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Digging into Tough Recommendations

The middle issue of the second year of Killing Time - Horror E-Rag, Issue 2-3, is available now. The part of it that I immediately wanted to talk about was the second Horror Cinema Autopsy about Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. That is a movie that is very hard to pin down. I speak highly of it on one hand, but on the other I rarely suggest to people I know that they watch it. There are no other movies that I am torn about suggesting to others. I have not seen the recent remake. As such I cannot comment on it. The article preceding the autopsy is about the great horror genre mythos, and making your own mythos. It has the tongue in cheek title "Purple Nurple" because it also deals with twisting elements from the overarching mythos. This title pairs up with the second story "Pink Belly" about a prankster's run in with the supernatural.

The first short story is "Husk Hound". There are things that I would love to say about this story, but you know my stance against unnecessary spoilers. I can say that it is another one of which I'm very much enamoured. There will inevitably be comparisons between it and a certain movie. Don't let the opening fool you. This issue's new act of the serial story "PSY3007" builds directly upon last time and ratchets things up with a startling revelation. It also opens the door for the rest of the series. The reviews kind of end up short changed here in the blog intro. This time up I have an awesome horror movie that just also happens to be anime. "Perfect Blue" is twisted and all kinds of mind scrambling. The book review is one of my favourites from the spectacular Graham Masterton. "Prey" is another of his Lovecraft inspired tales. That's it. You may now go buy the issue.

• Tags: disturbing, ghosts, Graham Masterton, Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™, Last House on the Left, mythos, Perfect Blue (movie), recommendations, supernatural, Wes Craven.

Differentiation and Divergence of Content

Let me start by saying... Happy Friday the 13th!

I have a few videos on my YouTube channel. I started an account there under just my name. The video content there is mine. That is to say the videos are personal and not something that is a part of R.M.T.P. Co. or Battered Spleen Productions™ per se. Some of the videos are tests. Some videos may end up pulled onto pages for Battered Spleen either as is or with additional content. This means there could potentially be a BSP YouTube page sometime in the future. My original account on Twitter in contrast is a mix of me, R.M.T.P. and BSP. The question then is what information streams and content do I put where. Should I diverge on where they are placed--I did to some degree with Twitter as mentioned in previous entries. What are the reasons why I shouldn't diverge?

Some items will not necessarily fit into the themes, feeling, or milieu of Battered Spleen Productions. Certainly it has been an odd fit pushing some of the BSP material on www.rmtp.ca yet I've done it anyway. There are no frequent updates for R.M.T.P., perhaps badly so, I cannot tell you the last news posted to R.M.T.P. that isn't from BSP. The question of what to include for Battered Spleen also comes up in the Grotesquerie gallery, which already has markers to differentiate images containing nudity and some of those do not have a horror or fantasy bent. The question will need answering again in the future when I get around to finishing and releasing my first role-playing game, especially if the first one done is the fantasy game.

• Tags: art, Battered Spleen Productions™, differences, gallery, horror, nudity, R.M.T.P. Co, role-playing games, theme, YouTube.

Advertising Content, Teasers, and Hooks

After the book is written or the magazine is published the work continues on for quite a while. Among that workload is advertising. To do that requires a bit of a different toolset as far as writing goes. Ad copy sometimes seems to be all about the hype, but as with everything, subtlety goes a long way even if it's an underlying subtlety. Now, with the way things are, mastering ad copy writing in the traditional sense must be followed by the skill to condense your sales message down to a very limited number of characters--I'm looking at you Twitter. With eight issues of Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™ available plus the Year 1 bundle I've had some practice trying to sell on Twitter. It’s not that easy when I need room to name what I'm selling plus the URL plus a hashtag so I can do some tracking.

I don't really have the knowledge yet to determine how well my marketing is doing on Twitter and Facebook--I consider the Battered Spleen Productions™ Facebook page an update location much like the Dead Days Calendar™, but expanded. I decided to do each Killing Time tweet as a teaser to one of the stories. I find myself limited to 70 characters maximum to pitch the hook to my followers. That's not a lot of space to sum up a tease for a story. I should note now that I write a new teaser for every tweet and that is for both my Twitter account @robertmale and the @batteredspleen account. This is to prevent monotony--even with three stories to cover for each issue--and getting marked as spam for repeating the same tweet over and over. In the same vein non-sales tweets and general tweeting draw more followers as well as prevent being a link spammer.

• Tags: Battered Spleen Productions™, Facebook, follow, Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™, marketing, social network, subtlety, Twitter, writing.