Movie Roundup, Speed Run Edition

I've been doing a pretty good job of catching up with my movie-watching lately, if I do say so myself. For me, watching movies is not only fun, but it gives me inspiration for my writing as well, so I consider it part entertainment, part work/research (although, unfortunately, I don't think I can write off my ticket and rental expenses as tax deductions).

Here are my thoughts about some of the ones I've seen since I saw The Force Awakens (four times!) last December. Disclaimer: these are not really reviews, they're just my bullet point observations and reactions. Also, there will be spoilers (you'll notice that I talk about the endings a lot)!

Deadpool

Really enjoyed this one. It was pretty much what I was expecting. Yeah, the plot was mostly vanilla-stock, but it was dressed up in vintage Deadpool-style bloody syrup and bullet sprinkles, which gave it its own flavor. I'm pretty sure that's what the writers and director were going for. Wished it could have gone on a little longer. Ryan Reynolds was born to play this character. Although, I must say that I kind of like the version of Deadpool in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon just a little bit better, with how he alternates between the high crazy voice and the low menacing one. Oh, and since this is a family-friendly blog, I will add that this movie is obviously not family-friendly.

Kung Fu Panda 3

Now here's a family-friendly one for ya. It wasn't quite as good as the first two installments of the KFP series, but it was pretty close. Lots of fun, solid story, awesome visuals. The ending was epic, which made me wonder how they're going to top that in the fourth installment.

Inside Out

Okay, so I saw Deadpool and KFP3 in the theater. Now we're moving on to the "I'm finally getting around to watching these" portion of the post. This was another kid-friendly one that I had heard a lot of good things about, so one day I just rented it at home. And it didn't disappoint. I especially liked the ending, where they showed what was going on inside of a cat's head. So very much on point. But yeah, bravo, Pixar.

Ender's Game

I actually liked this movie version better than the book, except for the ending, which I thought could have been played for a little more drama. The Battle Room looked pretty much exactly like how I had envisioned it, which was cool.

Spectre

You know, I don't remember much about this one. Some great scenery, lots of action...I miss Judi Dench as M. The ending sure seemed like they were giving Daniel Craig a happy, ride-into-the-sunset sendoff, which made me think that the rumors of him retiring from the role may be true. If he does, I wonder who the next Bond will be? And where will they go with the franchise now that the supposed overall-umbrella-evil-organization-that-was-controlling-everything-mwuahahaha has been defeated?

Coming up in the next roundup, probably: Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (what's with all the colons?), and more!

Author Visit, Readcon, H&G Show, Book Three Status Update, Oh My!

Lots going on! Let's get to it, shall we?

On Tuesday, I had the honor of doing an author visit at Shahala Middle School, which happens to be both my son's alma mater as well as where my daughter is currently a student. To sum it up: I had a really great time.

Thanks Tony

There were about a hundred seventh graders in attendance, and they were all very attentive and asked some really great questions. I spent about ninety minutes answering them and talking about not only the Spectraland Saga, but also about reading, writing, and autism in general. It was so much fun. Much mahalos go out to Shahala's librarian, Paul Warner, as well as to all of the teachers and students for having me and making me feel more than welcome. Check out the Spectraland Saga's Facebook page for more photos!

This author visit was a precursor to READCON, which is Shahala's sci-fi/fantasy family night for the whole community. It's like if Comic-Con was being held in a middle school library. That event will take place on March 10 from 6-8pm, and the Portland Superheroes Coalition (with a real Iron Man suit, I have been told) and the Star Wars 501st Legion will be in attendance, along with yours truly. The event is free to attend, and there will be a ton of fun stuff going on, including prizes, contests, a book fair, and more. Book sales and donations will go to support both the library and Autism Empowerment. And, if you have dinner at the nearby Wendy's from 4-8pm that night, a portion of your sales will also benefit these two great causes! So if you're in the Portland/Vancouver area and want to attend a fun, free con, be sure to come on down.

Tomorrow, I'll be doing my biannual appearance at the Portland Home and Garden Show from 6-8pm. I always have a great time doing this, as I get to hang out with my awesome indie author friends from the Northwest Independent Writers Association! Again, if you're in the Portland/Vancouver area - and especially if you're a homeowner looking for stuff for your house, along with some great books - I highly recommend coming down to check it out. I'll be offering my usual discounted live show special of ten bucks for Book One, twelve bucks for Book Two, or twenty dollars for both, so this is your chance to take advantage of that!

And finally, the monthly Book Three Status Update: as of today, I am proud to announce that I am up to 44,000 words, which is ahead of my planned schedule and 11,000 words more than where I was at the time of last month's status update. Rolling right along...

Time Warp

Last week, in my letter to Joel and Felicity, I made a reference to the fact that the two of them are occasionally involved in some funny time travel business. This is because, as readers of Book One and Book Two know, there is a difference between how time passes here on Earth and how it passes in Spectraland.

Okay, so in general, time goes by much faster in Spectraland than it does here. There are, however, as they would say in Doctor Who, a few wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ways that Wavemakers can mess around with the time difference so that it's not a straight minute-for-week correlation, or what have you. If you've read the books, then you know what I'm talking about.

And frankly, sometimes I feel like some Wavemaker somewhere is secretly messing around with how time passes here on Earth, making it go by faster than it's supposed to. Ever get that impression? Like, for example, when I was writing that letter to Joel and Felicity last week, it stunned me to discover that the last time Joel and I did an Annoying Zelda Mini-Game post was back in March of 2015 (I even made a comment in that post about how "time sure flies around here".)

That got me wondering, what else have I done that feels like it just took place yesterday, but in fact happened a relatively long time ago? This is when maintaining a blog, or a journal, or whatever, definitely comes in handy. Here are some of my favorites:

- Our household cats, Boots and Mittens, moved in just recently. Right? Actually, it was in December of 2014. That's a lot of litter boxes that we've changed already.

- My band, Second Player Score, performed at the benefit concert Rock For Autism. I get reminded of this whenever I look at our Reverbnation site. It feels like we just did that, but actually, it was all the way back in August of 2012.

- I was just explaining to one of my friends the other day about why there are seven planned books in the Spectraland Saga, and I remembered that I wrote a blog post about that a few weeks ago. Wait, no, it wasn't a few weeks ago, it was almost three years ago.

I could go on and on like this, but I think you get the idea. So I guess either - as the old saying goes - time flies when you're having fun, or, more likely, a Wavemaker (Fireflower? Joel? Felicity?) is trying to get Earth's time to match up with Spectraland's time for whatever reason. Maybe they're somehow taking advantage of the recent discovery of Einstein's gravitational waves? Hmm...

Letters to Spectraland

Brian Tashima
Prism Valley Press
P.O. Box 87454
Vancouver, WA 98687

February 11, 2016

Joel Suzuki and Felicity Smith
c/o Fireflower
Wavemaker Temple, Spectraland

Dear Joel and Felicity,

I hope the two of you are doing well. Right now over here it is Thursday, February 11, 2016, but I know that with all of the time warp stuff you guys are involved in it's hard to keep track sometimes.

Things back home are good. We got some more recent press coverage, both on TV and in the newspaper, and last Friday I announced that I'll be the special guest author at this year's Readcon at Shahala Middle School. I'll tell you more about Readcon later.

Haven't heard from either of you recently, so I'll assume that you're both really busy. I'm sure that you're having lots of fun practicing your wavebows, making up new lifepod-based recipes, and not getting into any kind of trouble whatsoever.

Felicity - when you get back, let's liveblog some more TV shows. I'm sad that Gravity Falls is ending, but I've gotten into a couple of new things, like Supergirl on CBS (which is fine for kids) and The Magicians on SyFy (which is not).

And Joel, when you get back, we should continue our Most Annoying Zelda Mini-Games series. I think we left off almost a year ago(!) at #6, the STAR game from Twilight Princess. Still not sure when the new Zelda game is coming out, but we might as well just forge ahead in the meantime (the good news is that the live-action series is apparently still on track).

Anyway, just wanted to drop you guys a line. Please say hello to Fireflower for me.

Best (because I know you both get squeamish when I say "Love"),

Brian

Spectraland In The News

The Spectraland Saga continues to make headlines!

This week, Jenica Villamor from KPTV was gracious enough to do an awesome story on us for Good Day Oregon. Check it out at this link!

Also, Michael Tsai from my hometown newspaper, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, wrote a very cool column on us that you can check out here. It's behind a paywall, but existing print subscribers can read it for free, or you can buy a 14-day pass for just $1.99 - cheaper than your morning coffee! (the good kind, anyway)

Since we're on the topic - in case you missed it, here's a roundup of all the other recent news coverage that Joel and company have been receiving:

 - A story that was featured on KATU news last November (here's the print version on their website, does anyone just happen to have a video clip?)

- An article in The Oregonian that now has over 2400 social media shares

- An article in The Mighty, a website focusing on stories about disabilities that has over 80 million readers

A special thanks goes out to Lisa Cohn of Arts Seen and Heard PR, who has done a fantastic job of helping me spread the good word about my little book series and what we're trying to accomplish with regards to the autism community. I would highly recommend her to any indie artists out there who need assistance with their promotion and publicity efforts. Also, be sure to check out Bash and Lucy, the children's book series written by her and her son Michael!

Launch Party Recap And Book Three Status Update

This blog post is brought to you by the number three. Why? Because today, I'll be recapping Launch Party number three, which featured three bands (each with three members) as well as three local authors. Also, I'll be giving you the third status update on Book Three.

Launch Party #3 was, in a word, awesome. Authors April Bullard and Shawna Reppert were there with their books (Roslyn McFarland had a last-minute situation and had to cancel - we missed ya, Ros), Nate and the staff at Shanahan's were super-cool as usual, and there was already a nice crowd assembled by the time I rolled in. Some of my friends even flew in all the way from Los Angeles and Hawaii to attend!

Toxic Kid hit the stage first and rocked the place with their old-school punk rock sound. Second Player Score was up, well, second, and I had a great time jumping around and screaming things into the microphone. Then afterwards, Stab In The Dark were so rockin' that they incited a mosh pit (check it out on our Facebook page - just scroll down a bit)! It was a very smart pit, by the way - whenever someone fell down, everyone stopped and helped them up. Good to see.

John and Karen from Autism Empowerment were also there, and I'm happy to report that I'll be able to make another donation after selling a bunch of books at the party. I'll bring the check over this weekend, John and Karen!

Since we're on the subject of books, I can now smoothly segue into the Book Three status update! Uh huh, that's right, you see what I did there.

At the time of last month's update, I was at 22,000 words. Now I'm at...(drum roll)...33,000 words! Woo! Right on track. This whole no-stopping-to-revise-or-rethink plan is really working wonders so far. Of course, I'm sure there's tons of garbage within those 33,000 words that will get cut or rewritten later, but again, as I learned during the Book Two process, that kind of thing will happen anyway, so there's no sense in slowing myself down during the initial drafting process.

And hey, how about that - the latest word count makes for another "3" reference! 'Cause, you know, 33,000 words...thirty-three thousand is a multiple of three...all right, I'll stop now.

It's Your Last Chance To Party

...as far as celebrating the release of Book Two is concerned, anyway (there will be many more parties to come in the future, trust me).

In case you haven't heard, the third and final launch party for Mystery of the Moonfire is this coming Saturday, January 23rd, at Shanahan's Pub in lovely downtown Vancouver. In addition to yours truly, we'll have three other local authors in attendance as well: Roslyn McFarland, April Bullard, and Shawna Reppert. And there will be three rockin' bands for your aural pleasure: Toxic Kid, Stab In The Dark, and Second Player Score.

Festivities start at 8pm and will last until 1am or so, or whenever they kick us out. There's no cover charge, but tons of merch will be available for purchase, and as always, a portion of the profits from my book sales will be donated to Autism Empowerment.  It's 21 and over, so make it a date night and leave the kids at home (with their own copies of Book Two to keep them occupied). Beer, books, bands...what more could you ask for?