John August

Projects

Snake People for iPad

Follow Up, Snake People

snake people iconIf you got an iPad this weekend, you know the iBooks app comes pre-installed with Winnie-the-Pooh. The attached iBookstore has a bunch of titles with which to fill your wood-grained shelves.

But in a welcome change from the walled garden of the App Store, iBooks will happily show you any ePub file you throw it. Including [last week’s short story](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/snake-people), Snake People.

If you want to test it out, you can download the ebook and try it out for yourself.

You’ll be downloading an ePub file that you need to drag over to iTunes. It will end up in the “Books” section of the sidebar, and should transfer the next time you sync. If it doesn’t, check that you have “Sync Books” ticked.

sync books

It’s not as slick as being able to purchase directly through the iBookstore, but Apple doesn’t let you “sell” free books. Neither does Amazon. It’s frustrating but understandable; they have costs, too.

If you have an iPad, try it out. Problems/concerns, leave a note here, or tweet.

When two characters are played by the same actor

Formatting, Projects, QandA, The Nines, Words on the page

questionmarkIf a main part of a plot is that two characters look identical (but are not related…think the movie “Dave”), where/how in the script do I say they should be played by the same actor?

— Jeremy Kerr

As a general screenwriting rule, if it would be obvious to the viewer, make it obvious to the reader. Immediately after introducing the second character, include a hard-to-miss note explaining that the two characters are played by one actor.

PROFESSOR DONALD SCOTT isn’t your classic tweedy bookworm. With a short temper and a strong right hook, he’s more likely to settle arguments in back alleys than lecture halls.

[NOTE: Donald Scott and Thom Penn aren’t twins, but are played by the same actor -- for reasons that will soon become clear.]

In the case of The Nines, a huge conceit was that the nine principal roles were played by three actors. I added a note just after the title page, so there was no chance a reader would miss it:

nines note

Snake People

Projects, Snake People, The Variant

snake people coverI have a brand-new short story called Snake People. It’s [available today](http://www.mulhollandbooks.com/popcornfiction/stories/Snake_People_by_John_August.html), free.

Snake People is a bit shorter than The Variant, and…well, kinkier. By movie terms, it would still be Rated R, but I feel some fair warning is called for. It’s both fleshy and scaly.

The story is part of Popcorn Fiction, an ongoing anthology of short fiction by screenwriters, including original work by Scott Frank, Larry Doyle, Jeff Lowell and many others. Derek Haas created the whole endeavor.

Cover art is by Ryan M. Nelson.

The Variant, free this weekend

Books, Projects, The Variant

On Monday, I’ll be publishing a brand new short story.

As with last May’s [The Variant](http://johnaugust.com/variant), I used an ad hoc collection of Twitter followers as a focus group. So if a few people claim to have read it, they might be telling the truth.

But they haven’t seen the cover art. Here’s an ambiguous detail from it: cover detail

In the meantime, I want to offer up The Variant for anyone who might have missed it. For this weekend only, you can [download the .pdf free](http://ja-vincent.s3.amazonaws.com/variant.pdf).