Sunday 26 September 2010

Blog - "Projects Upcoming"

Hello there readers.

So I do a lot of stuff. Some I get paid for, some I don't. Despite all of this, my primary vocation remains that of a writer, so I thought I'd give a few quick updated on the writing tasks ahead of me.

As of right now, I am working on the following projects:

The Spirit Of Mercy; A new Fiction series for Ultimate-Guitar
All About Hugh; The second series of the UG Story for Ultimate-Guitar
Effects Of The Internet; Another couple of articles in my continuing new media series for DottedMusic
Marketing Methods; A fairly large series of articles focussed around marketing yourself as a musician in the current fast track world for DottedMusic and Ultimate-Guitar
TommyFest Interviews; For the interviewees, myself, Ultimate-Guitar, SplashNet Radio and FunkyMonkey Radio, as well as the TommyFest website.

That's all of the writing tasks that I have on the go at this very minute.

I'm also making a new list of publishers to send Disbelief to, since I have now exhausted all other options concerning it. It's a long and extremely arduous task, so if anybody wants to do any of that work for me, I would be grateful.

In fact, that would be awesome. :P

Always a pleasure,
Tom

Thursday 16 September 2010

Blog - "Evil In Batman Returns"

Hey people, Tom Colohue here.

One thing that I've realised recently is that you can effectively write an essay on just about anything, so, today, I'm going to examine a pet peeve using the conduit of Batman Returns. The pet peeve, by the way, is mostly to do with myself, as a writer, and how I feel things could be done differently and, potentially, better. I'm probably wrong here, but I do like to make my points.

So, the discussion topic, other than Batman Returns, is The Portrayal Of Evil In The Media.

Let's start with the old Batman series. You know the one; zap, pow, shazam etc. In that series, the 'evil' was practically slapstick. The progression of the original Batman film seres (from 'Batman' to 'Batman and Robin') moves slowly down this route.

The original Batman film had the iconic evil of The Joker, brilliantly played by Jack Nicholson. Now, there, we had a real evil in action. He had true malicious intent, and the true urge to create utter carnage. By Batman and Robin, past the travesty that was Two-Face and The Riddler, we ended up with Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze. Evil? Yeah, right.

The Joker, as he was also shown in the more recent film The Dark Knight, was dominating, cerebral and psychopathic. Even as a mere observer, you felt that you were being mentally dragged through a rough and aggressive selection of challenges. In many ways, the original Batman film was a little too dark. The last scenes certainly gave me many chills.

In my opinion, Batman Returns actually got it right. Even though the Bruce Wayne character was somewhat undernourished in the second of the four films, the three evils were spread out and, even when they did work together, they had obvious motives of their own. Max Shrek had the typical greed of the megalomaniac, Catwoman was envious of the success all around her, and eager to create a little anarchy for the sake of it. The Penguin literally hated everything purely because everything hated him first. They all came together briefly, but it all broke down very quickly. While The Joker was quite easily, as I see it, the best and most evil of the crowd, but it was everything coming together in Batman Returns that makes it work for me.

So that's what I've been thinking of recently. I could write more, but this is only a blog after all.

Thanks for reading,

Tom.

Monday 13 September 2010

Fiction - "Happy To Hold On"

Hey all.

Today, myself and my writers group are starting a short story series to run over the next four days, concluded by yours truly.

It's called Happy To Hold On.

Please check it out. Click on the link to get taken to the first part.

The second part is now available from the following location: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/fiction/happy_to_hold_on_shoes.htm

Thanks in advance.

Sunday 12 September 2010

Blog - "TommyFest"

So, lately things have been a little mad.

My normal, everyday office job picked up to the point where I worked Monday, Monday night, Tuesday, Tuesday night, Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Friday night last week. Add in the writing I generall do over a weekend and you've got yourself a busy schedule right there, but at the end of last month, we had TommyFest.

TommyFest is the local music festival that I got involved in working the angle of international promotions. It was a years worth of work, all building up a head of steam to culminate in the bank holiday weekend of August. It's why I didn't really post much that month, for which I apologise.

I went along as a representative of Ultimate-Guitar in addition to the role I took in the committee, and let me tell you, it was one of the most singularly awesome experiences that I have ever witnessed. The music, the people, the poker games in the chill-out tent: everything.

The following weekend was literally tame because of it.

I'm currently going through the pictures that my photographer took, preparing for the interviews I intend to give and for the wrap up news post. So, if you know any of the following acts, or are just interested in what I intend to ask them, please keep an eye out.

-Steph Fraser
-Alex Hulme
-Escape Artists UK
-Fatt Tuesday
-Steph Ashcroft
-The Underachievers
-Cat Lowman
-Girl Peculiar

More as it develops, and maybe some exclusive pictures, just for my readers.