- What would be your secondary identity?
Pinup/character artist

- What forms of art do you dabble in, but don’t excel at?
CompletelyDigital

- How would you describe your ‘style’?
Lithe, lanky and angular with sharp edges.

- What medium do you favor most?
Pencil and Photoshop

- What are your favorite subject matters?
Elves and skinny guys.

- What are your least favorite subject matters?
Technology, vehicles, furniture.

- List your Artistic Strengths
Hair, shoulders, elf ears, elbow joints, outfits/clothing.

- List your Artistic Weaknesses
Perspective, proportion, backgrounds, cars and technology.

- Which of the above weaknesses would you most like to see improve?
Perspective

- Adult Content. . . yes/no?
Yes. A good throat slitting or tasteful nudity is necessary to replenish the muse.

- Adult Subject Matter you favor?
Female nudity, bondage, couples with strategically placed limbs covering nudity.

- Schooling/Training received in the arts?
Some life drawing of male nudes.

- Schooling/Training you’d still like to have?
I would like to know more about screen-printing and just printing in general.

- Would you consider yourself prolific, or a ‘quality over quantity’ sort of artist?
Quality over quantity. I don’t draw unless motivated. Or if it’s a commission.

- Would you considering yourself a Fine Artist, or a Commercial Artist?
Casual artist.

- Where would you like to be in five years?
It would be nice to have actually produced something for the masses to enjoy.

However, there are certain things I require in order to get real writing done.

1) Tea.
I need tea, or occasionally pop, before I write. I need the comfort of warm tea or the subconscious, overlooked action of reaching out for a drink then quaffing. Not only is tea warm and comfy but I think the time I take to drink is the equivalent of my brain coming up for air.
It also helps if it’s dreary or rainy outside but that’s not always the case and one can’t control the weather.

2) Inspiration.
I need to be inspired. I need to have ideas that are ready to spill forth from my fingers. Make no mistake, I always have ideas. I spend probably 90 percent of my time thinking of my various stories and characters. I never have a shortage of ideas, they’re just not always in order. Or sometimes there is gaps between scenes or situations. I have to have some sort of inspired path to follow. I feel lucky the rare times the story just seems to write itself.

3) Options.
I call it hop-scotching through stories. I have at any one time at least 2 stories going on. I can work for weeks on one story and then suddenly switch to the other. It’s refreshing.

4) Music, TV or silence.
I don’t like to write when people are around. I find them distracting. Everything I write has a specialized playlist exclusive to the story. I prefer to listen to their respective playlists while writing but sometimes that’s not always possible. Ambient TV sound is sufficient as long as it’s something unexciting.

5) The internet.
This might seem counter-productive but I prefer to write with an internet connection for research purposes. I like having an idea or fact and being able to check it’s accuracy in a second rather than going back later.

6) My laptop.
I like typing over pen and paper writing though I will write on paper if I have to, obviously. Sometimes one is stricken with inspiration and IT MUST BE WRITTEN RIGHT NOW!  so you grab the nearest pen and paper and write it down. Or take a memo in your not-a-smartphone-phone at 2 am.
But laptop is best.

7) Room to move.
If I am stuck I have a tendency to get up and walk around the room saying “Such and such happens and then…..?” and just try to think of the next logical step in the story or dialog or what have you. This is necessary.

Blogging/researching publishers/submitting/making lists counts as writing.
Gathering your resources counts as writing. It helps drive your progress forward. It counts.

So that is the madness in my method. It works for me. As long as I’m making relatively steady progress then I am a writer. It doesn’t really matter how I do it, just as long as I get there.

Last night I watched Let Me In, the American remake of 2008′s Swedish film Let The Right One In, for the first time.

If you’ve payed attention to my Goodreads lists, you’d see the book Let The Right One In is one of my all time favourites. Best vampire book ever and the 2008 movie is one of the best vampire movies ever. So when I heard they were remaking a movie that was, in my eyes, practically flawless, I was dubious.

And then I heard it was going to be more true to the book. Well, ok then, at least it won’t be a shot-for-shot remake because the original movie did leave things out of the book.

So after seeing it what did I really think?

THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK, MOVIE, AND REMAKE BEYOND THIS POINT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

LtROI is a perfect example of less is more while Let Me In is a perfect example of how CGI does not make a good film. Eli always fed in shadow while Abby was a CG Spidergirl. I guess they tried to make her look nimble and tricky but she just ended up looking silly. There was a weight to Eli’s clamp-and-kill method and the weird acrobatics of Abby were stupid.

The sexual ambiguity was all wrong too. When I first watched LtROI, when Eli says “I am not a girl.” I read that to mean “I am not a child, I am a woman.” until, of course, the big reveal. In Let Me In, when Abby says those same words I felt only that she meant “I am not a child, I am a woman.” And that was that.

I will say I liked the car crash scene and the results of Abby’s caretaker post-acid-bath. I felt more of connection between Abby and him than Eli and Harkan. The pool scene was done well.

Owen was good enough, Abby was good enough.

The scene were Owen doesn’t let Abby in is, again, less good in the remake. The overly-dramatic score mixed with Chloe Mortez’s shaking just made it look over-done.  And THEN Owen actually asked “is this what happens when I don’t let you in?” You don’t have to explain it! Eli walked in, braced himself, then it happened, quietly and horrifically.

The entire “Be more for a little while” scene was missing, which is to be expected since they cast aside the entire gender issue.

The cop was needless. I say this because there was a cop in the book and if you’re going to have a cop then have THE cop, with the cop’s backstory!

Now, beyond all this, is my biggest criticism.

Virginia.

Believe it or not Virginia and Lacke’s love story was one of my favourite parts of the book. It was tragic and beautiful. Her slow transformation from normal woman to vampire was very intense.
In Let Me In, we only get glimpses of what was supposed to be the Virginia character, she gets bit, she goes to the hospital, the nurse opens the curtains then POOF! Dead.
We didn’t see her slow descent, her struggle, or her active choice to have the blinds open and choose to end her suffering. It all just sort of happened. It wasn’t character development, it was nothing more than a cool scene.

I’m trying to decide if I hadn’t seen the original nor read the book if I would have liked Let Me In. Maybe, because it would have been a break from Twilight-mania and a breath of fresh air, but comparing it to the original just prooves that a bigger budget does not make something better.

Truly, less is more.