So where have I been lately? Around. If you’ve been following me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter, you can see that I’ve started writing for WhatCulture. It’s pretty much all about movies and comics, which has been a whole lot of fun to write about. I enjoy the work I do for JapanTourist and GaijinPot, but when it comes to movies and comics, I just have a whole lot more to say than I do about Japan.
Since I started writing for WhatCulture, I’ve produced a total of ten articles, and I have one more that’s currently under review. I’ve accrued over 200,000 hits total in that month, which I hope will lead to more people following the link to my site and check out my books.
If you’re interested in seeing what I’ve been working on over there, you can read the articles at this link.
Other than the WhatCulture stuff, I haven’t made much progress on fiction writing. I’ve mostly been working on my resume. My current day job will come to an end by late July, and while I have one job already lined up, it’s only part-time, which means I’m trying to find something else to fill the void. I also feel like I need a bit of a break after finishing SoulQuest before I jump into another novel.
Speaking of SoulQuest, I’ve finished the first round of edits on it. There was actually a lot less to fix than I initially feared, so that’s good. Of course, once I get it back from my editor, that may be completely different. But them’s the breaks, I guess.
What else is new? Well, I saw Iron Man 3. Yes, for once, Japan not only got a movie on time, but we actually got it in advance of America! Too bad that doesn’t hold true with Man of Steel (August 30), The Wolverine (September 13), Star Trek: Into Darkness (August 23), and Thor: The Dark World (February 2014). Come on, Japan, can’t you at least release a movie in theaters before every other country puts it out for rental? Especially given that we pay such a premium ticket price?
Iron Man 3 was extremely disappointing. The first half was incredible, but then…ugh. It just descended into self-parody, culminating in the awful twist with the Mandarin. I won’t go into detail about it here, but I wrote about it on WhatCulture and you can see it there—Iron Man 3: Thoughts on the Mandarin.
I will say this, though. One of the reasons I put a pause on Vanguard is because the villain I’d created was initially intended to be sort of a Colonel Kurtz-type of character, a western soldier who goes off the reservation and turns against America after seeing what they’re responsible for. And when I heard Shane Black describe Iron Man 3‘s version of the Mandarin in pretty much the exact same language, I sat there going, “wow, that sounds like a great idea! In fact, it also sounds…kind of familiar…oh crap…”
Of course, now that I’ve seen the movie, I know that isn’t what the Mandarin is, so I feel more confident about writing my story.