Brad Vance Author

STABITHA IS DONE!! Coming June 19th!

May 26, 2018 // 2 Comments

Yep, I finished. It’s out to a few “power readers,” people I’ve worked with who I know are really good with story and won’t just say, “uh yeah I liked it”! I need this thing poked and prodded until it’s the best it can be. I have a few objective readers who LOVE IT as much as I do, and think it could really go boom. This is the first time I’ve had live feedback on a novel as I wrote it, as well, so the development’s been much stronger than any other book I’ve done. I’ve bet the farm on this book. It’s either get rich or die in a ditch. Or, worse, a return to the barren hellscapes of Cubicle City. Which I’m just refusing to think about right now. One day, I’ll tell you the hilarious story of my imaginary Articulate user ID, Eliza Weizenbaum and how I didn’t get a job because of “her.” But not today. Seriously, if Stabbers takes off, I’m having a motherfucking Facebook Live [MORE]

CRUNCH #2 in production! A sneak peek from Day One of filming!

May 13, 2018 // 0 Comments

Mind you this is me cobbling together a “post prod storyboard” for my real editor, more than anything else. No color correction, brightness, sound, etc. Just my choices of the best takes, reactions, and how I see them mixing together. I took down my “support” page because Certain People in the writing community fucked that up for all of us, but as costs mount for Crunch, I’m thinking of trying again. I put a new, more powerful computer on the credit card so I can start to learn video editing. What you see was done (barely) in Camtasia Studio, wherein the playback was so wobbly I kept having to publish, watch, edit, publish, watch… I’m installing Lightworks because, yeah, it’s free as well as powerful. We’ll see how that is going forward, but I’m super happy with where I got on my first try! Take a look 🙂 [MORE]

“Stabitha” is NEARLY FINISHED! Mid June Pub Date!

May 7, 2018 // 0 Comments

60k words and closing in on the big finish… So proud of this book. If I can’t monetize this, I give up. I’ve put up older versions of some of this, but… this is close to final. Enjoy 🙂 CHAPTER ONE It doesn’t bother me, the sight of this young woman’s corpse. It was a messy death, blood everywhere, a nice juicy artery slit open while she was still chock full of fluid and very much alive. There’ll be plenty of work for ServPro in this apartment! The bed’s a total loss, and the area rugs, and I bet the walls are going to need more than just repainting. It’s a horrifying scene, no doubt. But it’s just a dead body. And so its motionless tragic tableau fails to move me. It got to a lot of the patrol cops, I could tell, and the EMS folks. It angered them, the permanently inert form of this twentysomething kindergarten teacher, a “citizen,” one of the good guys. Someone they’d have asked out on a date, if only they could have screwed up the [MORE]

CRUNCH update and new film scripts!

April 19, 2018 // 0 Comments

CRUNCH Episode two is filming April 28th! Okay, half of it, because I’m doing camera myself this time, and I’ve divided the script into two days of filming, Upstairs and Downstairs. WATCH NUMBER ONE HERE!!! The second half will film in May/June, and then I still need the insert scenes, the story-within-a-story of Brad’s favorite soap opera. But it takes as long as it takes. I was stressing myself over it and then had a realization: Only do something if it’s paying you, or it’s fun. If it’s not either, don’t do it. So I had to wait for CRUNCH to feel like fun again, which it does now. In the meantime, in addition to Stabitha, now at 55k words and nearly done, I’ve been busy on scripts. The script page is updated with new stuff and the most recent versions of a few others. There’s some real dark Black Mirror shit here, mostly because these were written over the winter and you know winter is like a Black Mirror episode that never [MORE]

OK one more “Stabitha” chapter!

March 23, 2018 // 0 Comments

I haven’t managed a lot of words on it this week but, after a long fugue state, all the pieces are picking themselves up and moving into place, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s done by the end of April… CHAPTER FIVE “What a martyr, our Miss Charlotte,” I said after Miss Slade exited the classroom. We had a list of the school’s employees, and it would be a long morning, going through them. Carrie nodded. “Wouldn’t even buy a pair of decent shoes with all that free money. And from what I saw in her closet, honey she needed ‘em.” “You know what this means, right?” “Yeah, pressure will be on to clear this one in a hurry.” “You do the money. I’ll do the… No wait, you do the computer forensics for the kink shit, I’ll do the money.” “I always have to do the kink shit,” she groaned. “It’s tough being an expert, Mistress Carrie.” She sighed. “Fuck you, Brian.” It was dull work, interviewing the dead teacher’s [MORE]

Two more “Stabitha” chapters!

March 22, 2018 // 0 Comments

The whole thing is around 40,000 words right now, a lot of that is outline but yeah. The overall construction work is pretty solid at this point. The Master Plan is three Brian books, and if that’s still a thing anyone’s purchasing after book three, well, after Closure on Brian’s Journey, I know Carrie’s a strong enough character to sustain her own trilogy 🙂 CHAPTER THREE “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said to the pretty teacher’s mother, and boy do I look like I believe it. My head turned just so, my eyes warm (or at least framed warmly by the well practiced look on my face), my voice gentle, rich with sadness, perfect mimicry of every TV cop ever. Because that’s what they’ve seen on TV, that’s what they expect, and all you have to do is give them what they’re waiting for, complete the tribal ritual to everyone’s satisfaction. It’s funny. Even though she’s the one who’ll get upset later, when Carrie gives the news, it sounds as cold [MORE]

“Stabitha” is back in production!

March 21, 2018 // 2 Comments

Getting back into production mode. Winter sucks, amiright? When this book makes me Ian Fleming rich, I’m spending all of winter on a Caribbean island. And I think it might, as do some other people. This is the first book I’ve actually “workshopped,” my contribution to the novel writing class I’ve been teaching, that’s dovetailed into a novel writing group. I’m getting lots of great feedback, so I know it’s going to be a strong story. Here’s what the first two chapters look like now. CHAPTER ONE It doesn’t bother me, the sight of this young woman’s corpse. It was a messy death, blood everywhere, a nice juicy artery slit open while she was still chock full of fluid and very much alive. There’ll be plenty of work for ServPro in this apartment! The bed’s a total loss, and the area rugs, and I bet the walls are going to need more than just repainting. It’s a horrifying scene, no doubt. But it’s just a dead body. And so its [MORE]

Editorial Services is Back, New and Improved!

March 15, 2018 // 0 Comments

Right here at this link. I’m focusing on developmental editing now. I’ve been teaching a small novel writing class, and I’m getting a lot of pleasure out of helping people take “an idea I’ve had for a while,” and turn it into a full fledged novel. I also enjoy helping writers tweak a first draft, giving them feedback they can use to create a much stronger version. Please spread the word! [MORE]

“Crunch” Kickstarter LIVE! Please spread the word!

January 28, 2018 // 0 Comments

Please share this! I’m trying to raise $5,000 for a high powered editing computer, software, lighting/camera equipment, and other costs for the next five episodes. If I raise more than that, it’ll PAY CAST AND CREW! [MORE]

“Crunch” Kickstarter submitted! Here’s the promo video I made!

January 25, 2018 // 0 Comments

Watch episode 1 of “Crunch” HERE on Vimeo! I edited this trailer using the final MP4 file, the music clips, and some voiceover I recorded on my Snowball mike. All done using an old version of Camtasia! So just imagine what I can do when I get a “real” editing setup for Episode 2 🙂 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Qke_yEN8mtj4N2_UmR7yuO1u2CvAmlO4 The Kickstarter goal for future episodes is a (relatively modest by KS film standards) $5,000, enough to get a good editing PC, Creative Cloud for a year, and pay for the Lumix G7 and memory card I’ve already put on the credit card 🙂 If I can raise more than that, people working on the show (and it is a show now) will get PAID! I’ll be sure to keep you posted, and to flog the Kickstarter MERCILESSLY when it goes [MORE]