"Baroness Sells Books" - One Month Later

Where to begin?

        With the book, of course!

Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno is currently available only at Amazon  in 3 formats: Hardcover, Paperback and Ebook on Kindle; the ebook is FREE for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

What's the book about?

              Quien es esa nina?

After a few weeks, the book has appeared on lists:

      I see you, "Top Release" bar.

And while attempting to self-promote across social media, I often cross paths with "people" who, by way of introducing themselves, will either like a post or reply with a quote that reposts my post, in hope that I would be interested in paying them to promote Baroness Sells Books on my behalf. It sounds pretty nifty in theory, but I would be more impressed if they had purchased a copy of my book and then tease what they could bring to the table by knowing something about it.

By the way, as an aside, I find promoting a book on Reddit akin to walking into a motorcycle bar the day after you purchased a motorcycle for the first time...

    He's lucky they didn't eat him 

                        alive.

These were the best efforts at currying favor, though:

      This tweet reads as if they 

      had read the screenshot of

      the summary on the back

      cover...with one eye open;

      Tom Lingquist is a private

      eye who has been working 

      at a movie theater; he's not

      an amateur sleuth - he's 

      acting on behalf of an attorney 

      and her client, the grieving 

      mother of the murder victim.

It's also made clear on the back cover-description that "Baroness" is a fictional character in a book, which, upon publication, became the catalyst for the death of the author. 

     And that's me, making the               most of it.

Nice try. Next!

This one gets Grok, Elon Musk's work-in-progress a.i. interface for X/Twitter, into the act:

     First, they noticed my tweet..

  Holmes and Poirot are bad guys?

Almost there..and then they did this:

    A.I. fan art! So soon? Why not.

Um..let's start with my immediate reaction:

He also looks like he might be displaying signs of burning out, which is kind of interesting; there's hints of that in the text, but I don't believe they've read it..I'd say it was interesting at how much they were able to adapt on a guess..Grok seems to believe he doesn't have thumbs, which is incorrect, though it could explain why this depiction of Lingquist appears so beleaguered..

Can't hold a baseball...

I decided to post my casting choices for some, but not all of the characters in Baroness Sells Books; I thought of them after, not before or during the completion of the book; they did not influence my writing, but I thought maybe I could give those art-generating algorithms that dwell in cyberspace a little push to influence subsequent a.i. art:

No plot spoilers from me..having said that, I'm aware some of the faces featured may not be household names - that's Rachel Ticotin as Norma; Josh Segarra as Rob; Finn Wolfhard as Mike; Melanie Martinez as Esther; Raquel Castro as Kira and Katerina. All of these choices might not match the characters as they are described in the book, but they can play them very well, I assure you.

I'll post more updates as they occur, but for now, if you haven't ordered Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery from Amazon, I recommend that you do. Give it a try. Grab some popcorn, have a seat and check it out! Tom will sweep up the popcorn.

The Batgirl On The Shelf

One Year Later...

   Pictured: Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton.

 I was looking forward to seeing this Batgirl film and see if it's good on it's own terms, for multiple reasons. 

First of all, it's Barbara Gordon. Barbara Gordon is the real Batgirl. Accept no substitutes. 

 And, yes, that is the Batgirl costume Barbara Gordon wore during the "Batgirl of Burnside" era, designed by artist & writer Cameron Stewart.

 We were also going to get a 3rd appearance of Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne, in a supporting role, on the heels of his "comeback" appearance in The Flash, as part of an ongoing plot thread that would link these upcoming films. From what little we've been told, this is an older, veteran Batman, wearing an updated version of his costume from the 2 Tim Burton films; it's possible this characterization is somewhat inspired by high-concept takes on the character in spinoffs like Batman Beyond, Kingdom Come or The Dark Knight Returns, while still offering something different. There were clues about the events taking place within an altered reality that was held in place as an amalgamation of different timelines:

     From a yellow belt to a black belt..I just realized that as I was sorting through these pictures that this could be the gag behind the change in utility belt color.

    I miss the yellow belt, anyway.

I found all of this stuff intriguing; they were clearly fast-tracking a deep dive into history and retroactively using the concept of a multiverse to insert a continuity and bring back whoever wants to jump in. Of course, this doesn't sit well with people who wanted a simpler, direct continuation of stories featuring characters and cast members from Zack Snyder's Justice League, but that's a reflection of the paroxysms in leadership at Warner Brothers effecting the content that gets created. To this date, anything we think we know about the future is coming from people on the internet who have the option of denying everything they said - it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. There were a lot of people rooting for the film to fail, without really knowing much about it, beyond what they're told by people claiming to have "sources". Why were they rooting for it to fail? Fidelity to Zack Snyder? Fidelity to Ben Affleck? Fidelity to Henry Cavill? Fidelity to Ray Fisher? Unfortunately, it's not clear if any of them are coming back, yet there were a lot of ugly campaigns employing gaslighting tactics to try to control/derail/influence executive decisions on what gets made and what shouldn't. 

 Everything I'm sure is true can be taken for granted by photographs taken of the cast and film locations in Scotland, both by amateur bystanders, posts on Twitter by the "Batgirl Movie News" fan account and by the crew, as well as any statements or posts made on social media by the film's star, Leslie Grace, co-directors Bilall Fallah & Adil el Arbi and statements made by the studio. 

  

   The casting of Leslie Grace was a surprise and recieved a mixed reaction; a relative newcomer, this was her first starring role in only her 2nd film (she had appeared in In The Heights the previous year), so it appeared she was popular enough with the studio executives, rather than cast a more-experienced actress, who might have a larger following. Nevertheless, in the months that followed, it's clear she always regarded her casting with appreciation, class, charm, dedication & enthusiasm.

    Stop the press...who's that?

     That's Emely Cartagena - Leslie Grace's stunt double as Batgirl.

       Yep, that's Emely up there..

          She's great, isn't she?

                     Exquisite...

    This message she posted was sweet of her.

The reveal of the name and identity of the sexy stuntwoman is bittersweet; this happened a week after the news unfolded that post-production on the film had been shut down by an executive decision to shelve the film.

 

As part of a new corporate merger between Discovery Networks and Warner Brothers, a massive restructuring of the corporate hierarchy took place, and the new boss, David Zaslav, decided that Batgirl wasn't up to a new standard going forward with the films; the implication is that he would rather greenlight  fewer movies than push ahead with content he found mediocre.

  Is Batgirl a bad movie? We don't know. There are people claiming to have seen it, via private focus group "test" screenings of a "rough cut", and their opinions are questionable; these people are anonymous and have no names; the people reporting these accounts will deny accountability for reporting fake news by blaming the anonymous source - that's always their loophole. 

       Written-off...by "Top Men"

   ...representation of Warner Brothers Archive

 What we do know, is that unless Zaslav reconsiders his decision, the footage from Batgirl will be locked away in an archive as proof of a "lost movie" the studio can't do anything with, applicable for a tax credit, reportedly worth 50 million dollars...for a film that cost 90 million to make...

    Locked deep in the Bat-archive

  Honestly, my take on this is Zaslav is going to run the studio like a military operation; he's making an example of this film, as his own message that from here on, he wants the studio to offer nothing but the best content, no compromises. No lazy pandering to demographics inferred by cynical & manipulative marketing research; no room for hustling, uncreative people using Conditioning tactics under the guise of "Social Justice Warrior" psuedo-activism and faux-hip subversion-of-expectations. Or so we think.. 

 Will he reconsider? If the film has been written off already, it can still be released anyway - the studio would have to pay back the credit received, but that's if they did the filing...

 One thing I'm certain of...this move by Zaslav got a whole lot more people talking about this film than at any time beforehand and, perhaps unwittingly created a movement to release it and give it a chance.

#ReleaseBatgirl / #ReleaseTheBatgirlMovie 

 And one other thing for sure...this is the first time I had a crush on a stunt double!

        Lovely view...and I'm sure that window has a nice view of Glasgow, too.

Until next time...same Bat-time, same Blog-channel..