Joshua P. Simon - The Accidental Author

Steel and Sorrow: Book Two of the Blood and Tears Trilogy is now available as an audiobook through the following outlets!!
You should be able to listen to a small sample at each location.

If all goes according to plan, Trial and Glory: Book Three of the Blood and Tears Trilogy should be released later this year.

As I’ve mentioned before with my previous releases, please leave a review at the place of purchase and spread the word to others. The best form of advertising for authors is through word of mouth and reviews act in this same way.

Thanks!

So, let’s do three weeks in a row of 90s bands that have women fronting them. If they’re good, why not?

I know Hole gets a bad rap, but that first album still holds up well. (I guess that makes sense if the rumors are true about Cobain ghostwriting it. Ha.) Anyway, here are a few of my favs from the album.

Violet


Doll Parts


Miss World

It’s been a few months since I’ve done a writing update so here we go . . . .

1. Audio books
a. Steel and Sorrow was completed a couple weeks ago. Now, I’m just waiting for ACX.com to approve the files and upload to Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. Hopefully, that should happen sometime in the next month or so. Keep checking here for the official release date.
b. Trial and Glory is currently in production. I’m hoping for it to go live before the end of the year.

2. Short Stories
a. I had planned to do a couple of these this year, but I don’t see that happening right now. I actually did start a couple short stories earlier this year (a couple thousand words on each). However, I lost interest and moved on to the two series below. I guess my heart just isn’t into writing shorter fiction at the moment.

3. Rondel and Andrasta series
a. Book 1 is done and will be going to beta-readers this weekend. It’s around 84K words and is a sword and sorcery adventure story.
b. Book 2 has been started. I’ve written about 16k words on the rough draft. I hope to have it completed and off to beta-readers by the end of the year.
c. I also hope to start Book 3 by the end of the year.
d. My plan is to make these mostly stand alone adventure stories with Rondel and Andrasta visiting various parts of the world for each book. I have quite a few story ideas right now. My goal is to keep the books between 80-100K words which will allow me to write them at a quicker pace.

4. Tyrus series
a. Book 1 is done and has gone through a couple of edits. It’s currently around 80K words.
b. Book 2 has been started. I’ve written about 45K words on the rough draft.
c. Although I love the series so far, it will probably be a while before any of it is released. Since it’s told in first person POV, I feel like I want all four books written (or at least the first three done) before I release Book 1 in order to make sure the series is paced well.
i. That being said, it will probably take me a while to finish the series because I’ve decided to work on these books intermittently between the Rondel and Andrasta series.
ii. The general premise of the Tyrus series is that a great ten-year war has ended and some of the soldiers are finally returning home. The world has changed drastically from what they remember and each has to find their place in it.

Considering the above, it is very likely that other than the audio books for the Blood and Tears series, I probably won’t be releasing any new material this year.

Conversely, I’ll probably end up releasing 3-5 books next year to make up for that. So, that’s definitely something to look forward to . . . .

Last week’s trip back to the 90s was Veruca Salt. This week is L7.

I opted not to include my favorite song by them since there’s some vulgarity in it (included in the title). Instead, I went with probably their biggest hit. Very underrated band.

Pretend that We’re Dead

I’m sorda late in getting this review up but while in NOLA Leah and I got to see a movie at the theaters for the first time in a while. We went with my sister and brother-in-law while the grandparents watched the grandkids. I was hoping to see Man of Steel but since my sister had already seen that one, we went with my number two choice which was Pacific Rim.

It seems that everyone else wanted to see World War Z instead, but no one really put up a fight so I took advantage.

I grew watching the old school Godzilla movies over and over so this was right up my alley.

Overall, I’d give the movie a 7/10. Reasons for the rating are below.

Pros:
- The movie delivered where it was supposed to. The Jaegers and the Kaiju were awesome. And the action was every bit as cool as I’d hoped it would be. The fact that they got this right made it worth seeing in my mind no matter what.
- The music/soundtrack was perfect. Especially when it came to the fight scenes, the music really added tension and emotion to the battles.
- Prologue – Del Toro covered all the backstory in a quick 5 minute narration while giving flashes of the events being discussed. This was brilliant as it allowed us to get right into the main story rather than suffer through a slow buildup.
- Pacing – The movie never felt like it was dragging.
- Idris Elba – Perfect casting and one of the highlights from an acting standpoint in the film. Great presence.
- Charlie Day – Awesome. Perfect person to provide comic relief. He and Elba brought their A-games.
- Max Martini – a small role, but he played it well.

Cons:
- Dialogue –Yes, there were some great moments like Elba shouting “We are cancelling the apocalypse.” However, this movie was filled with clichéd and stilted dialogue. Dialogue’s one of my pet peeves so I was cringing a lot.
- Casting – After Elba, Day and a couple of others, the casting director really phoned it in. I know the lines were bad, but it seemed at times people delivered it like it was their first day in acting class.
- Acting – See above.
- Ron Perlman – I don’t blame him. I blame Del Toro. Perlman is usually awesome, but he was so underutilized in the film it was criminal. The role he played could have been filled by anyone off the street.
- Script – Several poorly written scenes, holes, and subplots brought in way too late in the game without the proper setup (red shoe anyone?).
- Forced emotional connections – Too many instances where it was obvious Del Toro wanted to tug at the viewer’s hearts. However, I didn’t care about the characters enough for that to even come close to happening. The only exception/setup I thought was handled well related to when “Iceman” and Elba said good-bye to the old friend/dad before the battle at the end.

So, was it worth seeing? Yes. Was it good? Yes. Could it have been great? Absolutely. I know that no script/novel/etc. will ever be perfect but there were so many glaring things wrong with the dialogue/plotting, it makes me wonder how no one noticed them. Or maybe they did, but didn’t care.

Either way, take it for what it is, rather than what it could have been, which is an awesome action movie that makes you feel like a kid again watching Godzilla for the first time.

As with any era, there are bands who come up hard and fast and then just seem to disappear. The 90s had their fair share. Veruca Salt was one of them. Though they’re most known for Seether, Volcano Girls is a MUCH better song.

Too bad they didn’t stick around longer in the mainstream. Not enough bands out there of women playing rock.

Seether


Volcano Girls

Sometimes you want to relive the fond memories of your youth. Sometimes this succeeds (Disney cartoons, Looney Tunes, Transformers…)

And sometimes it doesn’t (Voltron, He-Man, and now…

THE NEVERENDING STORY

Unlike Voltron which had a few redeeming qualities such as the ending fight scenes or He-Man which was at least funny in its awfulness, The Neverending Story was just downright depressing.

This was one of my favorite movies as a kid, one that I watched all the time on TV and had probably seen at least 2 dozen times. However, it had been over 20+ years and I thought it would be cool to take a walk down memory lane with my wife in the hopes of one day watching the movie with my kids.

Yeah, that’s likely not going to happen if I can help it.

Horrible acting, awful special effects, randomness of the scenes within the story, lack of plot cohesivness, over the top cheesiness, failed attempts to be smart and philosophical. It wasn’t supposed to be THAT bad.

I think I could have written a better script on the back of a single sheet of toilet paper.

Even the scenes I thought were cool as a kid, like Bastian flying the luck dragon at the end, were almost unbearable.

On a side note, I didn’t remember that “pep” talk from Major Dad at the beginning. Wow. “Hey son, I know you’re like 8 and are upset your mom just died, but you need to suck it up and be a man like me. Got it?”

Father. Of. The. Year.

Two weeks later and I’m still reeling from watching it. I’m not exposing my kids to this because if they do somehow like it, I don’t think I can keep watching it myself.

Sigh.