Happy Friday! It’s so good to see you all. I’m Randall and I’m just sitting here, doing nothing. Here are a few things about me that I’m sure you’re all interested in reading…

BOYD MCCLOYD 4 - It is done. It’s actually published, but I’ll put links to it in the newsletter next week. You are all expected to buy a copy, considering most of you are adults as of late, so it would definitely help for you to shell out $16 to buy a book, from which I will make a $1.50 profit. Save your money, kids. Side note: It will also be a good Christmas present.

CINDY MCCLOYD - This is the next book that I’m working on. I started outlining it last August and started writing it in October. I’m at 25,000 words right now. Goal is to finish it by the start of the new year. It’s actually going pretty well, and considering that I have outlined the whole thing prior to writing it, it’s remarkably easy. The outlining thing is something that I worked on while writing screenplays over the last couple of years. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to structure the story so that it makes sense, rather than simply flying by the seat of my pants with a vague ending in mind. It gives me an overall idea of where I want to take things and simultaneously makes the writing process a lot easier. For this book, I am maintaining a 500-700 word per day average. I usually do 1000 words a day, but I have a lot of projects happening simultaneously, and considering this is the first novel that I’ve written in two years, I want to make it easy on myself. I’ve managed to produce work at a fairly good clip here and I am happy with the story, so hopefully this will be successful.

THE BEAN - The other big project that I’m working on. Seriously, people, I’m making a movie all by myself and it’s friggin’ hard. I now have ALL of the scenes edited and color corrected. It isn’t perfect, but taking my crap camera work and ensuring that the color is all the same through the whole thing is a daunting task. I have watched endless videos on color over the past couple of months and tried desperately to correct the different color from shot to shot. It seems to be going okay, but the final scene has color issues all over the place…issues that a professional colorist would be able to handle without batting an eye…but they are something that I have a hard time with, so it’s a slow process. This week (specifically…today) I will start putting together the WHOLE thing. I need to see the run time that I have for the film and whether or not it will actually fit into the 90 minutes that I wanted it to. I worry that it will run short, but I think it will actually be MORE than 90 minutes. Once I check that this week, then I can begin the process of filling in the gaps and making the story slightly more coherent (as it is mainly a series of vignettes at this point). It’s actually a very personal film, which is surprising to me, because I don’t normally reveal these personal aspects to the world. That was a surprise. So, fingers crossed, more news will come next week.