We exceeded our goal on the Hour before Morning Kickstarter campaign! It's a huge relief to have it over. :) Now, I need to send our rewards.

With 18 days to go, we have raised $1613 toward $5000 to complete and distribute my first film, The Hour before Morning, the story of a murderer seeking redemption in an oppressive future and finding compassion from two fellow prisoners as they await execution.

Backers at the $15 level will receive this lovely autographed photo of lead actor, Joel Albrecht in addition to sincere e-thanks and a PDF of the novel. The minimum contribution is $1 and all levels are welcome. Please consider chipping in and/or spread the word to the fans of thoughtful speculative fiction in your life. Thanks!

Click here for the Hour before Morning Kickstarter.

I'm quite happy with the way this one is shaping up!

Would you be interested in posting a brief Amazon.com review of either of my two novels, Perdita--an ecological sci fi story with a fairly traditional sociological/action/some romance plot--and The Hour before Morning, a shorter, more philosophical novel about colonial oppression and personal redemption?

I'm trying to gather enough reviews for a listing in Digital Book Today (18-20 reviews).

I'd be glad to send PDF review copies of either or both to anyone who's interested. Reviews can be really short; I'm basically just counting numbers of reviews.

Perdita teaser:

For a long while, Ethan sat on his cushion at the terminal, staring at the frequency dial without seeing it. If only he could get rid of the prisoner. She won’t give us anything. I’ve seen that wild look in her eyes; she’s even worse than some of the others....

And he didn’t want to have to hurt her. But the job was his; he’d have to do it. How could he convince her to speak honestly and speedily? Duress would not work well. Persuasion might work slightly less badly.

The Hour before Morning teaser:

But Elek didn't want to kill Jenchae. All at once, he felt old and strained and wanted to sleep. Recently, he started to picture himself just clinging to an outcropping of rock in the face of a sandstorm, expecting every moment to be torn into the wind. And the wind was in him, and if it didn't die soon, it would tear him to shreds. He wondered if Jenchae could make the wind die -- just for these last days.

I took a tiny step in Hour before Morning (book) marketing today by submitting the title to Publisher's Weekly. This means it will get a listing and about a 25% chance of a review.

In movie news, Matt and I have almost finished the trailer. We're waiting on a slightly updated FX shot, and then we can get it out to you!

The film itself is mainly waiting on audio right now. Once we get the current cut synced with the current sound, we can do our final edits to tighten up the pacing, and then we'll be off and running. :)

The Hour before Morning
Met with Matt today about The Hour before Morning. We actually didn't discuss the film much because it's getting on toward done. We did chat about trailers and marketing, which it was kind of exciting. Matt also showed me some of his color correction, which helps the look of the film a lot!

We picked a song from the score for the trailer. Grayson's score is haunting and just right, and haemony sings the Ash'torian chant beautifully, almost androgynously.

The Crow
While fish-sitting for a friend today, I saw part of The Crow on his Netflix. (I missed it when it came out.) It's not a great movie, but it did make me miss enjoying stories with that tone: dark fantasy, angst. If anyone knows any such that are well written (i.e. not a just rehash of the usual tropes), I'm open to rec's.

The Geek Girl Project
I have started writing for The Geek Girl Project, a blog by geeky girls (or "firls" as Kitty would have me type), looking at media, tech, writing, etc. It's a great group of people and lots of fun.

Another Good Review Blog
Check out Nye Joel Hardy's science fiction, fantasy, and other book reviews.

Life Post-Trigun
It is very restful to be done with Trigun. I've been pondering a final cleanup post of miscellaneous thoughts, but I probably won't do that right away. I think it may be time to obsess on Mirage of Blaze again for while. (MoB looks oddly gentle and comforting after Trigun.)

I wanted to post some examples of the impressive green screening work Michael Miller has been doing for us on a shoe string. We are so lucky to have his talent!



Elek works at a grungy rebel base.

( More behind the cut )

I got to hear a substantial portion of the score for HBM today. It's sounding really good, and I'm fortunate to have a composer in Grayson who is not only good with musical composition but has put a lot of thought into the movie, its themes, moods, etc.

I feel re-galvanized, like we're making real progress.

Michael has sent me some clips of his green screening work on the prison ship and rebel base. It's really impressive!

In particular, he did some very neat jiggery pokery with the fellows standing guard so that one looks much farther away than the other (they were filmed side by side). This gives an amazing feeling of depth.

I'm also very impressed that he actually managed to construct a plausible space ship out of the table wrapped in a green sheet we made Joel climb out of.

Progress!

As I slowly gear up to marketing my movie, I would appreciate your input as my target audience...