No Kindle? No problem.

Here's this, for everyone who's been asking, "What if I don't own a Kindle?" (The app DOES work on a PC and laptop!)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Now, even if you don't own a Kindle, you can go ahead and enjoy CINE HIGH.

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?

I went to the Boston ComicCon

So I went to the Boston ComicCon on April 21. First impression: So many people! It was supposed to open at 10 a.m. I got a slow start on the morning and got there just before 10, to find the line snaking all the way around the building. I waited for about an hour before the line started moving and I got in. Apparently, hours later, there will still people in that line. Around 2-3 p.m., I heard people saying, “I’ve been in line all day,” and “I only now just got in.” Crazy!

Yes, there were quite a few “fight the crowd” moments when trying to get close up to booths and rifle through the half-off trades (Drool… half-off trades…), but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. At last November’s SuperMegaFest in Framingham, Mass., there were so many people that you couldn’t walk around, you were just stuck in place with strangers’ bodies pressing against you (and not in a fun way). So the wide morass of people at ComicCon was an annoyance, but not so much to ruin the experience. It’s a weird balancing act with these conventions – too few people and it’s dreary. Too many people and it’s a pain. You need just the right amount of people for it to feel lively and fun. Con organizers have no control over this stuff, so whatever.

After seeing countless online photos of cosplayers at the San Diego and New York cons, it warms the darkest chambers of my heart to see the cosplayers in full force in Boston. The standout cosplayer was the guy dressed as Mr. T. Not just looking the part, but in character the whole time. This was fun for the first few minutes, but after thatI wanted to ask him to take his “pity the fool” and “jibber-jabber” act to other side of the room. The crowds loved him, though. I was excited to see some more obscure characters represented in cosplay. Dressing up as Batman is one thing, but walking around in public dressed as Mirror Master? That’s a whole other kind of personality type. And let’s not forget the slutty female cosplayers. I saw slutty Emma Frost (redundant?), slutty Batgirl (Stephanie Brown!) and two slutty Elektras (original, not movie version). Why don’t I have pictures? I could have, but I didn’t. Too much hassle, even to fumble with the phone, I guess.

Although I did buy my share of half-off trades (ooohh, half-off trades…), I spent most of the my time – and cash – at artist’s alley, which, amazingly, covered a good half of the con space. With own ebook about to come out (Cine High! Cine High! Cine High!), I was naturally interested in what the self-pubbers have come up with. I picked up comics in various genres, such as superhero, fantasy, comedy, and even memoir. Great stuff all around.

Artists like Time Sale, Becky Cloonan, and Ed McGuiness were there. McGuiness’s line stretched across the con floor. But I didn’t get in line for their autographs. Somehow, it was enough for me to walk by and see them there, knowing I’m in the same room as them. I was wicked excited to meet Jo Chen, cover artist for Runaways, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many other comics. She signed a print of the Runaways #1 cover for me, and said she loved working on Runaways because they gave her a lot of creative freedom to do the covers however she wanted. I was also wicked excited to meet Megan Brennan, co-creator of the webcomic School of World, as her Twitter feed is always fun and exciting. She and her co-conspirator Rel were very nice and creeped out by me at all, graciously signing a School of World book for me.

Amid all the hustle and bustle, the biggest talk around the con was Womanthology, the Kickstarter sensation that has led to magnificent hardcover collection of work by a variety of female comic creators. Sadly, every copy sold out almost instantly, so I didn’t get one, but the message was loud and clear – comics are no longer a boys’ only club. The ladies have taken the comics world and made it their own. Womanthology was the center of attention throughout the entire con.

To me, Womanthology means a little more than gender roles and comics. Womanthology started life with a single Tweet – 140 characters or less – and the whole things snowballed from there, so that the entire comics industry, if not the internet at large, stood up and took notice. The Womanthology creators are doing their own things, and the audience generates itself. I’m excited about that. It seems to me that this type of success is open to any writer or artist, of course. As Cine High is about be unleashed unto an unexpecting world, I’m well aware that sales may never rise higher than 20, or it might go viral and make billions upon billions of dollars. I just don’t know. If Womanthology started with a single Tweet, then it seems to me that any self-pubbed project has the same chance.

And… that was the ComicCon experience for me.

The CINE HIGH Wordle

I made a Wordle for CINE HIGH:



(Reminder: The CINE HIGH ebook is coming in May 2012.)