Myopia, Patreon, and "How I Would Have Done It"

As most of you know, I am a regular participant in the film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, now in its fifth-ish year. In order to get the podcast to its next level, we've created a Patreon with lots of different rewards. Reward tiers include access to exclusive series on the James Bond and Alien franchises, exclusive one-off episodes like one on the James Bond film soundtracks, live riffs on movies like we did late last year with The Black Cauldron, and for the top-paying patrons, picking movies for us to do episodes on.

All patrons, however, will receive the monthly newsletter "Myopia Prescription." A major feature of that newsletter will be a monthly long-form article from me. February 2020's article was how I would have done The Guyver, which draws heavily on ideas from my review of the first one and my review of the second one. The next one, slated for March, will be how I would have done The Last Starfighter. Other "how I would have done its" for further out include the 2007 live-action Transformers, the 1990s live-action Mortal Kombat, and the original Friday the 13th from the 1980s.

(New patrons can access the newsletters and bonus episodes from earlier months, so if you're finding this now, don't worry about it.)

These "how I would have done it" film treatments will be longer (both the Transformers and TLS ones are 2,500 to 3,000 words long) and more detailed than the "how I would have done it" blog posts like this one on Friday the 13th VII, although I will still structure them in the three-act format.

Thing is, I don't have so much time anymore, especially now that I've independently published Battle for the Wastelands and need to put out new series content every couple months to keep reader interest and build up those precious Kindle Unlimited page-views. As a result, you're going to see a lot less film-related content from me here.

So if you want to keep getting those "how I would have done it" posts (and depending on how crunchy time gets, movie reviews), make sure you subscribe to the Myopia Patreon. You can still get them for as little as a dollar per month, less than a cup of coffee.

After-Action Report: Two Cons, Two Weeks

I know it's been awhile since I posted anything, but these last few weeks have been busy. In particular, I've spent two weekends in a row working conventions here in Atlanta--the horror-themed Days of the Dead and the steampunk/alternate-history AnachroCon final show.

At Days of the Dead, I split the table with Nathan McCullough, whom I know from the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association and who was selling his new novella/short-story collection Drag You Down. That was a good weekend--I got 35 e-mail addresses for my semi-monthly newsletter and sold 33 books. The Thing in the Woods dominated with over half, but I sold a fair number of Little People, Big Guns and even seven copies of Battle for the Wastelands despite it not being a horror novel. I made at least one sale by comparing it to The Dark Tower, which helped me make a horror connection even though both Battle and TDT series are primarily fantasy.

I also handed out all my remaining Thing note-cards with QR codes for the e-book, which based on my Amazon rankings seems to have led to some upticks in sales. Unfortunately the relatively high table cost, even though I split it with Nate, and the high costs of parking led to a net profit of only around $25. Still, given the large number of books sold, the addition of new people to my newsletter, and advice Nate gave me on how to fix a minor glitch in the first print copies of Battle, this overall was a good experience.

(Going forward I'm thinking of carrying books to and from conventions in a rolling suitcase and taking Lyft rather than driving myself and carrying the original shipping boxes on a hand-cart. With a more stable suitcase, I could even take MARTA even though it's slower and shave off even more dollars. That'll be really helpful with the upcoming Atlanta Comic Con at the Georgia World Convention Center.)

AnachroCon proved more profitable, since I was a convention guest. I appeared in five panels, listed here. The most lively one was the one on tropes--we got into the ones people found annoying like Tragic Mulatto (I brought up Mr. Spock as the rare male example, since McCoy gives him crap about being a Vulcan and other Vulcans think he's too human) and characters getting "fridged." I sold 19 books there (Thing was the biggest seller surprisingly enough, followed by Battle) and since I didn't have to pay any costs, I made $121.50 in profit on 19 books and got 17 e-mails for my newsletter. Although it's unfortunate that this will be the last AnachroCon, the Atlanta Steampunk Expo  is moving to February to take its place next year and I've been in talks with the organizers about attending as a writer.

Time to get "Son of Grendel" revised and posted on Amazon and get working on the sequel to Battle of the Wastelands. :)