The REAL Adventures of a Newlywed - Day 2

Monday, October 12, 2015

Wake up EXHAUSTED... What day is it? How is it 9am already? My body is warm and dead... nothing wants to move. I check my phone... How do I have 150,000 emails? oh 149,990 are facebook comments and pictures we've been tagged in! We both feel so loved!

I eventually slink to the bathroom to put in contacts. How am I still so EXHAUSTED???

I step on the scale in the bathroom. My weight is down from what I expected and I haven't worked out in almost a week. How is this even possible? Before the wedding I would have gained a million pounds if I didn't work out for a week... Thanks stress! Either way, small victory that I didn't gain a metric ton of weight! I quietly vow to start working out on Wednesday after I get back to work even though I should probably start today... But I'm way WAY too tired! Plus we have stuff to do.

I finally get my butt in the shower. I start to feel more human. I also get the idea for this set of blog posts. I start running with it. But I'm out of time and have to finish getting ready so Andrew and I can return duplicate and broken  presents and buy a few much needed items off our registry. In between getting ready, I field phone calls. I accidentally give someone my maiden name... That's going to take some serious getting used to... when I decide what I actually want my name to be... even if I haven't officially changed anything yet. Soooo not looking forward to that process. I keep thinking of the million things that my name is on that will need to be changed. All in due time...

I scarf down two leftover cinnamon rolls. It's such a glamorous breakfast. But it lets us finally get out of the house.

We stop at the bank to make a deposit then meet with Andrew's financial analyst who I've never met. He's a nice guy but we don't stay long... Too much to do.

We run to Target to try and figure out who the mystery gift is from but they can't help. That's a shame, I'd really like to thank someone for that electric screw gun... I guess we're screwed...

We grab the couple items we really need including our bluray player cause its on sale YAY! All in all between coupons and sales, we save $80. I'll take it!

We move next door to bed bath and beyond to exchange a broken gift and return some duplicates. We head to the back of the store to grab a copy of our registry. The woman back there asks us if we know about their completion event that we apparently should have been told about when we created our registry. We joke with the woman about being married two days and if Andrew is the guy i married. It was probably way funnier in person than it sounds on here. We still decide to pick up another couple of needed items. Apparently my definition of need and Andrew's is slightly different. Welcome to married life ;) But we wander the aisles looking for things on our registry... We only registered 6 months ago... why has everything in the story moved? Of course I can't find anything cause of course! But somehow we make it through the store... and pay using our store credit YAY for that!

We head out to go start discussing honeymoon plans! We both could use a vacation right about now! Holy moly are we still tired. We can't wait to get out of here! Too bad we have to wait til January. At least we will get some amazing weather and skip out on some of the cold! Hawaii here we come!

We stop at the grocery store on the way home. Picking up a handful of items plus something for dinner takes three times longer than it probably should. If anyone finds my brain please let me know... I'm guessing I ate in my zombie like state.

We finally get home. I grab a late lunch and start in on the 1 billion thank you notes I have to write. I make a dent, but i start realizing there's probably more gifts coming. Some of the stuff off our registry hasn't arrived yet.  **groan** I'll be writing these things FOREVER. So glad I already wrote all the thank you's for the gifts we got before the wedding!

Then I start operation clean out DVR. It's nice and relaxing. I make a small dent but then it's time for dinner. We get everything cooking and sit down to watch Heroes reborn. We start some laundry. Then dinner is ready and we watch Quantico. We do dishes and start the dishwasher. And then it's time for Big Bang Theory. Leonard and Penny are newlyweds too, but their lives seem so much simpler. Being a newlywed is soooo not that easy but they have a "dog" just like us. Wow we are so glamorous! Two days in and we're already an old married couple. Until we starting playing footsy on the couch... we like to push each others buttons. That hasn't changed.

Andrew starts throwing out silly Halloween costume ideas he sees online, sexy sorcerer's apprentice, strawberry shortcake, sexy darth vader... why is everything sexy? then there's sexy chewbaccca ... there's nothing sexy about a walking carpet... I'll stick to cosplay thanks ;)

And now it's time for bed... cause TIRED... I'm sensing a theme here... :-P

The REAL Adventures of a Newlywed - Day 1

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Wake up a Mrs...

Mrs. Zombie that is... I'm freaking tired...

Stumble around... looking for something to satisfy... that hunger... BRAINS...

No...

That's not the right kind of hunger ... neeeeeeeed foood.

Get dressed and head down stairs and pack up the car. Decide I'm going to eat my arm off if I dont get food so we head to the restaurant. Tag up with friends and mumble incoherently about needing food.

Get food and collapse in the chair. Feel a little better and reminisce with friends. The inlaws walk in and join us... Holy shizzz I have inlaws...

We eat, we talk. Then it's time for everyone to start hitting the road. Time for goodbyes. I start crying. There's more crying during this time than there was during my entire wedding.

DEAR GOD... I'm a hormonal teenager... no I'm a hormonal preteen zombie... What is wrong with me??

Someone asks if i need help packing up the rest of my stuff. We head upstairs to finish up. Why in the hell do we have so much stuff, we've only been here two days.

We pack up the car, but we still have to pack up the hospitality suite.

OMG why is there so much food left over. Who wants what? I will never eat all this stuff... wait who am i kidding I can eat whatever I want, I don't have to fit into a dress anymore.

The hotel manager comes in with boxes to help us. My future brother-in-law gets caught "stealing" hotel pens... she lets him have them while my sister and I laugh hysterically in the corner.

We're almost ready to head out but my sister wants to look at invite and save the date samples at some point and my mom wants to do it now. We all plop down and pick our favorites. We have 11 months to finish planning her wedding. Everyone stand up and switch places. She's the bride to be and I'm the matron of honor. CUE MORE PLANNING!

We head out and FINALLY get home. But we have to unload the car and the house is now a disaster. When everything is unloaded Andrew crashes in bed watching some old movie and I go pick up the dog. She's pooped when she gets home. We totally know the feeling!

We unpack... how did I have so much stuff at a hotel for two days? EESH What was I thinking?

We call the hotel cause they didn't give us our cake topper or let us know if we had any leftover cake. They cant seem to find it though.

After unpacking we FINALLY open presents. Lots of stuff from our registry. Some cool stuff that isn't. Darth vader/stormtrooper salt and pepper shakers, rubber covers for the microwave, a menorah shaped like a dreidel from Israel. Then we get to a bag secured by a ziptie. Apparently Andrew hates these but he knows exactly who this gift is from and he's right. Some toys for him and stuff for me! And we have only one gift without a card. Not too bad! All in all, we are so thankful for all the wonderful gifts and how thoughtful everyone was!

Our friends call to see what we are up to and we invite them over so we can do dinner together. In the mean time my mom stops by to bring us even more food cause the 800 pounds we already have isnt enough. She wants her basket of kippot back but she manages to leave it. I guess we aren't the only tired ones.

We head out to dinner before our friends son melts down from hunger. I know the feeling kid, I know the feeling! On the way to dinner, we stop by the hotel to give them the smack down. They find our cake topper and box up our cake... it takes FOREVER. Seriously how long does it take to box a cake? Certainly not 20 minutes... This isn't rocket science... In the mean time our friend's son has a metric ton of cookies because he's hungry. World's greatest parents! (no seriously who wouldn't want cookies for dinner?)

We eventually get all our cake and head to dinner. Dinner is good and fun but uneventful and we head home to watch Doctor Who in bed. I pass out ten minutes in... story of my life....

The Epitome of First World Problems

Weddings are stressful. Anyone who has gotten married or is getting married knows this. And it’s not your traditional kind of stress. It’s a stress I’ve never experienced before. Your emotions are on overdrive and the stupid shit… it just starts to eat away at you until you just collapse into a puddle of tears and idiocy.

Sure there have been plenty of things to stress about. Preparations, venue, planning, what band to use who needs to do this who needs to that etc etc etc. There’s a lot of moving parts and getting all the stars to align is darn near impossible. And let’s not even talk about all the vendors out there ready and willing to pray on those ever fragile emotions. But when everything finally seems to come together into one state of Zen, something blows up in your face. I’ll say it again, weddings are stressful.

Without diving into all the gory details, there’s been wrong contract dates, a messed up wedding band, getting suckered into a nearly free honeymoon package that is a complete and utter scam, a million stupid other things getting screwed up, and lots and lots of drama. And I thought I could have a drama free day. HA HA HA. 

You end up in the place I'm currently in... The Epitome of First World Problems...

But in all that craziness you start to worry about all the little details and the important things seem to be left in the dust.

So as I sit here in a heaping puddle of tears, sixteen days out from my wedding, I’m reclaiming the important parts. Because at the end of the day, the important thing is I’m getting to marry the love of my life and we’re getting to spend the rest of our lives together. And that’s really the only thing that matters. The rest is just extra bullshit that might be wonderful to have, but in reality I don’t need. I have everything that is necessary to make this day be happy, the man I’m marrying.

So here’s a big middle finger to all the stress, scams, and stupid shit. I’m over you. I’m going to enjoy the next sixteen days, marry the man of my dreams and party my ass off with my family and friends. And if I trip on my dress and fall face first into my cake, well shit happens, at least the cake will taste good.

Tearing Things Down

Wow, so it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here. Sorry about that! Life kind of got in the way. In the last four or so months, I’ve sold two condos, bought a house, moved, continued on with wedding plans (a little over a month to go), attended the funeral of my 94 year old grandfather (as hard as death is I have comfort in knowing he lived a long and very full life.), and changed jobs. To say I’ve been a bit busy is an extreme understatement. There’s been good, bad and ugly over the last few months, but I look forward to all the good coming in the remainder of the year.

Sadly, the only thing I haven’t been doing a lot of is writing, which is evident in the cobwebs growing around this blog. It’s been a rough road and my schedule and stress level have made writing downright painful over the last six months or so. But in taking a new job as a teardown and cost engineer, I’ve learned some things about my writing. In my new role at work, we take aircraft parts and pull them apart to their base components. We study each piece, try to uncover all the processes that were involved in making it, and then try to understand how it is connected to the other pieces in order to create a much larger functioning part.

And in doing a few of these teardowns, I’ve realized I should really be doing the same with my writing. Take it apart to the bare bones, understand my characters, their motivations, what makes them tick, and how their stories and actions work together to create a much larger cohesive story. There’s a lot of moving parts to a manuscript and until you understand each of them, you can’t fully connect with your writing, your plot, your setting, or your characters.

So my next step is to spend some time really digging into my current WIP; getting to know all the elements so I can build an even better overall story. In doing so, I hope that I can dive head first into my current and future projects with a renewed sense of excite. I’ve got a lot of excitement headed my way and I hope to carry that into my writing in the future.

Thanks to all who have stuck with me through the rollercoaster over these last few months. I hope to share some quite a bit of happiness throughout the rest of the year. Keep doing your thing and I’ll be right there with you.

Mystery Twitter Theater

 

You're not going to believe this. I just found out I'm a suspect in a crime. Noted YA blogger Ensconced in Lit was murdered yesterday and her body has been found on Twitter. Yep, you read that right--Twitter. Apparently the killer made off with a super-epic LIARS, INC. prize pack and now everyone thinks maybe it was me. Well guess what, it wasn't me because Ensconced in Lit is one of my best twitter buddies. We even go out for coffee! But on that night I wasn't with her. I headed home from work to grab my laptop so I could meet some local writers at the coffee shop. I was there writing until about 9pm when I headed home and snuggled up with my dog.

I mean... how could anyone with a dog that cute murder a friend? Will you help prove my innocence? Head over to Paula Stokes's blog for all the information about the crime. If you can figure out who the real killer is and how they did the deed, Paula is going to award YOU the super-epic LIARS, INC. prize pack, which includes a hand-painted tote, a signed book, a deluxe swag pack, and additional mystery prizes. Come to think of it, I might just have to do a little investigating myself. After all, that prize pack is kind of to die for.

Or should I say to kill for...

#MysteryTwitterTheater was created to celebrate the release of LIARS, INC. a twisty YA mystery/thriller!

For fans of Gone Girl, I Hunt Killers, and TV's How to Get Away with Murder.

Max Cantrell has never been a big fan of the truth, so when the opportunity arises to sell forged permission slips and cover stories to his classmates, it sounds like a good way to make a little money and liven up his senior year. With the help of his friends Preston and Parvati, Max starts Liars, Inc. Suddenly everybody needs something and the cash starts pouring in. Who knew lying could be so lucrative?

When Preston wants his own cover story to go visit a girl he met online, Max doesn’t think twice about hooking him up. Until Preston never comes home. Then the evidence starts to pile up—terrifying clues that lead the cops to Preston’s body. Terrifying clues that point to Max as the murderer.

Can Max find the real killer before he goes to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? In a story that Kirkus Reviews called "Captivating to the very end," Paula Stokes starts with one single white lie and weaves a twisted tale that will have readers guessing until the explosive final chapters.

Missing Pieces Cover Reveal

Summary:  
“Your family is the most important part of your life. Your families are the people you love, and love is what separates us from scoundrels and criminals. It maintains order. Your parents, your sibling, and your Partner are the ones you love. There should never, ever, be anyone else who comes close to that bond. You have only one best friend, and that is the person you’ll be marrying some day. We must learn to differentiate the relationships in our lives: the people we love, and the ones we don’t. It’s inappropriate, it’s foolish, and it’s forbidden to think otherwise.”

Trace Bailey’s mouth is her worst enemy—somehow it always gets her in trouble. Luckily, she has a partner in crime—her best friend and neighbor since age seven, Piren Allston. He can’t get enough of her crazy sense of humor, and she loves that he’s always up for another adventure.

They can’t be friends, though, not in their world. Trace and Piren were Assigned to other people at the age of six, and they’re supposed to marry their Partners when they turn twenty-four. Failure to comply leads to Banishment, a fate worse than death.

Worse still is the growing realization that their bond is stronger than just friendship.

In a world without freedom, there are still choices to be made. Following their hearts means losing their family, but following the law means losing each other.

Social Media:
Website: http://meredithtate.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mltate24
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authormeredithtate
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31158937-meredith-tate



Author Bio:
A proud New Hampshire native, Meredith Tate lives in St. Louis with her husband. She loves reading and writing in all genres, but has a soft spot for dark young adult and new adult speculative fiction. Meredith has a master's degree in social work from the University of New Hampshire. She is a contributor to the St. Louis Writer's Guild's "Write Pack Radio Show" every Sunday afternoon. When she’s not writing, Meredith enjoys traveling, playing the piano, befriending wild geese, and spending time with family and friends. Much like her characters, she’s always up for another adventure.

The Common Problems With Sci Fi

 

Over the weekend I saw Jupiter Ascending. While I enjoyed it, I couldn't help but notice some common problems with sci fi, running rampant in this movie.

For a little clarity I'm going to give you a quick run down of the opening of the movie then use that to explain some common mistakes that occur in sci fi stories that don't quite work. See if you can spot some of the problems as I explain. And if you get lost in the explanation skip to the bold *** section and see why you got lost.

Meet the parents

The movie opens with a narration and meeting Jupiter's parents as they first find each other. Dad likes science and astronomy, Mom likes that he's crazy and into science. Fast forward, boom Mom is pregnant, and Dad wants to name the kid Jupiter. Mom says you can't name a kid after a planet, and then they get robbed in their own home. Dad tries to stop them from getting his precious telescope and gets shot and SPOILER **DIES**. At this point we aren't sure what this has to do with the story other than how our main character came to be.

Meet Jupiter

Fast forward some more and here's Jupiter. She wakes up at 4:45 am every morning, cleans toilets with her mom in fancy homes, and dreams of something more. Her life is boring and it sucks. YAWN. We get it Jupiter doesn't like things as they are, and feels like she should have more out of life.

Meet the sibling aliens
We are on some beautiful planet with tall shiny buildings and it's deserted. Oh wait who are those two? They are wearing fancy clothes and talking about inheritance. A third guy materializes out of mid air. One guy wants to make a trade and the other thinks it's cause he squandered his inheritance. They seem to tolerate each other and be related, but we don't know who they are, why we should care about them, or what they have to do with Jupiter who we just met.

Jupiter and her cousin
We know Jupiter wants nice things and can't afford them so she is getting her eggs harvested cause she wants to buy a telescope like the one that got stolen from her Dad. Her skeevy cousin has talked her into this and is using her for money. Again why do we care? What does this have to do with Jupiter and her story.

Meet more crazy aliens
We have some new crazy aliens with cool hair and tattoos on a roof watching another alien on the ground. Oh he's got cool boots, he's called a something or other that I never caught the name of. And oh hey, we can't let him live, but we won't tell you why.

Alien with the cool boots uses some cool tech to walk through a solid door into a fertility clinic to look at some records.

Aliens on the roof descend to the ground, one has a cool hover bike.

Alien with the boots emerges with a cool energy shield and they all fight in this epic fight scene with laser weapons and hover boots, but we aren't quite sure why.

Jupiter sees aliens

We've got some crazy lady Jupiter works for and cue the aliens mind probing the weird lady. Jupiter takes a picture on her cell phone that she later can't remember.

Crazy alien sibling wants someone dead
Cue crazy alien sibling number one. He wants what's rightfully his. What is that? We aren't really sure. He also wants someone dead. We aren't sure who said person is or why.

Jupiter goes to get her eggs harvested, uses a fake name

The aliens find her and scan her. She's the one, let's kill her! Cue crazy alien with the hover boots and she's rescued in some grand fight/chase scene. It's super cool. I SWEAR! But I still have very little clue as to what's happening to her or why.

Jupiter wakes up with alien

Every time he opens his mouth, it's to explain the world as he knows it, and to explain how everything Jupiter knows is only a partial truth. He was sent to rescue her by some guy and cue the info dump.

***

Are you still here or did you get lost? If you got lost, there's no shame. I saw the whole movie, and I'm still not quite sure I understand what happened. The problem is, by this point we are so far down the rabbit hole, I'd say at least 30 to 40 minutes deep in this movie, and we have nothing to latch onto. There's a million different story lines and characters, and very little grounding. But hey everything looks really cool! They are trying to build this amazing world with awesome tech, and keep secrets from the audience, but in the process all they have done is create confusion and little connection to the characters. And spoiler, as the movie goes on every time an alien opens his or her mouth, there's more giant dumps of information.

So what went wrong?

Cool Scenery

Hey everything was gorgeous, visually stunning in fact, but none of it seemed to have any point in the story. In fact sometimes we had no idea what planet we were on or why it mattered. It very often gave the audience a "why are we here" and "why should we care" feeling.

Cool Tech

What is sci fi without cool tech? I love fun things like hover boots, hover bikes, and energy shields. But if it's just floating around early in the story to say hey this is different than the world we know today, and it doesn't seem to fit with in the context of the story, it will probably confuse your readers. Put the cool tech in by all means, but at least make some of it serve a purpose with the plot and/or characters.

Character Development

Sometimes we get so excited about sci fi and all the possibilities that we forget the reader needs to connect with our characters. We can throw cool characters in there, but if we have no reason to care about them or connect with them from the beginning, we as a reader are going to give up and move onto something else.

Dropped in the Action

Fight scenes, yes they are cool and full of action and excitement. The problem with them is, if they are done incorrectly, you feel dropped in the middle. Even worse when there's crazy tech and characters the audience doesn't care about, this creates chaos and confusion. We get those, "who are these people", "why are they fighting", and "why should we care" feelings. If you are going to have an action sequence or a cool fight scene make sure the reader is grounded in it so they know why the parties are fighting, and why it's so exciting.

Back Story

This is a common problem in a lot of books not just sci fi. That said, in Jupiter Ascending did we really need 20 minutes of movie to explain how Jupiter's parents met, how she came to be, and that her life sucks cause she cleans toilets? Nope. Sure it told us she had money problems, wanted greater things for her life, and got her to the clinic where she was attacked by aliens, but a much more interesting story may have shown Jupiter's struggle with money in some fun way and let the dad's telescope thing come out a little more organically.

Show vs Tell / Info Dumps

Now I put these together because they seem to go hand in hand. While sci fi can have slightly more telling than say a contemporary story, there still needs to be a balance between show and tell. There are ways to show different worlds, alien species, and what they are all about without telling the audience everything about them. And if every time an alien opens his or her mouth it's to dump a million pieces of information on the reader, then you are just going to overwhelm them with weird names, facts, and plot with a lot of unnecessary back story. So there needs to be a way the reader can be informed of the important information organically and gradually. It needs to be woven seamlessly throughout the story instead of like word vomit on the page.

All that said, Jupiter Ascending had a lot of potential. And if you take it for a visually stunning movie with some cool ideas then you will enjoy the movie. If you rip it apart for it's many plot problems, you may not like it as much. I found myself having to turn my brain off at times and just enjoy the pretty scenery and awesome technology. So if you write sci fi, use this as a lesson to create cohesive, exciting sci fi with awesome characters and a kick ass plot that unfolds before the readers eyes and entices them to keep reading.

Naked Cover Reveal

Naked

by Stacey Trombley

Release Date: 07/07/15

Entangled Teen

305 pages

Summary from Goodreads:

The best place to hide is in a lie…

I could never fit in to the life my parents demanded. By the time I was thirteen, it was too much. I ran away to New York City…and found a nightmare that lasted three years. A nightmare that began and ended with a pimp named Luis. Now I am Dirty Anna. Broken, like everything inside me has gone bad.

Except that for the first time, I have a chance to start over. Not just with my parents but at school. Still, the rumors follow me everywhere. Down the hall. In classes. And the only hope I can see is in the wide, brightly lit smile of Jackson, the boy next door. So I lie to him. I lie to protect him from my past. I lie so that I don’t have to be The Girl Who Went Bad.

The only problem is that someone in my school knows about New York.

Someone knows who I really am.

And it’s just a matter of time before the real Anna is exposed…

Pre-Order Links:
Amazon│Barnes & Noble│Kobo Books

About the Author

Stacey Trombley lives in Ohio with her husband and the sweetest Rottweiler you’ll ever meet. She thinks people are fascinating and any chance she has, she’s off doing or learning something new. She went on her first mission trip to Haiti at age twelve and is still dying to go back. Her “places to travel” list is almost as long as her “books to read” list. 

She wants to bring something new to the world through her writing, but just giving a little piece of herself is more than enough.

Keep a look out for her debut novel NAKED, coming from Entangled Teen in 2015

Author Links:

   

Cover Reveal Organized by:

Pitching with a Twist

As most of you know I'm a giant space nut. So when I heard about SyFy's new space drama Ascension, I got pretty excited.

(**SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN EPISODE 1 OF ASCENSION**)

But upon finishing episode one I felt a bit cheated by that description. You see, there's a twist at the end of the first episode. (Really stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled.) Viewers discover in the last five minutes that the people who were launched into space in the sixties for a 100 year space mission, are really just part of a government experiment that never left Earth.

WHAT?

I did a double take. How could that ship shown in space not actually be there? And while I suspected earlier on in the episode this might be the case because there was little to no explanation as to how sixties technology would support this kind of long range space mission, I was still really shocked. But not in a good way. And that wasn't the only emotion surrounding me. I honestly felt extremely let down. Here SyFy was pitching this epic space drama (which they haven't done in quite some time), and in reality... there was zero space involved.

So all this got me thinking. How do you pitch a grand idea that has a giant twist, and not piss off your audience?

The pitch

The first thing you focus on is the pitch. Pitches are meant as a tease. They are also meant to entice the audience. In this case, I was teased by the space end of things, and I was definitely reeled in by the idea of a murder mystery on a space mission. But because the pitch is only meant to tease and not to spoil, the pitch should only focus on the initial part of the story, the inciting incident if you will. As far as Ascension goes, SyFy did everything right with their pitch. They teased me (maybe a little too much), and they definitely got my attention. So pitch well done! If you are pitching something with a twist, it's best to leave the twist out of the pitch.

The twist

The second thing to work on is the execution of the twist. This is where things can go south really quickly. You have to build up to the twist in such a way that when you do inevitably deceive your audience, they don't feel cheated, but feel enlightened and excited about the result. The clues and the story need to work together seamlessly, so that when the big reveal is dropped, it makes sense to the audience rather than leaving them rolling their eyes and/or feeling hoodwinked.

This, I think, is where SyFy didn't execute as well as they could have. In episode one, there weren't many, if any clues that supported the giant twist. While it's a really cool idea, there wasn't enough lead up to the twist. There was a lot of focus on the main plot, a girl who is murdered, and how one of the crew members managed to get a gun on board the ship. Which if this is the main plot of the story, that's fine to focus there, but the twist of not being in space needed to be tied into the main plot somehow. Thus far, it hasn't been (stay tuned for episodes two and three Tuesday and Wednesday).

Instead toward the end of the episode, we got a hint that the government was watching the Ascension's every move; which if they are on a long range space mission they should be. But unfortunately there wasn't a hint that this was some grand experiment that never even went into space, other than my deductive reasoning that developing this kind of technology in 1963 would have been extremely difficult.

The few breadcrumbs unfortunately didn't lead to the twist. This was a problem because when the bomb was dropped, we weren't even in the vicinity to take on the full blast. Instead, we were watching from afar shaking our heads at the devastation it caused. Which is not where you want to be when you reveal something huge. You want your audience so reeled in, they go how did I miss that? That's awesome, but... yeah, you want them speechless.

So if you want to plot out a grand sweeping twist for you story, great. Just make sure you build it so that's it entirely believable. Otherwise you risk upsetting your audience. On the flip side, a great twist will set off a series of emotions from your audience, but if you do everything right, they will be the right kind, not the feeling that someone cheated you out of something really cool.

Barrowmen's School of Immortality

John Barrowman's school of immortality

**ARROW MIDSEASON FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD**

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Step 1: Gain their trust

Step 2: Up the suspense

Step 3: Have an exit strategy

Step 4: Tear their hearts out

Step 5: Return with a vengeance