Next Project

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I plan on offering a new project in the coming days. Unfortunately, we've been having some trouble putting it together. I hope we can work these things out by the weekend.

National Treasure Book of Secrets

National Treasure follows the story of Benjamin Franklin Gates and his uptight father, genius girlfriend, and nerdy buddy Riley, as they try to prove Ben's ancestor was a true hero. Like the first movie, the plot primarily centers around the search for a lost treasure, this time a city of gold.

Despite the historical inaccuracies and the impossible storyline, I found National Treasure Book of Secrets mildly enjoyable. There were some funny moments and a few exciting parts. Overall, the movie a little less that what I expected.

Some of the escapades just made the whole thing too unrealistic. Ben kidnaps the President for goodness sakes! In part one, he managed to steal the Declaration of Independence. Even though that seems just as impossible, it seemed more believable than the stunts in part Book of Secrets.

I found the character of Ben to be a little annoying. He was just a little too sure of himself in this movie. Whereas, in part one he was a geek who used his knowledge of history and US government policy to steal the Declaration, in Book of Secrets, he's like a secret agent who can do whatever he wants with only the slightest bit of planning.

I like movies and stories that leave open the possibility of a sequel without overdoing it. National Treasure Book of Secrets does that as well. And considering the boatload of money this film grossed, it's probably safe to assume one will be made in coming months.

What I liked:
Riley, Ben's assistant
Historical references
Funny dialog

What I did not like:
Incan pyramids in North America
No conspiracy
Unbelievable story
Ben Gates new cockiness and self assuredness.

Added a new page on the site

I finally got the first chapter embedded into the website. I also added a new page about fantasy creatures. I'm most please to find some of my pages make it onto Google's first page. It was extremely gratifying to see some of my hard work pay off. Granted, these are probably not the most competitive words that I'm ranking so high on, it's still proof that my SEO skills are coming together.

I've also finished a story I started writing months ago. I only wanted this story to be about four or five pages long, but it wound up being eleven.

Now, I'm going to start working on putting together a short story CD. This CD will include several short stories that I've written over the years. I hope to offer it for a very reasonable price; no more than $5. Once that's done, I'm going to focus on finishing up the fantasy section, recording more chapters for The Jinn, and marketing, marketing, marketing.

First Podcast

Hit a little snag today. The podcast is ready, but unfortunately, I can't open my website editor with 1and1.com. There is a link to the audio on this blog, but so far, I haven't been able to add the first chapter to the site. Hopefully, this will be resolved by the morning.

In the meantime, Chapter One of The Jinn can still be heard by clicking on that gray box to the left. And you can still download the podcast here. Make sure to click on original if you want to download it to the desktop.

Adding Podcasts

I've been working on adding content to horror-fiction.info for quite some time. But now that the fantasy creatures section is done, I have to add some product or do something different. There are still many things I need to do with this site before I can say that it is done.

I will probably do The Jinn as a recurring podcast. I'm not sure if I'll do the entire book or just a portion. I guess it all depends on the business demands.

This switch doesn't mean that I'm no longer adding content. Quite the contrary. It's just that I've been writing articles almost nonstop for almost a month, and I've gotta do other things now. I have to do something to bring in more traffic, and the written content just isn't enough right now. Podcasts were always part of the plan anyway, so it's not like I'm deviating. And there's no reason why I should wait until all of the articles are finished before making a podcast.

Tomorrow, well actually today's since it's almost 3 in the morning, podcast will be the first few pages of The Jinn. Luckily, I've already recorded a good chunk of this already.

Finished all of the Fantasy Fiction creature articles

I've finally finished the creature section of the fantasy fiction portal on horror-fiction.info. Still not really seeing too many of my pages place high enough on Google. I think the highest ranking page I've seen so far was the werewolf page. However, I should mention that many of my pages aren't even indexed yet.

Still trolling for links. I've just found out that links from guestbooks don't mean a thing, and might even be bad. I've sent a couple of emails out today requesting links to my dragon page, but so far no responses.

I can't wait till I can finally start recording my stories. I'm hoping that taking that step will be the necessary move to drum up sales. However, I won't get any sales if I don't get more visits. But it's still too early to fuss about visits yet. I've only had the website up for about a month.

The Eye

I watched the The Eye starring Jessica Alba on DVD last night. I classify this movie in the horror of the demonic sub-genre of horror movies.

What I liked:
Good cinematography
Good acting by Jessica Alba
Kept up the suspense
Tongue in cheek reference to The Sixth Sense

What I did not like:
Simple plot; feels like I've seen it before
The supposedly scary moments became redudant
The ending was not to my liking

This movie is not groundbreaking stuff. It's okay. It's not bad, but overwhelmingly great either. If you want to watch something mildly unsettling to pass the time, this movie will do. But it won't keep you up at night, and you'll probably forget about it the next day.