Month: April 2013

weekend reviews

Flight flight-movie-denzel-washington

Flight has probably the most frightening plane emergency scene I’ve ever seen onscreen, but this is just a small portion of the film. It’s a film of “almosts”: Capt. Whip Whitaker (played by the magnificent Denzel Washington) was just about to land when disaster hit, he was just about to give up drinking and drugs and turn his life around when the investigation started, he was just about to – But we are entering spoiler territory. This film is more than two hours long, but you stay till the end because of the “almosts”. And it’s a great character study. You can’t predict this drunk, coked-up flight genius, but he has your sympathies. You want to see if Whip will do things right, this time.

Game Change

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This is a surprisingly good dramatization of the 2008 McCain-Palin campaign. Everyone, especially Sarah Palin (played by Julianne Moore, who deserves all the awards), comes across not as caricatures, but as people. People who get thrown into the circus of politics in the time of YouTube and SNL, and who slowly break under the pressure of a presidential race that they can never win. Good pacing, good dialogue – the two-hour run didn’t feel at all like two hours.

Sinister

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I am in desperate need of a good horror film. I don’t know why I even bothered to watch this. The musical score, instead of heightening the experience, just got in the way. The frights are corny. The film features families dying of horrible deaths, but I can’t shake off the feeling that I am just watching a movie, that they all got the noose off their necks after the take and they went out for hotdogs with the crew afterwards.  How will that scare you, or make you think? A good horror film removes you from your context. This 90-minute film felt like a three-hour film, I was so bored.

book sales

Back from the long weekend! I enjoyed staying at home but did not enjoy the heat. No, sir. I have heat rash on my face and arms. A bit annoyed also, because I’m having very little writing done due to work, planning a vacation with my siblings, cleaning the apartment, cooking my own lunch, and other things. I used to have so much writing stamina, but nowadays after work I just go home and watch TV or read a book. I need to save up and buy me some extra hours!

Anyway, this blog post is about book sales (wheeee) and I just want to say that I have received my first sales record from Visprint. I don’t expect much from my sales (Filipino authors, who go through literary life with no agents and no advances, often expect not to be paid, and get surprised when they do get paid a fair amount of money) , but I was happily surprised by the numbers: 507 copies of A Bottle of Storm Clouds sold from September 2012 to February 2013, with 30 copies sold at the book launch during the WIT event. It’s been sold in places in the country that I’ve never been, like Iloilo, GenSan, and the Mt. Cloud Bookshop (I know, yikes, I’ve never been to Baguio). This is why I still love traditional publishing: I can never sell 500 copies on my own (I think), and with such  reach.

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If you’re one of those who bought a copy of the book, thank you! And thank you to Ms. Nida, Kyra, and Visprint.

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My thanks also to Flipside Publishing for providing me with reports. For 2012, Lower Myths sold 13 copies, and The Viewless Dark sold 8. (I hear you snickering back there. It’s not a lot, I know, but I’ve received good reviews, and I’m grateful. But of course: do buy a copy?)

Apocalypses, I‘m happy to announce, has sold 23 copies so far. 

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These numbers are small I know, but they’re not yours they are my own – charot. I’m just here to sell some books.

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In the pipeline: the ebook version of A Bottle of Storm Clouds, a print version of The Viewless Dark as part of an anthology, and a science fiction novel.

Yep.