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Matt’s Blog

• Journey’s End

  2008 Jul 5

  I have to say I am a little disappointed with the Doctor Who finale. It wrapped everything up and it was interesting enough, clever in tying up the Donna story line, even if it came out as sad and very lame that no one actually died., and I enjoyed laughing at the Daleks dancing around like a remote control robot in the hands of a 5 year old jazzed up on sugar canes. However, it was just the same kind of story with bigger explosions. Same build up, same conclusion; the Doctor ends up alone, somebody does something bad and he yells at them but its all over and the enemy is destroyed. What I feel the show needed is a long running enemy, because there is always this huge build up to a giant threat but then they are always beaten in a two parter. There was this huge Dalek army, just like in season 1, and they manage to destroy them all in so quickly. They don’t seem deadly at all (Hello, Matt! You are talking about a kids sci-fi show!) They need to have a long running campaign against a continuing enemy. They don’t have to have them as the main villains all the time, but there presence should be seen. I believe this is also why shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost have been so popular; people like continuous story lines nowadays. They like depth to stories. Anyway, gripe over. No, I had another point. What was it? I don’t know. Possibly about the trailer afterwards for the Christmas special. The return of the Cybermen just seemed disappointing. They blew up a Dalek empire so easily so why should a few robots be a threat? Yawn. I think I’ve gone off the show.
  
  Actually the other point was about Donna’s sacrifice. The vary season hints were quite dark. I expected her to have to die a million deaths trapped in some time stream in order to save the universe or something, but no, she just has to forget about her time with the Doctor. This isn’t even actually dying like we were promised. It’s like if you were a Roman going to the coliseum expecting to see an entire village of traitors being massacred by lions but you get there and all you see is one gladiator wandering round in the sand looking for a sword he dropped because he’s feeling a little forgetful. What was that? And exactly how many times does genocide have to be committed on the Daleks? They get wiped out in the Time War, then in the season 1 episode Dalek then again at the end of Season One by a godly Rose, then at the end of season 2 with the cybermen, then in Season 3 when there was only three of them left and now again at the end of season 4. Each time sending the Doctor into a tirade about how genocide is bad even if they were bad guys. Please, each time they get killed and then it turns out they weren’t it just makes his tirades seem a little pitiful and I don’t want to dislike the doctor because he’s the only good things about the show - God help them when David Tennant leaves. Yet still, I suppose I can’t blame them for retroactively spoiling their own story lines, but they need to find a new trick. I guess it must be hard when you start a series and have to bring simply everybody back from the dead like a seventh sequel to a once brilliant horror franchise.

• Spirited Away

  2008 Jul 4

  While the Americans celebrate the beginning of the decline of their civilisation, they remain unaware of a great peril that has befallen the world. A whole section of the internet has been Mary-Celested. It is true. On Monday I remember Googling a way to help promote books and I found some great links that lead to me getting a new review, two features, an Author spotlight page and my novel Better Off Dead going in for an edit under professional eyeballs. Now I cannot for the life of me remember what I put into Google to get those search results because I cannot find them again. I want to continue with that and get some more good results. I felt so pleased with my progress this week.
  
  Anyway, in other news seems my karmic reward has already sprung into action as I got two Twix bars for the price of one at the swimming pool vending machine today. I decided to let the machine keep the 10p change, because I’m nice like that. So I think I made the right choice.

• Sliding Doors

  2008 Jul 3

  I had one of those moments today where you can see your life going down two different paths. I have no idea what the results of the two paths would be, but I knew they would be different. I decided to stop claiming benefit today since there is not a chance in the molten core of our Earth that I want a job before I go now - It is only 2 weeks away on Monday! I could have carried on claiming to get an extra hundred quid but since I have no intention of using it for what it was supposed to be used for, it amounts to stealing really. So I decided to stop, not because of any fear of the law, more of karmic consequences. My mind is weird like that. It came to the decision that if I was a hundred pounds shy of being able to stay in South Africa long enough to do what I wanted I’m sure I could get that money somehow, borrow it if necessary, where as who knows what kind of damage a karmic return for stealing could do. Might hit someone with a car. Apparently that hurts, and since so many good things have been happening to me recently I feel like I’ve paid off whatever big debt I had looming over me so I don’t want to start a new one. I’m just trying to be a better person. My name is Matt.
  
  I have also sent off my novel Better Off Dead to be edited. It was due another go over before going round the publishing houses again (after gather some more feedback from my anthology), but I thought a fresh pair of eyes would do a better job than me. Unfortunately it meant I had to go through some file conversion trouble to get the Appleworks file into a Word file. I just wish you could do it without losing all the italics, footnotes and some of the chapter headings. But then if computers did everything you wanted perfectly there might be a deficit of fuck ups in the universe and my head might turn into a cheese sandwich or something. I’d hate to have to try and resist eating myself... especially when I am bad for me. Damn cheese.

• Let Someone Else Do It For You

  2008 Jul 1

  It seems that the effort I made yesterday to market my book further, proved to be worth it as I now have an Author Spotlight, interview, book feature and soon, another review thanks to the very helpful people at BooksinSynch.com. I have also got a rather nice inclusion and mention over at Q2write.com which made me laugh. Scroll down to the bottom of the page in that link for my feature and don’t forget to check out the witty little mention on the home page too.
  
  So that has put me in a good mood. I’ve also started taking part in another online writing community at WritersCafe.org where I have begun posting chapters of my work in progress No Technobabble Please, We’re Earthlings. So head over there to read the first drafts and / or head over to the ‘My Works’ section on this site to find out more about the title and the completed novel that is awaiting a publisher, Better Off Dead. I had been putting off uploading information about these projects onto my site as I didn’t want anyone to steal any ideas, but since they have been mentioned over at BooksinSynch.com I thought it was a bit unfair that my own official site hadn’t mentioned them. So there they are. Now don’t steal the ideas, or I’ll set P-Head, The Gimp and Neville onto you and believe me when I say you do not want that. Just imagine a 6 foot ape in a PVC costume jumping up and down on your lungs while a greasy looking vampire tortures you to death and a crimson faced alien tries to preach to you about extraterrestrial religions as he humps your leg. No, I didn’t think you wanted that.
  
  Other than that, it’s been a bit of a scorcher today, so it was nice to be at work and not trapped inside my house sweltering as I try to write. I got some fresh air, played hide and seek with some kids (in a totally legal way) and taught them things, like drugs are bad, m’kay?
  
  Groovy.

• Doctor Who?

  2008 Jun 30

  It feels like a long while since I have made any major progress in the marketing side of things, but today I did. My book has been accepted as part of an online catalogue at Porcupine Books. Also, the kind people at the trinity of The Book Attic, Books in Synch and Anastasia’s Book Attic have agreed to do a feature on me and my book, as well as a review and update my profile with any information regarding future releases. That last one is quite a good deal for only £12.93. The more interest I can generate the better.
  
  In other news, not much has happened. I’m still in need of catching up on sleep from the weekend. I put it down to getting old. And there is much speculation about what is going to happen to the Doctor. I don’t want David Tennant to leave because he’s brilliant, but I can’t see how he can regenerate into himself after being shot by the dalek. I do remember hearing a rumour of the Doctor being split into two in this finale. Not sure how that will work, but I guess we shall wait and see. Yet another reason that it can’t be the weekend soon enough (the first being that it will be closer to my trip to South Africa). Some people hate the New Doctor Who, and it is pretty formulaic now, but Tennant is great in the role.