I liked this movie. Was it spot on with the comics? No. Does it matter? No.

I'm opening this review with something that I really hope catches on. A perspective on the whole concept of film adaptions. Rather than piss yourself off and miss out on a completely good movie of something you love, stop comparing it to the source material. Think of them as alternative versions, in an alternative world from the book, comic, etc. In the case of Marvel, even they reimagine characters, plotlines, etc in their work. That's why we have The Spectacular Spiderman, Ultimate Spiderman, Amazing Spiderman, and if you're old enough to remember Spiderpig. Get over it, enjoy the movie for what it is, be happy that what you're into actually made it to the big screen and move on.

That being said: I enjoyed this movie. It was a good blend of action, story and a pinch of humor that doesn't try to make sense of the X-men/Wolverine movie franchises, but figures out a way to simply deal with them. The gist of the comics was there, just handled a bit differently with different characters. Does it matter? Not really. I'm not going to go into what this movie is about, as the trailers handle that just fine. I simply wanted to say it was a good movie and you should check it out. If you're unsure you want to spend the money, mostly because of x-men 3 and Wolverine: Origin, I understand. Do yourself a favor and watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR1P-nduHzM  it's the cartoon version of this from the 90's. It'll give you a good idea of what the movie is like. Keep in mind, it's not exactly the same as the movie....again think of it as an alternate universe from the movie and comics.

Here are a few (3) sketches my friend, and artist Chris Yarbrough sent over to me this past week. Personally, I prefer Aeneas #2. I like the militarized look of the Death Squad and it seems very fitting for what they do. As more sketches come in, I'll post them. We still have Wynda and Lorna to finish out the Death Squad, as well as some sketches of goblins. These sketches only represent the idea of the characters and not the overall design of the book cover, which will be a wrap around.

I'm about 1/2 way done with the rewrite of book 1. It should go a lot faster from here, because it was mostly the beginning that needed the changes. Once the meat of this book begins, it becomes a lot more descriptive and stylized, especially in the non-Samuel chapters. I plan to go ahead and look them over, but I expect they won't be wildly changed. 

On a side note: I forgot how awesome Dixie was/is/whatever.

This is a fairly minor update. A few seconds ago I added a link for network blogs to this page. You can find it at the bottom on the right margin. If you're in to that sort of thing add me. Otherwise, you may check it out anyways, it seems to be a good way to find blogs on whatever topic you may be looking for.

Due to some upcoming things in the world of writing and such, I've decided to step away from The Lord Wars writing for a moment to restructure and rewrite Book 1 of CoM. Am I changing the storyline any? No. Characters? No. What I am doing is this:

1. Rewriting the Samuel chapters.
  - I had written him to be as normal and boring as possible. The idea at the time was that he was supposed to be the everyday man, the eyes and ears of someone who had zero experience with the supernatural and was essentially thrust in to it. Through the book his writing style changes somewhat. Initially seeing everything for what it is (a park, a bank, etc) he would end up looking at things from a new, more detailed perspective as his life changed from the book. Unfortunately, I went a bit far on the stagnant side. So, I'm rewriting his parts of the story.

2. Chapter clean up.
  - Originally, this first book was written as a series of short stories that I had planned to publish on a monthly basis for 50 cents each. It wasn't until after I had written about half the book I found out that Amazon wouldn't allow you to sell at such a cheap price. As such, the short stories became a book. What I've done (last night) was split up the content by the scene, rather than the story. So what was once 8 chapters is now 16. I know a lot of readers, myself included, like to stop at the end of a chapter, rather than in the middle of one. There's a sense of completion and it's usually easier to walk away from a book that way.

3. Possible  Prologue
  - I'm still debating this one. What I'm considering is having a prologue that's set in the first scene of the book, but by main characters from the distant future (time-traveled back). I'll probably write up something and show it to a few of the readers that have chat with me on a regular basis. You're more than welcome to do so, that info is on the contact page of this site.

I suspect that this whole ordeal won't take more than a couple weeks, if I keep at it. The artist working on the Death Squad cover has agreed to do one for this book as well (the entire series, really, but that's Kickstarter dependent). So, I'm hoping to get this all out at the same time, but we'll see. Keep in mind, if you already own the book this update will be completely free. The cost of the book isn't going to go up, this whole restructuring thing is just something I want to do. I've written 5 books since this one was published and I look back at it and shake my head. I have the technology. I can make this better, faster, stronger.

You remember how I said that I only had a couple chapters to go over for Five Man Midget Death Squad & Other Tales of the Tungri Clan? Well, they are done. I got a fire up my arse yesterday and now the book is ready for a real editor to look it over. Now its back to full on writing mode of Lord Wars part 1. I believe that deserves a Fonzie thumbs up of approval, don't you?

Book 5 is in full swing now and coming along nicely. Since I stepped away from it for so long (for me anyways) I decided to go back, re-read what I had previously done and go from there. All in all, I think I'm about 10k into this book and loving it so far. Since this is the 2nd book in the 2nd trilogy, there isn't a lot of backtracking to be done, so the content is new and to the point. It's also mostly action and the bringing together of characters from the entire series. It's fun to see everything come together like this for the first time.

Chris Yarbrough, artist of Radiation Day (https://www.facebook.com/radiationday2160), has begun sending me sketches. So that ball is now rolling. Which means I need to start spending a lot more time deciding what freebies to give away during this Kickstarter. Yes, I finally decided on Kickstarter. The reason is that it's more widely known and when it comes to small projects ($500 and less) it appears to succeed more often than not. Since $500 is what I'm actually going for ($300 for the cover and $200 to help me with the editing) I'm hoping this will go over without issue. The stretch goals will be for the covers of books 1-4 and Hitori. I'd like to see some consistency with the main series covers and handled by someone with a LOT more skill than I. As soon as I get permission from Chris, I'll post the sketch he's sent me so far. I'd like to ask, simply because it's not finished work and he may not want something like this in the wild.

I have maybe a chapter left to edit in the Five Man Midget Death Squad, but that honestly won't take long. I just need to do it.

Ohhh, I almost forgot. Until the end of the month, Chronicles of M is 99 cents now. If Itunes, kobo, etc haven't updated yet, give it some time. Otherwise, it is 99 cents on amazon and smashwords for sure. As soon as I finish the rewrites of book 1 (again, just redoing the Samuel parts, not the plot) I'll get that out. It'll be a free update to anyone who has already bought it. I'll let you know when that officially happens. I know sometimes ebook readers don't like to tell you there are book updates to be had.