I occasionally enter PhotoShop competitions¹ on Cracked.com, and even more occasionally, I win! Well, once. And by "win", I mean I came ninth. Out of a number only slightly greater than nine.

But that doesn't make me any less proud of what I've produced, so here it is.

For the competition "The unseen victims of video games":



For the competition "Rejected ideas for disaster movies":



And did I mention that I used to be a Hollywood B-Movie actor?



^{1 I cheat by using GIMP.}

MITIFOTIT:

Have I mentioned how much I love SMBC?

Against my better judgement, I went to the movies the other day, and returned with enough criticisms of the methods of a fictional serial killer to make a new video blog out of. (How many is enough you ask? One, I concluded.)

Enjoy! I've tried to make it spoiler free, but different people have different tolerances for that sort of thing. So, if you're someone who finds things easily spoiled, remember that the video can still be enjoyed with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears. The enjoyment, however, will be for me, not you, and it will come in the form of YouTube viewing statistics.



If you liked it, don't forget to rate, subscribe, tell your friends, et cetera.

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately - it's because of my SECRET PROJECT. Very soon I hope to be able to tell you about my SECRET PROJECT, so stay tuned.

New video blog! Hurray. I was going to make it about the various complex crises facing our species in the modern world, but that was too daunting so now it's about TV.

"Book Two begins with Bella angsting about reaching the old age of eighteen, which she worries will make her some sort of cradle-snatching freak because her boyfriend Edward is eternally seventeen. The fact that a 109-year-old vampire is sexually interested in an emotionally immature girl 90 years his junior apparently doesn't bother her. Edward cheers up Bella by giving her a mix tape. Unfortunately, later Edward changes his mind, takes back the mix tape, and dumps Bella. He leaves her in the forest by herself, and being a woman and thus without a sense of direction, she gets lost and almost dies."

I'm drowning in a barrage of emails from people who demand to know what happened to me this week. My typical response of "you don't want to know" never seems to go down well, despite the fact that it's universally true.

Nothing diminishes testicular pain like reading great reviews of your latest book - while on painkillers, at least.

If you haven't read Third Transmission yet, here are two great reasons to get off your butt:

"From the very first paragraph - opening with a strong female character to put Meyer's 'Bella' to shame - the reader is introduced to an action-packed, fantastical high-octane tale to keep the pages turning. Third Transmission leaves no doubt that Jack Heath is set to be the next Matthew Reilly."
-- Tara Moss, bestselling author of Siren

"This lightning-paced and brilliantly written novel (is) thumping, pumping, tightly configured and deftly researched. A new series of missions link together like chain mail in an astonishing plot-weave that works so well, you could peel it off the pages and slap it on a movie screen. The author writes with such intelligence and visual ferocity, one can actually hear the bullets slapping into metal, figuratively see the explosive action sequences mushrooming into life, intently feel the crushing devastation on his characters' hearts. Whilst dodging these figurative bullets and leaping from mentally-bound explosions during my reading of Third Transmission, one question kept occurring to me, over and over again. And the question was this: who on earth is Jack Heath?"
-- Tania McCartney, Australian Women Online

Of course, the downside of reviews like that is that they're so good no-one will believe I didn't write them myself, as I've complained about before.

I've been grievously injured, and look/sound/feel/smell hideous. What better excuse to make a video blog about US healthcare reform, where only two of those four things will be obvious?

So I'm back from a long, exhausting week in New Zealand for the Taranaki Children's Book Festival. I would have kissed the Australian ground when I stepped off the plane, but it was Sydney Airport. That's about the third least hygenic place in the world to put your lips.¹

Not that I didn't enjoy NZ - it's very picturesque, and very cultural. At one of the schools I visited I was welcomed with a song. Not the national anthem, or anything like that; it was a genuinely cool song, with harmony and solos and chants. Despite this, the kids still rolled their eyes and stuck their hands in their pockets and generally acted like they were way too cool for this, man. Some things are universal, I guess. And the cold didn't bother me too much - New Zealand may be practically a suburb of Antarctica, but I'm from Canberra, which is practically an ice-rink on Neptune.

I had more trouble with the accents than I expected, though. To turn an Aussie accent into a Kiwi accent, all you really have to do is replace the As with Es ("add" becomes "edd"), the Es with Is ("yes" becomes "yis"), and the Is with clipped Us ("fish" becomes "fush"). Note that these rules only apply to short vowel sounds, not the long ones - "after" remains the same, along with "eel" and "icy". It also helps if you call people "bro", and compliment the listener by describing them as "choice" or "mean".

(Every now and then you run into trouble when something isn't pronounced how it's spelled - Australians pronounce "busy" as "bizzy", whereas Kiwis actually say "busy". But that's not that interesting, so I put it in bracquets to keep you amused. I sure hope you like punctuation as much as I do!!!!!!!!)

I thought I had a pretty good handle on the whole thing. "Hi, my name us Jeck Heath, end I write ection edvinture books, most of whuch star Agint Sux of Hearts. A plisure to make your ecquaintance!"

But you know when you're at a noisy party, and you can only half-hear what people are saying, so you have to infer a lot from context? It started to feel like that after a while.

Festival volunteer: So whin dud you fly un, bro?

Jack: Just yesterday.

Volunteer: Choice es. How was the chicken?

Jack: Actually, I opted for the fish.

Volunteer: What?

Jack: I had the fish, on the plane.

Volunteer: No, the chicken!

Jack: No, the fish. "Fush". I didn't have the chicken.

Volunteer: Not the chuckin, the chicken!

Jack: I didn't eat the bloody chicken!

Turned out she was asking me how the check-in was.

Now I'm off to the Brisbane Writers Festival - I can only hope I misunderstand someone in an equally amusing way while I'm there.

Note: I apologise to my American and Canadian readers who may feel alienated by this article. I'll go back to talking about countries you've heard of soon. (i.e. America and Canada. Zing!)

^{1The first two are both places on Jamie Fraser's never-washed body.}

Hooray, new video blog! I have a newfound respect for Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame.) This whole making-videos-on-a-regular-basis thing turns out to be quite difficult.