Thunderbolt

When I asked my old friend, Villamor Cruz, to create the first pieces of art for Legendary , my thinking was that by having three images by the same artist, the opening of the book would have some uniformity to kick things off. Vill came back  with a wonderful drawing that was, in his words, "like a movie poster." It looks frickin' awesome. But, I wanted to have individual drawings for the chapters. Vill was kind enough to revise his drawing to make it into three solo stills of Allison, Brian and Kate. I didn't want his original art to go unseen, so here it is. I'm sure by looking at it, you can imagine a title above the image and credits down below, like typical teen movie from the 80s. Thanks, Vill!

Here's a song that was on and off of the soundtrack numerous times up until the last two weeks before publication began. It was originally going to appear later in the book, but I pulled it off in favor of Janet Jackson. The Bangles held this spot in chapter 4 until I decided to move their song to late in the book. This opened up a slot for Jody Watley to come back into the mix. I always liked this song and the kind of pop R&B it represents. Even though that may be a drum machine playing behind Watley, it sounds like it was programmed by someone who knows a thing or two about percussion. Watley's song was a smash hit back in the 80s, and I think that it holds up pretty well nearly 30 years later. This type of R&B, as well as a lot of pop music from back in the day, are the material I listened to when writing Kate. Even though she likes things that are polished and slick, Kate still has a backbone and doesn 't take any crap from anyone, including her boyfriend. Click...

Chapter 2 of Legendary is up on Popdose. This chapter features Van Halen's "Dreams," from their 1986 album, 5150 . This was one of the first songs I considered for the Legendary soundtrack. 5150 was a huge triumph for the band. Not only was it a huge hit, with four popular singles, but it shut up the naysayers who thought that Van Halen would collapse without David Lee Roth as lead vocalist. When Roth quit Van Halen (or was shoved out - depends on whose story you believe), many believed that Van Halen was done. Enter Sammy Hagar. Sammy is an everyman rocker who doesn't treat his audience as if they're beneath him. Roth, to me, always comes across as "I'm cooler than you," while Sammy is "You're as cool as me." This includiveness won over the Van Halen diehards, as well as new fans. 5150 may have had some half-baked electronic drums, but all of the songs rock, thanks to the combined efforts of Eddie and Alex Van Halen, as well as th...

Chapter 1 went live on Monday. I'm sure you've already read it, otherwise why are you reading this post? One of my favorite bands from the 80s, the Pretenders appear in this chapter. Seems that if you grew up in Cleveland during that decade you were bound to hear the Pretenders on any radio format, be it AOR, top 40 or Classic Rock. Chrissie Hynde, the leader and focal point of the band, hails from Akron. Because of that city's close proximity to Cleveland (it's about a 42 minute drive), Cleveland stations liked to claim Hynde as one of their own. I'm not so sure she wanted any part of that, but it worked in her favor as the Pretenders developed a loyal fan base in the Rock and Roll Capital of the World. The Pretenders had their major breakthrough with 1983's Learning to Crawl , which features the haunting "Back on the Chain Gang," one of my favorite songs of all time. I considered using that song to open the book, but changed it to "Don't G...

In case your only resource for Malchus news is this website...first of all, God bless you. Second, as I reported on Facebook and Twitter this morning, the Introduction to Legendary went live this morning on Popdose. Below is the link. Throughout the summer, as the chapters go up, I'll try to post info about the book and some of the music I chose. At the very least, it will give you a reason to return to the site on a regular basis. Tomorrow, chapter 1 and the Pretenders. See you then! Here's the link: http://popdose.com/popdose-presents-legendary-a-serial-novel-in-34-installments/

Here is the banner for the character of Kate. All three banners will be posted together only once. That will be tomorrow, with the Introduction to Legendary . The book begins publishing tomorrow!

The second banner by Nick Jennings for Legendary. T his one is for the character of Brian. The book starts publishing in 2 days!

Here is a look at the banner for the character of "Allison" in Legendary .  As you read the book, you'll start to see how the images here represent who she is. I think it looks pretty awesome! Thanks to Nick Jennings for the great work.

For those of you interested, I thought I’d explain some of the backstory and reasoning that went into the writing and publishing of Legendary on Popdose . While it would be easy to just let the work suddenly appear without any explanation, our era in is an information age and some readers like to get the poop on why some dude from California is posting a serial novel online.   The roots of the novel date back nearly 20 years, back to the first feature-length screenplay I wrote (discounting my college senior film, which began as a feature, but I eventually whittled down to 45 minutes). When Julie and I first moved to Los Angeles, it was the rise of the 90s indie film movement. Directors like Tarantino, Rodriguez and Anders were releasing personal films that didn't adhere to the rules of Hollywood filmmaking. These movies inspired me, much in the same way the great films from the 70s by Scorsese, Lumet and Ashby did. When I sat down to write my first script (that's why we moved ...

Legendary , the serial novel I'm publishing on Popdose, will begin posting on Monday, May 19th. The entire book is be 34 chapters, or installments, running into the early weeks of August. A new chapter will run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, EXCEPT for the week of Memorial Day, in which chapters will run on Tuesday and Thursday, and the week of July 4th, in which chapters will only run on Monday and Wednesday. Music, baby! One of the features that Popdose provides me is the ability to post songs with my chapters. This is one reason I'm not going directly the Kindle route with this book. Much like I did with every Basement Song post that ran on Popdose, a song will be incorporated into every chapter. When I was a teenager, music was always playing, either on the radio, through someone's stereo, or over the PA systems in the stores or restaurants I frequented. You hear phrases like "soundtrack to my life" and that's what I tried to do with each character in...

Before I get into any more news about Legendary and when it will begin posting, I MUST give an update about this year's Great Strides. Team Jacob raised over $9,000, and the Valencia Great Strides walk has raise $112,000 to date! That's frickin' amazing. Our small community raised a butt load of money!! The walk day was hot and wonderful. This year we were in a new location at the mall, one that was a little removed from the "in your face" presence we've had in years past, but the flip side was that the traffic was a little safer. The turnout for the walk was exceptional, and our team had close to 50 walkers. I owe all of you personal "thank yous," and they will be forthcoming. For now, I'm sending out a HUGE, universal "thanks" to all of our family and friends. It's your love and support that has kept our family afloat and filled with optimism. I wish I could hug each and every one of you. Alas, that would be costly and some of yo...

The radio silence on my end is typical around this time of the year. Besides the other stuff going on in my life - work, podcasts, family - fundraising and stressing out about cystic fibrosis tends to consume everything. This year we started out slow in raising money for Great Strides, the annual Cystic Fibrosis Foundation fundraiser to find a cure, but things really kicked into gear these last two weeks. Our team set a goal for $5K, and we surpassed that by over $2,000. Among the ways that we had people contribute (beside the usual soliciting of money through emails and posts) were a fund rasier at Jacob's school, a bake sale at the school where Julie works, Sophie's own efforts, and a bucket I placed on a table at my office. All of these proved to be successful ways to raise money. It was very, very thrilling. One of the coolest things that happened was the contributions by Brave New World, the comic store in Santa Clarita where Jacob buys his comic books. Portlyn, the owner,...