Holy shit... my friend got published!

Yup, he did! Check it out on Amazon here. Buy it. Read it. I don't need to tell you to love it, because that'll come naturally. It's such an addicting read that you won't be able to help it.

One day I was perusing the closest Barnes & Noble when a book with a startling, hi-res cover caught my eye. I started paging through it, instantly entertained, when I was surprised to note that before I knew it, twenty minutes had passed. Yes... me, the least mathematically inclined person on the planet... had been ensnared by a physics book!

Wondering what author could have performed such sorcery, I checked the cover. No... it couldn't be THAT Aaron Santos, could it? I knew that guy! I checked the back flap, and yes, there was his picture smiling back at me. Holy shit... he got himself published!

I am so proud of him, you have no idea. This book is beyond cool. It's called How Many Licks: Or, How To Estimate Damn Near Anything. In it, he details formulas on how to approximate interesting problems. Like, you know in the movie Amélie, when she wonders aloud how many people are having an orgasm right that moment? Well, Aaron provides a formula with some humorous trivia on how to reach an actual approximation (hint: Amélie is waaaay off.) Other hypothetical problems he explores in the book are just as humorous:

How much would Spiderman have to eat each day to produce the webbing he makes in the movies?

What's the chance of meeting your Mr. or Mrs. Right?

How long would it take to eat the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters?

Which is more expensive: the NASA Probe or the subway in New York City?



You'll be surprised at the solutions he comes up with. I've been showing it around at work, and one of my employees has been quoting it every day since. Students majoring in mathematics have been loving it, and even the folks who study vastly different fields couldn't help turn page after page.

So seriously, check it out. You won't regret it.

And Aaron, I know I've told you before, but if you're reading this... congratulations! Your book kicks so much ass!

Two Faces

The other night I was running through Boston Common when I stumbled across a live, mini soap opera in action.

I was marveling how bright the moon was that night, like someone had just punched a hole through the darkness, when I heard it:

"YAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGHHHH!!!" An almost inhuman wail of rage and angst.

There were two girls, probably around eight years old, on bikes. One had stopped and was looking back over her shoulder at the other one, whose mouth was open in a perfect "O", her screams tearing through the night.

"RAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!"

As far as I could tell, no one was hurt. An adult (the mother, perhaps) was walking towards the screaming child, speaking soothingly. The tiny human siren was just sitting on her bike, not moving, her head tipped straight back so that the out-pour of sound waves rocketing from her mouth could travel the farthest distance.

"YOU! HURT! MY! FEEEEEELLLLINNGS!!!" the girl wailed.

"I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings," the adult said. "I was just saying what you did was idiotic."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAAAA!!! WAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!" the girl continued to holler.

I burst into laughter and crossed the street while her screams escalated behind me. She was roaring so loudly that her voice was gargling and growing husky from the effort.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that I wondered if I should feel bad about laughing at a crying child.

I guess people forget how powerful we feel things sometimes. Children don't seem to have any qualms with it, but adults? Forget about it.

A writer's job is to feel, though, or at least have the capacity to understand what makes people feel the way they do sometimes. I always picture a writer as an exposed wire out in the open, with the dangerous potential to react to the other currents buzzing around out there. In other words, writers have to approach the world vulnerable and defenseless. Otherwise, how are they going to be affected about it... so that they, in turn, can write about it?

This is why, among other things, I think criticism can be so tough for an artist. It's almost like they have to prepare two faces: a sensitive one for the world that they have to creatively interact with... and another, shielded face for when the work is critiqued and evaluated. It's tough to balance between the two faces, and to know exactly when to wear them.

So to the writers and artists out there: how do you navigate such a world?

Catch-Up

Hi again. It's been awhile.

I guess I should start with the big reveal: "The Secret Project" I've been mentioning was a collaboration between my cousin and I. Around the beginning of summer, he brought up the idea of working on a short story together as a wedding present for our cousin Erin. I thought it was a touching thing to do, and to boot he even had the basic premise of a story already in his head, which was awesome. He told it to me, and I readily agreed to work with him on it.

But writing is such a lonely job by description, so how are two people supposed to go about crafting a story together that reads coherently under one "voice"? I was worried, but I knew if I were ever to work on a TV show or big-budget film, I'd definitely be working with other writers, so why not start out with another writer like my cousin who is humble, talented... and best of all... patient! I knew that whatever challenges we'd face, that I was on a good team.

So I asked him about it, and he found a great entry on Neil Gaiman's Journal about how he works with other writers. We liked the bit about them taking turns sending each other sections of the story. It reminded me of reading a serial novel in sections, and I liked the idea of looking forward to trying to surprise each other with each section.

So we tried it out. And guess what? We finished it in time for the wedding, and were pleased with the entire experience. When talking about it, we both mentioned how the story went in directions neither of us could have foreseen. It was definitely a treat watching a story take a life of its own, and carve a narrative that was unpredictably satisfying.

The funniest thing was trying to explain to my friends why I couldn't go out some nights due to meeting a deadline.

"What deadline?" they would ask.

"Um... I can't... actually say," would be my only response.

"What do you mean you can't tell me!?"

I've discovered since that secrecy, no matter how clear-hearted in intent, is still an outright slap in the face to some. My apologies to those people! I was just keeping a promise to remain secretive about it while it was being written. No harm intended.

If you want to learn more about the project, check out my cousin's writing journal. There's a good chance he will write about the experience too from his perspective. And even if he doesn't write about it, check out his journal anyway. His entries are always charming and witty to read.

Artwork

My current emotional state is approaching ecstatic delirium. The root cause of all this happiness is simple: Magic in Dogtown will have cover artwork. Not only will it have cover artwork, but the person designing the cover happens to be one of my favorite people on the planet.

I'll undoubtedly dedicate an entire post about her later on, but here are some facts:
-Yes, she has done prior professional work. I checked it out the other week. It was amazing.
-If the miraculous occurs and the book is published, my desire is to have her artwork featured in the final print.
-She is an intriguing character herself and one of the most fascinating people I know. If I write about her in a later post, people reading the descriptions will probably doubt her existence and therefore my sanity.
-Regarding the fact above: yes, she is actually real.

I'll talk about the artwork more later on as it develops.

---

Yesterday I went to a housewarming party wearing a T-shirt my cousin bought me that depicts a fictional construction company called "Steel Erection." Other details about the company are equally lewd. Later into the night it aroused discussion.

Girl: I can't stop staring at your shirt. "Steel Erection"? That's gotta be fake.
Me: No, it's real. My family's in construction.
Girl: But it's obviously referring to a penis.
Me: (feigns dumb) What are you talking about?
Girl: That can't be an actual company. It's a joke about an erection.
Me: (looks down at picture on T-shirt showing a very phallic-looking crane) If you think penises are composed of steel, then I pity you.

The host of the party has a tendency to tear off his clothes, run around, and generally wreak havoc when excited. I thought it wise to escape a bit early to avoid this situation, but Tropical Storm Danny decided to unleash on me on the way home. It saddens me to report that my steel erection T-shirt did not hold up well in the monsoon.


Stay dry,
Corey

Vibrations

Saw District 9 on Friday -- having been wowed by Neill Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joberg -- and was really impressed. Thing was, I put my phone on silent in the theater and forgot to reset it afterwards... causing me to miss all my calls on Saturday and most on Sunday before realizing the mistake. Yeah, I'm just brilliant like that.

Today I got to switch offices. Or, I should say move back into my regular office and out of my summer workplace. When I got there, I had the unusual feeling that I was walking across the bottom of the ocean, the silt stirring and swirling beneath my fingertips. It was that dusty and untouched.

And yes, I'm still writing away. I'm on a fun chapter, and it shows in the writing. I'm trying to start each chapter on a fresh beat to keep things jumping, but I'll only know when I finish the rough draft and read over everything if it works or not.

I saw this music video and suddenly started thinking of a new part of a back story for the main character in the book, but it doesn't relate at all to the song or the video. Strange how the brain works sometimes. Connections that aren't really connected at all. Still, I thank the artists and the creators of the video for the inspiration!

Monday's almost over, everyone. Stay fun.

Adaptations

I have internet at home again. I am satisfied that my life can now be overwhelmed by various online shenanigans as usual.

I've been meaning to write about adaptations for awhile, because I've noticed a lot of misconceptions about them in my life. After all, these days one sees adaptations springing up every weekend. In the past twelve months there have been a few big ones: Watchmen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and The Time Traveler's Wife, just to name a few.

In any case, there's something important I think everyone should know:

Adaptations are usually not direct translations between different forms of media.

Instead, I prefer to think of them as spiritual cousins, in a way. For example, one of my favorite adaptations is the movie Thank You For Smoking, which springs from Christopher Buckley's novel of the same name. I read the book (normally a sure sign that will make someone immediately scorn the movie) and thought the movie was superb. I think the secret to its success was that it didn't attempt to follow Buckley's novel verbatim. Instead it focused on the main character's constantly evolving relationship with his son. If I remember correctly, they only had one quick interaction in the novel.

In this way, it didn't degrade the spirit of the novel by trying to recreate the exact same ideas on film (how could that compare to what readers already constructed in their imaginations?), but instead took a new and interesting route in the world the novel created. Novels are typically hundreds of pages long. It's not a good idea to try and "condense" one down into 80-120 pages of script.

I think the filmmakers behind the Lord of the Rings movies were smart about this as well. Fantasy fans can be pretty harsh critics, and the Rings epics are classics, so it would have been insane to recreate the novels word-for-word on the screen. Instead, the films are different enough to be exciting and surprising to fans of the novels, but familiar enough to appease die-hards.

So, here are two rules I think every adaptation should follow:

1. Don't try to make the movie an exact replica of the source material. Instead, they should be separate, but definitely related, ideas.

2. More importantly, the original creator or author absolutely has to be on board with the adaptation.

For example, Watchmen was an intriguing adaptation, but author Alan Moore was very much against the idea of it being adapted into a movie. As much as I admire some of the talent behind the film version, I never like to hear about instances like this where the author's requests were ignored.

I've never really been keen on the idea of adapting, but two stories in particular prove to be the exception:

****Neuromancer, by William Gibson -- Filmmakers have been trying to adapt this for years. I think Gibson himself even penned a script at some point. The story, set in the future, follows a hacker who is trying to recapture the glory of what he used to be... at an extreme cost. Basically, I'd love the chance to adapt this, because frankly, it'd be really damn difficult. The novel's brilliant imagery would be tough to capture in a script, the characters are morally compromised in a way that would be difficult to make them sympathetic in a shorter media form, and the plot is complex to such a degree that it's near impossible to weave into a 90 page script. So yes, my desire to adapt is partly due to the sheer sense of awe I feel at Gibson's story, and partly due to artistic masochism.

****World War Hulk, by Greg Pak, Peter David, John Romita Jr., and Gary Frank -- Okay, don't knock it, please. A lot of people scoff at me when I tell them that the Hulk is one of my favorite characters in any form of media. "Where's your sense of good taste?" they inquire. "Didn't you have a concentration in Literature in college?" When questioned about this, I usually ask them if they have ever actually read any Hulk comics, to which the answer is begrudgingly in the negative.

When written well, Bruce Banner and his green alter ego can be very, very compelling. Try reading some of author Bruce Jones' arc in The Incredible Hulk series if you don't believe me. Whenever I let a cynic borrow some issues of this arc, they never, ever fail to get sucked right in despite themselves. Anyway, the World War Hulk story line ensnared me because none of the characters are really good guys. It's akin to watching an episode of "The Shield" for me, because I wasn't sure who to root for, but was glued to my seat nonetheless.

I always pictured it becoming a direct-to-video animated release (I wouldn't kid myself of trying to go theatrical), with the amazing voice-actor Keith David (Gargoyles, Spawn the Animated Series, Coraline, Platoon, Crash, etc) voicing the cunning, intelligent Hulk of the story line. Many people associate the Hulk with the feeble-minded ogre depicted in the movies who has a penchant for speaking in the third person, but in the stories I've read he is anything but.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that my dream of adapting this comic will ever come to pass, because the prequel, Planet Hulk, has already been made. And if you watch the trailer, I'd bet you a drink that that amazingly badass voice of the Hulk is voiced by none other than Keith David himself. Isn't funny how things develop, sometimes?

---

Is there anything you want to see adapted, or would want to try to adapt?

Still In The Lab

So all of my stuff is in the new apartment. Is all of it unpacked? No. Is it all organized into a cohesive living environment? Not really.

But it's clean, yes. And... all my stuff's in it. That's all I really care about at this point.

The writing is going pretty well. Coming to the computer lab after work puts me on a more refined writing schedule, which helps productivity in that department a ton. Maybe I should continue doing it this way even after Internet is restored to my apartment...

... Oh wait, one of the lab employees has just informed us that they're closing early today, so nix that last thought. I'm used to the academic year hours, which are 24/7. Oh well. I got a lot done this afternoon, so I'm pretty satisfied. Exhausted, though. I might just chill with a DVD tonight and recline for a bit. That actually sounds kind of nice, even if it a Saturday night tonight.

Some exciting but secretive stuff is in the works. I'll update about it when I am able to and it isn't so top-secret anymore.

Ugh, if my fractured thought processes -- evident by my scattered sentence structure -- is any indication, I'm completely exhausted. Hopefully I'll make it all the way through the DVD before conking out for the night...

Anyway, I hope your night tonight is more exciting than mine. Have fun and stay cool in this sticky weather.

Good night.