Next Step in Capstone

Hokay, now let's get down to business. Cyndi's last email left me with some questions of my own and I think I am going to slightly change my capstone...for the last time.

First of all, I have found a book that I have completely fallen in love with: Percy Jackson & The Olympians series by Rick Riordan. In about a month's time, I have nearly finished all 5 books (with a strong callous towards the movie because the movie's storyline has been completely altered). Cyndi has mentioned Rick Riordan being my inspiration, which I haven't considered until now because I've been writing this story before reading his work. Most likely, my target audience will be the same as his: young-adult to children, although I doubt children will understand some of the issues I want to discuss. Now the only reason I say "children" as a target audience is that Percy Jackson is found in the children's section of Borders. Well, Harry Potter dealt a lot with dark issues from betrayal and death to lighter issues of love to coming to age. People have already talked about the environment and war, but who has really challenged poverty, women's rights and all the nitty-gritty nasty issues? Hopefully my story of Iris, a fallen Angel encountering global injustices for the first time, will be able to face these conflicts and open the reader to social injustices that are often overlooked. So my book will be a mixture of entertainment and education. Percy Jackson mostly deals with coming-of-age, friendship, betrayal, death, revenge and ultimately, Greek Mythology, the rise of Kronos and magic.

Now I've been editing my book practically everyday with every minute I have since classes have ended. Since the only books I've been reading are primarily in first person (the Twilight Saga and Percy Jackson series) I feel the urge to change the narrative to first person instead of third person. But I'm pretty much tired of continuously editing the story.

Cyndi asked what form the work is going to take. So right now, it's a novel (unfinished at 63,000 words). What I'm thinking is taking a self-publishing route (like Christopher Paolini's Eragon) or taking on a different publishing route (online) or print.

I have planned on writing a series. First book deals with women's rights, the second book looks at environmentalism and the third book deals with internal conflict/civil war (Israeli/Palestine, China/Tibet, Darfur) . I appreciate Cyndi's suggestion on t he BP oil spill and the Israeli conflift over ships in Gaza. I mean, there are a lot of issues I want to confront not merely because Core requires it, but because there are issues out there that even some movie directors and scriptwriters in the US can't discuss (Pandora). Well I can't attack Pandora as I haven't seen the movie, but look at Prince of Persia. Political struggles over authority. The only movies I have seen that even deal with what I'm writing about are Hotel Rwanda and Osama. Women may have smaller roles in some movies, or are glamored up and be the only women on a ship full of men (Pirates of the Caribbean or Star Wars) but these women are all dazzled up. If true oppression is to be conveyed, Osama is a fantastic example of female oppression. As Cyndi mentioned, I can't solve the world's problem of social injustices in one fell swoop. I don't necessarily want to solve it, but I want to create a character who has grown up in a dystopia-like heaven be introduced to an earth torn by global injustices. He knows God doesn't exist, but it's his duty to provide for humans and challenge society that ultimately redeems him and makes these issues and maybe get people talking. While not an ultimate solution to aiding human rights, I feel it's more reasonable to approach issues people are less familiar with instead of something everyone has tackled.

Anyways, I don't think I can do the animated graphic novel approach I originally wanted simply because of how much effort and time I need to draw and animate the characters. I already have a trailer the I made for my 2D Animation Class, so this may be help me for marketing. Some other books I have in line:

Finish Rick Riodan's The Last Olympian
Oliver Bowden's Assassin's Creed
Matthew Stover's God of War (read Stover's novelization of Revenge of the Sith which was so much better than the movie)
Novelization of the original Star Wars trilogy by various authors.
JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Except for The Lord of the Rings I do have all these books sitting on my shelf that I've bought in the past year, but I wanted to finish Percy Jackson. I'm carefully choosing the books I'm reading to match either movies or games, but I just feel my writing mimics writing a screenplay with more narrative as if I'm the director.

Ultimately, I want to look into online publishing, self publishing or looking into a publishing house. With online publishing, I could do something like a chapter a week sort of thing, which would allow me to start publishing now. The first part of the book (planning on my book to be divided into 3-parts) has 24 chapters and 57-thousand words. If I did online publishing, I wouldn't have to worry about deadlines or finding an agent/publishing house or expenses. Well, maybe buying a website domain and such, but this would basically be the same as self-publishing, but not in print form. I do save money by not printing on paper, saving trees as well, but is there a possibility that I can get paid through my work? Online printing can also lead to people reading my work for free. How to make this work?