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Writer's pictureChris Russell

Outro S5 E4 – Books and Wrinkles




Hullo survivors.  How’s your bunker life going? 

Keeping clean? 

Maintaining good sanitary habits is important in the apocalypse!  Just because your whole family turned into degenerate brain-eating ghouls is no reason to stop brushing your teeth. 

I’m doing well – thank you for asking.  Had my two-week follow up on my broken collarbone and it is right on track.  Still sore but much better range of movement.  Day-to-day activities aren’t such a challenge now!

I’ve been bashing away at the novelization of the season one manuscript.  Getting close.  I contracted a publishing outfit and we’re working through the mechanics. 

One of the things they are providing is a cover design.  I’m hoping that the designer is as good as they think!  The covers I see on apocalyptic novels are all so cliché.  A man and a woman walking into a ruined city.  Every one of them.  It’s like they are clicking on a Apocalypse cover template.  It’s not just that the image is overdone.  It also strikes me as insulting to the reader and lazy.  Again – why are we assuming the readers are stupid?  Or at least assuming they are unable to understand nuance and imagery?  Why do we need to be so ham-fisted in our cover approach?

‘Ham-fisted’ is an interesting phrase?  It originated in the 1920’s.  It simply means you are so clumsy that you act like you have hams on the end of your arms instead of hands.

But – returning to the thread…The bottom line is that we should have the first of five books on the market within the next couple weeks/months.  I’ll surely be asking for your help in promotion – so stay tuned. 

After the first one, I hope that I learn enough to start rolling out the process across the next four season manuscripts.  I’ll also put out an audiobook version. 

So, you may ask, is the novelization significantly different than the podcast?  Depends what you mean by significantly.  The story and the characters are the same.  I have added content and at least one whole chapter to create continuity in the story.  I have sequenced the chapters to better support the story.  I’m going through now and polishing the character arcs so they make more sense. 

And best of all, I’m going to and the obscenities back in.  For the podcast I had to go easy on the bad words so we wouldn’t trigger any ‘adult only’ filters.  But it always bothered me that I was putting ‘nice’ words into the characters mouths that were not genuine. 

I’m pretty sure the apocalypse involves some cussing.

The audiobook versions will use this new version, the book version, and I’ll contract an audio professional to read it.

So – yeah, the different versions should be unique pieces of content that will add to what we did in the podcast.

Anyhow – I hope to have that editing finished up soon – it’s all coming together.

I listened to a couple of books since we last talked.  The first was Eat, Pray, Love – by Liz Gilbert.  It was ok.  She’s a very good writer.  But I’m not the target audience for this book.  I can see why it was so popular.  It verbalizes that nagging feeling that women of a certain age have that they are trapped in a world that is not of their making and maybe, just maybe, they have the strength to break out of the trap. 

I also listened to A Wrinkle in Time.  This is a young adult science fantasy novel by American author Madeleine L'Engle.  I had never read it, and it popped up on my library audiobook app – so I figured I owed it to myself to fill in this gap in my experience. 

Honestly, again, I’m not the target audience.  I almost tapped out.  It felt very familiar to me – like a mash up of Lemony Snickets and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with a little Lost in Space thrown in. 

But – it allows me to ask you a question.  A question to ponder.  What do all these young adult fantasy success stories have in common? 

Besides being on the banned books list in Alabama and Florida? 

What do they do differently that makes them timeless?

Here’s the thing. 

These beloved, successful, ageless works are successful because they don’t talk down to their audiences.  They present complex, compelling content.  They challenge the reader.  They assume the reader is smart.  Is worthy. 

They are not written for young adults, they are written for humans.

And that is something special.

Chew on that my friends.  How do add that kind of authenticity, that kind of truth, to your art?

Keep an eye on the bunker windows for tesseracting aliens…

And keep surviving.

 

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