Hint Cinema

Hint Fiction contributor and all around cool cat Adam-Troy Castro brought the existence of 5-Second Films to my attention, or, as he put it, Hint Cinema. Here's some background:

5-Second Films was created by Brian “Boss Man” Firenzi in the Spring of 2005, after being disappointed by so many 5,400-second films. The rules are simple: 2 seconds of beginning titles, 5 seconds of film, 1 second of end titles. If you take umbrage with these 5sfs running at an actual length of 8 seconds, we can only assume you’re no fun at dinner parties.

So these guys obviously weren't inspired by Hint Fiction (not like this film was), but as you can see below, the films are definitely an acquired taste, just like HF. Are they silly? Yes. Are they wacky? Yes. Are they films? Yes. Enjoy.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saqO_ZqX6uY

Also, this is your last reminder about the Hint Fiction event at the KGB Bar tomorrow evening at 7 pm. Yes, it's the same night as the Oscars, but not to worry -- I'll be keeping everyone updated about the winners, no matter how inane the category. So if you're in the area, be sure to come out and get Hinted! (That sounds dirty, but it's not.)

StonerMedia

One of my best friends, Noah Stoner, runs his own video production company in Central Pennsylvania called, aptly enough, StonerMedia. Recently he's been doing mostly weddings, but if you have a particular project in mind, he'll definitely hear you out. He does great work, as seen by the wedding trailer below.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14782471[/vimeo]

R.I.P. Uncle Leo

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh1ZRtXk_ho

If you're a big Seinfeld fan like me, you probably heard about Len Lesser (aka, Uncle Leo) passing away a few days ago. Very sad news indeed. He's one of those character actors you never forget, and despite the commercial above, he's been in a lot of great stuff. Here's a lengthy interview where he talks about some of his biggest projects (he talks about being on Seinfeld first):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7sw0QNO78E

Saturday Stuff: More On E-Book Royalties, TwitLonger, Best Of EDF 3, American Grindhouse

Earlier in the week I talked about e-book royalties and what the Authors Guild had to say. Just yesterday they released a new part of their ongoing series, this one aptly titled "The E-Book Royalty Mess: An Interim Fix":

Negotiating a publishing contract is frequently contentious, but authors have long been able to take comfort in this: once the contract is signed, the interests of the author and the publisher are largely aligned. If the publisher works to maximize its revenues, it will necessarily work to maximize the author's royalties. This is the heart of the traditional bargain, whereby the author licenses the publisher long-term, exclusive book rights in the world's largest book market in exchange for an advance and the promise of diligently working to the joint benefit of author and publisher.

Now, for the first time, publishers have strong incentives to work against the author's interests.

As we discussed in our last alert, authors and publishers have traditionally acted as equal partners, splitting the net proceeds from book sales. Most sublicenses, for example, provide for a fifty-fifty split of proceeds, and the standard hardcover trade book royalty -- 15% of the retail price -- represented half of the net proceeds from selling the book when the standard was established. But trade book publishers currently offer e-book royalties at precisely half what the terms of a traditional proceeds-sharing arrangement would dictate -- paying just 25% of net income on e-book sales. That's why the shift from hardcover to e-book sales is a win for publishers, a loss for authors.

The piece goes on. Definitely worth checking out.

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I love Twitter. I don't know why. If I had to choose between Twitter and Facebook, I would take Twitter in a heartbeat. There's just a simplicity to it that I really like. Also I really dig the fact that each tweet can be no more than 140 characters. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the "Hint Fiction guy." I believe it really can help writers work on their word-choice and self-editing. Of course, a few tweeters out there will run on and on, which sorta defeats the purpose. You know what else defeats the purpose? Services like TwitLonger.

On some level I've always known this service to exist but never bothered with it. Why would I, when the simple point of Twitter is to keep your posts nice and short. But recently a new upgrade with TweetDeck (which I use mostly for my desktop tweeting) has this service enabled. Before when I would tweet and go over the 140 character mark, the numbers would turn red and show a negative. Now, however, it just continues, as if encouraging you to keep typing away and not worry about the limit. This is sad and goes against everything Twitter stands for.

My point? That servies like TwitLonger really suck. And if you use them, shame on you. Shame!

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On a brighter note, the table of contents has been announced for the third edition of The Best of Every Day Fiction. It includes online friends Gay Degani, Aaron Polson, Ben Loory, and many, many more. It also include my story "Multiplicity." A big thanks to Jordan Lapp and Camille Gooderham Campbell and the rest of the EDF team for not only publishing my story in the first place, but for now reprinting it. When the book becomes available, I'll be sure to post about it here.

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Everyone have a nice and safe romantic weekend. Tune in Monday for an exciting announcement (at least, I hope it'll be exciting). In the meantime, American Grindhouse!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AndtsMdk2fc

The AWP Post

Last week I was at AWP, but you knew that already. In fact, some of you probably saw me there. I probably saw you there. We probably talked. Or we didn't. Either way, it was a really fun time. I could do a breakdown of everything that happened -- or at least what I did -- but I won't. If you're that interested, check out my Twitter feed starting all the way back to last Wednesday. Basically, I met a lot of great writers I've known online for quite some time, and everyone was super friendly. There was a lot of talk about writing and publishing. There was also some drinking. Okay, there was a lot of drinking. Even some karaoke-ing as you can see from this picture:

I sang "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band. And yes, by that point I'd had a drink or two or three or four.

Anyway, Friday was the Hint Fiction panel. It went very well, despite the fact that at the beginning I feared we wouldn't have enough material to fill the allotted hour and fifteen minutes; then, an hour later, I realized we didn't nearly have enough time for everything I had wanted to discuss. They put us in one of the smaller rooms that they had at the conference, so it was standing room only. In fact, there were even people standing out in the hallway listening.

Later the panelists -- Randall Brown, Roxane Gay, Michael Martone, Daniel Olivas, and myself -- as well as a few other contributors went down to the Norton booth in the book fair and signed copies of the anthology for awhile. Later Norton sold out of all the copies.

I'd said before that I would try to get the entire panel on video. It happened, though the picture quality isn't very good. The sound quality, however, is pretty decent, and that's all that really matters anyway. Because YouTube won't let you upload more than 15 minutes of video at a time, I had to break the whole thing up into 6 parts. So below you can view part 1; to view the rest, check out my YouTube channel.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4obfFNZ_Ao