rhinogirl

Haven't been posting much. Been too busy writing, and moving. Mostly writing. But I want to tell you this:

I met with an agent at the Southern California Writers Conference in Newport Beach this weekend, and after reading the first fifteen pages of my urban fantasy novel, Cast into Darkness, he requested the full manuscript.

Yes, I am a happy little camper. Still along way from selling it, but it's the first step, and a huge validation.

The rest of my writers group (the Gorilla writers from San Diego Writers Ink) also kicked ass and took names. Everyone got agent requests for their novels, and my friend Indy won the conference award for fiction for her suspense novel Ceremony.

So it was a good weekend.

I thought this was pretty cute on the Simpson's last night:

I can't believe someone finally did this. It's kind of like our game.

Here are some of the details from Locus Magazine:

"Today the estate of Ayn Rand announced that they had authorized science fiction writers Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow to write an official sequel to Rand's bestselling novel Atlas Shrugged.

"Given that the original novel features an amazing new metal alloy, a secret valley protected by force field, and an unlimited new energy source, we felt that a science fiction perspective was key to carrying forward Ayn Rand's ideas," said Rand estate spokesman Perry Leikoff. "And what better science fiction writers to chose than two collaborators who were also past winners of the Prometheus Award given out by the Libertarian Futurist Society?" Read more

Sold another one, this time to a horror Twitter 'zine, Tweet the Meat, to be published later this week.

On a related subject, Glenn Glazer sent me this. Loved it.

...to Thaumatrope, a twitter magazine for science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction under 140 characters. This was really fun to do: I enjoy the challenge of condensing a story down to its bare essence. You can see what kind of stuff they publish on Twitter at @thaumatrope or on the web at thaumatrope.greententacles.com/

It's a Valentine's Day-themed story that involves candy hearts and nanotechnology. ;-) It will be out on Feb. 14th.

The good news: New Doctor Who episodes start June 27th, new Torchwood starts sometime in July.

The (possibly) bad news: they're both on BBC America, not SCI FI. Not every cable operator carries it, so you may not get it. And it is not yet in HD ("coming soon", they say). And, worst news of all, (but known for some time), there are only 5 Doctor Who episodes (a Christmas special and 4 regular episodes) and 5 Torchwoods. Sigh.

Still, I like to look at the glass as half-full. New Doctor Who! New Torchwood! Yipee!

Apparently the producers of the horrible Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie, Fran and Kaz Kuzui, who hold the movie rights to Buffy, are planning on doing a new Buffy feature film. They haven't contacted Joss Whedon and don't seem particularly interested in doing so. It's pretty clear, despite rumors to the contrary, that the movie won't have the supporting cast in it and might not even have Buffy in it - it might be another Slayer entirely. Fandom has, of course erupted into chaos at the thought of a Whedon-less Buffy film.

( Read more... )

...or so the rumors say. According to TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly, Fox will announce Monday at the Upfronts that they are renewing the extremely low-rated Dollhouse for 13 episodes. The catch? Joss Whedon agreed to a drastically reduced budget. Not sure what he can cut - it doesn't seem like a big budget production to start with. As long as they don't get rid of Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) I'm happy. Any ideas?

UPDATE: According to Entertainment Weekly, Terminator: TSCC has been officially cancelled. No word yet on Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but renewal is not likely.

In other renewal news, ABC renewed Castle, Nathan Fillion's mystery/detective procedural. I like this one quite a lot, mostly due to Nathan Fillion.

UPDATE: Chuck renewed for 13 episodes. Still waiting for news on my favorite show, NBC's Chuck. They are reportedly close to a deal to bring it back for a third season. Fans did a quite clever campaign with one of the primary sponsors, Subway, to encourage NBC to renew it. They asked people to go to Subway, buy a footlong sub, and write on the comment card about how much they appreciated Subway's sponsorship of Chuck. Apparently it actually had an impact.

Entertainment Weekly's website has an interesting post today asking the above question and soliciting feedback. They specifically cite the case of the likely success of Terminator: Salvation, expected to open in two weeks with $90 million plus of box office versus the likely cancellation of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.

There are a few possible answers that occur to me off the top of my head.  One is that many SF TV shows are serialized stories, and shows with serialized stories tend to drop off in the ratings since they require viewer commitment. Another is the economic issue of SF being a niche genre and network TV being a "hit"-oriented business model that has no room for anything else. I think these are both true, but ultimately I think the main reason is a creative one:

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DVR data on Friday night's shows is finally in. To no one's surprise (except possibly Fox's), Dollhouse and Terminator are two of the highest gainers in ratings due to time-shifting. Dollhouse gained 30% and Terminator gained 36%. I doubt this will save either show, but you never know. Dollhouse was also #2 on the iTunes Top Ten list the week it premiered. Haven't seen any online streaming numbers yet.

I thought Dollhouse's second episode was an improvement over the first, but the third episode was a letdown. Apparently Joss didn't get to do his own thing until about episode 6. Will there be any viewers left by then?

Full article here: http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/03/dollhouse-dvr.html#more