Changing Names? Yes, We Can!

Yes, I have given the green light to Sean Moss to convert this blog into his writing paradise.
But you can already tell from the new title and the background color change. However, there might be another name change straight ahead.
We started out as Taiwan Fashionista in the days when I let myself be enthused by a newspaper report about a Frenchman working as a 'cool hunter' in Japan, taking pictures of stylish young women on the streets of Tokyo and then trying to sell his expertise of Japanese style and fashions to anyone interested. I was dreaming of doing the same thing in Taiwan, but Taiwan is not the style capital of the world - it follows Tokyo and Hong Kong more than anything else - and I didn't have the time anyway. So Taiwan Fashionista the blog became a loose collection of remarks about new shops opening, new and old shops closing, and the occasional style-related event or book review. Those items will still be there for view on the new blog.
Then along came S2S, Senses to Senses, an attempt at expanding the style idea to include everything that appeals to the senses, from traveling to cars and ads. For that purpose, I recruited two new writers, Shadrilla Kems, mostly for fashion, and Sean Moss, for travel and cars. And writing.
Sean soon talked me into a new overhaul: he wanted to write an action series on the Internet and could he have this blog to do it. I first balked at the idea, because this is my blog and his idea is so different. But he's very persuasive, I saw some of his writings and ideas both on and off this blog, so in the end I agreed. This is going to be the blog by Sean Moss. Shadrilla Kems has lots of other projects going, so don't you worry about her.
However, we unexpectedly bumped into another problem. Should we keep the slightly misleading URL taiwanfashionista to change into something new? First of all, we found out that both Hermetic - the title of Sean's story - and seanmoss were already taken as blogspot URL names. The latter is only a phantom blog with the letters JJJJ as its title, but still, we can't use it anymore.
Then we went looking for ways to promote the new blog, you know, social networks and the like. But there again, we found out that our Sean Moss is not the only one in the world, he already has namesakes on MySpace and Facebook and the like. They might not be thriller writers, but still. We want to avoid confusion. If Sienna Miller writes to Sean Moss, the message better arrive at our Sean Moss.
So what did we do? We changed names. Again. Too bad, but I told Sean to take a pen name. It's similar, but different. Short, because some wise people on the Internet think writers should have short four- or five-letter names so they can be printed really large on the book cover.
But we're not revealing the new name for Sean Moss and for his blog and work quite yet. We'll first do all the registering so we're sure we control the names. It'll be the final name change. Honestly. We're still evaluating whether to stay at the taiwanfashionista URL or take a new one. If it's the new one, we'll change all the references to the blog in our signatures on forums and the like. Too bad some forums, like the ones on the Fox TV services, don't even allow links to blogs. One way less of attracting interested people to Sean's stories.
That's life. As Taiwan Fashionista and S2S are about to enter a completely new life, I bid you 'arrivederci' but not farewell. If Sean Moss is generous, I might still pop in for a comment on his writing or so. Keep watching this space.

Grazie,
Enzo Ciancia.

Just an Idea

As a beginning thriller writer, I've been thinking of ways to promote my writing. Of course, my main activity is still writing the books. My first one went out to the publishers, I have four rejections so far, and three replies still expected. Like any eager writer, I have followed up my first book by starting work on my second. I'm still hopeful for the first one, but by the time all publishers have replied to my first query, I want to have the second book ready to go.
Yet, writing is a lonely job. That's why I now have an idea to change that. What do I want to do now?
Write a book on a blog. I hear you say, that's not original, lots of people have published Internet books. What I want to do is this: write a thriller chapter by chapter, and put each chapter up on my blog as I finish them. I'm shooting for one episode a week, to keep reader interest going. I won't be writing the book first, and then putting up a finished, polished work on the Web.
I want to write free style, write one chapter with the content I think up on the spot. Once the chapter is finished, I post it on the blog immediately, with only minor reviews for typos and grammar.
Episode after episode, chapter after chapter, week after week.
There are some minus points about this, of course. First of all, you will say I'm throwing my writing out there for everyone, including the sharks who don't care about copyright and might steal my ideas and my words. Fair enough, but it's still going to be fun.
The second danger is that I run out of ideas after five or ten chapters, and the whole structure comes creaking down on me. Or I'll write myself into a corner, not knowing where to take the story next and falling into rambling and rumbling. At least, I have to give it a try.
Then there's the question of where. Of course, I would like to put my writings right up here. But for that, I'll have to consult my host Enzo Ciancia and see if his generosity matches my appetite for self-promotion. Enzo founded this blog with fashion in mind, and that's what he and the lovely Shadrilla Kems want to be writing about. If I get the green light, I would also like to change the layout of the blog, because pink and my thriller writings just don't match, sorry, Enzo.
Or should I start up a separate blog, or even a completely new web site for my writings?
Over the next week, I shall continue to refine my ideas and consult with you guys on the Internet, on forums and blogs, to see how you do it, and how feasible or ludicrous my idea is. As you know, I write for fun, and what could be more fun than writing on and on on the Internet?
As far as style is concerned, I'm thinking of my blog story in television terms, it's like a series with weekly episodes you look forward to. As to content, I feel inspiration from action TV series like Prison Break, 24, Lost, The X-Files, but maybe with more action elements, more Asian influence - Asia is after all where I live - and more sunshine. My ideas are already here on paper, I just need to find ways to put them on the World Wide Web and make them attractive enough so that other people will want to read them. I need to do what a good writer does. I need to go there and do my research. See you soon.

By Sean Moss for S2S.

Write What You Know

Every writer will hear those words: write what you know.

If I took that literally, I wouldn't be writing very much, thank you. Maybe I'd be a travel writer, because I like traveling in all its aspects, from the bus ride through interesting scenery, to the walk around 2,000-year-old ruins, to the thing in the picture: lazying around in a paradise-like environment.

But you don't have to take it literally. You don't have to have an expensive law degree like John Grisham to write about treacherous lawyers. I agree, it does help, and it did help him to turn his books into megabestsellers, but to me, those four words mean something else.

First of all, if you're a writer, you do more than writing, you read. And you probably like writing what you like to read. The same genre, that is. If you've been reading thrillers for decades, like me, you probably feel at home in that genre, you know the tricks of the trade. Maybe you can't list them all right away, but you can tell where they are. You know the thriller. So if you have to write what you know ... there it is. Write a thriller.

But unless you're really extremely smart, you probably can't know everything. Does that mean you have to refrain from writing certain things? If you're lazy like everyone sometimes is, then yes. Don't write about a gun firing off 9 rounds if you don't know whether it's the model that can. In the old days, when I was young, I loved browsing through encyclopedias. But today's people have it far easier. The most beautiful invention of all times in my eyes is the Internet. You can find anything on the Internet. Even how guns work. So there is no excuse anymore. If you don't want to sound stupid to those who know more than you on a certain topic, go and do your research. Write what you know. What you might not know today, you certainly could know tomorrow.

I write what I love at home, and I write what I know at home and at work, even though they are completely different things. And next, I have an idea to do something more with this blog. But first, I have to go and ask the blogmeister, Enzo Ciancia, and see what he thinks about me taking up more of his space. I let you know more later this week. See you!

By Sean Moss for S2S.

The New Harry Potter

There's always a craze which has to be followed.
Right now, the competition is hot for who can call himself or herself the new J.K.Rowling with the new Harry Potter.
The winner for the time being seems to be Stephenie Meyer, who had a full article devoted to her work and her online marketing campaign in a recent Business Week. She also seems to have taken over, if not the world, then certainly the Amazon Top 10.
What is she writing about? Vampires and children. Who is the target audience? Children, or, well, teenagers.
Maybe another contender would be Neil Gaiman. His tales also mix fantasy, children, gods, and other magical elements. And he sells. I don't know how much, but he does.
So should I also be writing fantasy for children or teenagers - or YA (Young Adults) - the politically correct expression for the easily offendible?
My first question is: aren't most societies graying, with children, teachers and pregnant women becoming a rare sight?
My second question is: aren't doomsayers telling us that kids don't read anymore because they're too busy with their Wii, MP3, online games, Facebook and MySpace?
Well, maybe, but at least, the world is a large place, and not all children have given up on the printed word yet. And their parents have more spending power, at least until the recent price rises, so books will still find buyers.
So should I write for young people?
My answer is still no. Because there are already many people out there doing a fine job of writing for children, even if they haven't reached J.K. Rowling status yet. No because I want to enjoy myself, and I do that writing thrillers and action stories, not fantasy for young minds. No because I'm not a crass commercial mind, targeting my writing at certain focus groups just to make money.
I want to enjoy myself, I want to write what I feel. And that brings us to the saying every writer hears: write what you know.
But that's for my next entry in this blog.

By Sean Moss for S2S.

Web Comics

I told you how seeing the movie 'Wanted' with James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman - I wish him a speedy recovery after his accident - got me interested in cartoons, anime, manga, animation, comics, and all these other things I can't tell apart.

My interest took me to buy the book 'Webcomics' by Steve Withrow and John Barber at Page One at the not inconsiderable cost of more than 1,000 NT dollars.

I now also finished reading the book, and I've learned two main things: you have to learn a lot of software before you can present comics online, and making money out of comics is even more difficult than doing it writing thrillers, which is what I want to do.

The book presents a ream of comic artists from the United States, Great Britain and Canada. The top name I learned about is Scott McCloud. He's supposed to be the guru of web comics, not just drawing some of its finest examples, but also published books on its theoretical underpinnings. What I'm interested in, is the practice, not the theory, but fortunately, this book also shows each artist featured going through the process of writing a comic from the pencil sketches and screenplays right up to the moment the finished work appears on the Internet.

It's not simple. There's all kinds of software involved, mostly Illustrator and Photoshop and Flash, but also more obscure stuff like Poser and the Wacom tablet. Professional graphic artists surely think all this is really simple, but I would face an uphill learning curve. And need a strong budget to afford all that software.

All in all, I'm still glad I read that book. It also told me that you have free web sites, mostly owned by individual artists who try to make a living off the merchandise, and sites where you have to register and pay. Some of those are collectives offering a wide range of comics from different artists. The names of sites I remembered the most are Modern Tales, Komikwerks and Keenspot.

Anyway, I think I'll stick to writing thrillers for the time being. Even though I need to get to 300-400 pages and 100,000 words, making a web comic of the same story seems like double the work to me: you still have to write the story, the plot, the dialogue, the characters, but when that is over, you still have to draw the whole story in pages of attractive drawings. And get the whole thing to look right on a computer screen.

Reading the book, I felt I was learning a lot, and I'll keep looking out for good comics sites, books and news about the art.

By Sean Moss for S2S.

Angelina Jolie drives a Lada

Yes, she does. At least in the movie 'Wanted' which I went to see with mixed feelings.
I'm an old-fashioned guy, so I didn't know if the violence and brutality was going to be over the top. I can tell you right now: it was, sometimes, and I certainly didn't appreciate the furry animals, but the fact is, the brutality was offset by the visual excitement.
I'm not going to tell you what Angelina Jolie did with her Lada - you probably saw the trailers with her doing tricks with a Dodge Viper, but not the Lada chase - so I don't want to spoil your enjoyment.
The movie actually reminded me of Guy Ritchie's 'Snatch.' Violence, swear words, brutality, thuggishness you only want to see in films, but also visual flair. The bullets, the jumps, the cars, the train. This movie rocks and you want to know why?
Two words: graphic novel. Hollywood has fallen in love with cartoons, animation, manga, and the graphic novel. And that means we get too many of those movies, with only a small minority worth watching.
I'm an old-fashioned guy - I already told you - so I grew up with the adventures of Tintin, the Belgian journalist traveling around the world with his coterie of weird friends and his cute doggie. Then there were Asterix and Obelix, the Gaul villagers who singlehandedly defended their home against the armies of Julius Caesar while also traveling around the world, including a visit to the Olympics in Greece. Then there was Alex, the young kid living in the Antiquity, dealing with Romans, Greeks, Egyptians.
All pretty civilized stuff, often funny, but always enriching. So now we're in 2008. Graphic novels are known for their darkness, ominousness - is that a word? - violence, brutality, and sometimes cruelty and misogyny verging on pornography. The graphic novel version of 'Wanted' is a lot more violent and crude than what director Timur Bukmambetov put on the screen. But that's because they're written and drawn for adults, not for the children who read Tintin, Asterix and Alex. I hope they still do, anyway.
The fire and brimstone of 'Wanted' has had one result. I bought myself an expensive copy of 'Webcomics' by Steven Withrow and John Barber. You can look it up on Amazon or other sites, it gives you an overview of what's going on with online graphic stories.
Will I start writing a graphic novel? Unlikely, it looks like double the work of a written novel. I already spent months writing a 300-page thriller, printing it, sending it off to publishers, and waiting for a response - so far, 4 negative, and 3 no-shows, if you have to know. I do what all writers do: while waiting for something miraculous to happen with the first novel, start writing a second one. I won't deviate from that plan, certainly not for a gigantic enterprise like dozens of pages of drawings and text balloons.
But it's well worth some research. And I like watching Angelina Jolie drive a Lada.

By Sean Moss for S2S.