Machinima for Dummies

As of about five hours ago, Machinima for Dummies is available from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

So, order it now!

And remember, there’s a free signed copy waiting for the first person to give me a picture of the book on shop shelves!

We’ve already gotten a review on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, it’s from someone who hasn’t even read the book, but “reviewed” us purely on the basis that Second Life wasn’t mentioned in the back cover blurb.

If you have read the book, please do feel free to review it on Amazon - I’d love to hear what you think, and it would be good to get some more useful feedback up there.

Did anyone just see the clouds part and light shine down?

How about hearing a sudden heavenly choir?

Did the world suddenly make sense?

Was there a disturbance in the Force?

If so, that’s because…

It’s HERE!

2 days to go until Amazon starts shipping… Get your copy now, beat the rush.

So we’re nearly, almost, tantalisingly close to the end of production on the book.

We’re reviewing laid-out proofs, we’re finalising agreements for the DVD (and thanks to everyone who helped with that), and we’re starting to think marketing.

At the same time, I’m running up and down the country like a fly with a bottom of an unusual colour. First it was Wednesday and Thursday in Leicester, where I was meeting with people about the Machinima Europe Festival festival, which is happening 12-14th October. It’s looking really cool - the guys at DeMontfort University’s Institute of Creative Technologies(IOCT) are really into the whole idea, and they’re giving it a ton of support. The more I saw of it, the more I was convinced that this one’s going to be big.

I also got to talk to dozens of students at the DMU Open Day about Machinima, show a whole bunch of Machinima films, and generally have a great time.

(As a side-note - above all else, the interest, enthusiasm, willingness to throw around ideas and receptiveness of the IOCT guys was great to see. I sat down to dinner with four top people on the Festival sat down to dinner, we all got a bit drunk, and we ended up brainstorming up and deciding to run a new Machinima project - now that’s the kind of people we want involved in Machinima. )

Now I’m back in Edinburgh for a day of frantically bouncing emails backward and forward between editors (including our saintly proofs editor Jodi, who we’re currently assailing with Excel spreadsheets full of last-minute alterations on a daily basis), and in about an hour I jump on a train, hook up to the WiFi, and continue firing emails back and forth into the ether as I’m carried at ballistic velocity (I wish - it’s British Rail we’re talking about here) toward Cambridge, where I’m demoing at the BBC Blast event with the Moviestorm guys.

Machinima is cresting the horizon. More and more serious people are getting interested. We’re now talking about a medium where Machinima creators regularly get approached by representatives of major TV companies, where festivals are being organised for us by seriously influential academics and high-powered business types, and where I’m legging it down the country to teach Machinima at a BBC-sponsored festival.

Toby Moores, one of the main brains behind the Machinima Europe fest (and the high-powered business type I refer to above - he’s also the producer on some of the best-selling PS2 games of all time), reckons that 2007 is the landmark year for Machinima, the point at which we crest the visibility curve. I was dubious when he first proposed that theory, but the more I’m seeing of this year, the more I’m convinced that he might have a point.

Hot darn, but I’m tired.

We’re in the home straight now. The end is in sight, and both Hugh and I are staggering towards it, gasping for breath with every muscle crying out in pain. The problem is that the end point is deceptively far down the track. I keep thinking we’ve almost finished, then something else turns up, and we’re back to the mind-numbing task of checking every line of a 400+ word book for errors and changes.

Hugh’s making coffee right now, which I desperately need. I remember talking to Paul Marino some time ago. He described the last 10% of his machinima-book-writing-process in much the same way. This is the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time. I’m on my last legs. If we don’t finish all our little tasks today (and it’s looking like we might not), you’ll find me on the floor in a fetal position, gibbering like a maniac.

Somebody call my mum and tell her to write me a note. I can’t do gym today.

“Creativity is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, and 120% swearing, cursing and hitting inanimate objects.”

“The first 80% of the work takes 80% of the time. The other 20% of the work takes the other 80% of the time.”

We’re on the Author Review stage of book writing now, which essentially means “edit our work, and the changes our editor has made, and the queries she’s made about our horrible, horrible grammar/geek jokes/general errors”. Oh, and whilst we’re at it, we also have to trim nearly 100 pages from the page count.

Well, that’s going better than expected (experienced writers will know that there’s always a whole bunch more that you can cut without affecting quality), but we’re starting to flag. Johnnie has been hallucenating User Friendly-style coffee mugs. I’ve nearly fallen asleep in my oh-so-comfy ergonomic chair.

Only 110 pages to go, and then we can rest!

(We’ve also been incorporating changes and suggestions from our lovely, lovely technical reviewers. You all rock. )

I understand that Johnnie’s blogging this one too, it’s 2:18 am, and I’ll probably write more about it in the near future, so for now I’ll just say -

We’re done. We’re f(*&(ing done. The last few days have been a bit of a slog, and we’ve still got a whole lot of review, updating, editing and cutting to do, but we have now, officially, written the bugger.

Wewt.

It’s half-two in the morning, and neither Hugh nor I are capable or abstract thought, but it’s done.

Hey, look Mum - I just wrote a book!

We’ve worked so late tonight that, even here in Scotland, all the pubs are closed. Celebration will have to wait until tomorrow.

You’d better all buy this book when it’s released, as well as buying two or three spare copies to give to friends. We’ve put in some serious effort for you people.

And now … bed.

It’s truly amazing just how much rubbish we’ve written in some of our first - and even second - drafts. In this latest pass over the Medieval II Total War chapter, we’ve corrected everything from “me love you long time” level grammar, to sentences so convoluted they’d be illegal in a government document, to statements that were Just Plain Wrong.

Also, we now have less than a hundred pages to edit this evening. If it wasn’t 21:30, that would be more reassuring.

One down, five to go!

We’ve just finished the edit on the first of our chapters for today. I like to think of it in the above terms, because “One chapter down, five to go” is much better than the more-exact “Six pages down, a hundred and eleven to go!”.

HELP STOP TRAPPED IN HUGH’S FLAT STOP SEND FOOD STOP MAYBE PARAMEDICS ALSO STOP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP