Seven isaacs

The Seven Isaacs Synopsis

Here is a modified and updated synopsis.

When Eight awoke he never suspected it would be the last time he would see Father. He also never suspected that he, along with his brothers and sisters would suddenly be thrust into the wild, hunted by an elite and specially trained military task force.

Eight and his six siblings are by-products of an underground, illegal human cloning experiment. Born and raised in a laboratory under constant scrutiny, observation and experimentation, they’ve rarely, if ever seen the blue skies of the world outside. One day, the alarm sounds and the man they call Father ushers them toward safe passage, as the laboratory is seized and shut down by a government task force. The seven aptly named and numbered children are forced into a world unknown and unseen by their senses to experience the vivid realities that we consider day to day living. While struggling with the rising emotions of anger, greed, love, loss and religion, they quickly learn of their delicate place in this world along with the frailty of their bodies and minds as they cope with medical side-effects and “abilities” of their condition as only Father could explain.
Oh, and lest we forget, the task force that is set upon their capture and if necessary, extermination of this inhuman and abnormal breed of humanity.

The Seven Isaacs is an existential journey of the seven children as they discover the modern world for the first time, and that world inside their minds, while fighting for their lives against a military that is hunting them and the secrets in their past that haunt them.  While weighing heavy on science fiction, modern reality and medical discovery, the story unfolds and gently touches on the philosophical effects that human cloning can have on the minds of children when faced with the harsh realities of their differences in this world.

The Seven Isaacs is the first novel by award winning independent filmmaker Michael Mustizer. He won Best Action Feature for my film, The Coldest Winter at the 2005 Hollywood Digital Festival, and wrote and directed the actress Laura Yuhasz in her best actress winning performance from his script, Two Days with Juliet (Philadelphia Fiction Festival) in 2003.

Convergence

i seem to be at a point in my life where all of the pieces that have been set up over the past few years are lining themselves up and falling in place where they belong.

Tomorrow ends my last day at my current job and Monday I begin my new job… Which. Happens to be in the same location, but it is better money and actually working for the company I work at, rather than being a contractor providing services to said company.

With my three year divorce behind me, my life at home is looking up and forward. There is a great pressure that dissipates once the legal bullshit is done and over with.

The house that I live in, we are finally in the process of purchasing the property, as opposed to renting it like we have for the past year.

And, in my professional life, that of my dream job, the pieces are all lining up for the big break. I have finished the novel, which has been three years in the making. I have studied it and broken it apart page by page so many times that I can’t even look at it anymore. But, the one thing that stands out while working on this novel is that, yes, I can’t get away from my filmmaker’s roots. I originally tackled The Seven Isaacs with the concept that I was going to write something that couldn’t be filmed. I knew that there were going to be kids involved and I knew that some of those kids were going to get killed as the story progressed. No one wants to watch kids get killed on screen.

What I didn’t realize was that during that process, I was writing the most exciting, the most human and best story I had ever written. What i didn’t realize is that I was writing from the perspective of a director, an editor, a filmmaker. I wrote something that is ripe to be told on screen, more than anything I have ever written.

Today marks a slightly important day. Today, I submitted my Japanese screenplay Ashio to the trade market in Tokyo. It is the same even I attended last year, but this year, I am hoping to be accepted to make a pitch to all sorts of producers and filmmaker’s in order to sell that script and story idea.

What I didn’t plan odoing was submitting The Seven Isaacs as a film project… But I did anyway. I made up a short promo package for the story and sent it off to be examined by those on the selection committee for TIFFCOM. The story is universal. It is by no means inherently American or Japanese for that matter, but it does have a very Japanese sensibility to it. It is honest. It is human. It is bleak at it’s worst and bright and promising at it’s peak.

It would also make for a badass anime project. Probably more than a live action feature.

Life is falling in to place. I always knew, deep in my heart that nothing was going to happen in my life until my divorce was done and over with. Well, here I am. The divorce is final. The universe is hovering above me and everything is dropping. The tetris blocks are all lined up. I just need that one long piece to drop and make this puzzle complete.

Adventures in Editing – The Seven Isaacs

(sorry for the long post… iPad won’t let me “Read More”)

A couple days ago, I posted a photo of the recently finished up corrections draft of my novel, THE SEVEN ISAACS. it boasted a nice, staggering number of 100,000 words. It boggles my mind that I actually wrote something that big. It clocked in somewhere around 550 pages. Yes, I tend to be wordy. I like to write. I also like to write here and tend to get wordy here. In my mind, a blog should be filled wi the written word of it’s owner to really open up that avenue into that bogger’s mind. So that’s what I do here.

My novel has been a long time coming and I really am busting my ass to get it truly finished and all the typos corrected and all the formatting stuff fixed so that I can get it on the market in October. It’s a rush, but it’s the best time of year to release my book. I try and deny the science fiction aspects of my novel, because to me it’s not about science or fantasy at all. It’s about humanity. It’s about being human and learning to be human. That being said, it is science fiction and the best time of year to release a scifi and horror book is Halloween. So, there, we have a goal. Goal is set.

Each and every day I am spending reading my novel aloud to myself to find the mistakes that need to be corrected. I have sent the book out to a few friends and family and acquaintances as well as gotten it into the hands of a couple agents and publishers (who declined btw) I know friends and family aren’t always the most objective when reviewing and there can tend to be some bias there, but I do trust the people that I have handed the book over to. I trust them to not hold back and to play it straight for me.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. Never a novel, but I’ve been writing for a very long time. I wrote my first script in 1998 and self produced my first film based on that script in 2001. Then, I was off. I was a writing machine. My early work is CRAP. Utter garbage. Some of it got better with time. Two Days with Juliet, my feature from 2003, garnered itself a couple small awards that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t written so much shit. Juliet was a story about a cutter who was dealing with the sudden loss of her parents. It was a very tightly wound story that I wrote around one location. The characters were great. Deep and well thought out real people. That was the first time characters appeared in my writing and not caricatures.

That script had zero editing involved. I wrote what I shot and shot what I wrote. It was the perfect script. There was no room anywhere to cut anything. I thought it was the Same thing with Cold Winter. My backyard, again, award-winning, WWII spaghetti western. The script was tight, but this, I ending up learning a valuable lesson about editing. When you film something and one shot Is completely fucked and you have to rewrite the final film around that missing scene, can get interesting. You learn how much can be said and not shown and shown and not said with missing scenes. I ended up cutting ten minutes of scenes from the film, because we couldn’t keep them for various continuity reasons.

With a book, I have a tough time editing. It’s difficult for me to know what and where to cut scenes. So, I have to go with my gut. My gut tells me. My instincts let me know how much is too much and what is good and not good and what pushes the story forward and what is just filler.

About three years ago I started the novel. Then it got put aside for many months after a few chapters had been written. Then life got in the way and writer’s block got in the way. I’ve always hated that chapter. The transitionary chapter between the old me and the new me was a mess. I wrote it when my life was a mess. I didn’t truly become a writer until I got an iPad and I was able to write with the flick of a finger.

So. I the process of the third read through… I completely cut out chapter six. It’s gone. I went from 100,000 words down to 97,000 words with that flick and swipe of a finger. A short rewrite at the intro of chapter seven…. And poof. Fixed.

This morning I get an email from a friend who has been somewhat of a creative sounding board with me for the last few years. She doesn’t pull any punches and lays everything down straight. She’s always the first to tell me stuff is too wordy. Me… I just see the movie in my head.

This is what she had to say about my novel, which she hasn’t finished yet:

” I was enjoying what I was reading, but, as you know, there is a lot of editing down I think that can help.  But it is unique and, in a word, visonary.”

Visionary.

To me, that’s not a word I take lightly.

Thank you for the compliment. Hopefully I can get the book out to a few more readers and start getting some feedback before I decide to develop this into a tv series or something!

The Seven Isaacs – synopsis

The Seven Isaacs – Synopsis

When Eight awoke he never suspected it would be the last time he would see Father.  He also never suspected that he, along with his brothers and sisters would suddenly be thrust into the wild, hunted by an elite and specially trained military task force.

Eight and his six siblings are by-products of an underground, illegal human cloning experiment.  Born and raised in a laboratory under constant scrutiny, observation and experimentation, they’ve rarely, if ever seen the blue skies of the world outside. 

One day, the alarm sounds and the man they call Father ushers them toward safe passage, as the laboratory is seized and shut down by a government task force. The seven aptly named and numbered children are forced into a world unknown and unseen by their senses to experience the vivid realities that we consider day to day living.  While struggling with the rising emotions of anger, greed, love, loss and religion, they quickly learn of their delicate place in this world along with the frailty of their bodies and minds as they cope with medical side-effects of their condition as only Father could explain.
 
Oh, and lest we forget, the task force that is set upon their capture and if necessary, extermination of this inhuman and abnormal breed of humanity.

The Seven Isaacs spans 100,000 words and dissects the journey of the seven children as they discover the modern world for the first time, for better and for worse, while fighting for their lives against a military that is hunting them and the secrets in their past that haunt them.  Bordering on a science fiction modern reality and medical discovery, the story unfolds and gently touches on the philosophical effects that human cloning can have on the minds of children when faced with the harsh realities of their differences in this world.

Hit me up if you want to give it a read.

So I came home from vacation to this.  My ONE AND ONLY COPY of MY NOVEL.  I had a single copy printed up just for posterity reasons, as well as for formatting and sizing purposes.  I needed to see how it really looked.  A novel isn’t really a novel until it’s tangible and in your hands is it?

The editing is coming along.  Soon I’ll have links for the ebook and such available.

So, I came across this today. They are some handwritten chapter outlines for my novel The Seven Isaacs. …and wouldn’t you know it, i didn’t follow this at all! Good thing. My stream of consciousness was WAY better and took me to a special dark place to write from. I am absolutely fascinated by the process of creativity.

This is the design I made for the cover of my novel, The Seven Isaacs.  I finished it up not too long ago, and it is in the process of being corrected and edited as we speak.  It’s a long process that hopefully won’t take too much longer, then I will have links and free copies via ebook for people.   the cover speaks multitudes and is yet abstract enough to make you want to read more. There’s still some work to do both on the cover and on the book itself.. but we are getting there!