The Word Tank

In the months since the saga of The Mountain and The City came to a close by becoming a real, live book, I've been working on some things.

I started off by returning to my film roots with "The Scapegoatist", an unpublished novel I decided would make a better screenplay. A little digging through this blog would turn up some mentions of that story, along with an excerpt of that previously doomed book. Before the paint had dried on that one I jumped into a second screenplay, this one no less dark, yet a change of pace in that it's a period piece. More on that in the future.

The other major project I've been involved with is launching www.thewordtank.com. I'll let the press release speak for itself:

New York author Brian Martinez has teamed up with Naples film and literary manager Bruce Barone, Jr. to form a start-up aimed at aspiring writers. Dubbed The Word Tank, they offer a full-service gateway for editing, polishing and selling spec scripts as well as other forms of writing.

Combining the artistic with the commercial, the pair believe they offer what their website refers to as a “unique industry perspective” to the screenwriter who wants to enjoy success yet maintain their artistic edge. In some cases they may even help the project find a home. As a writer himself, Martinez has some insight into the ups and downs of the creative process. “I know what it’s like to have a manuscript locked away in a drawer because it’s not right. I honestly believe everyone has a story in them, but the process of getting it out isn’t always an easy one.”

Barone, CEO of Barone Media Group, a public relations, media and design company, says the project came from both a love of scripts and a hard look at the marketplace. “We realized there were all these script services promising fame and fortune instead of focusing on the writer’s work. We wanted to focus directly on their needs and find a way to take their work to the next step.” Their site even offers editing and formatting services to ensure the end product is as professional looking as possible. Barone adds, “If the work is excellent, the doors will open.”

Much has been said of the difficulties in being picked out of the slush pile, from tired interns to over-saturation of the market. Martinez, no stranger to the perils of authorship, explains. “If someone picks up your story, you have five minutes to impress them, tops. So the question is, what will you do with that five minutes?”

The duo invites writers of all kinds to visit their website, www.thewordtank.com, where their blog offers weekly tips and thoughts on all aspects of writing and selling stories.

The Word Tank was formed in 2013 by Bruce Barone, Jr. of Naples, Florida and Brian Martinez of Long Island, New York. It offers services for beginner and intermediate writers to sharpen their scripts as well as market themselves to potential buyers.

Zero Hour.

The Mountain and The City, Part Zero has arrived.

The final chapter of my serial is out on Kindle and all other formats. It's been a long and varied road, with one more stop next month when it's released as a collected ebook and, for the first time, in paperback. The digital serial has been the perfect home for this story, but I've had a good number of people ask for it on paper as well.

Happy reading.

An Excerpt from TMATC: Zero

 The blue light-bulbs barely light up the garage. All I can see is the car in front of us and then after that it's all black, except way off at the other end a little bit of outside light comes in. Really quiet, dad tells mom that's where the booth with the keys is. It's hard to tell with so much dark, but it feels like forever away.

Mom hits into a car's bumper with her leg. She curses at it in whispers.

“Your phone has a light,” dad tells her.

“I don't want to attract attention. We don't know who else is in here.”

Her saying that makes it so much worse. Staring into the black, just tires and mirrors looking back, pieces of metal and rubber and shiny glass, right now they all feel like they want to wake up and come after me, which is crazy and not possible, but sometimes things that are crazy and not possible happen anyway.

Without any words we tip-toe through the dark garage toward the little bit of moonlight at the other end. It's so quiet, I can hear dad's breath in his nose-hairs.

All of a sudden, a little too loud, mom says, “Elliot?”

The white shirt looks like it's floating in the dark toward us. When it gets closer the big man's face is above it, sweaty and with big, wide eyes. I don't know what he's going to do, if he's our friend or not, but then he brings his shaky hand up to his mouth, and in barely a whisper, barely something we can hear, he says three words.

“Under...the...car.”

The Mountain and The City, Part Zero

Just announced. See the cover and release date over on my Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianMartinez

To The Gates of Hell

Yesterday, October 13th, I attended New York Comic Con for the second year in a row. Last year was a last minute surprise, offered a ticket by a friend who couldn't make it to Sunday. I went with a long, long-time friend of mine, Dave, and we enjoyed it so much that this year we pre-ordered tickets. Once again I enjoyed the costume-watching and the booth-browsing, buying some Doctor Who merch for the wife and a graphic novel bio of Hunter S. Thompson, which as a huge fan of that other Doctor, I'm really excited to read.

As it turned out we only had time and patience to wait for one panel, the first ever Comic Con appearance of author Chuck Palahniuk. He has a new book out by the name of Damned, which I was lucky enough to get a free copy of. I earned it, you could say, by sitting on the dirty, nerd-trampled floor just left of stage through the entire appearance. Palahniuk and his helpers also threw several bags of arms, legs and hands into the screaming crowd; all fake, all autographed.

In the past few years I've been fairly vocal about my disappointment with Palahniuk's output. Not that he's put out too little material, but in fact just the opposite. He's managed to publish a book a year, which, while I absolutely commend his work ethic, I felt it led to a mediocre bunch of books. Keep in mind, this criticism only stems from a single place, and it isn't hate. It's absolute awe and jealousy and devotion. You see, this is the man who wrote three books, back-to-back, that turned my world on its head. Those books: Fight Club. Invisible Monsters. Survivor. Three books I repeatedly had to slow myself down reading so I could taste every word, admire every sentence, enjoy every page, because I knew that when it was over, the only thing I would be reading anytime soon that could touch it would be the same book read all over. What followed those three books was what I would best describe as diminishing returns: still really good, but with progressively less kick.

Seeing Palahniuk at Comic Con this past Saturday, other than realizing he's beginning to resemble Jack Kerouac as he ages, I learned a few things about the man. To say he knows and enjoys his crowd is putting it lightly, and I was struck at how generous he was toward them, to the point where he actually began apologizing when his bags and bags of freebies ran out. There was also one thing he did during the Q & A portion which I can't get out of my head. That was, whenever a fan asked him a question, no matter how predictable, or bizarre, or entirely off-topic, he would stop. He would remain quiet for several seconds, and you could watch as he went over the question in his head and really, truly gave it thought. This would be suicide for a politician, who is trained to fill every moment of air-time with inane filler. "That's a good question," they'll say, "and my staff and I have been pondering that same dilemma, and what I would like to say about that, to you good people, is..." and all the while what they're actually doing is listening to the feed in their ear. Some man in a booth close by, getting paid a lot of money to tell him how he feels. I was deeply, thoroughly impressed to see Palahniuk answer a question this way. And it showed: his answers were intelligent, spot-on, and above all, honest. It impressed me, and it made me want to treat people the same way.

The major meat of the appearance was a reading of a new story, one he said was titled "Boogeyman", one that made heavy use of shock and horror to get its point across. While it's a tactic you could say Palahniuk over-uses, there's no arguing how effectively he uses it. His command of language is so strong that, even straining to hear its details echoed in the cavernous room, I felt nauseous at times, and had to remind myself they were only words, they weren't real, they didn't have to take form as images in my head. I came out the other side of it reminded why I fell in love with his work in the first place: because it's brave, and because it makes me laugh, and because it leaves scars. At least for now, I'm a follower again.

Expand and Contract

An announcement to share with my friends and fans- I was recently given an opportunity to sign with Bruce Barone of World Media Partners, and I'm happy to say I took it. Bruce is an excellent manager/publicist/sounding board/guy poking me with a stick, and we already set to our first project together- developing a feature-length screenplay. I can't tell you much about it yet except that it's based on an unpublished work of mine. I can also tell you we're committed to not only getting the sucker made, but making it damn good. It's an exciting time right now.

The second part of this announcement is I'm looking to make a few waves on Amazon to coincide with this new chapter, and I want you guys to not only help me do it, but get something out of it in the process. That's why I'm having a one-day blitz tomorrow, where if you download my novel A Chemical Fire for 99 cents you can pick any other book I've published and get it absolutely free, in all e-book formats. All you have to do is buy it between noon and midnight on Thursday, 6/28, forward the receipt (or a screenshot, etc.) to the email address brian at bloodstreamcity dot com and tell me which book you want. That's it. If you've already read A Chemical Fire you just need to write a review on Amazon during that same time slot and email me the link. Technically that means you could get a free book without ever actually buying one, but I don't mind. The reviews are just as important as the sales if not more so. So really whether you participate in this event or not, feel free to slam Amazon with all your ACF reviews. It can be ten words long or a full dissertation, either one would be appreciated, and I love to hear what you guys have to say.

Here's the list of books you can choose from:

Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost (novel)

The Mountain and The City Part II (serial)

The Mountain and The City Part III (serial)

The Mountain and The City Part IV (serial)

The Mountain and The City Part V (serial)

23,337

More than twenty-thousand. That's how many times a story of mine has been downloaded or otherwise bought between May 2010 when I began this self-publishing experiment, and today, the end of April 2012. I'm not sharing that number to brag, but rather to convey my total shock at how many people have potentially read my work. The better share of those have been free downloads, so it's not like I've gotten rich off this thing, and in fact I can safely say that any money I've made has been invested right back into marketing myself, with a giveaway here and an order of bookmarks there. On the other hand doing all the formatting and design-work myself has kept my costs low, and that means that while my writing hasn't made me much money, it hasn't lost me any, either. That's been an important factor in keeping this whole experiment away from the territory of "it's a shame what happened to that guy" and safely in the realm of "as long as it makes him happy".

So all I've really put into this has been my time, two years of it, which of course is valuable in its own right. Time is money, etcetera, and that's not even talking about all the hours I've spent of my life writing, all that putting words down and deleting them, all that editing and thinking and focusing on things that aren't real. Good practice, all of it, and all of it taking up time. I could have had a complete second job in that time and been making real money, but how much of our time do we really spend doing things of actual value, versus time wasted watching television and sitting on the internet, playing games or screwing around in the yard? I would argue that I didn't waste any of the time I spent writing. I would argue that I did have a second job.

The reason I'm thinking about all of this is the same reason I came up with that big number I mentioned. You see I had to crunch some numbers because there's someone who has expressed strong interest in being my manager, someone who can help me develop my work and put it in front of the right people. Back before May of 2010 I was doing my best to get someone's attention, anyone who might be willing to represent me and get my name out there, but when that proved to be difficult I changed directions and dove into the new arena of self-publishing that was happening around me. Now two years later one of those people has contacted me, and he did it because he read a few of those things I'd self-published and saw some something in them. And he's even a nice guy.

Nothing is official yet, and I may be talking about this too early if the whole deal ends up falling apart in my hands (though so far I don't see it happening), but even then I would treat this experience as a success, because I did what I set out to do- I got someone's attention, not by way of gimmicks or shouting at them, but by the merit of my work, or at least the potential in it. It's either ironic or very fitting that this comes so soon after someone tried to use my writing against me, to defraud a bit of cash out of me, because even when that setback happened I didn't let it frustrate me, and instead made a conscious effort to take it in stride and laugh it off (see my last post). For now at least good things are happening, and its given the last two years a sweet validation, to know that even if it may take a while to go from the place I am now to a place where I don't need a day job anymore, but can rather support my wife and myself with my work, the waiting will be easier, and angled increasingly upward. If nothing else I've earned myself more than twenty-thousand pairs of eyes to watch me stumble there.