The Backworlds

Today is the release date of The Backworlds by M. Pax. I've been a fan of M. Pax for a long time. Check it out :)
 

The Backworlds is here!

The first story in the Backworlds series by M. Pax. A vision of how humanity might colonize the galaxy some day in the distant future.

The Backworlds

After the war with Earth, bioengineered humans scatter across the Backworlds. Competition is fierce and pickings are scant. Scant enough that Craze’s father decides to hoard his fortune by destroying his son. Cut off from family and friends, with little money, and even less knowledge of the worlds beyond his own, Craze heads into an uncertain future. Boarding the transport to Elstwhere, he vows to make his father regret this day.

Available from: Amazon / AmazonUK / Smashwords / Feedbooks

Other links to more outlets can be found at either Wistful Nebulae or MPax

The Backworlds is an ebook and a free read. All formats can be found at Smashwords and Feedbooks.

Weird Friday - Weird Vehicles Part 2

This week's special Friday edition of Weird Wednesday features another excursion into the Weird Vehicle Garage (check out Weird Vehicles Part-1) - not to be confused with the Mythik Garage, which is slowly being filled with cars from the stories of Mythik Imagination; but that is a tale for another day.

Top Speed: 70mph Land - 10 knots Sea

First up is the Surface Orbiter. Made from a 1958 milk tanker (there are such things as milk tankers??) the Surface Orbiter is designed to circumnavigate the globe. Self sufficient and capable of traveling over land and sea, it has ventured over 33,000 miles on land and 3,000 miles at sea in the quest to travel around the world.

Gold Rush and Hunger Games

Hello Blogworld, this is Jon.

Hopefully there are still some Mythik Readers out there ;) So here's the deal: April has slipped away in the blink of an eye, just like March did, because my schedule has been extremely busy. I did finish a screenplay for a paranormal thriller and have been doing multiple re-writes. Writing for the silver screen is a bit different than writing a novel, of course. The rewrites aren't just for plot or characterization, but also fall along the lines of "our special effects department needs more info to make the blank" or "we can't afford to do that" etc. But it is definitely fun.

Screenplay

I blink my eyes and next thing I know, all of this extra long month of February has gone by. I have been typing furiously for most of the month on a movie script. February 29th is my deadline (at least for the first draft) and I am almost done. I've got 126 script pages done, and am working on rewriting the story.

So, I have regressed in my social media commitments, but made very good writing progress. I need to catch up with a lot of stuff, but will get back into good blogging form soon. Hopefully.

Well, I still have a few hours left until my writing deadline is officially here, so I better get back to work :)

Action, Thriller, Comedy, Drama

I think, when people talk about genres, most people think of them in terms of what the story is about. Instead, I think a genre is really much more about who the audience is for a particular story.

I recently came across a fascinating analysis of spec script sales by genre from the Go Into The Story blog by Scott Myers. A "spec" script is when a screenwriter sells a script "on spec," which means they weren't hired to write a specific story; instead, they write whatever they think will be marketable and then hope to sell it to a producer. They are speculating, gambling their time and effort in hopes of a future sale. It's always interesting to see what kinds of stories Hollywood thinks will make them money. What I find particularly interesting, is to see the breakdown by the four major Hollywood genres: Action, Thriller, Comedy, and Drama.

Weird Thursday - Weird Vehicles Part 1

Today's weirdness is a day late, but is hopefully worth the wait. We've got a garage full of odd sci-fi conveyances that are (or have been) real, believe it or not. It ended up being rather crowded in our Weird Garage, so this is Weird Vehicles Part 1.

Top Speed: 20 mph

First up is the LeTourneau Overland MkII Land Train. It is like the Antarctic Snow Cruiser on steroids. Perfect for hauling much needed supplies across the Martian tundra (or across earthly deserts,) the Overland MkII was as long as two football fields. It had 54 electrically powered wheels and could carry 150 tons of cargo. Each wheel was over 11 feet tall. The idea was that it would be used by the Army to deliver goods to inhospitable and remote locales, but by the time it was ready for action in 1962, it was rendered obsolete by newly developed aircraft technologies. Sadly, most of the Land Train has been sold for scrap, although you can still see the restored lead car at the Yuma Proving Grounds Heritage Center.

Fantasy Map Tutorial

There's a lot of talk these days about "World Building," which helps create a realistic and interesting story setting. But after you have carefully crafted your world of wonder with believable geographic and geopolitical details, you probably want a nice picture of it, right?

I'm going to show you how to make a cool looking fantasy map.

What you will need:
- a graphics editing program (I used Photoshop.) There is also a free program called GIMP.
- a public domain image of an old map.  Some good sources for public domain images are: Public Domain Sherpa and NOAA's Office of Coast Survey Historical Map & Chart Collection. The NOAA site is a gold mine. It takes some searching, but you can even find maps of old west towns, forts, and battles!

What we are going to do:
We are going to take an existing public domain map and modify it to look like the imaginary world we have in our head.