CINE HIGH is here, now

Ooohh, yeah, it’s the big day.

CINE HIGH is now available on the Kindle. It’s 99 cents. That’s one-ninth the cost of a BATTLESHIP ticket.

Plot synopsis:

Jack“Joke” McDee cares more about making his classmates laugh than his schoolwork, and his grades show it. On the last week of eighth grade, after Joke does his“clumsy juggler” act on the hood of the principal’s car, he’s nearly run over by a strange girl with a pink motorcycle. She tells him the truth, that he’s not human. He’s the living embodiment of the genre of comedy.

The girl takes Joke for a ride, transporting him to a strange high school, Cine High, where tough kids Action and Scifi have abducted the teachers and barricaded all the doors. Action and Scifi plan to take over all of entertainment once they graduate, and they’re holding the school hostage until all the other students swear loyalty to them.

Only one other student has the numbers to fight back, Horror. To convince Horror to join his side, Joke journeys from one end of the school to the other throughout the day. The whole time, he wonders, is comedy really the most powerful genre?

CINE HIGH has been an experiment from the beginning. First it was a Twitter novel, and now as an ebook. It’s light, it’s funny, it’s exciting.

So everyone spread the word, and leave one of those cheesy Amazon reviews while you’re at it. Remember, WE ARE THE MEDIA.

What is CINE HIGH?

What’s the big blockbuster release on May 25, 2012? Men in Black 3? Pfft, yeah right.

Friday, May 25, is the official pub date for CINE HIGH!

What is CINE HIGH? It’s my ebook! Plot synopsis:

 

Jack “Joke” McDee cares more about making his classmates laugh than his schoolwork, and his grades show it. On the last week of eighth grade, after Joke does his “clumsy juggler” act on the hood of the principal’s car, he’s nearly run over by a strange girl with a pink motorcycle. She tells him the truth, that he’s not human. He’s the living embodiment of the genre of comedy.


The girl takes Joke for a ride, transporting him to a strange high school, Cine High, where Action and Scifi, the toughest kids in school, have abducted the teachers and barricaded all the doors. Action and Scifi plan to take over all of entertainment once they graduate, and they’re holding the school hostage until all the other students swear loyalty to them.

Only one other student has the numbers to fight back, Horror. To convince Horror to join his side, Joke journeys from one end of the school to the other throughout the day. The whole time, he wonders, is comedy really the most powerful genre?

It’s an experiment. I’ve been working on CINE HIGH for about a year and a half. An earlier draft was “published on Twitter, one sentence at a time, one sentence at a time, from August to December 2011. That was an experiment, and the ebook is an experiment as well.

Huge thanks to Erich Asperschlager for the unendingly awesome cover art. Follow Erich on Twitter at @asperslobber.

Hope you enjoy the book. If you do, spread the word, and take a minute to leave one of those cheesy Amazon reviews. In this “We are the media” age, every little word-of-mouth helps.

Conversation overheard at Best Buy:

BEST BUY EMPLOYEE: "We don't have From Hell, which surprises me, but we have this one. It's really similar. It's a period movie, and Johnny Depp plays a detective.

OLD MAN (to his adult daughter): "Hey, he found this other one with Johnny What's-his-name."

OLD MAN'S ADULT DAUGHTER: "Sleepy Hollow! She doesn't have this one. Dad, she's going to love it."

OLD MAN: "Yeah, OK, let's just pay for it and go."

Let's do this ebook thaing: The doldrums

The whole being between drafts thing bugs me. I should be excited – I’m about to put Cine High on Amazon. It’s my big self-pub experiment. I’m also revising the super top secret project (Currently on draft number 11) in the hopes of it landing an agent. The most recent manuscript, Act Four Scene One, will soon begin its own second draft, probably over the summer, and there’s certainly (hopefully?) a lot of happy discoveries to be made in that process.

For today, though? I’m not writing. I’m planning a little here, researching a little there, revising a little there, but not a lot of “pure creativity” type of work.

Part of my doldrums, I suppose, comes from that I’m not so much between projects, but between ideas. My head’s full of characters and plots from stuff I’ve written, but not from what’s new. I currently have no next story, the one I can’t wait to start working on. There’s no creative “spark” right now. That’s something anyone can force, I know. I’ve got to keep doing what I’m doing, trusting that the “spark” will hit again, and I’ll get all excited about a story again.

Nonetheless, doldrums.

Moving forward: May will be Cine High month, mark one. On this blog, you’ll get the first glimpse of the cover, your first look at the story, trivia about the characters and their world, and, of course, the release day!!!

If I’m really going to do this self-pub thing, might as well go all out, right?