Hadn't forgotten about this as I so often have done in the past when it comes go blogs, just updating it on my phone gets on my nerves due to lack of keyboard and lack of wifi.
At the moment I want for things to do though as Im still staying in a hostel and, what with the ad hoc weekly booking, I am unable to stay in the same room week to week.
This was fine for the last couple of weeks as I had accidentally booked the same room a few weeks running, but all that was available online was a 10 bed dorm instead of an 8 so today I have to move.
I took out all my stuff and put it into storage an hour or two ago, and am now waiting, after a big breakfast, for the cleaner to change the sheets and things, before I can put my stuff into the new room.
Spent some time playing...a game which apparently was accurately if unimaginatively named 'Tower Defence', on my iPhone and then decided to write this to pass the time.
The last couple of weeks have more or less been the same shit day after day.
Wake up. Get dressed. Go to library. Do quizzes. Leave. Go running. Read The Iron Druid Chronicles in a local Waterstones on the other side of Hyde Park without paying for the book. Come back to hostel. Eat. Shower. Sleep.
Repeat.
This would be fine seeing as 8 more weeks of this and Im hired by the coppers and earning wages for once.
But Ive listened to the first three Iron Druid audiobooks several times now and am becoming bored with them, I dislike the quizzes but know I need to do them, and running is fun but Ive overdone it and feel exhausted.
My monotony breaker - reading Iron Druid in a Waterstones store mid run - was working, but I'm 2/3rds of the way through Shattered, book 7, now and the other two of the series have yet to be written and published.
The series is...well, saying its awesome and better than The Dresden Files (its genre mate) is accurate, but if the series was a bit longer I would say book 4 strikes me the same way as 'Changes' or 'Raising Steam' did of The Dresden Files or The Discworld respectively.
This is to say that the author decided to mix things up a bit, shake the heroes out of their 'Normal' lives and set them on the path of adventure.
And this changing of the tide resulted in a loss of what made the series better than most others...alright, so Raising Steam was a train wreck (pun intended) rather than a tide changer, but my point stands.
Atticus abandoned his world for the first three series and then became locked on conditional events which span entire books for the next three volumes.
First he assists Coyote, second he tattoos his apprentice, and third he goes on a run across Europe. It's not until book 7, the start of the last three of three sets of three volumes, that it feels like The Iron Druid Chronicles again, with a myriad of characters and varying events.
I'm not saying books 4-6 were bad. They were well written, but in the change of setting a lot of the iconic structure of the series had to be put aside to serve the plot, and that's what made it less than the first three volumes. In my view anyway.
Worth reading it all, but you'll find a change in tone between 3 and 4 which isn't resolved until around book 7 where there is yet another change in tone.
And whatever you do, try to get ahold of the short stories if you read the series because if you don't you'll miss out on some very key plot points which the author assumes the reader has the wherewithal to find out about.
Anyway, fact is that its an epic series and I've nearly finished reading it, and to brake up the boredom of forking knowledge into my abused skull I need something else to do in the evenings without a PC to my name.
And that I've decided will be drawing.
Ever since I first heard the Discworld audiobooks I've always wondered why no one ever made them into a TV series or even graphic novels.
And I don't mean adapted them for visual media - a book which takes 10 hours to read aloud converted into a 2 hour movie - I mean simply taken the written text and converted what is described into a visual rather than an audio representation.
I know they're doing a splendid job with A Game of Thrones, actually making a TV series which is better in structure and presentation than are the books, but the only attempts made on my three and now four favourite series are godawful shite.
First you've got those Discworld TV movies, which can best be summed up by someone's idiotic decision to cast an ageing Del Boy, a walking Cheeky Charlie trope, as I know the actor, as a Wizard known for his cross country running who was actually in his early 20's during A Colour of Magic.
Add to this graphic novels which fail to capture anything like the spirit of the books. The best artwork of The Discworld is by Paul Kidby, but I'm fairly sure, for various personal reasons, that you'd never get him to visually translate The Discworld or allow anyone to borrow his art style to do so.
Then you've got that astoundingly bad The Dresden Files TV show whose only relation to the book series is in its name. I mean, the protagonist doesn't live in a basement, doesn't drive a blue Beatle, and isn't even tall for crying out loud.
And again add to that yet more graphic novels which are either unique and non-canonical with the main series or of the main series but adapted stories, and in both instances lack proper translation in art style where the artist has ignored clearly explained visual aspects of settings and characters by the author, not out of a desire to replace them with something better, but because you get the sense he or she never actually read the books before putting pencils to paper.
Its not a difficult concept to my genius brain; read da books, write down notes on what is in the scenes, plot out where the photographic camera takes its shot to capture the essence of the action, and then draw and storyboard turning said action of, e.g. Hounded, Storm Front, The Colour of Magic, or Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (1, 2, 3, 4 of my favourite series of audiobooks), into a visual translation of described text.
My uber brain has also suggested on auto-pilot a number of techniques to make the visual materials an inspired work.
Included are, for example, in book 3 of The Iron Druid Chronicles where a series of foreign national magi, including a Wizard, an Alchemist, a God, a Vampire and a Werewolf all share stories of injustices committed by the Nose god Thor to the Druid Atticus, the protagonist, where the artist could use art styles to draw their stories native to, for example, Iceland (where the Vampire and Werewolf are from), Finland, where the Wizard was from, Asia, where the Alchemist was from, etc.
That's on the serious side.
On the lighter side, one could also convert verbalisation into visual puns, as is the want of the author at various light hearted moments.
I'm currently listening to Hounded of The Iron Druid Chronicles for example and where it is mentioned that The Morrigan ignores Atticus' mortality for the pleasure of goading Angus Og and my caffeine drenched cerebellum shot me an image of The Morrigan prodding a grumpy looking Angus with the words 'Atticus O'Sullivan' (though spelt in the original Old Irish which is too complicated or me to remember off hand) with a grin on her face.
Silly, funny, and just what Atticus would think as I've come to learn from the later books in the series that despite being two centuries old, the bastard had a childlike sense of humour which you only really notice when in contrast with his Arch Druid in book 7.
Audiobooks, correctly voice acted, are some of the best kinds of entertainment media. Long, inexpensive in production and sale, enjoyable, complex, and with a visual component provided by ones own imagination, which I personally have in spades.
And the visual translation of the same could only serve to compliment such an experience of someone else's work of genius, if, and this is the important part, we could find someone to translate it properly.
The point there is that lesser minds, ones who can draw but lack intellectual facility (I've long since found that those with said facility for art usually have a tenuous grip on reality, and basic logic as well) are unable to formulate the proper structure for artistic display of textual media.
I on the other hand can see it perfectly in my third eye but lack of the facility to create it in reality.
As yet anyway.
Which is why I want to take up drawing. As usual, my ethos towards such events, most events, is that if you want it done right, do it yourself.
The creators of such works, as is the way of humans, don't give a flying fuck if the adaptations of their work are made with the same skill and expertise as their own.
Its that or they are ignorant enough to not be aware that someone else is butchering their writing anyway, which is as bad for their lack of attention.
If this weren't true I hardly believe they would allow it. I wouldn't, and I'm smarter than they are by default based on the available evidence that they did allow it to happen.
The point is this; there's no way I'm going to a) find someone who would do a visual like audio translation of these books, and b) get the authorisation of those who own the IP.
This is because a) no one gives a flying fuck about doing some creative genius unless they had the idea, and b) IP owners won't talk to me and aren't interested in investigating creative works of genius.
I mean, let's go find Kevin Hearne's email address, outline what I'd like to do, and include a rundown on how to convert the first three chapters.
1) he won't read it. 2) he probably won't even know I sent it as it'll end up in a screener's inbox and ignored. 3) he won't seriously consider it cus he receives lot of crap like this all the time. 4) and even if he likes the idea, he'll never buy that I could arrange it without creditable credentials and prior work for endorsement that it wouldn't be a waste of his time.
The biggest issues with the well known of any stripe is that the better known they become the less easy it is accomplish anything with them in any regard.
In short, if I want this done, a visual representation of textual media, I need to make it myself, publish it myself, and then ask for forgiveness instead of permission when lawyers come calling and demanding why I stole the authors IP.
Because? Humans are dicks.
Still, gives me something to do in my downtime, its cheap to get started, and I've found a book to teach me the basics. And I've always enjoyed a good clean challenge.
Learn to draw, and draw Hounded, book 1 of The Iron Druid Chronicles, then once Ive passed my police exams scan, arrange, write, etc. and produce a reasonable first issue comic.
Then see what effect mailing a few copies of same to the publishers of The Iron Druid Chronicles has.
Better to do that and then say 'I did tell you what I was doing' later on than have them outraged that I never told them at all.
Its something to do that isn't those fucking quizzes.
Its 1pm now so Im off to move into my new room, have a shower, and head off to the library to do some horrible, horrible quizzes...or possibly revise for two exams I have on Saturday.
Tomorrow I will, if I remembers, try to detail the idiot saga with my college who doesn't understand that if you sell courses that are entirely online, then you need to provide some way of doing the work, which is to say fucking PC access...mother fucking assholes...
Bai.
