“Your writing partner likes to tweet.”
– Pointed observance made by an executive to my long-time writing/producing partner on his recent trip to L.A.
Well, yes and no. No insofar as I hate the 140 character limit and don’t really find twitter a suitable medium for relaying opinions and in-depth information outside of links. But yes in that it’s a terrific way to get the simple facts out like: “Dark Matter was one of Syfy’s most-watched scripted shows of 2017!”.
Still, very sweet of him to notice.
Which reminds me. Amidst all the thank you’s to cast and crew and fans, I neglected my extra special shout-out to the members of the Dark Council, the DM fans behind those Dark Matter FTL Drives that saw our little show trending weeks and days on end.
And so, thank you to…
Hilda Clark Bowen who put in many tireless hours amid the innumerable things she had to juggle in her own life.
Tom Gardiner who fought the good fight and, “coincidentally” had his syfy screener privileges revoked soon after writing an article critical of the show’s cancellation.
Kelli and Lance Zielinski, the dynamic duo and techy twosome who helped lay the groundwork for all those FTL Drives.
Syrine Epiome representing the overseas contingent with a wealth of ideas and some mighty marvelous artwork.
Lo Ren who helped keep the dream alive with some amazing graphics to drive the campaign.
Elise Cochrane, another member of Team Europe, who went above and beyond the call to help spread the word.
Thank you all.
Yes, thank you to all those who handled the logistics. Individuals who put so much extra into the effort of recovering Dark Matter. While our friends have yet to be saved and the Raza is still out there echoing in the cosmos; continuing in some alternate timeline perhaps, we know it resides forever in our hearts.
🏆👍
Many thanks indeed. I am in awe of folks who can pull off amazing endeavors!
They are all awesome for leading us!!! Thank you to all of you!!!
Hi Joe
Yes, many thanks to one and all who herded us through those wonderful weeks.
Elminster (AKA Randy Coleman)
Big thanks for all those folks from us too! We appreciate all the work you all put into trying to save our show.
Today, Twitter increased the character limits to 280 characters for everyone and not just the beta test group. Mixed reviews on that move.
It was a fun month working on trying to find Dark Matter a home. It was actually a gift to me to get immersed and involved in the effort. I didn’t have time to think about Patrick and his move to a group home and this being the last school year for him. I came right off the Hurricane Harvey stuff (which also distracted me) and flowed right into this.
Now that September is gone and October was used to get my taxes done (which I got done 2 days before the deadline), my 25th wedding anniversary festivities (except I’m still not done with THAT video–that has evolved into something huge), and my 2-day beach trip with my book club friends (who always excuse me from reading any book because of my life), I’m finding that I’m not quite busy easy and the tears have begun to flow again. (BTW, if we are FB friends, I have my beach pictures on my page. They look like they are all sunrise pictures, but look the ones that aren’t in screenshot of each entry. There are ugly jelly fish, and shells I found, and the interior of the amazing beach house (that was FREE). I love FREE.
But now its November, and I have Christmas stuff to start preparing. I’ve decided to do calendars for my clients’ gifts this year (if I’ve seen their pets enough to have that many pictures). Have to figure out an alternate gift for the others. Christmas cards will be a breeze this year because of my new system. And I have to work on my Christmas letter. I might find myself with enough time that I may want to decorate outside. Haven’t done that in YEARS.
And I promised Jeff I’d get the anniversary video done by the end of the year.
I hope that we will be able to continue the effort at some point in time (you never know what may change to make it something that can be done). But I’d like to also try to keep everyone together and continue to care about each other.
XO We Love You Hilda. XO
Sounds like you had a wonderful time at the beach. I caught a couple of the pics on twitter. Very Nice.
By The way Joe; Hilda didn’t just stay on top of the Dark Matter FTL campaign and coordinate the most amazing, emotionally moving, send off video from the fans. She was always there to help with hosting live tweet ups for the U.S side during the shows run, whenever her schedule permitted.
Love you back. I spared Twitter the several hundred I took.
I thought everyone who worked on that series did an incredible job – all you mentioned and more – no wonder it was one of the most watched scripted SF shows of 2017 -it and all who helped put it together .. all deserve a much better fate. It had a something that few series SF or otherwise have – I can’t believe that the powers that decide such things didn’t value the chemistry and all the rest that worked (and it had an audience that could have grown enormously). It is hard to let go of that – for the viewer and those who created.
I would like to thank those who took the effort and made me apart of the campaign, especially Tom, who showed us and everyone just what Sci-Fi is made of. Even while I am on Long Term Disability and listed as a company employee, I understand what it means to have your privileges suspended.
Those are very kind words, but trust me when I say I didn’t lose much. Hell, I won. We all did. We came together and were heard around the world.
So I lost a couple of screeners from a dying network run by petty people. I made a thousand friends. From where I sit it’s a pretty nice view.
Today I learned that cowboy bebop has been greenlit as a live action series then I remembered you stating that you were hired to write a series bible with a pilot script and though wow if this sf project you spoke of is cowboy bebop well then that’s huge because with all the failures of doing live action remakes of our beloved anime title’s this one might actually be great truly great because I really do believe that you joe are the perfect guy to do cowboy bebop justice oh boy I really hope that this is what your doing.
I raise my hat to the Dark Council (great name!) for all you did for Dark Matter and us fans. Despite the cause, it was great fun and made made us all feel a part of something unique and special.
Plus I learnt a lot about Twitter
Thank you guys for all you did! 😁
It was a blast. Thanks for being a part of it.
I’ve been following Tom on twitter. He has a joie de vivre that I enjoy! In these times, it’s nice having a break from the bad. Syfy revoked his privileges? Sore winners (or whiners).
Pbmom is known by another name: Warrior Mom! I’m not sure how she does it all. Yay on the beach trip! The beach is my happy place.
A big thanks to all you mentioned! I might know Kelli, Lance, Syrine, Lo Ren or Elise. Does anyone know their twitter handles? I probably saw them when we did the tweet-a-thon. That was a lot of work! Kudos to all!!!
Drea: Are you moving back to Colorado anytime? I’d wait for spring…. 😉
Tam, I’ve got a list of the Council’s names & Twitter handles along with their permission to make it public. I intend to (eventually) write a blog post about these people because they all worked MUCH harder than I did. The post is slow in coming because, honestly, I’m emotionally spent but finding my energy again. Finally. (Sucks to get old)
For you and anyone who’s on Twitter, here are the names and handles for all seven (hey, what a serendipitous number!) members of the Dark Council:
Lorena Molina (@starbuck125)
Syrine Gouni (@the_epiome)
Hilda Bowen (@PBMom)
Kelli Zielinski (@The_Tabula_Raza)
Lance Zielinski (@MetalAria)
Elise Cochrane (@miaelsters)
Tom Gardiner (@Thogar)
Tom–We carried each other. <3
Warrior Mom doesn’t sleep much. Jeff says I’ve likely lived two lifetimes.
The beach is my happy place too. I’m a Pisces after all.
Cheers to the DM tweeters, it still hasn’t sunk in yet, I’m ready for Season 5 in Comix form. Thanks to @PBMom I caught up on Travelers season 2, Jennifer Spence and Patrick Gilmore are so good, and then Ms. Tapping showed up with Enrico Colantoni, and Andy Mikita directed, so much SG alum goodness.
Indeed, great thanks to all the members of the DC. Through their efforts, we were able to at least say that we tried everything that was feasible to save the show. Not to mention, it was kind of fun, and I got to “know” a lot more people on Twitter all around the world that are really cool.
Thanks for being a part of it. We just organized it; you guys were doing the hard part of tweeting and trending and trusting us as we experimented with different things (especially that first week).
Wait what? Did two blogs get mixed together?
Something went weird with WordPress. Your Nov 7 entry seems gone but all it’s comments are on this one!
Regardless, that sure was a lot of booze!
See? And when I couldn’t find the Nov 7 post earlier I thought it was my lack of sleep again.
Ah ha!!! I knew it, I knew it!!! I thought I was going crazy! I still am but now I know it wasn’t just me!
I’m so confused. The date on this blog entry confused me and my computer.
Are you saying there was no Whiskey in that group?
@PBMom – So whats your new system for Christmas cards? Are you talking about printing them?
@Tam Dixon – Who’s Tom?
I’m Tom. :o)
I read Joe’s blog every day, but don’t comment often. It’s creepier that way.
I’m sorry. Have I mentioned I’m old. In fact I will be retiring end of December. My brain has already gone. I saw these comments but I swear I did not see the post. Crazy eh?! I kept getting an Error 404 on my computer. So I just took a nap.
I know who you are. In fact Joe is quite fond of you. So am I. You comment plenty on this blog but I see you a lot more on Twitter. Carry on.
No need to apologize. I’m old, too, and will probably forget all of this by next Monday. My brain left years ago, but my mouth refuses to stop talking. And yes, I pretty much live on Twitter when my job isn’t making me do real stuff in the real world.
I would love to retire, but right now it’s a race to see if I retire from my job before my body retires on me. My money’s on the meatsuit cashing in first!
Christmas cards: I subscribe to a group called SendOutCards for my work clients. It allows me to make custom-made cards. I’d use them to send birthday or homing day cards to the pets, Christmas cards with some of my favorite pictures of the pets over that past year, grief cards for those who lost a pet, birthday & anniversary cards to the human clients, get well cards, (you get the idea).
My old process was buy Christmas cards. Find a picture or two of Patrick during the year and go to CVS and make copies. Mind you, I send out about 260 Christmas cards every year (down from the 400+ previous list). Then I would write a newsletter & it would print front and back of one page. I would have to fold those, write on Patrick’s pictures the year, print labels, write the name of the people in the card, put that all together, put the label on the envelope, and put a stamp on each one, too. When I had to choose between outdoor decorations or continuing with my Christmas card tradition I chose the cards because it was more person-to-person with people I cared about versus people driving who I didn’t know to admire or mock my decorations. The choice was easy for me.
Last year my new printer was not going to work with my Windows XP computer which was where the address book was. I tried getting them into Outlook but the labels wouldn’t print correctly. I was at my wits end and time was running out when I thought — SEND OUT CARDS!
It took me a while, but I added all the addresses from my Christmas card list to the address list of the cards, knowing that was the only time I would have to do that. Then I created the card. I could plaster that card with pictures. The front was the school pic of Patrick (which they aren’t doing this year until the SPRING!!! ARGH! — really I can’t complain because they do it for free), I’m trying to think if there is a way I can show you it. I don’t know how to insert pictures here but let me figure it out. Then I wrote in the card the password to the WordPress blog so they could read my Christmas letter. Although much of my life is online, there are some things I don’t want people who I don’t really know or certain people I would prefer stay out of my life, using my blog and doing a password protected entry was the best way to do it. There I was able to include many more pictures and even video, something Christmas cards the old way would not allow.
So the process this year will look like this: Go through and see if I need to remove anyone (like if someone passed away), or I remembered they moved and have to get their new address, etc. Then create the card, Go to my “groups” and highlight Christmas(home) and Christmas(OOC) (out of country). Click SEND. Boom. Done. It winds up costing about the same or maybe even a little less if you count all the costs for making copies of the Christmas letter, the cost of printing up the photos, the cost of the Christmas card, etc. This year I want to figure out how to insert their names into the cards so it is more personalized. I think I’ll try it on myself.
I have a Boomer one for people who need to get a Boomer picture card like his groomer, his vet. I have a Christmas(work) one for people who are business to business. All my Christmas(clients) ones will get an individually made card. I plan to have mine done hopefully around Thanksgiving so they get to people on-time this year.
Ponytail: Send me an email at HildaBowen@comcast.net and I can send you the JPEGs for the front picture and the inside cover. I’ll be happy to add you to my Christmas card list. I have a Chanukah card list, too. 🙂
@Joe:
I do miss hearing of the latest libation, and so I’m raising a glass of Aberlour in memory of the Dark Matter Whisk(e)y Club.
To commemorate the DMWC, how about some black t-shirts with the DRWC initials in the style of the CGBG scripts? I think that would look cool…
Lastly, any new whiskeys that you have your sights on? I’m planning to add a few new bottles over Christmas this year.
@PBMom:
A belated Happy Anniversary! I hope you and Jeff had some fun.
I apologize for the late well wishes; September and October were a blur, a car rebuild and traveling blur, but still a blur. It sounds like your life has been a whirlwind as well.
Thanks Jeff. My Jeff and I had a good time. Dinner was a little disappointing, but we actually got to go out ON the ACTUAL anniversary. Then when we got back and Patrick got off to sleep, Jeff and I opened each other’s gifts and we talked about highlights and low moments and the disbelief that with all the stuff that had gone on and the two times we almost didn’t make it, here we were and we knew this was forever for real. I know that is weird to say it that way, but marriage is not easy with a child with autism in the mix. There was one surprise in that review process that caught me off guard. He mentioned one of the moments he was most proud (not the only but among the list he gave) was when I started the first special needs ministry in our city and was doing all that volunteering. He never told me that before and I saw that time period as part of where our marriage started going all wrong because I was either working/taking care of Patrick and when he was home/taking care of Patrick, I would be doing ministry work so we never saw each other. Now I’m curious why things went sideways (yeah, better not stir that hornet’s nest, LOL).
Sounds like you too had a very busy September and October.
Ok, now that I have read the actual post that goes with these comments, I am up to speed. I agree the Dark Council did a fantastic and professional job. I have never tweeted so much before and learned a lot from PBMom. Tom Gardiner and the rest of the gang were awesome! Job well done!
Aw, thanks Joe. And on my 40th birthday you post this, too! :: hugs ::
I’ve been a little quiet lately, a lot of adjustment to my new job and some other shakeups, but still have some things I’m following up on now that things are settling down.