Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – Crashing Billy Crystal’s Party

I was working at Universal Studios in the late ‘90s filing contracts, and sometimes I saw strange things when I would leave.  Once I had a couple friends visiting for some reason.  I don’t remember for certain why they were there, but I remember one of them was a costumer, so I think I was introducing her to someone.  Anyway, I had a really crusty car at the time.  When it moved it sounded like it was having a perpetual fart.  It was barely holding together, having rust all over, several colors of paint, and a window that was being held up with a stick.  There was even writing on the back, “OBO” which stood for “Or best offer.”  It had said “900 OBO” but I had wiped off the 900.  I couldn’t get the rest off, so it remained, and the car became known as Obo.

As we were leaving, we got stuck behind a line of fancy black cars, many of them limos.  They were stopping in front of the Europe part of the backlot, letting people off, then continuing forward.  When we got to the front, valets opened the doors and rushed, almost pushed, us out, then one took the car and “sppppppp” sped the car away.  We were all dressed better than the car looked, so we sort of fit in with the suit and tuxedo clad men and women in their fancy dresses, so we strolled into the event.

There were tables with large meals on them, so we sat down to eat.  Pretty soon, Billy Crystal stepped up to the mic at the front and began speaking.  Soon we realized we had stumbled into a charity event and eating plates that were costing others thousands of dollars to attend.  We felt guilty, (but not too guilty to have another course or two,) so we eventually wandered off.  We walked up the hill toward the suburbs area.  During the day, it was hard to go up here because the tour trams went through, but in the evening, it was an easier walk.

We got to a point where we could see a huge cliff wall that had been built over the water where actors were climbing around.  They were shooting Jurassic Park 3.  I knew it had been written lately; I had don’t the paperwork for the writer’s contract.  It had been Alexander Payne, an acquaintance whom I had met a few times at the Nebraska Coast Connection.  It was a bit depressing to see how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he was being paid for something he wrote over a weekend, (we did the paperwork on a Friday and the script came in on a Monday,) but I needed to get over that and focus on my own work.

We weren’t there long before someone found us and told us we couldn’t hang around, so we strolled back to the event which we passed through to return to my car.  I gave the ticket to the valet and waited.  It was quite a while before we heard “sppppppppp” in the distance, and after several more limos and fancy black cars passed by picking up their wealthy patrons, my little crusty Obo pulled up and we climbed inside under the judgmental gaze of those around.  Then we scurried out of there, the car sputtering fumes and going “spppppppppppppp!”

RPG Into a Book

I’ve been thinking about the role playing video idea and I know what I want to do with it.  First, I want to do my own version.  It won’t likely have as good of production value as Wil Wheaton’s, but I plan on doing something he didn’t; use miniatures.  This will bring over what I’ve already collected for my mini-wargaming show, and will hopefully bring over that audience.  It will also give a separate voice from other rpg videos already out there.  It should also look really cool.

But what will also make this endeavor work is the idea that I could make a book based on the story at the end.  The videos can generate an audience which is then drawn to the book at the end, because it’s the story they just watched unfold.  What’s more, I have had this idea for a fantasy world for a long time, but I didn’t have a specific story put together.  This will fill in that all-important part while giving me the chance to fulfill this desire to build my fantasy world.

I’ve also determined that sci fi and fantasy are a lot more likely to sell in self-publishing, and have determined to focus on that from now on, so this fits with my overall plan more anyway.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – Beginning Film School at NYU

Having grown up in Nebraska, switching to New York City for college was an obvious culture shock.  However, it never felt as strange as many people thought it would be for me.  I was ready for a change, and I was ready to learn a bit about filmmaking.  The most education I had had was a class run by someone who believed nothing good had been made since Casablanca.

Ironically, a film had come out the summer before I went off to NYU called The Freshman.  This was not only a wild coincidence because it was about a young man starting college, but also because he was beginning school at NYU studying film.  I wondered how true it was going to be for me, especially in regard to the teacher who was so obsessed with The Godfather that he couldn’t talk about anything else.

I had some teachers like that, but more on that later.

The screening of The Freshman I went to was empty, as though it was a private screening for me; a warning.  I didn’t know how to take that, and I still don’t, but it was something that stood out.

The other movie that ultimately had a lot of meaning for me about that time was Pump up the Volume.  I saw it while on the way to New York.  My dad and I stopped off for the night in Pennsylvania.  He wanted to see something I wasn’t at all interested in, and he wasn’t interested in my Christian Slater movie, so we agreed to meet afterward.

At the time I thought Pump up the Volume was just an okay flick.  But on retrospect, it was very foretelling.  The story is about a young man who runs an underground radio station, broadcasting his views on life that really connect to other teenagers.  The FCC comes down hard on him for illegally broadcasting, and he sends a message to everyone to make their voices heard.

This movie could not be remade now because the concept of getting your voice heard is taken for granted.  With Youtube, podcasting, blogging, and all sorts of other ways to get your voice heard, the idea that you once had to go through a filter is gone.  But that really characterizes the difference between the world I was trying to break into as a storyteller at the time, and the world today.  In the 20^th century you had to ask permission to get your story told; permission from a movie studio or a book publisher or a magazine or a film festival.  That changed throughout the 2000s.  IFilm started to change that on the internet, but failed when they decided to become like the film festivals.  Little did they know that people were tired of that mentality, and they went by the wayside in favor of Youtube and blogs.

Now Pump up the Volume seems almost quaint the way it seems to state the obvious.  But one has to understand that those dark days of entertainment are only a very few years behind us; and the movie should serve as a warning of what it could become again if we ever regulate these free markets again.

A New Form of Storytelling Through Roleplaying Videos

When I first learned about the concept of a roleplaying game in the 1970s, I was confused.  How could you have a game with no board, no cards, no pieces even?  I was blown away when I learned how Dungeons and Dragons worked, and how it was a story being made up by several people sitting in a room together.

There are many people who have forgotten this concept, and turn role playing games into mathematical equations, (also referred to as roll playing.)  But the people who truly understand the concept know that it’s about creating characters and a story and everyone making it together.

I always knew the strength of using this to create stories and even books, or even as inspiration to make a movie.  What hadn’t occurred to me until recently is how the medium itself can be used to create a storytelling video; one where you do not use the story as a script, but rather you show the people creating the story to begin with.

This has been achieved with Wil Wheaton’s Titan’s Grave where he and four players create a story by playing a role playing game and taping it with a professional crew.  What’s groundbreaking about this is the fact that it’s not used as the structure for the story, but rather is the story.  The concept of a storyteller has of course been around for eons, and has been popularized the last few decades on A Prairie Home Companion.  This takes that concept and increases it by five in the way it has five storytellers all doing it together, and you get to see the story form in front of you.  It’s made all the more exciting by the fact that the end is not predetermined.  Characters can die, and the party can even lose in the end.  It’s a mixture of a story and a sporting event all in one.  And the fact that it’s low budget means they’re less likely to pander.

I’m looking to do my own role playing videos as soon as I can; thus mixing the three things I enjoy most, storytelling, gaming, and videos.  I have several I want to do, including D&D, Outbreak, Savage Worlds, Star Wars, and Deadlands, which has already been started, but without cameras.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – The Extras Scam

People are told that one of the gateways into the film industry is through being an extra.  You pay your dues in the background of other movies while you make contacts and get to know your way around.

When I first moved to LA in 1995, there were a number of these agencies you could sign up with that had their own ways of finding you work.  Some of them charged a fee up front for you to sign up with them, and they took a very small finder’s fee whenever they got you work; others took no fee up front but got a larger percentage with each job they found you.

Over the years these other agencies dwindled until only a few remained, and only one truly dominates the industry, Central Casting.  Central was a company that charged an upfront fee and took a small percentage of your paycheck.  There was also a yearly fee to remain in their databank.  They made huge amounts from starry eyed hopefuls like myself who had been told this was the gateway to working in the film industry, and by offering our services to multi-million dollar movies for minimum wage.

In order to get work, we had to call in and wait through a long list on an electronic message saying what types of people they needed the next day.  You had to call in over and over, waiting for several messages hoping they needed your type.  If your type didn’t come up, you had no work for the next day.  Of course, you had to give up taking any other work, and when you did get on a set, you were paid so little it didn’t come close to making up for the days you didn’t get anything.  And we continued to pay our fees to remain with Central Casing year after year.

But this is what we were told we needed to do, so we kept doing it.

Then in 2011, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office started cracking down on extras casting companies that charged up front fees.  This issue had come up when there was a scourge of complaints from people who had paid to be included in services but never received work.  Being at the height of the Great Recession, the issue was much more serious, and agencies were required to provide true employment services like in any other business.

In some ways, these agencies were caught in the middle.  Movie studios and production companies have a long history of shafting employees at the bottom.  While they make movies and shows chastising the wealth gap, they have the largest disparity in payment.  Their “above the line” stars, producers, etc. will make millions while the “below the line” extras and production personnel make minimum wage or less.  They are infamous for having an over-abundance of unpaid interns who are supposedly lucky to be there and are “learning” the craft as they get their bloated employers coffee.

It was these studios and companies which were pressuring the extras agencies to provide them with cheaper and cheaper labor, all along expecting fancy offices in the wealthiest areas of town.  So the extras agencies had fallen in line to remain open, passing on the charges and low pay to their employees.  But after the City Attorney’s crackdown, many had no choice but to shut their doors.

But not Central Casting.  They were big enough to last a bit longer; long enough to come up with a different solution.  Recognizing the annoyance of their employees needing to call in to find out about work, they began to provide a service that could call in for you.  No longer would you need to sit on the phone for ten minutes at a time wading through listing after listing, then having to call in again a few hours later if there wasn’t anything for you.  Now you could get a call-in service to do all that for you, and they would call you to let you know you have work.

Of course, this could all be bypassed if Central Casting simply placed their listings online so people could see at a glance if they fit anything.  Or, god forbid, they could do the casting and simply call the people they felt were appropriate for the parts, rotating in actors who hadn’t worked the day before so everyone gets even amounts of work.  But Central Casting isn’t going to bother with all this, you know why?

Because the call-in service is even more profitable than the original payment to register.  While it used to cost about $25 to register and the same to renew each year, it now costs $70 per month to get the call-in service.  Of course, you can choose to bypass the call-in service and call in each day yourself, but you’ll find that there are only very obscure and extremely specific listings; such as little person with a nose ring and a tattoo on his neck, or people who are missing limbs.  Occasionally they’ll offer jobs to people who have fancy, classic cars, but let’s face it, you aren’t getting any of those on an extras salary.

This is because the call-in service gets the listings first.  They fill it with their list of customers who are paying $70 a month, and the only listings that are making it to Central Casting’s messages are the obscure ones the call-in service couldn’t fill.

This obvious scam only gets by the City Attorney’s Office because they opened the call-in service under a different name, Extras Management.  It’s not particularly subtle, however, as the management office is directly across the street from Central Casting, and they even tell you at Central Casting when you register that you should go over to Extras Management and sign up to ensure you’ll get work.

Of course, work is not assured.  In fact, even when you’re called onto a job, it’s still not certain.  Even though you must have your schedule cleared for the day of a shoot, accepting no other work, if the production company decides to cancel, they can do so, even up to the last minute, and you are not compensated.  This means that, from the moment Extras Management calls you, you cannot accept any other work.  You must be available for the shoot, and you must show up.  But if the production company changes its mind or falls behind schedule, it can cancel your job, even if you drove clear across town and turned down other work.

What’s worse, they can require that you clear your schedule for several days, then decide they don’t need you after the first one, even if it’s too late for you to find other work.  This was exemplified in a heartbreaking way on a set I was on a while ago.  There were over 50 of us who had been told we had three days of work.  We all showed up and worked through a hectic schedule, standing out in the hot sun and trying to get shade since they didn’t have an air conditioned area for the extras.  (Of course they had plenty of air conditioned units for the “above the line” people in this show that made fun of elitism, but nothing for the extras.)  After 5:00, when it was too late to find other work, we were all told they wouldn’t be bringing us back the next day.  I’ve never seen so many people break down in tears.  I’m certain that if you were to watch that episode of the show and look into the background, you would see a plethora of wet faces.

This was during the Great Recession.  Many of these people were counting on the work to pay for rent.  This was near the end of the month, and several said they would now be evicted because they had no chance of making rent.  Some smuggled craft service food off the set because it would be all they would have to eat.  All this while the producers who made these decisions were going home to large houses and hefty paychecks for making a show deriding greedy rich people.

Oh, and by the way, Central Casting still pays only minimum wage for the days you do work, and they take a percentage out for themselves.  This means that the $70 a month one pays Extras Management isn’t even covered in one day’s worth of work.  It takes a day and a half before you become profitable.

It is a shameful racket, one that Central Casting profits from under the table.  One might have hoped Schwarzenegger might have done something about these practices when he was governor, but he was part of that “above the line” elitism that never sees the suffering of those at the bottom.  He had the air conditioned room that never even saw where we were.

The New Schedule of Relic Worlds

After reviewing what’s been working and not working for me in publishing, and where I am in terms of Relic Worlds, I’ve reworked the schedule for the second book, short stories, and pick your path books.

The second book will now be released at Wondercon at the end of March.  The short stories will continue to be released up to that point, and the fourth pick your path book will come out on Christmas day.  In fact, the fourth pick your path book and the first novel will both be available for free on Christmas as an incentive to get people to reading them.  I might make all the pick your path books free on that day as well.  The idea is that people will be getting new Kindles on Christmas, and they’ll likely turn them on to see what’s available for free, so I’m hoping they’ll pick these up.

I plan on having a lot of events between January and March to build interest in Relic Worlds, and to generally have fun with it.  Overall, Relic Worlds is intended to be fun, so I want people to enjoy some events and games that relate to the adventure and science fiction of the story to get into the series.  Some of these will include geocaches, programming, online treasure hunts, etc.

For now, it’s time to release more short stories and continue building up the website for the immersive experience that is Relic Worlds.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – Running Into Spielberg in Vegas

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1995, my mother was moving to the area as well.  She and my father had just gotten divorced, and she was starting where she had left off when she married him in the ‘60s, Loma Linda.  I had met some people who promised to help me get my career started; I just needed to get out to Southern California.

My mom and I were driving in a two van caravan; her in a big mover, me in our family van.  This was the days before cell phones, so when we wanted to chat, we either needed to pull over, or I had to run over to her at a red light.  At one of these interchanges, I accidentally locked myself out, and when the light turned green, I couldn’t get in.  Luckily, my mom had a spare key, and as cars drove by honking, I ran over and got it from her.

I was listening to audiobooks along the way, and as we pulled into Vegas, I was finishing The Diary of Anne Frank.  Great material for Sin City.  As such, my mind was wandering and I was looking down at the sidewalk rather than up at the bright lights.  I remembered something from Schindler’s List and was about to say to my mom “In Schindler’s List…” when I smelled something rank.  I stopped, looked up, and found myself face to face with a drunken stranger I had almost run into.  He was talking to someone beside him as he stared at me, wondering why I had almost plowed into him.  He was wavering a little on his feet, and had clearly drunk a lot.  The smell I had detected was his alcoholic breath.  And it immediately dawned on me.  This was Steven Spielberg.

I froze in place, unsure what to say or do.  My mother hadn’t noticed.  She was further down the sidewalk unaware what I was doing.  Then the light turned green for Spielberg and his friends and they walked across, leaving me behind.  At that moment my mom finally realized I wasn’t with her, and came back to me, asking why I was slack-jawed.  I pointed at the street, at the man in white pants, and said, “Spielberg.”  She looked and recognized him and said, “huh.”

I took it as a good omen, and was walking on cloud nine the rest of the day.  Screw Vegas, I just saw the most successful filmmaker in history on my way to the city of movies.

Review of What Worked for Two Gun Hart

Now more than six months after the release of Two Gun Hart, it’s time to review what worked and what did not with its release and promotion.  I point out six months because that’s typically the amount of time after a book’s release that promotions last before it is labeled a “backlisting.”

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long as it seems like it just came out.  But the time has flown by because I did so much for it; and yet it feels like there’s been so little result, or at least far less than there should have been.

The promotional plan was broken into four parts, each lasting three months, so I’ll go through each one here.

6-4 months before release:  The plan was to give people an idea of the story; sort of get them primed, if you will.  I did this by promoting the sister book, The Great Heist.  This had one chapter in it that covers Two Gun Hart, and the idea was to get people curious about it.  I also used this time to get it to reviewers so they’d be done with it by release.  This worked moderately well.  The Great Heist was difficult to sell as people didn’t know me or the book, and it would have probably done better just to give it away for free.  I did have a free giveaway for the Kindle at one time, which I think did the best good, but it would have been better to get it into more hands.  As for reviews, a lot more people promised to review it than came through.

3-0 months before release:  This was the big period where I tried to generate interest and did a pre-release.  Most importantly, I tried to get onto every radio show I could and to speak on every blog and podcast that would have me.  I also tried to get as much press coverage as possible.  I wanted everyone to buy during this time because all pre-buys would count as having released on the day of release, thus giving me the best chance of a best-seller.  I worked all day practically every day sending out press releases, emails, calling places, etc.  One press release I sent out got picked up by stations all across the country, but they all talked about the story and few even mentioned the book.  As for radio stations, especially NPR, I was mostly ignored.  Since I wasn’t a major publisher, they didn’t care.  As for fellow independent bloggers and Youtubers, there was silence.  Some even said they wouldn’t have anything to do with self-publishers, which is funny since they are self-publishers.

0-3 months after release:  My celebration of the release was to go and talk at as many places as possible.  This was mostly in Nebraska and Iowa where I had a tour with the Hart family.  Everywhere we went had a large reception, and everyone bought the book.  This was the best time of sales.  Any time I could directly talk to people, they were fascinated with the story and immediately wanted a copy.  Radio stations in Nebraska and Iowa had me on… scratch that, in Lincoln and Iowa had me on.  Omaha and most of the rest of Nebraska ignored me.  Strangely, Omaha is very much uninterested in independent endeavors; you can tell by the fact that few independent stores are anywhere in the city.  As for bookstores, only a few would take the book.  Even independent bookstores would say that since it’s an independent book, they weren’t interested, all the time not recognizing their hypocrisy.  I did manage to get it into the Barnes & Noble system and a few stores bought it, but not many.  There were a couple of the ones that have always been supportive of me, such as A Novel Idea and The Bookworm, both of whom had signings for me.  And then there were a few other stores that opened up to me since I had it printed through Ingram Spark which made them returnable.  But I only made a little bit above what it cost me to have them printed through that company.  I’m not sure that even includes the listing I paid for that went out in Ingram’s catalogue that supposedly goes to bookstores everywhere.

4-6 months after release:  I learned along the way that a lot of clubs, such as Rotaries, want authors to come speak, especially if they wrote about an interesting non-fiction subject.  The bookstores were often empty when I went to speak at them, but organized events were typically pretty full, so I gave it a try with a new visit to Nebraska.  This has worked better, with the captive audiences always enthralled, and almost everyone buying a copy of the book.  It’s a bit inefficient, however, as I have to go to each one, and after a two week trip to Nebraska, I just barely paid for my flight there and back.  I also learned to sell the book at specific markets that are interested in this sort of thing.

All in all I learned two important lessons.  First, the way to sell a non-fiction book is through personal interaction.  If you have an interesting subject, people will want to hear the story, see the pictures, then they’ll give it a chance.  It’s a good idea to have elements from the book, such as pictures, clips, and evidence of what you’re talking about, so people can see for themselves that this is true and fascinating.

And second, I learned why someone said something I read a while back.  He said that he published his fiction independently and his non-fiction through major publishers.  I didn’t understand why at the time, but now I do.  For non-fiction to sell, you need the aid of news and radio organizations to give you some legitimacy.  There aren’t as many online locations to build interest in your work.  There’s also a stigma with non-fiction in self-publishing.  People believe that if it’s traditionally published, it’s gone through a gambit of editors who are checking on its accuracy.  This is not true, as editors with big houses are looking for what is profitable, not what’s true; and the idea that they’re checking over your accuracy is a myth.  In fact, traditionally published books are less likely to be accurate because of their motivation to make money.  But most people don’t know this, so they’re only likely to buy a traditionally published non-fiction book.  To add to all of this, most history readers are themselves traditionalists, and are more afraid of technology than embracing it, so it’s very hard to reach your audience.

Fiction, on the other hand, has a lot of readers who are likely to try something new, especially in the areas of science fiction and fantasy.  As a result, I’ll be focusing my efforts on releasing and promoting Relic Worlds and my fantasy story, then doing non-fiction on the side from now on.  It’s unfortunate, but I want to make a living writing, and if readers, and especially the media, refuse to see the value in independent non-fiction, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Began the National Writing Month Challenge

I have begun working on the fourth Relic Worlds Pick Your Path book. Today I collected the outline and the title and set everything up. I begin working on the interior content tomorrow.

The way I create the storyline and outline for a Pick Your Path book is this. I start by figuring out the overall feel and where I want to go with it, meaning some of the things I'll want to be sure to include, etc.

When I'm ready to start laying it out, I write 1, then fill out the introduction. I then give several choices, lining each one up in order. So choice 1 will be "go to 2." Choice 2 will be "go to 3" and so on. I then go to 2 and write what happens there. The choices are right after the last choice in 1. So if choice had 3 choices, the last one would be #4, so entry 2's first choice would be #5, and so on. In the physical book version, these numbers translate to page numbers. However, I try not to think of them as page numbers as they will also be selection points in the Kindle and PDF version.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker - The First Time I Learned About Star Wars

My first movie experience was almost Star Wars.  I was six years old and my father wanted to take me to this new science fiction film.  But my mother, being a responsible parent, stopped him and said that he should watch it first to see if it would be appropriate for someone at my age.  So my dad took my brother to see it while my mom took me to see Benji.  Yep, my mother’s sense of responsibility made Benji my first movie rather than Star Wars.  Damn you good parenting!

My mom, sister and I got home first and we were in the kitchen when the door opened and my brother rushed in with his eyes wide.  My father was right behind him, his own eyes wide as well.  It was as though he had just seen a ghost doing gymnastics.  He told her that I had to go see this movie.  Not should, had.  Still being the responsible parent, my mother asked if it was age appropriate, and he vigorously nodded his head.

Soon after, we went to see it at the Stuart theater in downtown Lincoln.  It was a former stage theater from the days of grand productions.  It looked more like an opera house, complete with deep cushioned, plush, red seats, and etched mirrors in the lobby; and it played only the biggest movies.  I remember only bits and pieces of watching it.  In particular, I remember that I didn’t know what “terminate” meant, and when my mom explained that it meant to kill, I couldn’t believe they were thinking about killing Princess Leia.  It was the first time I remember feeling fear.  I didn’t understand yet that the good guys general win these movies; my exposure to television thus far had often been football, and in that, either side could win.  So I truly didn’t know that the rebels would win.  (Oh, spoiler alert.)

I also remember going to the bathroom during the scene when Obiwan Kenobi turned off the tractor beam, so I didn’t understand why the characters were able to leave.  For some reason I remember another older black kid in the bathroom with me.  I think I remember this because it was one of the first times I was using a bathroom alone, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to a stranger in a bathroom.  I wasn’t nervous with fear, I was nervous about my manners.  Am I supposed to look?  Am I not?  I think men and women react differently to bathrooms; we never get over our fear of looking at one another while in them.

After the movie, I remember going to the apartment buildings my dad owned and jumping in the pool.  We had taken a family friend, Jon, and he and my brother Trevor were reenacting scenes, especially the one in the trash compactor as though the walls were going to smash them in the pool, and the snake creature was underneath.  I remember one point when Trevor said, “we’re all going to be a lot thinner” and Jon responded, “At least I won’t have to iron my clothes anymore!”

In the years to come, it would prove to have an impact on me as strong as my dad predicted; especially with the toys.  My best friend Ryan and I collected as many figures as we could and created stories with them.  This became my first efforts at storytelling.

And then my father purchased making of documentaries on laserdisc.  I began watching them over and over and over.  I was obsessed with how people made images that went on the screen; how storytelling could be visually explained, and how those images stirred the emotions.

Relic Worlds Pre-Orders Postponed

I had announced at Strategicon and some other places that the next Relic Worlds novel would be available for pre-order in November on Kickstarter.  My apologies, but this has been postponed, probably to February.  Sorry for the delay, and stay tuned.

Relic Worlds Games at Strategicon This Weekend

I will be showing two Relic Worlds games at Strategicon this weekend.

First will be Relic Worlds: Showdown, the miniatures game using the Savage Worlds rules.  This will be Saturday at 10 am.

Second will be The Lost Worlds, the Relic Worlds board game where players search various planets for lost treasures.  This will be Saturday at 3 pm.

Come out and join us!  Directions for the convention can be found at their website:

http://www.strategicon.net/

When I was in Nebraska

I made this video a while ago when I was last in Nebraska.  I go there about twice a year to research new projects and promote finished ones.  When I did this video, there had just been an intense flood.

The night that it stormed, I had promotion things scheduled.  However, the heavy pouring rain and the lightning flashes were great inspiration for writing.  So I put everything else away and I just lay down under a blanket on a couch in view of a stained glass window and thought.  As the lightning flashes illuminated the colored glass, the story slowly played itself out for me.  This turned out to be the Relic Worlds short story: Lancaster James and the Ghost Ship from Beyond.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker: Stranded in Park City

I was traipsing through the fresh snow of Park City, heading through the darkness and drifting snowflakes toward my car in the parking lot.  It was the middle of the night, and the snow had been falling since 10.

I had seen it when it started.  From outside a club along the main street of town, the tiny white dots dancing toward the ground highlighted in the glow of the old fashioned lamp posts.  The white sheen of the streets got trapped by the walls of the quaint buildings, creating an all-too-perfect glow, like a painting of small town America.  Next to me, someone posted the results of the winners of the festival.  At the top was someone named Morgan Spurlock for a documentary called Supersize Me.  It didn't seem important at the time in January, 2004, but in retrospect I realize I was the first person in the world to learn that this groundbreaking film had been the winner at the festival.

I had been invited to the club by two women with whom I had shared a shuttle bus.  I shouldn't have been surprised that they didn't show up, though I later found that I had probably gone to the wrong club.  It was just as well.  I needed to head back to LA, and I had only enough money to pay for the gas to get me there.  I had a check waiting for me at home, but my ex-girlfriend, who had not yet left my apartment even after more than two months after breaking up with me, refused to help out by depositing it.

I had risked everything to go to Sundance.  I didn't have a film in the festival, but I did have a movie being developed.  We had met with a bunch of well-known actors, and Martin Sheen had offered to be a part of it.  I just needed investors, and Sundance was a way to get to these investors and production companies without being blocked by what I called the red velvet rope.

I had made some important connections, and now I just needed to get back to Burbank with them.  The snow was starting to come down hard now, and I needed to get off the mountain before I got blocked in.

That's why I was so horrified to see a tow truck with a small white lump on its back, my car, driving out of the parking lot.  I screamed in panic as I chased after, cutting across a nearby lawn to try to cut it off.  Much to my surprise, there was a hidden dip into which I suddenly sank up to my chest.  Stuck, I tried to push forward anyway.  But I could do nothing but helplessly watch my car be carried away into the darkness.

I was helpless, alone, more than half buried in the snow in the darkness of the middle of the night.  I was lower than the lowest point.  This is where a lifetime of trying to make it in the entertainment industry had led me.  Hundreds of miles from home without a car, no way to get to it, and not enough money to get it out and drive it home even if I did.

As I floated there in the snow in shock and hopelessness, my mind began to wonder how I had gotten there.  What choices had I made that brought me to this point that was lower than I expected life could ever get?

I will be exploring these choices, and my experiences, in this blog.  Whenever the title begins with "Tales of a Failed Filmmaker" I will be telling these stories from a journey of 25  years of trying to make it in the film industry, and failing.

I'm beginning this story now because this month, (in fact, this day,) marks the 20th anniversary of my arrival in Los Angeles.  I will not be telling this story in order; it would take too long to get to more recent tales, and I know I'll be remembering things out of order along the way.  So each story will be from a different point in time, and I'll do my best to explain the dates where I remember them.

What's Coming Out for Relic Worlds

Since I've been talking about Relic Worlds recently, I figured I'd describe what products will be coming out for it, and what I'm working on for them.

First, what already exists are the following:

7 short stories
3 Pick Your Path books
2 novels
1 comic book

Here's what I'm coming out with this year:

12 short stories
1 Pick Your Path book
2 games
1 novel

There will actually be one more Pick Your Path book that will come out at Wondercon, but that's technically next year.  Some of the short stories might also come out next year as well, depending on how quickly the magazines publish them, (if they publish them,) and whether I am able to stick to my schedule.

www.relicworlds.com

Relic Worlds Promotions

I spoke before about the fact that I'll be pushing Relic Worlds over the next few months.  I thought it might be a good idea to explain the overall plan of how I will promote it.

August-September:
Get the word out about the series in general
Release past short stories to all mediums
Send out past short stories and novel to everyone who might review it or talk about it.

October-December:
Push the current short stories.
Release the current Pick Your Path book and games
Fix up and promote the upcoming book

January-March:
Release the new book
Promote the new book
Get as many reviews of the new book as possible

April:
Climax the whole thing at Wondercon

By "climax" what I mean is I'll have everything showing together.  That means all the books with the new one front and center, all the games, and all the ancillaries. I'll present it all at a booth, but I'll also have a presence at the game tables during the day, and the game room in the evening.  I'll also have models wandering the front getting their pictures taken and handing out cards.

This last will make it clear once and for all whether or not this series is going to work, or if it will become just a hobby for me.  We'll see.  In the meantime, check out Relic Worlds at:

www.relicworlds.com

My Last Great Effort

With Two Gun Hart having been released, and my 4th of July promo of The American Game behind me, it's now on to promoting Relic Worlds.

This is the last great effort I will be making to try to succeed in the entertainment industry.  I tried for more than 20 years to succeed in the film industry, and have tried for about the last 5 to succeed in the book industry.  I know 5 years isn't a lot, but it's the amount of time people typically give for something to work, and it's about time I grew up and get on with life.

So it's now or never.

It's appropriate that Relic Worlds be that last effort.  Star Wars and Indiana Jones were my two earliest influences into storytelling, and this series is a combination of those two giants in my mind.  So if it is to be my last big project, there couldn't be a better one.

This doesn't mean that if it fails, I'm going to stop writing and doing projects all together.  First of all, I have two other efforts pushing forward.  I'm publishing a couple games, and I have my Command Combat Battle Reports show on Youtube.  If either of those succeed, I'll be able to make them my day job, and writing will go right along with them.

But if all of them fail, (fail meaning I can't make enough to earn a regular living,) then I'll just have to put more time into having a regular career, and my writing and video making will all take a backseat.  I'll always do them, but at a slower pace.

And by the way, it's not that my earlier projects failed.  It's just that they make enough money to be side projects, not enough to pay rent and bills.  Two Gun Hart was a particular surprise.  I expected that to be a big national story and even reach a bestseller list, like the New York Times, or something like that.  Disappointingly, the media has ignored it.  NPR, which I particularly had faith in, never even responded.  (Well, one show responded to say they weren't interested in that, but possibly in another story of mine.  He sent me a sample of an earlier show that I should strive for, one in which a person goes to see a psychic and believes he's being followed by the ghost of a celebrity.  Yeah, I should strive to that rather than an Italian-American hero who broke from his family and the stereotypes.)

I now have more faith in Relic Worlds because it does not depend on the standard media which follows trends rather than logic.  I have control over how much it gets out there through social media and online communities.  I just have to get good at that.  As an introvert, that is a daunting task, but one I will have to work on to make a career out of all of this.

KDP Select Free Promo Days - The Results

 After several weeks of preparation for the KDP Select free promotion, I was ready for the event itself.  I had activities scheduled for each day of the event, from July 1-5.  Below are the activities and the results on each day.

July 1:  I posted information about the free book promotion on my own Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Since Facebook is looked at primarily by my friends, I explained on it what the KDP Select program was, and why I was giving books away for free.  To people who are not in this industry, the entire idea seems odd, so I wanted to explain how giving books away for free was actually helpful to me.  I said also that it would be great if people could pass this on to anyone they thought might enjoy it.  I immediately saw results, with friends sharing the post and putting their own explanation on it.  They downloaded the book, and even downloaded copies for other people.  I had planned on gifting the book to some people and asking them to gift it to others, but I didn’t need to because so many people did it already.

            I also posted details about the sale to groups that are relevant to the book.  In this case, that includes baseball and Civil War groups, as well as some general history groups.  I was a little worried how they would take it, but because I had been actively part of these groups for the past week, it worked better than anything else I did during this promotion.  A bunch of people liked it, commented on it, and shared it with their friends.  They even thanked me for giving it away for free rather than getting annoyed that I was promoting on their site. 

I also posted on writing and reading groups I belong to.  These are the least effective as so many authors post on these all the time, but you occasionally get that writer/reader who’s interested in the graphic if it stands out who shares it.

Finally, I talked about the sale on Twitter with specific hashtags, including: #Amazon #eBook #BookBuzzr #BookGiveaway #BookMarketing #Kindle #KindleBargain #KDP #WLCFreeToday #FreekKindleReads #free… #Kindle #Freekindle #freebook #FreeKindleBook #ReadThis #authorshelpingauthors.  This last worked better than expected.  I’ve never been good with Twitter and rarely does anyone respond to anything I post, but all day I was getting notifications of people retweeting me, favoriting my posts, and following my Twitter account.

The result of this first day was 166 downloads, #3 in historical fiction, #52 in literature and fiction, and #1,330 overall on Amazon.  This was down from around 13,000.

July 2:  My paid promotions kicked in, and the number of downloads soared.  This is the greatest lesson you could learn from all of this.  Pay for the promotions on several sites that are effective where they tweet about you, post on their website and on their Facebook page.  That’s where you get the numbers.  I immediately saw my numbers jump before I did anything.

            I also went through my social media and I responded to comments, liked other people’s comments about things unrelated to my book, (this grabbed their attention without me having to say anything.)  I should mention here that my profile picture is a picture of my book, so every time I commented or even liked anything, people saw my book cover without me having to say anything about my book.

            I also wrote a thank you on my own Facebook and Twitter to those who had helped spread the word about the book, then I gave the good news about the results, giving them the credit for getting it there, (and not mentioning the paid promotions.)

            The results were #2 in both historic fiction and literature fiction behind a book called The Widow of Larkspur Inn in both categories, and #106 overall with a total of 1,471 units downloaded that day alone.  I was achingly close to achieving one of two very important goals:  #1 in my category, or in the top 100 overall.

July 3:  Unfortunately, I was not to reach any of them.  I had peaked already, and the next day, as the paid promotions faded, my numbers slipped.  I still had some promotions to go as I was sending direct tweets to a list of Twitter handles: @DigitalBkToday @kindleebooks @Kindlestuff @KindleEbooksUK @KindleBookKing @KindleFreeBook @FreeReadFeed @4FreeKindleBook

            One place I saw something that I might try in the future; someone placed up a meme with information about their book.  More people read memes than text on posts, so I might try that in the future.

            I also found reasons to post information about the sale again on some of the same groups, and on my own.  Typically that reason was to give everyone an update on how the sale was going, and informing them that it was still going on.  I told them about the results of the day before, that I was on the cusp of being #1 in two categories, and in the top 100 overall.  I didn’t tell them it was slipping.

July 4:  And it continued to slip, even on this day which was supposed to be the biggest one of all.  It had gone on long enough by this point that I was having trouble making excuses to talk about it and make it feel organic.  I continued to post on free book groups on Facebook, which allow you to post once a day, and I gave some updates on my own profile.

            My girlfriend Jamie had a good suggestion as well that I tried.  I found several posts other people had put up that I believed others would want to see.  I shared it on a page or group of my own with hashtags that were popular, (especially #4thofjuly) and I also put the hashtag of my book #americangame.  I also posted a link to the book on my author page with the hashtag #americangame.  That way, when people were going through #4thofjuly they would come upon one entertaining entry that also happened to have #americangame.  The hopes was that people would shift onto that track and find the link to the book itself.  I don’t know how well this worked, as it was in the middle of a lot of other things, and in the middle of a holiday, but I’ll be trying it again for Relic Worlds.

            I posted on my blogs in multiple locations and put links up to see the blog.  It was discouraging, an exercise in futility.  It seemed like the harder I worked to post about it, finding new and creative ways to make it look organic, the more it slipped in the ratings.  All the while I saw other people’s postings on Facebook about their fun times at 4^th of July parties on a beautiful day while I was stuck inside trying to give away my book.  At last I gave up, put it all away, and went to a party.

July 5:  I did the one thing I had forgotten to do on either the 3^rd or 4^th, I posted the book trailer.  This was especially useful in reenactor sites as I used reenactors to make the trailer.  After the link to the trailer was a link to the book.  I tweeted and posted about this trailer all over the place.

            I got some more views on the trailer, and it no doubt got some final sales, but the promotion had lost its impetus.  It closed still at #2 in historic fiction behind that same Widow of Larkspur, #21 in literary fiction, and #638 overall.  I might have regretted not putting the trailer up sooner, as I had intended, but it wouldn’t have mattered, as I discovered in going over the results.

            First, I had intended to put the trailer up at some point during the weekend.  Something I discovered with this promotion, and, funny enough, I happened to see in the news while doing these promotions, is that people tend to post during the weekend, but rarely read anything.  This is especially true on holidays, and even more common on sunny holidays where everyone is out at grills and pool parties.  According to the news report, the most effective days for social media are Tuesday and Wednesday morning.  I guess it helps people get over the hump of the week.

            I also discovered that shorter promotions, 2 to 3 days, are more effective.  The intent is to get your book into the top list in your category and overall.  Though I didn’t reach number 1 or the top 100 overall, I got close to both, and would still have been visible when the book came out of being free.  Mainstream shoppers would have seen it suddenly appear high on the rankings in Amazon for sale at $2.99.  Instead, because the free promotion continued to go on, it slipped after reaching that top spot until it tumbled back down to the 600s.  That’s still pretty good, especially compared to where it had been, but it’s less impressive.  I discovered through this that it’s best to have your book launch to the top through an efficient and compressed promotion, then pull it out of the promotion so everyone else can see it.  If it doesn’t work, you still have a couple days left on your KDP Select free promo days to try again.

            What I was surprised to see were the other books that were in the category lists with me.  Both historic fiction and literary fiction were mostly romance novels.  The historic fiction ones tended to be geared for older women, and the covers had an upper class woman in fancy clothes standing in a romantic field near an upper class European home.  Often a man was there with his shirt unbuttoned and muscles rippling underneath.  (His face was often unseen.)  The covers implied some connection between the woman and this wealthy, mysterious stranger, and the titles confirmed it.  At the end of my run, the book that was in the number one spot was titled A Daughter’s Inheritance.

The literary fiction ones were the opposite end of the spectrum.  Women wore ripped clothes, or clothes that were too big as they seemed to be falling off, and a bad boy with torn blue jeans and no shirt or a tank top, again with rippling muscles and no face, stood nearby.  Their titles implied what the covers were implying, the women were winning over the bad boys.  The book that bumped The American Game from number 2 was entitled These Hoes Ain’t Loyal.

I don’t know what to make of this, except that I’m concerned for the independent book world if these are what hold the top spots most of the time.  Almost all the rest of the books that shared the top 25 were classics from mainstream publishers.  It’s disheartening both in regards for independent publishing, and feminism.

There was one other element though that seemed to put books in the top list; one which I will exploit on my next attempt.  The top books tended to be parts of series.  This meant readers were following these books, and the author was served in that readers were downloading an earlier book for free, then purchasing the sequels if they moved on.

So that’s what I will be doing with Relic Worlds.

KDP Select Free Promo Blog Entries

I promised to write about my experience with the KDP Select program as I did it, but, as often happens, I wound up being so busy doing it that I didn’t have time to write about it. I’m glad I did, as I feel that I stretched as far as I could with the information I had, and if I had taken time to write about it, I wouldn’t have done everything I hoped.

I’m now going to write about each part of the KDP Select free promotion as a separate blog entry.  The first one will be about selecting and preparing for the days of the promotion.  Each subsequent entry will then be about the promotion itself.  I’ll put the first few up today, then the rest will go up after the promotion is over.

In the meantime, the promotion itself is still going on through the weekend, and my book The American Game is available for free on Amazon at:  http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1435946633

My Visit to San Francisco and Some Thoughts on Pride

I was pushed into finally getting up from my desk and going on vacation this last weekend; a task I should try to do more often in general.  My girlfriend Jamie wanted to go to San Francisco, where she used to live.  It ended up being the perfect weekend for this, as we left on Friday, June 26^th, a day which will live in the history books as the day homosexuals won the right to marry everywhere in the United States.

There could be no more perfect place to go than San Francisco on a day like that.  This is the city that has typically been accepted as the mecca for gay rights.  And to place the cherry on top, it was Gay Pride Weekend.  We expected it to be hopping with celebrations when we arrived.  Our only fear was the amount of traffic that was likely awaiting us.

We were pleasantly surprised to find there wasn’t much traffic at all.  This was soon to turn into a disappointment.  There really wasn’t much celebrating going on.  Everywhere we went was business as usual.  There was apparently one area of town that was celebrating, but the city in general was pretty darn quiet.

Late on Friday night, (close to midnight) we heard booming.  Jamie and I feared it was explosions, then we thought it was dumpsters being moved, and at last we realized it was fireworks.  I ran outside in my sock feet, anxious to finally see celebrating happening.  But there was none.  The few people I came upon seemed annoyed by the fireworks, and uninterested in their meaning.  I followed the sound one way until I realized they were coming from a different direction, then determined they were coming from yet another direction, and then another.  The booming was bouncing off the sides of buildings such that it was impossible to figure out where they were.  When I finally figured out the proper direction by the smoke drifting over the moon, I headed toward it.  By the time I got high enough to see, though, they were over.

As I chased these ghost sounds I ran across several people; none of whom were interested in the historic event taking place in their city.  The same was true on Saturday.  I’ll speak more about San Francisco in general in another post, but I was disappointed to learn that the city seems to be losing its spirit.

On Sunday we went down to City Hall to see the Pride Parade, and there at last saw crowds of people celebrating.  They had all congregated in one place, and they were so packed together we could not get through to anywhere close to the front.  Here they were not merely commemorating who they were as people, they were celebrating a triumph, and the march was a victory parade.  Contrary to what some people would have you believe, their cheers were of love and acceptance; their joy unbridled.  They were free.

I will, however, make one criticism.  Along with the celebrations of gay pride and the Supreme Court’s decision came a faction of people who often connect themselves to gay rights activism; I call them fetishists.  It’s the people who wear ass-less chaps, merkins, tasteless lingerie, sadomasochistic attire, bondage equipment, slave collars, and sometimes nothing but a cock ring.  I will not judge these as perversions; everyone has a right to their own desires in sexuality.  But I will argue that it is a different issue, and bringing them out to something as important as marriage equality distorts the issue.  It provides ammunition to the detractors, and scares away those who would otherwise be allies.  Most of all, it’s not truly the same issue.  Fetishism is a right for straight couples as well as gay couples, and there is certainly a place for that entire conversation.  (And by the way, I will be on the side of the fetishists as I believe in that right as well.)  But the basic right to love and marry who you want is what is being commemorated at Pride, and this year in particular is being celebrated for its victory.  It is a celebration for everyone as it improves our democracy.  It should be done with dignity, and should be visible to all, including children, without being clouded by other issues.

All in all, however, I am grateful and, well, proud, that I was there to see this historic Pride march.  As for the rest of San Francisco, well, that’s another story of which I will write later.

Dear Hollywood

Having been involved in the Hollywood scene for so many years, I just love this guy's insights into its inner workings.  It's the beauty of Youtube, the REAL independent revolution.

My Two Cents About the Confederate Battle Flag - Part 2

Now that some of these people in office are coming to their senses and removing the Confederate battle flag from government buildings, I’m sensing a disturbing trend in overzealousness.  It’s become a venerable witch hunt for anyone, public or private, who displays the battle flag in any way.

In an absurd example, Apple has deleted all games from their sales library that has the Confederate flag; i.e. Civil War games.  Stores are removing any books that show the flag, as if deleting the Civil War itself from memory will solve our problems.  Even battlefields and museums are being pressured to remove the flag, even though their primary purpose is to teach history.

The fury of course comes from the bastardization of the flag by racists since the formation of the KKK and other hate groups.  They had no right to bring back the Confederate battle flag and make it theirs, but they did, and I understand why it is viewed with fear and anger.  However, consider this.

Slavery did not begin with the Confederacy.  It existed under the American flag for many years before the south seceded.  It also existed before that in the UK for many years.  Both of those countries also slaughtered indigenous people in North America, reducing their numbers in America by 96%, the largest atrocity of people per capita in history.  The UK also slaughtered people across the globe in their colonization efforts.  The Spanish killed countless Indians in South and Central America.  The Chinese murdered millions of their own people, as did the Russians, and several other nations.

So here’s the question, why aren’t their flags banned?

If you’re really going to criticize individuals for waving the Confederate flag because of slavery, then you have to criticize individuals for waving just about every flag on Earth, because no one is innocent.  Every country is guilty of something as atrocious as the Confederacy, the United States included.

So yeah, the Confederate flag has no place above government buildings, and people need to be sensitive about where and why they place it, as it has been misused by hate groups.  However, to bury it completely, even from our museums and other historical locations, is overreaching and downright hypocritical.  And if we’re not very careful, it may be turned into a symbol of freedom of speech.

My Two Cents About the Confederate Battle Flag Controversy - Part 1

As a Civil War buff, I’ve felt like I should weigh in on the whole Confederate flag debate, but I sort of put it off because I feel that the incidents that started this discussion warrant a deeper discussion on bigger topics, like violence and the roots of racism.  But I suppose this debate is long overdue.

First, it’s important to note that the flag that is commonly referred to as the Confederate flag is not actually the flag of the Confederacy.  It is the battle flag intended only for use by the military.  Therefore, no one was ever supposed to wave it unless they were a soldier.  Anyone who waves it who is not a Confederate soldier is like the a-hole who wears a fireman’s outfit to go into a bar to pick up ladies when he is not, in fact, a fireman.  To put it another way, you have to earn the right to wear that uniform, or wave that flag, by risking your life in either endeavor.

That having been established, the fact that the flag belongs to the military says that it has no place on a government building.  To place it on a civilian public building implies that a military coup has taken place, and the government has been taken over by force by the military.  This is a type of government that neither the USA nor the CSA claimed to want to be.  It therefore further had no place on public location.

Finally, even those who had a right to call themselves Confederate soldiers were ordered in 1865 to furl their flags and “unfurl them no more.”  That is a direct quote from none other than Robert E. Lee when he ordered his men to put the flag away and to serve the United States flag.

So those people who wish to wave the flag on any official building are not only waving a symbol of rebellion against the country and a sign of lingering racism, they’re disregarding its very meaning, trying to set up a military government, and disobeying a direct order from the head of the Confederate armies.

So I just have one question for those who want to keep raising the Confederate battle flag… Why are you hating on General Lee?

Two Gun Hart Documentary

It occurred to me that I probably have not posted my own documentary about Two Gun Hart.  I've been using this as a 10 minute promo.  (The original documentary had stuff about Al as well.)

Here's the 1 minute version:

Sometimes Fathers Have the Best Stories

The first book I wrote that really launched me into publishing and being a serious author was Pro Bono, which is the true story of my father and grandfathers' involvement in the Caril Fugate case.  It took me many years to get around to doing this, and by that time, many of the people involved had passed on, including my grandfather; whom I never appreciated fully while he was alive.  In researching and writing the story, he became a bit of a hero of mine, and it's hard to imagine that I had known this man.

Luckily, my own father had remembered a lot about him, even small details.  He and my grandfather both worked hard at getting Caril Fugate out of jail, a girl/woman they believed firmly was innocent.  My father has since then gone on to provide me with the inspiration and basis of two more non-fiction books, The Great Heist and Two Gun Hart; both of which originated from comments his father told him.

Lesson, listen to your dads.

These books are available on Amazon.

Pro Bono:

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Bono-18-Year-Defense-Fugate/dp/1479108375/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1434924345&sr=8-6&keywords=Pro+Bono&pebp=1434924349263&perid=0YKZ5N4B8KHDAJDFPP2W

The Great Heist:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Heist-Biggest-Robbery-Returned/dp/1493532693/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434924377&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Great+Heist

Two Gun Hart:

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Gun-Hart-Long-Lost-Brother/dp/069237289X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1434924398&sr=8-2&keywords=Two+Gun+Hart&pebp=1434924402359&perid=1EM64ZV2JNAMYVBM7X5R

#fathersday #stories

Independent Book Review

A few months ago I found myself complaining that no one reviews independently published books on Youtube.  Then I thought, hey, no one else reviews independently published books on Youtube!  I should both put my money where my mouth is, and corner that market!  Here's one I did.