Text to Speech Readthrough

There are fourteen days left until The Field is released and I’m going through the final read throughs. I’ve found the best way to catch errors and to tweak a manuscript is hearing it read out loud.

I use Scrivener for my books and one great feature is the speech synthesizer. You can read your manuscript out loud yourself, but after awhile your throat starts to hurt and you still miss a lot. At least I do. Having a separate voice read it helps immeasurably. I’m making three read-through passes through the book to catch all the typos and polish the manuscript. It’s drudge work at times, but necessary. If you’re considering releasing a book, listen to it at least once before hitting the upload button.

RIP Nikon 3100

My little Nikon 3100 finally broke for good. Here’s the last shot I took with it:

 

I took this camera with me everywhere, dug sand out of the lens extender with a pen knife on a beach in Mexico, took shots in Detroit neighborhoods where you were a sitting duck if you stood still for over a minute, kids birthday parties and countless other scenarios. The lens only stayed sharp when fully wide angle and now the on-off switch is shot. I’ve had this camera for about eight years and it took a lot of abuse, being my primary street photography camera. I’m really going to miss it, and I’m not sure what to replace it with. Thinking about a Leica C or a Canon S120.

Here are some links to some of the 3100 shots:

http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/around-detroit/

http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/around-detroit-2/

http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/freeway-abstractions/

 

Graphic Novel First Steps Part II

As stated in the last post, I’m experimenting with photographic backgrounds with hand drawn characters to produce a graphic novel. For practice and fun I’m putting a recurring strip up on this blog entitled JUSTICE – DETROIT STYLE. I’ll show the tools I use, the process to produce the panels and I will also post the script so you can see how that works.

Here’s the first panel I’m playing with:

I took the photo earlier this week and used Pixelmator for everything. If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is the way to go. Here’s a post about it here: http://stefanstudios84.wordpress.com/blog/ If you don’t have a Mac, you can use GIMP which is open source and free. GIMP is a great tool for creating graphics and manipulating images. If you have Photoshop then you’re all set.

The main character is Rick Justice who appears like a normal guy but takes extreme justice into his own hands. The first story is worked out which will result in about eleven or twelve panels. After that I’m going to make it up as I go along. I’m working on the characters (bad guys, Rick’s girlfriend, victims, etc.) now for the first story and for future installments.

Graphic Novel First Steps

I started some preliminary work on a graphic novel tonight. I plan on making it little different than the normal graphic novel fare where the backgrounds will be photographs with the characters layered on top. I’m not sure how well this is going to work, but I’ll document the steps here. I’ve been wandering around Detroit taking background shots and started character sketches tonight. Here’s the first one:

The drawing is a candidate male character. Above are a couple of street shots in Detroit. Next to the drawing is a Royal Langnickel pencils set that I came to appreciate in about two minutes. If you want to do any reasonably serious pencil sketches, this is the set to get. I got it for $28.75 on Amazon.

My next post will be the first attempt at scanning a character drawing and layering it into a photograph, probably using Pixelmator.

 

The System – A Detroit Story – Free Download

The System – A Detroit Story – is now part of Kindle Prime and will be a free download on Amazon.com from Friday September 26th through Tuesday September 30th.  It’s available here: http://www.amazon.com/System-Detroit-Story—ebook/dp/B005HZKIBE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313788718&sr=1-1

The Field Update

t’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog. I’ve been working on The Field for about a year now, a lot longer than any other book I’ve written. This is a tough one. It’s at about 85,000 words and a working draft is heading to the beta readers next month with the word count of around 90,000.

This is one of those books that could go on and on like a Stephen King tome but that goes against the way I like to write. I like to write short novels a person can finish reading in a matter of hours, but I get consistent complaints that my books are too short. This time I’m going to take the advice of my beta readers and expand it to around 120,000 words if they believe it should be longer. Please let me know if you would consider being a beta reader on this or future books. 

Regardless of length, the book will be out by December 2014 at the latest.

General Fuzz

I listen to electronic music when I write, without distracting lyrics. Trying to write while someone is belting out a song just doesn’t work. I either listen to Pandora for new artists and material or check out recommendations on iTunes. Today I ran across General Fuzz. I already had already downloaded two of his songs from iTunes and liked them, but really didn’t pay attention to the artist. Today I did, and went to the General Fuzz website.

The music is simply great- intelligent, well thought out, catchy and clean. Plus, get this, all of the downloads are free. 

Who is General Fuzz? James Kirsch from Newton, MA, and a true artist. He’s supported through donations.

If you like to listen to quality music when you work, check out General Fuzz. This dude is for real.

Here’s the link to his site: http://generalfuzz.net/index.php

Virgil Bliss

Every once in a while a gem of a movie pops up out of nowhere. One such movie is Virgil Bliss. I first though, yeah, another low budget stinker but I was dead wrong. Virgil Bliss is a great film. Low on budget, yes. High on writing and talent, yes.

Virgil Bliss is an urban tragedy. Virgil’s chances of success in the outside world appear to be doomed from the onset, from the sarcastic prison guards messing with him before his release, to being fired from his job as a janitor for being an ex-con.

Virgil is released from prison to a halfway house in New York where he meets the confrontational Manny Alvarez, who Virgil eventually befriends. After unsuccessfully trying to pick up women, Manny takes Virgil to the gritty, post-industrial street corner that Ruby works. Virgil makes the tragic mistake of falling in love with her, much to Manny’s protests. Virgil is played by Clint Jordan. Ruby is played by Kirsten Russell. Both performances are truly authentic and convincing.

It looks like Virgil and Ruby may have a chance of a new life, but it doesn’t work out that way. At all.

An added bonus is the soundtrack, nearly perfect for this film.

Virgil Bliss was written and directed by Joe Maggio.

Grade A

Future Jobs?

There’s been a big buzz lately about software replacing workers in higher paying jobs. Who’s vulnerable? Accountants, budget analysts, loan officers, auditors, tech writers, insurance adjusters and many more. According to one measure these jobs face an eighty five percent chance of being automated. Shipping clerks and delivery drivers are at risk. So are retail workers. Even mathematicians have a forty seven percent chance of being replaced by machines. What about low-end jobs? Probably gone forever.

Bill Gates recently said, “…twenty years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model.”

I believe it.

For the last three weeks I’ve been in the first Tackling the Challenges of Big Data class at MIT. It’s an in-depth overview of Big Data and emerging technologies that harness it.

One of the sections covers machine learning and great strides are being made, almost daily. A new age of intelligent automation is on the horizon, and there’s nothing stopping it. So how will this affect future economic policies? Seismic changes, I’m thinking.

It’s indeed a Brave New World we’re entering.

 

Godzilla

…in 1954 we awakened something…

I just watched the trailer for the new Godzilla movie and it’s really good. Brian Cranston plays a feature role (looking  nothing like Walter White) and adds quality acting to an otherwise SFX based flick. The trailer is full of cool cliches, such as the obligatory, trumpeting BWAAAAS in the back ground and it’s the first I’ve heard  Gyorgy Ligeti’s Requiem and Lux Eternal in a movie since the apes were running up and touching the monolith in 2001 – A Space Odyssey.

It took me forever to connect to the Godzilla website (consistent mySQL connect failure) which isn’t a surprise. I’m sure it will be  swamped for awhile. Godzilla is directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters) and written by Max Borenstein.

Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc

I bet it’s a hit.