The Tomorrow People

This is from my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Dec. 3 The Tomorrow People: I feel like being creative and writing my script, but I have writer’s block.  I will write about other TV shows to get myself to be creative.  I saw the pilot of The Tomorrow People on Oct. 10, 2013. 

It starts off with Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell.  He is the cousin to Stephen Amell, the star of the TV show Arrow.)   Stephen does a voice over about how he goes to high school and takes medicine.  He has a single mom who’s a nurse and a little brother.  He ties himself up to a bed.  

John (Luke Mitchell) sneaks into a hospital/ psych ward.  A woman, Cara (Peyton List) tells him where to go.  A guard follows him.  John disappears in a flash after taking the file.  3 agents follow him to a subway station and there is fight scene as John fights off two guys.  I like that part.

John gets on a train and another agent is there and he fights him.  John then flashes in and out.  The file is about Stephen.

Stephen wakes up between a black man and a white woman.  The black man is his neighbor and he brings Stephen back to his house.  Lol.  

Mom (to neighbor): He has a sleeping disorder.

His little brother Luca is there.

Stephen had encountered a bully earlier and took his drug.  This time Stephen puts Fastlax into his pills so the bully would take it.  Introduce Stephen’s African- American friend Astrid (Madeline Mantock).  He’s hearing a woman’s voice in his head.  The bully takes drugs of Fastlax.

Stephen has a flashback of his dad.  Stephen hears a voice telling him to go to a subway station and to get on a train.  John takes Stephen and transports him.  It leads to an underground lair with Cara.

Cara: We are the Tomorrow People.  I’m telepathic, transporting, and telekinetic. 

John: You’re not sleepwalking, you’re teleporting.  This is an abandoned subway station, 100 feet below.

I then notice the producer Julie Plec’s name.  She produced other TV shows I watch like The Vampire Diaries and Kyle XY.

An Asian guy Russell (Aaron Yoo) comes and tells about a group called Ultra and is hunting us.  The government knows about them and wants to hunt and use them.

There was a homeless guy on the subway train and tells cop about the transport fight.  Dr. Jedikiah Price  (Mark Pellegrino.  He looked familiar and until a few hrs later I remember where I saw him from.  He played a bad guy on Being Human season 1.)  He talks to this African-American agent who fought John.

Dr. Price puts the gun down.  The agent can’t shoot.

Dr. Price: You can’t kill, you are unable to kill.

Dr. Price shoots and kills him.   

Cut back to the lair.

John: You inherited your powers.  Your dad was our leader.

Stephen: My deadbeat dad left my mom and 2 kids.

John: Your dad was our leader and he left to give you a normal life.

They show his dad on a videotape: “I want to say I’m sorry.”

Stephen leaves because it’s too much to take.

Stephen tries out his telekinetic powers and tells his friend Astrid about it.  She tells him he’s off his meds.

Astrid: Wasn’t your dad schizophrenic?  I stuck by you for a whole year.

The bully beats Stephen up for the drug switch up.  Stephen telekinetically pushes bully away.

Dr. Price: There are 7 people, and I think he’s the one.

Cut back to school.  

Mom: The bully is in ER and is crazy because he took your meds.

Stephen walks home and a black SUV follows him.  He telepaths to Carla that he’s in danger.  He runs and
is kidnapped.  Carla sees it.

 The Tomorrow People have a computer named Tim and it talks.  He shows the security video of Stephen being kidnapped and he finds the car.

Dr. Price has Stephen tied up.

Dr. Price: I’m an evolutionary biologist.  I found a 17 yr old who stole $7 million from the Federal Reserve, and another 16 yr old who got into the White House.

Carla and Russell enter the office building.

Dr. Price is going to put a needle in Stephen to fix him.

Dr. Price: Your dad is dead.

Security guard comes in.

It turns out their powers don’t work in the building.

Carla, Russell, and John fight agents.

Stephen concentrates and able to teleport himself out of the chair.  His friends find him.

Dr. Price shoots at them and Stephen stops the bullet and also able to teleport them out.

John and Carla kiss.

Stephen watches the rest of the video of his father.  Robbie Amell is a good actor as he has tears in his eyes as he watches this.

Stephen goes home and Dr. Price is there.

Mom: Your dad has a brother and this is Jed.  They had a fall out.

Dr. Price shows picture of them: I was born human, and he wasn’t.  I became a geneticist to help him.

He then shows a video of his dad in a ski mask, and he enters a car and it blows up.

Stephen talks to Carla.

Stephen: How come you didn’t tell me Jed is my uncle?

Carla: You are not like him.  They are my family.  I won’t let anyone hurt them.

Stephen: I have to find out who my dad is, whether he is a hero or not.

Stephen throws away his pills.  He then joins Ultra.

My opinion: I thought the pilot was average.  I didn’t watch it after this pilot.

Here are the comparisons:

Teen sci-fi show: It seemed like a boring sci-fi TV show like Smallville.  

Complicated families: It reminded me of complicated family relations like on Once Upon a Time, The Vampire Diaries, and Heroes.  Well family is interesting.

A secret government agency hunting people down: X-men, Heroes.

After Earth: I was thinking about how this movie got all these bad reviews.  I saw the trailer on Youtube and it looks good.  I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t say if it’s good or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIt20emgLY

Machete Kills: I did read a review about how this movie is supposed to be bad on purpose.  On imdb.com it says a 6/10.  Mediocre or average.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2002718/?ref_=nv_sr_1

writer interview (part 2)/ Screenwriting Goldmine

This was on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:



Dec. 27 Writer interview (part 2): I have written an interview where I imagine a host is interviewing me about my writing.  It’s mainly professional.

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/01/writer-interview-contract-lesson-bobbi.html

I remember watching Tyra Banks talk show and sometimes she does kind of sound like a psychologist talking to a guest you know like the teen pregnancy episodes.  Here’s the episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_huMNaUQ8Q

Well here’s part 2 of my writer interview.  It’s going to get personal.

Blogging

Host: Why do you blog?

Tracy: Because I want to produce my script The Vertex Fighter and get it produced to be a TV movie.

Host: How long have you had these blogs?

Tracy: Tracy’s Blog has been here since Jan. 2008, so 6 yrs.  My The Vertex Fighter has been here since Jun. 2011, so 2 and a half yrs.

Host: Do you have any followers?

Tracy: No, but I do keep track of my page views.  In Tracy’s Blog, I get 100-200 page views a day.  In The Vertex Fighter blog, I get 0-20 page views a day.  My Fighter blog is about writing, TV, and movies.  That post is usually on Tracy’s blog too.  On Tracy’s blog there are lots of topics like jobs and news.

Host: Do you intend to get a book published?

Tracy: I would like to get from blog to book, but I haven’t figured it out.  I have thought of turning my script into a fictional book and then self-publish it on Amazon.  But I don’t want to write a fictional book.

I’m brainstorming, because The Book of Awesome writer Neil Pasricha made a book that is compiled of his blog posts.  I could, but how would I make it?

Tracy’s Blog: Business edition: All the job, career articles and tips, job interviews, job experiences that I went through.

Tracy’s Blog: Writer’s edition: All the TV and movie reviews, synopsis’s, writer/ author interviews, articles, and tips.

Tracy’s Blog: Jokes edition: Daily Silly jokes, comedy comparisons.

Host: What if you never become famous?  Your blog never becomes a book?  You don’t win any awards?  
Then what?

Tracy: Then I’m going to keep blogging.

Script

Host: So are you getting any closer to getting your script produced?

Tracy: I was so busy working, especially in the first half of the year Jan.-Jun. 2013, that I haven’t been pitching my script much.  I only had one producer read it and he rejected it.

Host: So what now?

Tracy: I don’t feel motivated to pitch my script.  I’ve been writing scripts since I was 14 yrs old.  So from 14-22 yrs old, I’ve been writing scripts for 8 yrs.  I had to graduate out of high school and Professional Writing in college, and then I started pitching my script.  I was 22 yrs old when I started pitching it.  In 2008-2009, I was constantly looking for production companies and pitching to them.

In 2010, I was laid off so I only pitched for 4 months of that year.  In 2011, I was working and looking for an office job all the time.  In 2012, I did the same, but I worked more temporary jobs that year.

In 2012, I applied to get jobs at TV production companies, but that only lasted a month.  There are some in Edmonton.  I did apply to them back in 2008 and got one interview.  

I was just going through my notes of all the places I pitched to and when.  There isn’t a lot that I did this year.  I did join the Edmonton Film Makers Group in Meetup and read some member’s scripts when I joined the Edmonton Screenwriter’s Group.

Host: This sounds like you lost steam.

Tracy: Yeah.

Host: So have you thought of finding ways to motivate yourself to getting your script produced?

Tracy: Yeah.  There is the route of typing up inspirational quotes.  Or maybe I should go into the direction of blog-to-book, if I can find a way with that.

Maybe I need to make myself more creative like watch something to inspire me.  I did watch the movie In Time and it did make me think on how to write my script.

Or I need to put up some articles about Canadian TV shows being produced in Canada.  It’s gotten too hard getting this script produced.  I gave 100% effort in 2008-2010 in pitching.  I’ve tried to get an agent, but couldn’t.   

Dec. 29 Screenwriting Goldmine: I unsubscribed to them yesterday.  It turns out I’ve been subscribing to them since 2007.  They asked why I unsubscribed and I said that it’s in the UK and I’m in Canada.  Here are some interesting excerpts from them:

ONLY ONE IN FOURTEEN UK FILMS MAKES A PROFIT

News that only around 7% of British films make a box-office profit

is dispiriting. (That said, some might be astonished that that many

actually do...)

Of the 613 British films produced or co-produced in the UK from

2003-2010, only 3.1% of those with budgets under £500,000 made a

profit. 

The bigger the budget, the more likely the profit, suggests

ScreenDaily's Michael Rosser who was reporting on statistics

released by the British Film Institute at the Screen Film Summit

http://www.screendaily.com/news/only-7-of-uk-films-make-profit/5064187.article

A POSITIVE UPDATE ON UK WOMEN SCREENWRITERS

While statistics can be used to say anything, let's not overlook

some more BFI data for the period 2010-12. It says that "a high

percentage of the most successful and profitable independent

British films had a female screenwriter and/or director attached."

The news points out that women are underrepresented in writing and directing

roles in the film industry. 

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-press-release-bfi-research-women-filmmakers-2013-11-25.pdf

"For all UK independent films released between 2010 and 2012, just

11.4% of the directors and 16.1% of the writers were women.

However, for the top 20 UK independent films over the same period,

18.2% of the directors and 37% of the writers were female. And for

profitable UK independent films, 30% of the writers were female."

Commenting on the data, BFIO CEO said: "Women are creating stories

and characters that resonate with audiences in the UK and around

the world, and it's encouraging, and absolutely no surprise, to see

films from women writers in particular really making an impact. 

"Frustratingly, overall the numbers of women in writing and

directing roles remains low and there is still much work to do to

ensure female voices can come through."

Philosophy dressed up in capes and Spandex

This is on my blog www.badcb.blogspot.ca:

Dec. 24: Here is the counter argument to Jay Stone’s article “Hollywood hooked on a teenage fantasy” about all these superhero movies.  On the same Edmonton Journal page, Katherine Monk has an article about the importance of superhero movies.

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/12/book-hollywood-hooked-on-teenage-fantasy.html

Philosophy dressed up in capes and Spandex

Comic-book adventures dissect life on an extra-large scale

Katherine Monk, Postmedia News

Published: Friday, May 04 2012

Snooki. Paris. Kim. We live in a culture that currently celebrates ordinary, untalented mortals who flex their muscles and have emotional meltdowns - for no good reason other than empty entertainment.
No wonder I crave super-heroes. At least they "live large" in a way that attempts genuine meaning.
Superheroes ponder the heavy questions, from the dimensions of responsibility that go along with great powers, to the mental exhaustion of saving the planet.

While Paris Hilton and the Kardashians are contemplating the dollar value of amateur porn, Spider-Man, Batman and Wonder Woman are hard at work trying to ennoble the impoverished soul of man.
Forever trapped in the time-less battle between good and evil, superheroes allow mere moviegoing mortals a chance to dissect the human condition on an extra-large scale.

Just as every new comic-book villain gives us an exaggerated look at our own flaws, every superhero offers a chance at redemption.

So what if a short man with a waddle and a goofy laugh wants to freeze the oceans, or erase every metropolis with a laser beam? So what if he blackmails the leaders of the western world to hand over the contents of Fort Knox to impress his fluffy white kitty, or his impossibly long-legged girlfriend?
When we see Penguin or any other masked marauder attempting to undo the past two millennia of civilization, we can see our own petty in-securities through a funhouse mirror. The same is true for all the good things about us: Superheroes animate the human ability to love, and to sacrifice ourselves for the common good.

Before the age of secularism ushered in the modern Super-man with the pen and ink of Jerry Siegel and Canadian artist Joe Shuster with the publication of Action Comics #1 in 1938, we had scripture to guide us through the moral labyrinth of actions.

The fun part of superheroes is that they're like gods, only with human sensibilities.
Whether it's Hulk's bad temper or Spider-Man's latent selfloathing, the superhero isn't one-dimensional and goodygoody dull. They are like us - only gifted with talents we could only dream of.
The Spandex set is essentially the modern version of pagan deities: larger-than-life immortals who fight with each other, struggle with the same ego needs as us, but eventually transcend all things petty to become shining examples of the human potential.

One hundred years before the comic-book Superman redefined our relationship with the cosmos, there was another embodiment of the Superman who accomplished very much the same thing. Friedrich Nietzsche's Superman, or "Übermensch," sought to release man from the chains of blind belief in a higher power. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche killed the old god because he felt it was limiting the human capacity for creation. Nietzsche believed humans were too beautiful and too gifted to be eclipsed by an inanimate monolith of omnipotence, so he destroyed the old belief system to let us live in the bright light of human truth, where we could take charge of our own destiny.

These ideas were not lost on Siegel or Shuster, who took certain Nietzschean ideas and translated them into what appeared to be non-threatening, two-dimensional kids' stuff.
Yet, nearly a century later, these heathen concepts have sunk into the sedimentary layers of our society - where they are now played out on the big screen every summer.

Whether it's watching Thor argue about the worth of humanity with his brother Loki, or Superman's big decision to abandon superheroism for human love, the superhero movie allows us to explore the most profound questions in metaphysics through a candy-coloured lens of fun.

Every time you walk out of a superhero movie, chances are good you appreciate being human a little bit more.

It's not superpowers that make the superhero. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Unlimited power defines the villain, while the human capacity to love, to show compassion, and to embrace our own flaws, are what truly make a hero.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=b53544f1-0198-41af-b281-9286d6f4b3ed

Dec. 27 My opinion: It’s a good article.  I will have to moderate how much superhero movies I watch.  On Showcase, for the past couple of weeks I saw that Iron Man 2, Thor, and The Green Lantern were playing.  I thought about it and I wasn’t really interested in watching it.

Blog to book: I was reading the Globe and Mail on Dec. 7, 2013.  It mentioned Maddie on Things by Theron Humprey.  It’s a website at first where Theron takes pictures of his dog standing on things like a skateboard.

Here’s the website:

http://maddieonthings.com/

http://www.amazon.ca/Maddie-Things-Serious-Project-Physics/dp/1452115567

Meetup: There is an Edmonton Film Makers Group.  There is also an Edmonton Film Makers Group #2.  I then get an email saying #2 is closing down unless someone wants to become the new Organizer.  Well no one did and it closed down.

Sex comedy: You know it’s interesting.  I like the TV show The Sausage Factory about 4 teenage guys and they have these sex jokes.  However, I don’t like sex comedy movies like:

American Pie (saw on TV.)
American Wedding (saw for free, got a movie pass.)
Van Wilder (went to a friend’s house and saw it.)
Road Trip (saw it on a band trip on the bus).
Sorority Boys (saw it on TV.)

Intentionally bad writing: I was thinking about those Syfy TV movies and how they are often intentionally bad like Dinoshark.  Just watching the trailer you can tell it’s terrible.  The TV show MADtv does bad writing to make the sketch fun to watch.  I wrote about this before, about the 1970s sex ed tape with Avril Lavigne guest- starring in it.  There is all this misinformation about sex, but you do laugh at this line.  

I’m forewarning you right now that you will be offended by it.  The dad says: “Don’t you know birth control is the woman’s responsibility?”

Film Festivals: There is the Toronto International Film Festival or TIFF.  There is the Edmonton International Film Festival.  I didn’t go to the Edmonton one.

Syd Field: On Nov. 23, 2013, I cut out this Edmonton Journal article about the “Author literally wrote the book on screenplays.”  He lived from 1935-2013.  His book is called: “Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting has been required reading in Hollywood since it was published in 1979.  It has been translated into 23 languages and used in universities around the world.”

book/ Hollywood hooked on a teenage fantasy

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:



Dec. 11 Book: I have thought of writing the Rain script or The Vertex Fighter script into a book form, and then self-publish.  It will then gain more attention and it could then be produced into a TV movie.  However, I don’t want to write a fictional book.

Dec. 16: I sent “Self-publishing rewrites rules/ Allie Brosh.”  Then my friend Sherry told me I should write the Rain script into a book and then self-publish.  That’s uncanny.  I was thinking the same thing and then I emailed her back the above paragraph.

http://www.badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/12/self-publishing-rewrites-rules-allie.html

Rain script: Today is my day off.  I did do productive things like look for a job, read the newspaper, and pick up a prescription.  I decided to look at my notes again because I did take a break from it.  I read some of it and then I got frustrated with it because I’m stuck.

I decided I might as well print some of what I typed up.  I always write my script on scrap computer paper to save paper.  I decided to print it on my scrap paper for the same reason.  My notes are scattered so when it’s typed up and printed, I can read it clearly.

Comparisons:

A character steps on a bomb and can’t move or it will detonate: I found this in my notes.  It was done on Flashpoint ep “Coming to You Live.”   A character Young does step on the bomb and he was stuck there.  Then he decides to step off it and then it kills him.  It was a powerful ending.  

It was done on Rookie Blue where Dov Epstein enters a drug lair and steps on a bomb.  Bomb squad comes, and she puts the weight of Dov to replace his weight so he can step off it.

It was done on Castle’s ep “Still.”  Beckett steps on a bomb and the others have to solve the case.

A drug that makes you really smart: It was done on the TV show Invisible Man where Agent Hobbs was injected with this drug that makes him really smart, but then later proves to be fatal.

It was done in the movie Limitless where a man takes this drug, becomes really smart and really rich by using his smarts.

Reading scripts: A producer I have in contact with has sent me some scripts to read before, and I write my review of it.  I joined a couple of Meetup groups and I read the other members scripts.  I have read one full-length script and a 30 page outline.  I thought both are really good from un-produced writers.  One script was drama and the other was action.

I then sent my notes to them about my take on it.  I say things like I like the dialogue, or the plot twist.  This script reminds me of these other movies and they appreciated my feedback.  

Left/ right brain: Throwing out old notes is good for my left and right brain.  My left brain likes that I’m cleaning my room and recycling.  My right brain is being more creative.

Hollywood hooked on a teenage fantasy

Superhero fetish stretching out into a future of endless sequels

Jay Stone, Postmedia News

Published: Friday, May 04 2012

The versatile British actor Tom Wilkinson was talking recently about his new movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's a film about a group of seniors: a rare film that's actually aimed at the over-50 crowd.
"There are a lot of people over the age of 50 who really like going to the cinema and don't want to watch X-Men or Clash of the Titans," Wilkinson said. "And why should they? God. There is a big market for films that are slightly old-fashioned, in the way they used to make films in the '70s."
Later, though, he amended his view: "A good X-Men movie. - A good movie is a good movie is a good movie," he said.

Amen to that. As Duke Ellington once said about music, there are two kinds: good and bad. But even given all that, the Hollywood love affair with the X-Men and their ilk - with the genre of the superhero film - is getting out of hand.

The latest one, The Avengers, opens this week, and it should be one of the good ones, with a fine cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner, and an innovative director in Joss Weldon. It's been getting strong reviews. It is probably a lot of fun, and if it were being offered up as a surprising change to the summer movie schedule, it would be refreshing. But it's only the latest in a perennial parade of super-hero films, with other high-profile entries like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises still to come. They are both remountings of franchises that have been reinvented more often than the iPad. Like many super-heroes, Spider-Man - still a Johnny-come-lately to those of us who grew up with Super-man as the king of the super-hero universe, with Batman as a sort of weak-kneed second cousin - is hailed as a metaphor for confused adolescence, or maybe the ambiguities of power. Batman, meanwhile, is another depressed saviour who represents the futility of nobility in a world gone mad.

There have been some wonderful Batman and Spider-Man films, but there have been some lousy ones, too.
It doesn't seem to matter: If you want to talk about the great responsibilities of great power, you have to do it through the eyes of a teenager who can climb up the side of buildings. Hollywood has been taken over by fantasy, and it's almost a novelty to find a story about an everyday adult trying to solve realistic problems without benefit of Spandex or a supercar.

Like the X-Men, with their cast of heroes tormented by their extraordinary powers - the pain of being inflammable becoming a symbol for lonely adolescence in a way that, say, Holden Caulfield never imagined - The Avengers brings together a wide selection of offbeat creatures. Downey Jr.'s Iron Man gets by on the star's charisma, but the character himself is a juvenile trope for the misuse of military power. And do we really need more of The Hulk - even as portrayed by Ruffalo - as an illustration of the destructive effects of anger? It was kind of campy fun back in the 1970s, when Bill Bixby turned into Lou Ferrigno when he lost his temper, but it's a constricted kind of fun. It's the same thing every time, the temper tantrum as character development.

And that's the problem with Hollywood's superhero fetish. There's simply too much of it: indestructible warriors extending back in time (Thor is another of the Avengers) and forward into an endless future of relaunches and remountings and even more obscure comic-book characters. I know I'm mostly alone in this: Millions of fans of these superheroes can't wait to see them on screen, a nostalgic trip back to the time when (I suppose) they all dreamt of being invisible or flying or turning unconquerable. It's a teenage fantasy that has taken over an industry that is more and more turning to familiar, pre-sold ideas - old TV shows, bestselling youth fiction - to fill the seats. A good movie is a good movie is a good movie, but can we please have a few more with ordinary human beings?

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=5867c524-9237-458d-8531-31c0001c2898&p=2

Dec. 24 My opinion: Yeah, I have to agree with the above article.  There are all these superhero movies.  The latest ones I saw are The Dark Knight and Iron Man and those were about 5 yrs ago and only when I rented it on dvd.

self-publishing rewrites rules/ Allie Brosh

This is from www.badcb.blogspot.ca: 

Dec. 4 Self-publishing: I cut out this article from the Edmonton Journal because it inspired me:

Self-publishing rewrites rules

Rookie author gets deals after putting her novels online

The Associated Press

Published: Friday, April 19, 2013

After a feverish month of inspiration, Colleen Hoover had finally fulfilled her dream of writing a book.
With family and friends asking to read the emotional tale of first love, the married mother of three young boys living in rural East Texas and working 11-hour days as a social worker decided to digitally self-publish on Amazon, where they could download it for free for a week.
"I had no intentions of ever getting the book published. I was just writing it for fun," said Hoover, who uploaded Slammed a year ago in January.

Soon after, people she didn't know were downloading the book - even after it was only available for a fee. Readers began posting reviews and buzz built on blogs. Missing her characters, she self-published the sequel, Point of Retreat, a month later.
By June, both books hit Amazon's Kindle top 100 bestseller list. By July, both were on The New York Times bestseller list for ebooks. Soon after, they were picked up by Atria Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. By fall, she had sold the movie rights.

"I wasn't expecting any of this at all. And I'm not saying I don't like it, but it's taken a lot of getting used to," said the 33-year-old Hoover, who quit her job last summer to focus on writing.
Hoover is both a story of self-published success in the digital age and of the popularity of so-called New Adult books, stories featuring characters in their late teens and early 20s.

When Hoover finished her third book, Hopeless, in December, she initially turned down an offer from Atria and decided to digitally self-publish again. By January, that book, too, was a New York Times bestseller and she signed that month with Atria to publish the print version, but kept control of the electronic version.

In February, Atria bought the digital and paperback rights to two upcoming books from Hoover: This Girl, the third instalment in the Slammed series, set for release digitally later this month, and Losing Hope, a companion novel to Hopeless to be published digitally in July.
Even after being able to quit her job, Hoover said it wasn't until a book signing she organized with other indie authors in Chicago in the fall that her popularity began to sink in.

"I remember coming down the stairs and there was this huge line with hundreds of people and someone goes, 'There's Colleen Hoover,' and they all start freaking out," she said. "That was, I think, the first moment that it hit me that this was way bigger than I thought."

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/archives/story.html?id=f63cd0e1-1f69-40ad-870b-9e9f47b221eb

Imagination: It’s time to use my imagination.  I met authors at the Chapters store in West Ed mall.  I only go there to go shopping, not to meet an author.  What if I set up a table there like those authors did?
Cut to Tracy sitting at a table.  A guy comes up to her.
Guy: Hi Tracy, I’m a big fan of your blog.  I like your fun emails the best.  Can you autograph my favorite blog post of yours?
Tracy: Yeah, sure.
Tracy autographs the post “The Listener/ Tori Kelly/ self-deprecating and funny.”

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-listener-tori-kelly-self.html

That is so unrealistic.  Who autographs blog posts?  There are famous bloggers like The Book of Awesome author Neil Pasricha.  He probably autographed the book than a blog post.

Omar Mouallem: As I was writing this blog post, the Edmonton Public Library writer-in- residence/ old classmate of mine emailed me back on my Rain outline.  He was kind of harsh, but he was telling his plain opinion on it.  It did inspire me because he questioned the story.

On Labor Day weekend, he wrote a book in 3 days.  I’m sure I can finish my script.

Book Publishers Association of Alberta: I checked my blog and it turns out I didn’t write about them.  This is what they are: 

“The Book Publishers Association of Alberta (BPAA) is a provincial association of book publishing companies and is one of the strongest communities of regional publishers in North America. The BPAA was founded in 1975 to support the development of strong publishing houses, away from Canada's traditional centres of publishing. Today the BPAA has more than 30 members, many of which are owned and operated in the province of Alberta.

We are a regional affiliate of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP).
The BPAA responds to all questions from its members, the public, media and industry, on matters to do with publishing.”
http://www.bookpublishers.ab.ca/

Dec. 6 TV production company: Remember in 2012 I wrote about how I applied to TV production companies?  I did back in 2008 and did one job interview at one and didn’t get hired.  In 2003-2004 I did try to get an internship at TV production companies.  It was when I was upgrading.  One company called back and told me they only hire NAIT’s TV program students.

The thing is I did try that path before, but I wasn’t able to get in.

Dec. 7 Sun Media: I read that they laid off 200 people.  They also sold 74 newspapers to one of their rivals, but the Competition Bureau has to give a confirmation first.

Comparisons: This is a real life comparison.  I was thinking about how publishing companies and staffing agencies are the middle-man.  You don’t need a staffing agency to help you get a job.  You can go straight to the company that is hiring and apply there.

A publishing company is a middle-man because there is self-publishing.  Self-publishing has always been around, but it’s more popular these days because of e-books.

Blogger: I’m a blogger so I’m the writer, editor, and publisher all in one.

Allie Brosh: I read the article “A candid picture of depression” by Zosia Beilski in the Globe and Mail on Nov. 1, 2013.  It’s about mental health, but it also fits into this email because she’s a blogger and cartoonist.  In the article she talks about her depression and not being able to do the simplest things like returning a DVD.  

Her cartoons are “using a simple paint software for Mac.”  

I do like the picture of a unicorn on her “About” page.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/p/about.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/

From Zine to Bestseller/ Touch/ Stan Lee

This is from www.badcb.blogspot.ca: 

From Zine to Bestseller: In Aug. 1, 2010, I cut out this article form the Edmonton Journal.  I like this article because it’s about a writer named Jeff Miller who has been writing since he was a teenager and he gets published.  I have been writing TV scripts since I was 14 yrs old, and I had 2 short stories and a poem published in the Canadian Poetry Institute.  Miller is truly successful.  Read the first paragraph of the article:

From zine to bestseller

Julie Fortier, Postmedia News

Published: Sunday, August 01 2010

A few weeks ago, the bestseller's list at one of Ottawa's independent bookstores, Collected Works, looked a little off.

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson.
2. Ghost Pine: All Stories True, Jeff Miller.
3. The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson.
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson.

"Yeah I know, it's kind of funny how it turned out," Miller said from his current home of Montreal.
Even Miller's publisher, Robbie MacGregor at Invisible Publishing, said he was "a little surprised" the collection of true, hilarious, and at times extremely touching stories Miller has been working on since he was 16 years old in a zine by the same name would be able to edge out the Swedish murder mystery powerhouse of Stieg Larsson.

Ghost Pine was also on the Montreal Gazette's top 10 bestsellers list for three consecutive weeks in May and is on track to have a reprint by early fall.
"We realize he's no Stieg Larsson, but for a Canadian indie title -- and especially a zine anthology -- we think that's pretty decent," MacGregor said.

"Jeff Miller's book, his stories, his style -- they're personal. He's been carving out a space for himself, and readers have been responding."
In his collection, Miller recounts the time he moved to Japan to be with his morose girlfriend only to be dumped the day after arriving, the time he disappointed some "Ottawa Valley crackheads" who forced him to clean out his meagre bank account at an ATM in Ottawa's financial district, the dishevelled tours across Canada as a band roadie and many other tales; some big, some small. Just as the title indicates, all the stories are in fact true, a style he said is rooted in the do-it-yourself zine subculture.

He started writing in his parents' Ottawa home while a high school student in the mid-1990s, when the punk DIY approach to music, as well as publishing, was in full swing. "It was something I could do alone in my room, and at that time in my life I spent a lot of time in my room, like most teenagers do," he said laughing.
Miller said several of his zines are still in print, and he estimates he has sold somewhere around 10,000 copies over the years. Most of his fans are in North America, but he has sent copies as far as Australia and Malaysia.

Stories are not in chronological order, and many take place in Montreal, which he has called home since 1999. He attended Concordia University as an English literature major and is going back for his master's degree in the fall.
Miller is also working on a novel, but he has no plans to stop writing his zine.
"Once you get started on it, it becomes a lifelong obsession. ... There's this production mode that becomes such a nice antidote to going crazy with editing. You get to take out some clip art and get out the glue stick and scissors, bike down to the coffee shop and figure it out."
To purchase a copy of Ghost Pine: All Stories True, go to ghostpine. ghostpine.wordpress.com.

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=c543ce67-87f5-482a-ad70-996417bc7dd4

Touch: Back in Jan. 2012, I wrote about the pilot Touch.  Here’s an excerpt:

Jan. 25 Touch: Today I finally saw the pilot to Touch. It's by Tim Kring, the guy who created Heroes. He's really creative and a great writer. On Heroes, it was about a group of people all around the world who had superpowers. They were all connected to one another. If you watch Touch, it's about a group of people who are all connected with one another.

I was very inspired by it. Tim Kring had said in this article I read in 24: "This is really a chance to continue what you would call social-benefit storytelling, the idea of using archetypal narrative to create and promote a positive energy in the world."

http://badcb.blogspot.ca/2012/01/touch.html

My opinion: I didn’t watch this show after the pilot.  I was really busy with work, and I was cutting down on TV.  I didn’t pick up a lot of TV shows.  I went on Wikipedia and the show got cancelled after 2 seasons.

I like that above quote by Kring.  In the 24 article, there is another good quote by him: “As storytellers, we want to reserve the right to say there is some other idea floating above it, something spiritual or supernatural.”

I’m going to put it in my inspirational quotes collection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_%28TV_series%29

Nov. 26 Stan Lee: I cut out this article called “Spider-Man co-creator offers lesson in superhero history” by Russ Bynum.  It was published back in Nov. 2, 2012.  It’s how he got started in the comic book business.  I only copy and pasted a few excerpts from the article.  He’s really nice and paid a visit to the Savannah College of Art and Design to meet the students and see their work.

“Before he scripted the first adventures of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, a young Stan Lee launched his career in comic books as a lowly sidekick. To hear Lee tell it, the artists he worked for as a teenage assistant in 1940 might as well have dubbed him the Anonymous Eraser-Boy.”

"They gave me a big eraser and I had to go over the pages to make sure the pencil marks didn't show," after artists finished their drawings in black ink, Lee said Wednesday as he revealed this to an awestruck classroom of art students on the Georgia coast. "You guys are actually drawing. I never got past erasing."
"It's not a throne?" Lee quipped as he sat in a plastic chair at the head of a table surrounded by 11 students, each one with broadsheet pages of their works-in-progress, bottles of ink and an iPad.

If Lee himself possessed a superpower, it would be his ability to conquer the generation gap. The young artists he met seem as familiar with Lee as they are with his costumed heroes.
"You see Stan Lee and everyone knows who he is," said art student Dan Glasl. "Every kid has this part of their life where they're this awkward, geeky sort of kid. And Spider-Man is the character every kid can put themselves into."

"We just hoped that a book we were drawing would sell so we could keep our jobs and pay the rent," he said. "We never for one minute thought there would be schools where they teach this."-Stan Lee

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=73785f9c-86a2-4b5d-9859-24dde719a9c8