My cover: Version 3

Before Writing There Is...

In case you’re wondering, I also draw. I’m a self-taught artist before I was even a poet, before ever I’m a writer. My drawings is pretty much sweet stuff due to the fact that I’m not yet that experienced in using photoshop. I usually do traditional but photoshop produce crisper lines and vibrant colors.

Here’s some of my amateur work.

TRADITIONAL:  

DIGITAL:

All of my works (the good and the bad) is in my DeviantArt account. It records my progress as a self-taught artist. If you want to check them out just click here—or not. :D

Beyond Human

Let’s talk about “civilization types”. Now what is this “civilization type”? There are four actually, now before anything else I will ask for your forgiveness if there are some grammatical errors in this post; it is because the time I am writing this. It’s quite rather late so my mind by this slice of time is in a haze.

Now, where was I?

Ah, the civilization types. There are four and this was categorized by a Russian Astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev:

Type 1: those harvest planetary power.

Type 2: those that can harvest the sheer power of the sun.

Type 3: those who can utilize the power of an entire galaxy.

Why am I discussing this to you? I presume you are wondering why such a writer like me ever take interest in these kind of things. Well, because in this kind of thing I find wisdom. Sir, or madam, we are Type 0. But there is a good news, we are going to type 1.

Here’s Professor Kaku to explain it clearly:

I like what he’s been saying in all honesty. Type 1 and all of the ascending civilizations are open-minded. Us? Well I think there are many but the opposite is likewise.

Divisions—

For me that is the right word, the divisions of religions and cultural narcissism and other things that is narcissistic in essence. At once glance on could see who these people are. But there are also wise people, those who are diplomatic, and they are in every culture too. There are the ones who accept change, the ones who accepted the earth is round and the sun is the center of the galaxy and not the earth. For those who oppose them they do no hate or harm, they just agree to disagree in different views.

Essential narcissism don’t just agree to disagree and keep the peace, they push what they believe even they know it isn’t right or don’t have a proof on what they are believing in. We could do anything about really because once you attempt to imply your own views, (only imply, not sear to their brains) they will turn calmly manic and attack you in hurtful terms and pseudo-intellectual discussions.

Anyway, why am I saying this? I don’t know really, maybe because I see many close minded people day by day. I’m a writer, we conveniently observe people: their gestures, the expression of their faces, how they act if they see something unconventional for their taste. Of course we also hear discussions, prying (I won’t sugarcoat what really I’m saying) eavesdropping. It’s actually refreshing every time you do it.

Now how to end this post? I have nothing in my mind now really, I guess the lack of sleep is taking its toll… so I’ll just be simple.

FIN

A Change in Perspective

I thought a lot about this because I’m getting the feeling that my original title “The Divine Wheel” was sending a wrong impression on my book. It’s too (like I said before) holy and its contents do not practically swerve to that point. It’s like any YA to adult fantasy novel. It has almost-sex scenes and other element that make YA a YA.

It is now called “The Last Disceptarix.” It has been my strongest title this mind of mine could think off, the only problem to it as to why I didn’t chose it was because of the word Disceptarix. Who knows Disceptarix? Do you know Disceptarix? I bet not! That’s why I had been thinking twice.

But now that’s the title of the first book of Trinity Nexus.

Here's the edited cover:

The sales are down. And I won’t whine because it’s my only book posted on amazon. The second book would be I think two month from now. It’s the prequel to my ever so awesome book (<give me a slack an let me think my book is awesome) entitled “Solace of Truths.”

Got a nice ring to it, huh?

Anyway, I need to sleep now. I had a long day and my grammatical skills are on it’s lowest so sorry for the typos and the whatnot if there’s any. Sigh*

The Cover and Iron Man 3

There’s something bothering me lately, and it’s not the expired bread I ate the other day. It’s about brilliant colors donned by nonsensical things. I noticed that people like, well, flashy things, even that under those flashy things are a stupid meaning that makes you scratch your head from temporal to occipital.

This post, as you can feel, would be a rant; a rant about movies and the eye candies alike.

Let’s start with movies, and I promise you I’ll try to be diplomatic about this.

Have you seen the Iron Man 3? I bet you did, who haven’t? It has all the great action scenes and Tony have a freaking robo-suit every grownup man loves to have. It’s a blockbuster hit, I know but I have a big problem about it.

After the movie and as I was walking with my mind still wrapped around the movie, I told myself: “God, I never expected that to happen.” And it meant in all the bad ways you could possibly imagine. The director, well, mass produced the film to suit for the general audience. The villain became a big joke and the story fell flat in a very cool and fashionable way.

So what am I saying here?

I’m saying that the movie didn’t stay true to the fans of Iron man since the very beginning. The writer of it I think became lazy and uninspired to bring justice to every character in the lore. If you look closely, now not at the movie but the viewers, one could see the psyche the general population has about the “inner beauty” concept.

A book is always judge by the cover, no more no less. In the trailers of the Iron man 3, there have been lines the Mandarin said: “Do you want an empty life or a meaningful death?” nothing like that escaped his lips during the movie. The advertisers or whoever in charge in the promotion of the film made a false take of the content of the film.

Sad really, very sad indeed.

The inner beauty is really hard to find. One can look at the advertisers and one can see what I mean. I guess let’s add the big time publishing houses (just because I’m in the book business). They do everything in advertising to present their newfound great book of the century, but they follow trends. No not follow trends but create the trends. They control everything that makes an indie author that have a beautiful book obsolete for the readers.

It’s like the movies. Say the “Godfather”, the film company treated it like a piece of trash until it became a huge hit. Same story for “Rocky” and other films that had passion from their creative crew. Today most of us (including me) like all the shiny things and explosive CGI, shaky cameras and shouting on the screen—those are the films that hit the box office… shiny. I’m not saying all CGI movies are only filled with air because there is a slightly recant movie that I like that’s full of CGI and its District 9 (great underrated film by the way,) I’m saying the writers of those big budget films should have a spine for art and not just the money. But we have to admit it sooner or later that it’s always about the money, am I right or am I right?

And so how about the art?

They’re everywhere. Good films, good books, good art… It’s up to people to find them, to not to judge the book by its cover and go through the meaning embedded in any art.          

(P.S: out of the topic but i just want to say I very much like San Cisco. Here's one of their song:)

Things I Recommend When One is about to Write

My friend, my invisible friend beyond the screen, I have a thought that I hope would help you in writing. It’s not that complex but I assure you you would write 3k words per day (what I mean by day is a day when you’re having a rest from your job). Now, If your reading this, I have t rephrase what I just have written—I can’t assure you, because writing that long in a single day would up to you.

Here are the steps that I commonly do (and I hope they’re universal by any means.):

1. Watch TV
2. Play an app (an app that deals with killing monsters and all kind of nasties)
3. Overdose of caffeine
4. Eat banana
5. Close your door
6. Destroy all distractions: Phone, TV, internet, your cat… (no, don’t destroy them, just turn them off—I actually destroyed a phone once… hmm… yea…)
7. Write. I don’t care what you’re writing or how daunting this task to you but write, and by angels in the clouds write fast. Just write fast, let the words fly out to your subconscious, let your mind be in a trance and keep your stare only at the blank sheet of paper, not in the word count, not in the time, not in anything.

Yes, I’m serious about everything including the banana, why? Banana is a natural resource of energy. Don’t cannibalize your body with energy drinks because the chemicals in them would take each of your cell’s reserved energy sources. It will drain you out in the worst possible way.  

If you do all of this, time itself would slow down when you’re writing. It would be like dreaming with the use of your fingertips and very comfortable keyboard. That, my friend beyond the screen, is what happens to me every time I write. Have you watched inception? Yes writing is like that; a dream inside a dream whereas time moves in a very slow pace. 

Now here's Cloud Atlas Sextet for your ears (Sorry, this is just one of those random messes my mind births out every second. Just want you to hear it.)

Hunting Agents with a Bow and Arrow... (I mean a keyboard and the internet)

My sweet Lord! I just discovered that I can still hunt and query for the right agent even I self publish my book in the internet. Isn’t that awesome? For me I guess.

The thing about self publishing is that you have to seduce (<a lack of other term) your potential readers first to be read. You’ll have to do many marketing stunts that would drain your time for actually writing to nada. And to be honest, I just want to write. And to be honest once more, my sales are dismally dismal in all epic proportions.

This gives me doubts to the readability of my book. But we should look at some elements here that lead us to my dismal downloads: one should know that there are free e-books on Amazon, and I just put my book in that kind of promotion. The question here is do those who download my book reads it right now? The answer is simply no, I have no credibility for them, and I’m an unknown, the hell the care for what I’ve written… and most of all, they downloaded the book for free.

One thing is I didn’t tell anyone, not even my friends that I already publish the damn thing.  Don’t get me wrong here, I think self publishing is empowering but I really want to write and nothing more. I just want to sit in front of a black page and just type away anything this mind of mine harbors, may it be horror, suspense, or nonsense, typing and typing it down is all I want to do. I hate marketing, tweeting my book with all the hash tags and the shoveling my book down to those potential readers. That seems invading for my taste.  

That’s why I’ll be hunting for agents and pray to anyone up above to grant me one. Then to have a publisher knocking on my door to tell me we will publish your book worldwide. That would be a gem, right? If that happens I’ll go to my bed and sleep with a wide smile. Yes, sleep, that’s how I celebrate things such as New Year, thanksgiving, Christmas and all those unnecessary holidays—and oh, valentines, especially valentines.

Anyway, I have to divert this post to a lighter side of my life. I’m at the third chapter of my third book. I’m planning to finish its first part before I ever edit the second one.    

Thank you once again for visiting me here. I have no idea how you ended up in my blog but it gives me pure joy. And I’m going to celebrate that by sleeping. Yay!