The new set for Series 2 of The April Kohl Show

I’m one of those people for whom the solitary lifestyle of the writer is a blessing. I enjoy my own company, and have issues with being forced to socialise with others for extended periods. It’s just how I am. That’s not to say that I can’t work with other people – work is a different matter altogether. Just don’t expect me to want to spend a week constantly in someone’s company while we laugh, joke, play video games or watch films. I’d get to day three and start chewing the furniture. Or worse.

Nevertheless, it’s really nice to see family every now and again. My aunt and cousin visited for the weekend, which was nice. It’s the first time my aunt has been to my house since I moved to Bolton in 2007 and I think she was suitably impressed. We’ve put a lot of effort into making the house look nice and feel like home, and it has paid off.

We talked, watched videos, played video games and went out for a short tour of Bolton. It was going to be a longer tour but a) there’s not much in the middle of Bolton to see that I’ve not already shown on one of my ZJKR videos, and b) we were pelted with hailstones so hard I thought I was going to have lacerations by the time I got home.

That minor setback aside, we had a really great time and it was wonderful to see them both.

On Saturday night, I started work building the set for the next series of The April Kohl Show, which has languished in obscurity for many months now. It is a chat show filmed in virtual reality, which has the advantage of me being able to interview people from around the world, in real time. While building the new set, I was approached by someone who works with one of the major virtual reality television stations. We got talking and one thing led to another, now I have an opportunity to get The April Kohl Show onto one of their channels. There are a few things to sort out, like a proper intro sequence, some end credits and editing that doesn’t suck but I think I can do it. Hell, the editing was something I was going to try to get worked out for this series anyway.

I’m going to make a couple of intro sequences and then decide which I like the best. This is the first intro I’ve come up with:

In addition, I’m hoping to grab a few people while they are online and interview the hell out of them. Maybe then I can put together a few fun shows for my showreel. That would be very nice, if I do say so myself!

On a different note entirely, work continues apace on the rewriting of Unholy Crusade. The version you can find here on this very website is now totally out of date. The new and improved version is already being advertised on the All Mouse Media website as being released this month, so I suppose I’d best get to finishing it! This version is snappier, has far better writing and dialogue that is more finely-tuned. In other words, it’s a far superior product and if everything goes right, it will be available as a eBook by the end of the month.

'Shock', by me, via Flickr

When it comes to interesting things, I mostly find them out these days through watching YouTube videos. I am a subscriber to several channels on YouTube, ranging from the purely entertaining Wheezywaiter and Ray William Johnson to the informative Philip DeFranco and, of course, The Vlog Brothers. It is from the latter than I learn the most.

Things I learned about today are the fact that if you put &wadsworth=1 on the end of any video on YouTube, you can invoke the Wadsworth Constant on the video. “What’s the Wadsworth Constant?” I hear you ask. Well it’s a value posited by a Reddit user called, funnily enough, Wadsworth. He or she says the first 30% of a video (averaging out at about 40 seconds) is skippable without losing any information, so you can invoke the Wadsworth Constant to “get to the good bit” quickly. Brilliant!

For what it’s worth, that skips the introduction and title sequence on my videos. Some of you may enjoy that. Speaking of videos, here’s my latest!

The other interesting thing I learned today is that there exists a punctuation mark for those occasions where you need to ask a question in an exclamatory fashion, such as when “You did what?!” is an appropriate response. This symbol is called interrobang and it was invented in the 1960s as a marketing gimmick that caught on in the media for a few years before disappearing into obscurity. It looks like this:

‽

Of course if you’re using a computer or font that does not support obscure extended Unicode characters, that probably looks like a square to you. In which case, picture a question mark superimposed over an exclamation mark and you’ll get the right idea. Jennifer’s expression in today’s photograph adequately sums up one occasion where this symbol would be applicable.

Work continues on the editing of Unholy Crusade and other stories. I don’t know whether it will be released at the end of this month or next but it is coming soon, so keep an eye out on here and I’ll talk more about it when it is released. There are first drafts of three of the five stories in this collection available on this website, so if you want to get an idea of what will be in the book, give the Stories section some love. The versions of each story will be somewhat more refined (and in several cases, the stories are now longer and much more rounded) but the online versions are fun too.

Anyway, I’d best get back to work now. These stories won’t edit themselves!

There’s an old saying that a writer has to read a lot if they are going to be any good. It isn’t usually phrased exactly like that but I didn’t want to come across as unoriginal so I went all long-winded and now I’ve got this huge, run-on sentence that is completely getting away from my point.

These books aren't just for decoration (but they do look good)

Where was I? Ah yes. Reading. I’m a big fan of reading, as I’m sure most people in the blogosphere are. I like to have at least one book on the go at any one time but I’ll generally supplement that with a few magazines, comics and blogs as well.

Right now, I’m reading Guilty Pleasures; the first in what has become Laurell K Hamilton’s infamous Anita Blake series. I say infamous because, as Penny Arcade put it, they quickly become werewolf sex books.

Suffice to say, I shall not be reading those particular books. As some of you may already know from what I’ve said on previous incarnations of this blog, I’m asexual. The concept of reading about sex does not therefore appeal.

Anyway, that’s my current choice when it comes to fiction. I’m also reading a non-fiction book at the moment, because I like to keep my options open when it comes to settling down with a good book. Right now my non-fiction of choice is The Oxford History of Britain, because history is something that fascinates me. I usually like to read about ancient history (Roman and Egyptian are my favourites) but sometimes it’s good to know where you come from.

So there are my books of choice right now. Next week they will probably be different because I go through a book every 7 to 10 days, on average. I know a lot of people who read faster than that but I have limited time, what with everything else I’m doing. Keep a pace that you’re comfortable with, otherwise reading turns from a pleasure into a chore.

Actually, that’s true of just about everything.

On the magazine front, I’m a fan of New Scientist, Comic Heroes, Writing Magazine and Mensa Magazine. You can get three of those in your local newsagent and I’d highly recommend them if you are into popular science, mainstream comics and writing, respectively. I would love it if Comic Heroes put more in about independent press and web comics but I suppose there’s only so much you can talk about on those topics when they are, by their very nature, often quite intangible and rapidly-changing.

Anyway, that’s enough about what I’m in to. What are you reading? (Please don’t say “your blog!”)