The Laptopless Life

Posted inRandom Musings, Rants, Writing
Sometimes I am a forgetful fool. Yesterday I was at my buddy Jim's, where we began recording what will be a weekly podcast series covering ground similar to our book, A Year of Hitchcock (Scarecrow Press, 2009). It was a fun project to dive into. While I've done radio before (doing the "color commentary" for a local station's Election Day coverage, that sort of thing), I had never done podcasting. They're similar, but not quite the same. Anyway, I the laptop and some recording equipment up to his place, we yammered for a while about Alfred Hitchcock's movies, had lunch…
A Year of Hitchcock

Best deal in town

Posted inAlfred Hitchcock, Works by Eric
Jim, my co-author on A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense (Scarecrow Press, 2009), tells me that this deal at Borders is the best price so far. Enter promotional code IPL1255 at checkout and you'll save 25%. We love this book, can't wait for it to hit the streets, and we hope it does well enough that we can pull the price down on our follow-up (which is underway). Speaking of Hitchcock, the features on this new DVD set are amazing, but be wary of bum discs. Some of them won't play in many DVD players.…
Tellin’ Stories

Tellin’ Stories

Posted inRandom Musings, Writing
Writing about Neil Gaiman's Sandman the last few weeks has reminded me of how envious I am of him. Not in a BAD way, mind you. Rather, in the way that makes you more eager than ever to bust your ass and create things until the world sits up, takes notice, and says, "Okay, good. You can live your life doing this full time." Here's a guy who was allowed to create something that afforded him the ability to write pretty much any kind of story he wanted to write. Horror. Fantasy. Adventure. Mythology. Romance and historical and crime and…
A brief history of time

A brief history of time

Posted inMusic, Random Musings
Well, my work PC kinda got borked on Friday, so I spent all day today running scan after scan after scan after scan. Think the problem is resolved. I blame ... well, I blame someone who is not me. It wasn't my fault. I swear it. Because things are rarely, if ever, my fault. Totally forgot to post this to my website after it was finished, so I'll post it here instead. A month or two back I spent a few hours playing around with music by Stanley Lieber. He does moody, atmospheric ambient music I quite dig, so, in…
A Year of Hitchcock

A Year of Hitchcock

Posted inAlfred Hitchcock, Works by Eric, Writing
So hey, my buddy Jim and I wrote a book. We think it's pretty good. You ought to buy it. It's available for preorder at Amazon and a gajillion other retailers, and it officially set for release in April. This isn't a self-publishing venture. The book is due out in April through Scarecrow Press, a notable publisher of scholarly tomes and the like. So hey, that's pretty swell. We're very happy. It's funny, in the more than two years since we wrote it (we began in January 2006), we've come across at least three bloggers who were going to attempt the…