life then post it to facebook.

Our interaction with social media has become rather strange. Many people share pictures on Instagram, post what’s happening on Facebook, or share pictures of their food on tumblr, but have fewer actual conversations. But we call the people following us on those various platforms “friends”, and we get little boosts of serotonin every time we get hundreds of likes on a picture/post.

I admit that this is why I prefer Google plus. There are fewer personal posts. Images and information is usually about jobs, hobbies, or information on how to do something. I follow a lot of authors and geekdom so I get to see information about new blog posts, how to, news that’s going on in the world, and of course the geeky stuff I love like Firefly and Dr Who. It doesn’t call these people friends, unless you name the circle they are in “friends”, it calls them contacts. They can be business associates, fiends, people who love the same thing that you do, or any number of other things. It’s really good for networking. Not as good for posting random BS from your day to day life. Usually.

I suppose I’m terrible at social media. But I’m okay with that. Some things don’t need to be online. I mean really, do you need to know everything I eat, what I’m reading, and that I just got a root canal? Okay, maybe I could write a blog post about some of those things, and I probably will, but not every day of every moment.

“What’s on my mind?” Music, games, hopes, and dreams. Writing my books. Getting some sleep now that my tooth is healing. So many things, and many more tomorrow.

But I think I’ll only broadcast what I think others might be interested in.

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An Update and a Book

First the update.

I finished “Flight of the Griffins”. It is now being edited by the editor, and will hopefully be out soon.

It’s be a long road, and I am very glad to see this one finished. I will be ecstatic to see it out!

 


I just finished reading “A Perfect Blood”. In it, Rachel Morgan has to deal with a serial killer doing ritualistic slayings who’s origins look demonic.

I admit I am rather bias. I love Kim Harrison novels. The magic, the mayhem, the witches and vampires… Yes, one of my favorite series.

Times have changed. Authors can, if they choose, be very interactive with their fans. Kim Harrison answers her fans on her Facebook page often, giving insights into her books. There is a character in “A Perfect Blood” which isn’t exactly introduced. So, natural, I went to the internet to find out where this character came from. The answer was on Ms. Harrison’s Facebook page. Another fan had asked her the same question, and Ms. Harrison gave her the name, and a brief description of where the character was introduced (in a short story in a separate book) but didn’t ruin the story for anyone.

More authors are choosing to stay in closer contact with their fans. Not just about their books, either. They share things just like anyone else. Pictures, news, updates on their personal life. These authors, those who “get a little personal” seem to do very well with their books too. They’ve made a connection with their audience.

After all…. if you actually like the person who’s writing you may feel even better about throwing some money their way to read their work.