Kill Shakespeare

Kill Shakespeare is a 12-issue comic book that's a mash up of ideas and characters from the canon. for more info, check out the Wiki listing.

Dating Yourself...it's a problem

I'm not talking about having a close personal relationship with your hand here but writing in a way that makes your writing seem old-fashioned. Most writers are savvy enough not to use transient slang in their stories, but there are other, more subtle ways in which writers betray their age. For example, I have a friend whose "tell" is that she knows Yale University didn't start admitting women until 1970 because she entered college in 1969 and wanted to go to Yale. But if she mentions that, it immediately tells everyone that she's 61.
I have another friend who frequently makes reference to obscure movies that came out decades ago, and also makes extremely subtle jokes referencing vintage.  That would simply mark him as eccentric but then he attempts to explain the jokes while laughing heartily and it's just truly painful.
So there are ways to avoid the obvious things. But ... sometimes even when you're careful, you're blindsided.
I have a client who wanted his script read by one of my subcontractors, a smart guy in his early 20s.  The reader liked the script a lot but was puzzled by one thing. The main character's backstory included a reference to the "Oklahoma City Bombing" with no other explanation.
"The writer does not explain what happened to the protagonist's family," the reader wrote in his report.
He'd never heard of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
He was six years old when it happened.
The writer--like myself--just assumed that everyone would understand his reference.
It's easy to say -- "but everyone knows about the Oklahoma City Bombng," but my smart, young sub-contractor did not.
My client rewrote the script.

Review of Macbeth starring Sam Worthington

There are more than 60 different versions of Macbeth listed on IMDB, which is kind of amazing. This film, a modern-day adaptation set in Australia, is ... intriguing. It opens with three red-headed schoolgirls defacing the gravestones in a cemetery, a sequence that is disturbing and creepy, especially since the colors are so subdued that their red hair and the red paint they're using just pops out like ... blood.
The scene soon shifts to a neon-soaked waterfront meeting place where a drug deal goes sideways in an operatic, balletic orgy of violence that is equal parts Quentin Tarantino and Baz Luhrman.
Director Geoffrey Wright filmed the movie with more Dutch angles than an Amsterdam neighborhood, but the overall effect is incredibly stylish. There's real carnality in the scene where Macbeth is confronted by the Weird Sisters who hail him as the Thane of Cawdor and he who shall be king thereafter.
He has never really considered the idea--we get the impression he's really sort of a drone--but once he's considered the possibility of being the king, the idea will not leave him alone.
The adaptation maintains Shakespeare's dialogue but strips it down to the bare minimum. (That's good because sometimes the actors' Aussie accents get in the way, as in the line, "Takes the reason prisoner," which comes out "Take the raisin prisoner.")  A lot of dialogue is delivered as voiceover, which keeps it from sounding too melodramatic in the context.

Summer of Shakespeare continues!

From Star Trek: The Next Generation to Shakespeare. Michael Dorn is appearing in a production of As You Like It this summer in Los Angeles. (This month in fact.) It's a modern-dress version (it's often performed in modern dress) and directed by an associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Goldstar has cheap tickets, so I hope to go.

Buy Shakespeare

Shakespeare iPhone cover

Show your love for the Bard by wearing Shakespeare-themed stuff!  And purchasing quote mugs, posters, and prints.  Available at this Zazzle store.

Pulp Ink 2 is here!!

Huzzah--thanks to editors Chris Rhatigan and Nigel Bird!! These stories have a horror and a fantastical edge. Buy it here for kindle for just $2.99.  Buy the print version here.
Here's what you need to know about it:  Pulp Ink 2’s got beautiful killers, visions of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty rats, and one severed arm on a quest for revenge. No half-assed reboots here, just some of the finest writing in crime and horror today.

Featuring stories by Kevin Brown, Mike Miner, Eric Beetner, Heath Lowrance, Matthew C. Funk, Richard Godwin, Cindy Rosmus, Christopher Black, Andrez Bergen, James Everington, W. D. County, Julia Madeleine, Kieran Shea, Joe Clifford, Katherine Tomlinson, R. Thomas Brown, Court Merrigan, BV Lawson, and Patti Abbott.

Win the Ultimate Shakespeare getaway!

Airfare to Stratford, Ontario, accommodations and two tickets to three of the Shakespeare Festival's offerings. Details here.