Mark Lingane's Blog

Upon reflection, when writing Note to Self I wanted the reader to decide the gender of the character. To do so, I left out all references to their alignment. Looking back, especially based on Kry’s actions, I created a non-binary character. So, for those who are outside the definitions of a dated identity structure, this one is for you.

Mark

I cannot deny that the Tesla Evolution has been the most successful series I have created. But as readers will know, it ends. Or does it! Yes, it does. Maybe.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the action takes place on the east coast of Australia. And there is a lot of Australia left over. So, what is happening there?

The answer has been the new series: the Tesla Expansion. I take on some of the ideas in the Tesla Evolution and build on them, but on the west coast.

First of the rank is Degrade. Available 1 Dec. It is set five years before Tesla and contains a few familiar faces.

Blurb: Out on the scorched plains of the West Australian deserts lives a boy in a hunk of rusted metal. His life is simple: search for water aquifers and sell their location to the water-starved megaRig cities crawling over the countryside. 

But fate has different plans. A chance encounter propels him on a dark journey of self-discovery, where he becomes the most precious piece in a ruthless game of chess between the warring mech rivals. Disturbing truths about his past come to light and he must decide what he stands for and who he believes. 

The safety of the planet is at stake.

Or as I say: same universe, a whole new adventure.

Enjoy.

m

At least it’s over now. It comes with sadness that such acting power has been poorly used. Capaldi brought a seriousness and gravitas to the roll that no other has. Beyond the SFX, stolen moments of excellence shared with Michelle Gomez’s and Pearl Mackie hinted at what could have been.

All I can say is that Steve Moffat appears to have run out of steam for both Sherlock and DW. His dialog for Pearl Mackie mirrored style, tempo and phrasing of Jenna Coleman, which I find derails the plot flow, and too often his doctor lines sounded like Matt Smith.

Nothing was new, and the entire episode felt like a replay of The Time of the Doctor.

In all, I believe Peter Capaldiwas a great doctor with moments of brilliance, brought down by inconsistent writing. I’m sad to see him go.

This year has been about the changing face of rhetoric. Once considered the art of persuasive speaking, it now is little more than soundbites, lacking in sincerity, content or even sense, and political debate is confrontation rather than persuasion.

A teacher at my old school once said, "Two students receive their test results. One got 50% and said, 'I passed.' The other got 49% and said, 'I failed.' "

The teacher was stating 50% is not a meaningful pass. On a colour spectrum, it is neither black nor white, but grey, of which there are fifty shades.

And as we saw in 2016, binary victories were declared on little more than a pass mark. Divisiveness over such narrow margins is not victory. If nothing more, it shows that the population is in conflict and it needs to be educated, or healed. There are always two sides to an argument, but if a result comes in at 50/50 or 45/55 then the case for neither side has been made properly. The message has been lost in its reduction to the soundbite.

But we have not helped with our own desire for information to become entertainment.

2016 showed us we are not as open-minded and compassionate as we thought we were. It showed the world wanted to live in a time that no longer exists--if it ever did--in the dreams of yesteryear, which seems to be the 1950s. We shrunk away from a complex and scary world that operated in ways we couldn’t understand or trust and hurt people through relentless corporatization and globalization.

And debate continued in confrontation rather than persuasion, because confrontation is about the anger of today, while persuasion is about the dreams of tomorrow. In the end, concern about today won. As the world readies for its great step back into golden memory, we sit at a unique point in time. Maybe an isolationist policy will work for the world and everyone focuses back on themselves, their neighbours, community – those things we complain that we’ve lost.

Or maybe nothing will change, and the new (old) world order will find new ways of hurting the less fortunate even more, and the disparity of wealth will continue to increase.

Who knows.

2016 was about confrontation. Let’s make 2017 about persuasion. Let’s listen more, understand more, think more before acting, not simply overreact to a soundbite. Consider both sides using the grey matter in between our ears, and know that the modern world is complex enough to have black, white and fifty shades of grey.

What a gem of a movie. 10/10. Laughed from the start.

The indie world is the apprenticeship of the writing craft, the talent pool for the next great artist. It allows the audience to enjoy the journey of a writer, watching the development of an artist, a growth of skills and a realization of a vision. It’s a place where new ideas can be explored, new genres can be formed, rules can be broken, statements can be made.

To me and for many others, Amazon’s KDP program has allowed me to bring my abstract view of the world to life, and present my ideas and concepts that don’t necessarily belong within traditional boundaries and expectations. This is exemplified, and emotionally rewarded, when someone puts down a book and says I’ve never read anything like that; indie has spoken.

I am studied at university and read at schools because of the opportunities created by Createspace and KDP. I couldn't have done it without them. Welcome to the new world.

Powered by indie. Powered by imagination.

#PoweredByIndie

This month (October 2016) Amazon is running a Powered by Indie: Celebrating Great Writing festival. They have asked me (along with many others) to write about what we like about being an indie, so I will be doing a couple of posts over the month about the pluses and minuses of the road less travelled.

You can check out the great titles here: www.amazon.com/poweredbyindie

The page celebrates the best of the best in indie publishing. And, for some reason, me at some point during the month.

CTHD was such a monumental movie it probably didn’t need a sequel. But we have one, so how did it fare?

In a nutshell, it is diminished but different. Different enough for you to think of it as a new film rather than a sequel. It has lost the cinematic and epic quality of the original with a far more made-for-TV feel. And as a made-for-TV movie it is very good. The action and spectacle is top notch, as a CGI China provides an exhilarating background against which the story unfolds. 

Michelle Yeoh is still in fantastic form, but Donnie Yen--of whom I’m a big fan--just doesn’t measure up to the calibre of Chow Yun-Fat, and provides little more than a redemption arc for Yeoh’s character.

Adopting an all English script has taken away the mystique and the whole production feels far more western. The action, although plentiful and modern with its direction, lacks the breathtaking intensity of the original, where they seemed to do more with less. Story-wise, the dual love stories are reproduced but have been watered down. In general, it feels like a rebranding for a younger audience.

If I hadn’t seen the original, I would walk out thinking it wasn’t too bad, but not understanding what all the hype was about. 

1.     If you don’t have a MacBook Air, you’re nobody. And probably dead to me.

2.     No matter how big you are, you’re still pretty small.

3.     If you’re small, then you’re really really really small.

4.     Kobo people are really friendly (but of course, they’re Canadian).

5.     The sun is generally MIA.

6.     No matter how big you think the potential in China is, it’s bigger.

7.     German’s speak English better than most English-speaking (!) teenagers I know.

So close to being great.  Hugely ambitious with its heart in exactly the right place, but there were moments were it did stumble. Michael Caton as the emotionally immature Rex and Ningali Lawford as Polly (his long suffering neighbour) are high points with great performances (as you would expect) but Jacqui Weaver (Dr Farmer) was just plain odd. Mark Coles Smith was for most of the film at his usual excellent level but there were moments where he would over react making him feel uneven. Maybe this was down to editing of the scenes, but characters would jump between normal and going off the deep end emotionally without any provocation.

But don’t let that detract from what is an important story. In fact there are several important themes going on within the film: euthanasia, race relations, ethics. My hat is off to Mr Simms in tackling such an ambitious project, and delivering a pretty good end product. It’s better to have tried something great and marginally fall short, rather than deliver another average film that will be instantly forgotten. You won’t forget Last Cab to Darwin.