I am having a remarkably hard time writing in the soap opera-y, dialog-driven, fast-paced style of ASKOF. Usually, I can separate things. Mardi Gras Mask was "Let's pretend to be an original series ghost writer!" Cold Lake Murders is "Let's pretend to write an actual novel!" 31 Things to Do in Sleepyside When You're Dead is "Let's pretend to be a comedy writer!" And ASKOF was always, "Let's pretend there are no rules and anything goes and there is no such thing as too over-the-top!" But now, in working on Rocket Man, I keep finding myself toning things down. Or putting in details that aren't necessary. With ASKOF, I took the attitude of, "You know who these characters are. You know where they live. You know their histories." So, I didn't ever bother with, "William Regan, the Wheeler's groom" explanations. For some reason, I keep going there now... 🙄
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So, ASKOF is heavily influenced by music. When I write it, I have something playing in the background for inspiration. A few nights ago, I had Youtube running and it landed on some version of the song A Million Dreams. I didn't know this song and I had to look it up to learn it was from The Greatest Showman.
I did not look up A Million Dreams because I particularly liked it. I looked it up because it was nagging at me. Because it reminded me too much of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Tonight, it clicked into place for me. Linkin Park's Waiting for the End. Yeah, if you are familiar with both songs, you may think, "Huh?" But the, "All I want to do is trade this life for something new." of Waiting for the End and "Every night I lie in bed. The brightest colors fill my head." of A Million Dreams are *thisclose* to the same thing, melody-wise. Funny how that works. So, I have a full time job now (with a long commute.) And I'm halfway through a Master's degree. But I miss this. I miss the writing and making the graphics and cheesy videos. This is my one hobby that I truly take joy in. Digging around on the Wayback Machine. Found some funny stuff. Like these 20-year-old beauties:
And then I found a page for ASKOF's soundtrack:  We have definitely come a long way in 20 years. The best part is, everything looks much better/nicer now and takes half the time to get it online.
I laugh at these old images and websites now. It makes me wonder what I will think of my current efforts in a few years. I guess I forgot to post about Episode 5.3 last week? All righty, then.
Episode 5.3: We Belong and Episode 5.4: There But for the Grace of God, Part 1, now airing. I finally have my old external hard drive back. This thing is ancient, and rather large. By comparison, my current one is about 1/6th the size but holds 10x as much. So, I'm awful with naming files. For instance, one folder on the old drive is called "stuff" and another is called "more stuff." Yeah. I'm poking around to see what I can find. I just came across these though. These are the original ASKOF banners.
I've also found a lot of the old Jixemitri banners, images, and forum themes. This stuff is pretty darn funny. Here's the original Something Wicked This Way Comes title image. What I don't know is why there's a cemetery in the picture. There's not one in that episode. *shrug*  I don't know if my graphics skills have improved or not, but I figure, at least I'm not still making these:     Bad clip art! Drop shadow! Inner shadow! And the absolute worst - bevel and emboss. Why was that ever a thing? It looks so cheap. *face palm* LOL. Episodes 5.2 and Bonus 5.1 air now.
Everything is set now with these latest episodes. The pieces are all in place and the ASKOF story line has come to the point where the movie fits in. So, in a little over three weeks, Pandora's Box will finally premiere. So, tonight we reach the 100th ASKOF episode. I only recently found out that the milestone for syndication has apparently been lowered to 88, and in some cases even that is ignored. I'm sticking with 100, because I like that number.
The average word count for an ASKOF episode is 5,000. So, doing the math, yes, the series has hit somewhere around 500,000 words. Take that NaNaWriMo! I've written 10 of your novels. (Of course, it's taken me 17 years, but we'll let that go for now. Besides, if we factor in all the other Reluctant Monkey stories, we're at somewhere around 725,000, not counting the lost stories, like Flashbacks. I think I might be getting the hang of this writing thing. *ahem* Quality of writing not guaranteed.) So, yay. ASKOF has reached the necessary episodes to go into syndication. Totally makes me want to create a "rerun" calendar. ;) |
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