Blog

  • Rice Tea – Friday Update…

    In keeping with my promise, I’m be releasing an update to the book. Just as I’ll do each and every Friday from here until completion.

    I’ve also created a site where you can grab both the current and earlier edits. See what’s changed in the space of a week, or go back in time to revisit certain segments before they were re-edited.

    You can check out the new revisions-tracking site here:
    http://book.maelys.bio/archive.php

    …and as usual, you can always download the latest revision here:
    http://book.maelys.bio/latest.php

  • Rice Tea Front Cover…

    Well, here’s the front cover for the book:

  • var Rice_Tea = H4CK3R5;

    First off, H4CK3R5 has a new name: Rice Tea. It avoids any kind of potential cease and desist letters I might get from a not-too-happy MGM.

    Now last time I talked, I said that I had completed the second revision of the initial draft. In the time since, I’ve tweaked it to my liking. Enough for me to get into writing the true brunt of the project.

    To that extent, I present to you my new plan: each week, I will release on my blog the latest iteration of this project. Every Friday night from now until completion. You’ll then be able to download the book to that point and share your thoughts.

    That said, do keep in mind that I will likely edit older chapters as I go on, for the sake of making sense. Near the end, major revisions may even be made to earlier segments of the book.

    Download the first release here (PDF).

  • H4CK3R5 2nd Rev. Complete…

    So I’ve finished the new revision of the H4CK3R5 plot. It’s 45 pages this time round, a tad longer than the 32 pages of the previous incarnation (or the 6 pages of the original concept.)

    The ending has been completely revamped, but still doesn’t sit well with me. It’s better, but is still of a letdown compared with the earlier half of the plotline. I’ll continue ecking away at it until I’m happy.

  • H4CK3R5…

    Well, progress on H4CK3R5 is doing well. Last I talked about it, I had finished a new draft and was toying with the idea of creating a radio play and novella.

    I am now well underway with yet another new draft, the necessity of which was based on the rather unengaging latter half of the original work. Then, about two weeks ago, I decided to mothball the idea of a film script altogether and instead create a novel.

    Now this creates an interesting shift. The original script was grounded in the target budget of production for the subsequent film. Every single shot in there is pondered as something that can be achieved for free or at least for really cheap. Money was a limiting factor for my imagination with regards to the events that take place in H4CK3R5. But now being a novel, that ceiling is no longer present. But the shift extends to more than that – the film script is a visual medium, and to that extent can convey information in a certain way that a novel cannot. The reverse is just as true. So we’re dealing with a situation where I have to really reinvent the whole thing.

    Purely presenting a screenplay as prose does not work. The differences are too significant, and I cannot ignore the new opportunities afforded to me by the removal of limits on my imagination.

    I suspect that the book will end up being like a Michael Crichton work; in essence a novel that reads like a movie. That’s what I hope at least. I don’t fancy that the end novel will be all that long. Perhaps 200 pages.