In the entertainment world, digital effects have already crossed the threshold that allows us to distinguish movie fantasy from reality.  But what happens when that expensive technique evolves into a cheap tool that can be used create synthetic actors or environments?  What happens when you can no longer trust that the person you’re talking to is real?  Just ask Emily from Image Metrics:

If the tech talk lost you and you skipped ahead, go back and take a second look.  Emily isn’t real.  While you’re thinking about how close to real she looked, let the design engineers over at OTOY show you the type of world you might meet Emily in:

You could run both of these on a standard iPhone, no massive computers required.  The technologies have a way to go, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see a world where you can no longer separate real and virtual content.  We go to big budget movies expecting to be wowed by the impossible, but what about the evening news?  If videogames like World of Warcraft can bring in millions of addicted users, how many will flock to OTOY’s simulated “liveplace” environment?

Contact lens computer displays are already in the early stages of development, and it’s more than likely our children will find it hard to imagine a physical world where the real and imaginary didn’t interact.

I just received word that my short story “9th Ward” has been accepted by The Midnight Diner anthology and will see print this October in a spiffy trade paperback.  The post-Katrina tale follows a hurricane victim trying to survive a supernatural collision of past and future New Orleans.

Summary: Six outcasts struggle to face their demons and work together in order to stop a galactic civil war.

Current Status: Critiques on the third draft are still coming in, but I’m starting to work on the final draft.  It will take two to three months to polish the novel and create all the submission package materials.  SD should be headed out to agents by October 1st.

Zombie Nation (short story)

Summary: A plague of self-interest and apathy threatens to bring the world to the brink of war as a virus spreads across Africa.

Current Status: Under review at Doorways Magazine.

Communicating With The Dead (flash)

Summary: A husband tries to communicate with his wife after she’s been infected with a deadly toxin.

Current Status: Rewrites.

Grandpa (novella)

Summary: A young girl joins her grandpa on a quest to destroy their utopian future.

Current Status: Rewrites.

Henry V (stage adaptation)

Summary: Shakespeare’s greatest war story adapted as an interactive play.

Current Status: Early Draft.

Seventy-five years ago the drive-in movie was invented by a man named Richard Hollingshead. All he needed was a 1928 Kodak projector and the hood of his car. The following year he turned the idea into a business and the first commercial drive-in was born.

It’s been more than a few years since I last had a picnic movie in the back of a truck, but as the number of drive-in screens dwindles, I long to return.  Wondering where to find that prehistoric beast known as the drive-in?  Look no further than driveinmovie.

I just finished principle revisions on the third draft of Severed Dreams. Ten authors contributed to the rewrite, averaging one page of comments for every twenty pages of manuscript. In all, the combined comments added up to just over two hundred pages of emails and transcribed notes.

As you can imagine, it takes a good deal of time to review so many opinions…and even more time to make the agreed upon changes. I missed my February deadline by a few weeks, but hopefully that added effort will show up in the manuscript. I’ll be fine tuning the third draft over the next couple weeks and submitting it to my writing group mid-April.

A twenty-eight year old California woman recently filed for divorce, blaming the videogame World of Warcraft for the breakup of her marriage. In recounting the woman’s sad tale, Yahoo saw fit to add, you guessed it, World of Warcraft advertisements to the news story.

So much for tact.

Thanks to the SF Signal for the trip down amnesia lane.

Yes, rewriting a novel is a bit like rolling a large bolder uphill, but I’ve managed to make steady progress. Hopefully, I’ll get to the top before I look like this guy!

The first act of the third draft is now complete. I’ve tested some of the new material out, and the response has been very positive. The polished opening will now go to my writing group while I work on streamlining the middle of the book. I’m a little behind schedule, but there’s still a good chance I will finish by the end of February.

Some books you find. Some books find you…

I Am Legend is one of a handful of books that made me want to be a writer. It was dated and a bit hokey when it found me, but I fell in love with it just the same. My attraction wasn’t based on the high concept aspects of the book. It was based on Robert Neville’s struggle with isolation and his defiance in the face of an overwhelming and hostile world. The book has popped up in my short fiction, and now that the new movie’s out, I doubt the references will be seen as too obscure.

I’ve suffered through two attempts to turn the book into a movie (The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man). Neither succeeded in bringing the Robert Neville I knew to the screen. Schwarzenegger was set to do his best impersonation of Charlton Heston in the late nineties, but that attempt was pulled (thankfully) for financial reasons. That brings us to Will Smith. When I heard Smith was visiting super-max prisons to see how the inmates handled constant solitary confinement, I knew the movie was on the right track.

I had the opportunity to see I Am Legend on an IMAX screen. It’s a smaller movie than you might expect, but the overwhelming format works with Robert Neville’s isolation, pulling you into his world. Smith’s performance is mesmerizing. And while the third act of the film deviates from the book a great deal, it brings with it a satisfying enough conclusion. Read the book. See the movie. You won’t be disappointed.

There are a handful of authors still in the process of reviewing the second draft of Severed Dreams, but the early reviews have come in. Overall, the critiques have been insightful and very positive. Here’s a book blurb-ish sample of early response to the novel…

“Smart and complex.”

“Highly imaginative and visual.”

“Addictive.”

“Very Satisfying.”

“Exciting, touching, and inspirational.”

“Brilliant!”

I have 2-3 month’s worth of work ahead of me as I shape the second draft into final form, but Severed Dreams is close to being a finished project.

Coincidentally, George Lucas attended USC in the late 1960s…