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I'm pleased to welcome a fab author to the blog today who is introducing a trio of talent and their new project that's out this week! Check it out...  Benjamin Emory Larson is a writer, lyricist, songwriter, and composer. He’s written operas, musicals, plays, books, and short stories, and his work has been performed in nine states throughout the U.S. He currently lives in the beautiful Twin Cities with his wife, Erika, and their fur babies, Zelda and Leo. Reed Reimer is a media composer working on projects in film, web, and videogames. He lives in Minnesota with his wife and two daughters. A nice cup of coffee, and his library of instruments in front of him is a good day  Mat Kaminski grew up fantasizing about being able to create the art he’d see in video games. Over time, that passion led him to university where he received degrees in Graphic Design, Multimedia, and a degree in Illustration from Memphis College of Art. He works as a freelance artist and collaborates on projects with his fiancé as well as commissions from commercial customers.  Part short story, part graphic novel, and part concept album, Codeburst is a dystopian science fiction fable about Aubrey--a programming genius in search of her lost creation--and Jamie--a man struggling to regain control of his life from the artificial intelligence that has taken him over. The Interview... Who are you and what do you write?
I’m Reed Reimer from Minnesota, and I write stories. Generally, I tell my stories with music, and I also write stories in musical/opera form. With CodeBurst, this’ll be my first effort towards traditional prose. For a lot of my projects, I work with my long time collaborator and friend, Ben Larson, and CodeBurst is no exception. Where and when and how did the writing life begin for you? I’ve always had creativity flowing through me, and I began playing instruments at an early age. Creating new music to help reinforce a mood, or tell its own story was always at the heart of my playing. Life, taking many different directions finally led me to pursue my Music degree from PSU. Luckily, I met my writing partner Ben, who was pursuing a degree in Theater, in one of the music classes. It was his musical talents and fun attitude that helped me ask him to partner in the creation of an operetta I wanted to write, and that’s what led to Maelstrom - The Zombie Opera… and everything since. How has the journey to this point been? Can you give us a basic rundown? Since graduating university, professional projects have been sporadic, and I’ve had an unrelated professional career, which still supports my art. The projects I have worked on, have been mightily fulfilling. One short film I wrote the music for was given quite a few awards from various film festivals, including “Best Film” at the 2017 San Diego Comic Con, which afforded me my first SDCC experience. I’ve also received “Best Music” awards from different festivals, which is also nice. More So than anything else, it’s the ability to create that really keeps the serotonin flowing. Since 2018, my day job has allowed me to be in a creative position that I could spend an increasing amount of time on my art, so I’ve been writing music for different web-series, marketing campaigns, and even created a concept Christmas Album: “A Movie Trailer Christmas” to exercise some different creative muscles. Now, the stars are aligned. I randomly met an artist (Mat) on Twitter who’s creative passion inspired me to gather the troops to begin work on a multimedia project: CodeBurst. What's been the hardest part of your writing/publishing experience so far? And the most enjoyable? Because we’re self-publishing the project, the most difficult parts that we’ve encountered include the fact that we had originally planned for the project to release in April, then COVID-19 essentially shut down everything. Since then, the difficulty has come in coordinating all of the different project parts and contributors to complete everything in quarantine. While Ben, Mat, and I have been able to work on the story and art on schedule, we have five different artists who are singing or playing on the concept album who would normally have come into the studio to record. Thankfully, we’ve been able to handle everything whether through home recording solutions or other methods, but that adds time. The most enjoyable part of the project has been collaborating with these amazing artists, and creating something in a medium that we haven’t typically worked in. Would you go back and change anything? No. I have a hard time looking backward. There are so many projects and things to do, that unless I’m constantly pushing forward, then nothing gets done. I don’t even have time to procrastinate, HAHA. Where would you like to be in 5 years time? And 10? Or, what are your plans for the future? In 5 or 10 years, the dream would be to have my art be my primary source of income. It would be amazing to work on some very large budget projects that would allow me to hire and work with professional orchestras. On the writing side, if the format of CodeBurst is successful (by our own metrics) I imagine we would have a series of projects just like it, including exploring the CodeBurst universe, and other genres that we absolutely love! What's one piece of advice you'd give to new writers just starting out? The thing that has kept me sane, is that I love what I do. When I begin to focus on trying to create to attract fans or followers, I begin to get discouraged, and have to remind myself that I’m really doing this for me, and hope that there are others out there who will like it as well. I do this because I love it. And most importantly... Ketchup or Mayo? - Ranch… lol. Night or Day? - Day Inside or Outside? - Inside Dogs or Cats? - Cats Twitter or Facebook? - Facebook ebook or Paperback? - ebook Sun or Rain? - Rain Keyboard or Pencil & Notebook? - Keyboard, although i LOVE the romanticism of pencil and paper Comedy or Drama? - Comedy Chips or Chocolate? - Chippers… a wonderful chocolate covered ripple potato chip from Widman’s Candy Shop in ND.
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January 2021
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