Story Counter – updated 7/1/2016

Rough draft / editing status

Transfer – 100% / 100% edit (131,150 words / 400-ish pages)
The Big BhangPUBLISHED!
CountdownPUBLISHED!
Genesis-6:
1. Launch Sequence I – 100% rough draft / 0% edit (29,245 words)
2. Launch Sequence II – 45% rough draft / 0 edit (40,000 words est.)
3. Genesis-6 – 15% rough draft / 0% edit (unknown – 75,000 words est.?)
4. Killswitch – 65% rough draft / 0% edit (25,000 words est.)
5. Rebirth – 35% rough draft / 0% edit (25,000 words est.)
Extraction – 66% rough draft / 10% edit (125,000 words est.)
Razor’s Edge – 25% rough draft / 0% edit (60,000 words est.)
It’s Harder This Way – 100% rough draft / 25% edit (30,000 words)

(Eh… I’m on a bit of a terror at the moment and books are finally getting knocked out)
(and yes, that IS correct… “It’s Harder This Way” is the sequel to “It’s Better This Way” and it’s getting written right now. Should be done with the rough draft by the end of March. Full novel!)

Sharknado – Ultimate Entertainment Experience!

Boy. I don’t know what to say. My wife Carly and I just watched SyFy’s super-mega-ultra-awesome new movie “Sharknado”.

For those of you not paying attention to EARTH in the last few months, this movie stars Ian Ziering (90210) and Tara Reid (tabloids?). The plot is that a few super-tornadoes apparently spawn over the ocean next to Los Angeles, and somehow suck up 2,348,003 sharks of various, man-eating types, and begin to wander all over Los Angeles destroying things while the sharks that are rotating around inside…eat people.

Now, I did miss the first hour of this Emmy-Nominated (my own personal fantasy here, carry on) masterpiece, so I might have missed a lot of the important plot bits. The second half though, was a %@#$#@ ROLLER COASTER OF PLEASURE for my brain.

Wife too, Carly loved it. She spent the last hour of the movie (basically from the instant we turned it on) alternating between raging at the television, to screaming at the television, to one time standing straight up off the couch and screaming “THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!!!”

Now, to be fair, it COULD happen. She doesn’t believe in the power of sci-fi like I do (hence why she’s a history teacher and I’m a writer). IT COULD happen that a dude could push a young woman out of the way of a shark that has just fallen out of a raging tornado (I’m assuming an F4 or F5, they were huge) straight down, mouth-first, started up his chainsaw, and dived off the pavement straight into the shark’s mouth.

Two minutes later, Carly topped her previous amount of disbelief when the dude CUTS HIS WAY OUT OF THE SHARK. With his chainsaw. Not only that, he rescues a helicopter pilot’s girlfriend (?) that had been eaten by the same shark not TEN minutes earlier while they were a thousand feet in the air flying right on the outer edge of one of these sharknadoes. The shark literally flew out of the sharknado, snatched this girl from the passenger seat of the helicopter, and then I guess disappeared back into the raging sharknado.

You guys…it was so awesome. I really wish you all had been there. There are no words to describe it properly…

It makes me wonder sometimes…WHO WRITES THIS SHIT???? And how the hell can I get hooked up with SyFy to sell a story like this? I have one of those ‘plot wheels’ just like SyFy does…you know, the one with the three wheels and you spin each one and write a story about whatever topics match up.

I just spun mine, and my next story is going to be about a congressman who is actually an ancient spider that has called his alien brethren back to Earth so they can devour human blood of their victims that have been falsely convicted of terrorism and sent to Guantanamo…

I’ll let you all know if SyFy bites on this. I really, truly don’t understand how they couldn’t!

Travis

PS It came on again two hours later, and we watched the entire thing while I live-tweeted it…amazing…

Avatar – The Review

So I finally sat down last night with my roommate Jeff and watched the movie ‘Avatar’. I decided I had better sleep on my thoughts before I wrote out this review, as if I wrote it last night immediately after watching it, you would be reading a review filled with about 95% curse words and other vulgarities, and about 5%…well, 5% ranting without vulgarities I suppose. Continue reading