- Blog here more often. Blog on work site more often. Blog on cooking site more often. Blog on other “fun” site more often. Think about cutting back on the number of blogs you have that don’t get updated.
- Write another novel. Possibly by blogging less.
- Write a short book and give it away for free on Amazon.
- Work more. Make more money.
- Sleep less. Spend less money.
- Exercise. Not more or less, just at all.
- Continue to eat preservative-free.
- Continue to enjoy only the best food and booze in the world.
- Work more to fund expensive food and booze habit.
- Pinch yourself every time you see your wife.
Watchable low-budget horror
Just got done watching “The Other Side,” a low-budget ($15,000) horror movie that I could actually sit through.
Most of the time, I add some low-budget horror movie to my Netflix queue, watch about 30 minutes of it and then shut it off in disgust (and sometimes, honestly, I don’t even make it through the credits).
It’s a very interesting premise, that someone can escape from hell back to the living world again, and the filmmakers did a hell of a good job with some of the montages and “special” effects, considering their lack of cash (I mean, my car cost a lot more than $15,000, and it doesn’t even have realistic blood).
If you’ve got streaming Netflix, add it to your queue. And yes, for the record, I read books, I don’t just watch horror movies, but I can’t read a book while working.
Follow-up: I mentioned in my last post that I was going to watch the Swedish precursor to “Let Me In.” I did. It was excellent, though I found the American version was paced better and the acting was far superior.
A “real” vampire movie
I’m a huge fan of creepy horror movies. I’m not so big on slasher flicks (unless they’re unintentionally funny), or gore-porn, but I can’t get enough of atmospheric horror (if that’s even a sub-genre).
Since I’m currently working on my next project, a novel about a young boy who’s haunted by the ghost of another young boy, “Let Me In” is finding its way onto my movie rotation every week or two.
Chloe Moretz (who is, without a doubt, the most talented child actor to come along in a long time) puts in an outstanding performance, and the filmmakers really captured young innocence exceptionally well.
It’s based on a Swedish film, “Let the Right One In,” which is in my Netflix queue. We’ll see if I can muster up the courage to watch it.
Back “home”
My wife shot this this morning when we got up. Can't beat the setting.
My wife and I are spending the Fourth of July weekend at my parents’ lakehome in the small northern Minnesota community that was the inspiration for Indian Falls, the setting for “4:37.”
It’s a small cabin right next to the water, and it was where we would live for the entire summer when I was in high school. There was no internet in the cabin then, no cable TV (we got one channel over the air), and no air conditioning. Thus, the only way to spend 90-degree, 95 percent humidity days was to get out of the house and find a cool, comfortable place to read.
Naturally, returning to the lake once a year now serves as needed re-ignition of my passion for words.
Since most of my old tattered paperbacks now reside in boxes in the basement of our home in Michigan, I felt the need to go to the used bookstore in town this afternoon and buy a couple. My Kindle is loaded up, and I have a few thousand words to put into the forthcoming next novel, but it doesn’t matter if I get to the used paperbacks this weekend or not. It simply felt weird to be at the lake without at least a few secondhand books.
For the record, I bought John Sandford’s “Rough Country,” which I picked up off the shelf because the title implied it might have some great scenic descriptions of my native Minnesota (which I miss), and “Velocity” by Dean Koontz. I never read Dean Koontz growing up, because I was under the impression that Stephen King was a better storyteller. My wife tells me I need to branch out and give him a try, so sometime in the next few weeks I’ll get around to reading my first-ever Dean Koontz novel. I may be the last hold-out.
Check out the Kindle version of 4:37 — only 99 cents on Amazon.com.
