The Best Things In Life

Lot of ground to cover in this post. Let's see how much I can get.

Anyway, the first big news. I'm officially starting my third novel this week. It's a special one though, as this is the one I'm writing with my father. Well, it's our project; I wouldn't actually let him write anything. In case you don't know, my father is a reknowned fantasy artist. It's going to be a truly true "graphic novel." Not a comic book. My story set in his world, with my rules and his characters.

I had a thought once I knew I was going to have to start writing this thing; that there had to be some kind of novel-writing software that didn't cost six hundred dollars. At least, I figured, there had to be a programmer/novelist who had to have created a similar program and posted it online for other novelists to use for free.

I was pretty much exactly right.

It's called yWriter. It's more of a plotting and organization tool than it is a fully functional word processor, but I think I'm getting addicted to it. The plotting, oh the plotting! Don't thank me, thank Simon Haynes, the guy who wrote it.

EDIT: Turns out he wrote something else you writer types might be interested in as well. It's called Sonar. Check it out.

Next on the list is a guy named Jonathan Coulton. He's the mastermind of this thing called "Thing A Week" where he writes, records, and posts a new song each week. Each MP3 is freely available under the Creative Commons license. Not only that, but most of them are hilarious in a subversive, almost too-subtle way. My favorites as of right now: Code Monkey, Rock and Roll Boy, and The Presidents.

I know there was more. I know there was. That's okay though, this is a long enough post as it is.

And yeah, I know. I made an animation of a guy blowing up. Sure, it's kind of bad taste, but he has a funny name and I'm sure he's just fine. With CGI these days it's not necessary to actually explode actors anymore.