Things I’d Like To Work On

If I ever got into the position where my books got published and I was able to pick projects, I think I’d probably follow Neil-O’s advice and do it out of interest, not out of money. I mean, it would be very cool if someone thought well enough of my books that they offered several large buckets of non-sequential $100 bills for the rights and wanted to produce a movie. And I’m mercenary enough and shameless enough to know that no good will EVER come of that (Except in a few minor miracle cases) and would gleefully take that money and run, then not really attach my name to it in anyway. And I sure as heck wouldn’t decry a movie before it came out, only to change my mind and heap praises on it afterwards the way Anne Rice did with the Interview With A Vampire film.

But what I’d really like to do if I had the financial freedom and sufficient opportunity is to get my hands good and dirty and wallow in a lot un-literary stuff.

For instance, if anyone asked me if I wanted to work on a comic book, I’d say “Hell YEAH!” I owe a great deal to comic books, if for no other reason than they inspired endless hours of entertainment while I was growing up, and I do think they are a valid genre within literature if the likes of Miller, Gaiman, or even up and comers like Vaughn are anything to go by. And if anyone asked me, “Hey, you wanna’ work on a video game?” that would also be a total no-brainer, as video games have brought me an unimaginable number of hours of entertainment and happiness over the years. To be able to tell a story in a video game like the kind I experienced with Final Fantasy VI or its sequels, or to tell a tale of adventure like The Longest Journey would be a geek dream come true.

I wouldn’t say no to television or film either. It’s more curiosity about getting actively involved in high budget productions that would compel to get some experience, but as you might have guessed from the previous blog entry, I’m by no means blind to all the ways it could go wrong.

But one thing that I sure wouldn’t mind taking a crack at is that much ignored bastard child of written entertainment in today’s visual world.

Radio Plays.

When I was in university, I signed up with a group of wild n’ crazy kids that went under the monkier “Eclectic Underwriters Radio Theater.” We were amateurs, we were just starting to get our writing legs under us, and the equipment, especially by the standards I’m used to now in a typical editing suite, were appallingly Victorian.

But dammit, radio plays were fun.

There’s something liberating about knowing you can create any kind of story you want, that has the immediacy of the spoken word, but with sound effects and careful writing to carry off the visual aspect in the listener’s imagination. During my Electic days, I was WAAAAAAAY ambitious and created a huge monstrosity called “King’s Cove” which ended up being the longest and most technically complex radio play ever devised by the group. It was a huge, unwieldly thing with layers of sound, many actors, and all kinds of goofiness. But then you have to expect that from a radio play that posits “Elvis Presley is happily running a lighthouse in a small New England coastal town.”

Man. Radio plays.

I’d love to jump into that again…