The brainstorming process for discovering Ghost Little's far-reaching science fiction novel, Suns Go Dark, began with a literal dream a girl had.

From that kernel of a dream, I explored its viability as a large epic, as a short story, or as a simpler free book to read online, but in any case, it would tie into the rest of the larger story arc spread across the other books.

In time, I discovered Suns Go Dark was the governing themetic force linking these stories together. But how did it go from dream to page?

The Dark Tower is an inaccessible magnum opus of imagination and insignificance. It's probably a tricky pitch for a movie, as well. In fact, I recall the potential for a movie adaptation news motivating my initial read of the text.

And, yes, that marathon session through the series roughly ten years ago revealed:

1. This is a story structured around the terrifying idea of an endless universe
2. This is a story about writing as a craft
3. Because of the first two things, it's a wickedly difficult series of books to pitch as a mega-big Hollywood movie (let alone properly adapt into a movie)

But how does The Dark Tower teach us how to write stories, how to write characters, and how to write worlds...?

In the animated .gif to the side here, you'll observe a hundred-million dollar rendering of King Kong whipping a freak-beast with a boat propeller attached to a chain.

This is from the film Kong: Skull Island. It's so dumb. I loved it. But the movie's also a living embodiment of culture-as-a-franchise (or, CaaF, which I just made up).

Thousands of people spent insane cash to put a bet on movies like Kong: Skull Island. Interfacing with this sort of entertainment is exhausting.

How do we counteract this trend? We go low-tech. We go local. We enjoy indie bands. We discover free books to read online. We pull our heads out of the sand...

Writing and self-publishing a novel in roughly 25 days isn't out of the question. Now, that writing and publishing milestone isn't going to make any modern writer a single red cent. Nevertheless, posting a working "beta" draft, something that may become a novel and people may one day pay to read, must become measurable.

I've approached this declarative moment.

Ghost Little has built a living document, a library of free books to read online, tailored to modern reading habits and written with digital distribution at its foundation.

This is how to write a short novel and how indie authors can get their work out there.

It's not technically anybody's fault that corporate-sponsored escapism has become a team sport in 2017. It's just what happens when a sub-demographic like the Xillennials (that's the folks in their mid-30s with living memory of the 1980s) were raised by aggressive, cruel marketing campaigns.

Sega against Nintendo. Boys against girls. Kids against their parents.

Now we have a half-dozen movie franchise shared universe vehicles to side with or against. While Marvel's MCU has succeeded up to this point, the Warner Bros. and Universal copycats are dying on the vine.

How'd they botch it...?

There a great difference between movies released in the summer movie "season" and movies that are emblematic of the summer season. Movies that embody that summer mood. These are movies you always watch when the season is making you jump.

I want to address the best summer movies. Movies that are about long days and about living for night.

Today, I'll look back at 2012's cult 3D-showpiece: DREDD, starring Karl Urban.

What're you reading this summer? Really, not anything? No, if it has the word "GIRL" in the title, it doesn't count, sorry.

You've got a phone, don't you? You probably even have an iPad. Here's a hint, check the Kindle store for free stuff. 

You don't need to spend any money on summer reading just yet. There's a great library of free books to read online over on the Amazon Kindle Store. This will help you narrow the search... 

The modern world demands we manage our time. When you sit in a tiny room opposite a person interviewing you for a job, they're going to ask you how well you'll deal with the demands of time.

It's a matter of allocation and prioritization. This demand seeps over into our off-work hours, namely, that the modern world will offer fewer of those hours, if you can even manage to distinguish them.

Enter: Netflix. The bullet that killed broadcast TV. It's still "television," but it's on-demand streaming. Of course, if Netflix killed TV for busy adults, how will the upcoming Netflix Alternative manifest, meaning, what'll kill Netflix?

Conjecture: video games. Why? Because they invite agency.

I'm sorry, I've done the math. It's solid.

Yes, it turns out, I've read some stuff on the internet. What's more, I've read some books. The words and lettering, my god, they match up!

Now, here's the trouble: writing is a craft and 97% of what you read out there is shoddy and physically harmful, like a child living off his own hand-crafted birthday cake for his entire adolescence. That's a heck of a tummy ache.

I want to solve that problem. Here on Ghost Little, I'm writing free books to read online, available for all, with the audience in mind...

Taking the planet's hyper-fast globalization into consideration, we must face facts that clear communication across all available channels is already a critical survival ability for humans.

Learning how to write quickly and honestly is an under-exercised muscle in the human arsenal.

Until a search engine can properly face-scan a few quintilian faces on video files, writing remains the most measurable communication format, and the blog post remains the backbone of the written word for all peoples, personally and professionally.

Mastering this writing craft will make you an efficient, effective communicator...