I have news. Good News. The Monarch Preview is now available!
Those of you who have purchased, or plan to purchase, Monarch through Amazon can now read the Chapter One Preview. It is entitled "Enter the Cipher" -- the opening chapter of the book!!!
If you have already purchased Monarch or Monarch:Egg, you should be receiving an email from Amazon shortly. The message will ask you to replace your current version. Click it and enjoy. Thank you for your patience.
If you enjoy what you read, please "like" the story or "rate" it on Amazon.
Feel free to send any comments or questions to aaronpitters@monarchthenovel.com
Thank you for reading. Happy Thanksgiving!
-Aaron Pitters
Monday, November 21, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Atlanta Writers Conference (Nov. 2011)
I liked how much access we were given to Chuck Sambuchino. He is a well of information. Unfortunately, other than the agent panel at the beginning of the day, he was the only one giving seminars all day long. I almost felt bad that he had to be up there for so long. Granted he covered a wide variety of topics, but the guy is only human.
It seems the view of agents towards self-publishing has begun to change. The panel of six agents at the Conference now consider self-publishing a viable option for authors. They weren't suggesting that everyone do it. In fact, they advised everyone to try the conventional route to publishing first, but if a particular set of circumstances warrant it, then they felt self-publishing could be a good thing. (One can always take their work down from Amazon if need be.) This is a vast shift from what I had heard over the past year at AWC meetings. With more and more success stories coming out of the self-publishing realm, everyone (from the readers and the writers all the way to the publishers) is attempting to adapt with the change. The book world is in flux due to e-Books. There is no solid ground and, for the moment, writers don't have to take the circuitous route to being published. This is wonderful news for someone like myself.
Overall, the conference was informative and helpful, if not a little too intimate. They could have used more than the one microphone for the Agent Panel. Some of what was said went unheard. Poor marks for that. However, my agent pitch session went well and my chance meeting on the shuttle back to the airport with another agent put a shine on the whole experience.
-aap
Take Shelter Review
Now that the AWC Conference is over I can write about the movie I saw last week Wednesday.
Take Shelter is a well made Psychological Drama that focuses on an everyday American family man, Curtis (played by Michael Shannon), who begins having unsettling nightmares.
The dreams become more intense and Curtis begins to fear that he may be becoming like his mother, who abandoned him as a child due to her paranoid schizophrenia and has been hospitalized ever since. He does not want that to happen to his family, so he lies to all those in his life about why he is updating the storm shelter in the back yard.
Curtis sees doctor after doctor, who prescribe medications to help him maintain his way of life, but the nightmares persist and his world begins to unravel, much like the destruction wrought by the horrific storms in his dreams.
I won't give away the ending in this one, though I will say it did make one gentleman grumble behind me. I hate when people do that. My opinion is that the ending tied it all together nicely. It had me walking out of the theater reflecting on the simply told story and the complex issues it raised about the human mind.
This movie, as the groaning man in the theater might attest, is not for everyone. Kids won't like it. People looking for action and adventure or comedy won't like it. But those who like to walk out of a theater reflecting on what they just saw will enjoy this movie. I did.
-aap
Take Shelter is a well made Psychological Drama that focuses on an everyday American family man, Curtis (played by Michael Shannon), who begins having unsettling nightmares.
The dreams become more intense and Curtis begins to fear that he may be becoming like his mother, who abandoned him as a child due to her paranoid schizophrenia and has been hospitalized ever since. He does not want that to happen to his family, so he lies to all those in his life about why he is updating the storm shelter in the back yard.
Curtis sees doctor after doctor, who prescribe medications to help him maintain his way of life, but the nightmares persist and his world begins to unravel, much like the destruction wrought by the horrific storms in his dreams.
I won't give away the ending in this one, though I will say it did make one gentleman grumble behind me. I hate when people do that. My opinion is that the ending tied it all together nicely. It had me walking out of the theater reflecting on the simply told story and the complex issues it raised about the human mind.
This movie, as the groaning man in the theater might attest, is not for everyone. Kids won't like it. People looking for action and adventure or comedy won't like it. But those who like to walk out of a theater reflecting on what they just saw will enjoy this movie. I did.
-aap
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