So in fun news for today: I can officially announce that I’m going to be contributor for Entertainment Weekly‘s new blog The Community.

How did this happen? Well, I happened to be on Twitter (ok ok, I’m always on Twitter) and saw that the EW was looking for bloggers about television shows. So I applied. I then got back an email asking for writing samples about shows I’ve written. I sent in my blog posts about How I Met Your Mother, The Walking Dead, and Doctor Who. Apparently there was something in there that was good enough because then I got a reply back saying I had been chosen and could I be available to speak on the phone with an editor?! I’ve been chosen along with 20 other bloggers to write about TV shows and I’m geeked. It’s been an awesome whirlwind experience over the past few months and I’m really excited about doing this. I mean basically I get to do what I’m already doing, just with a potentially bigger audience.

If you like TV shows, you should definitely check out the blog. It’s written by other superfans so you’ll get a nice variety of shows and different styles of writing. While the blog is already up and running, I won’t start posting until the week of April 20.

The first show that I’ll be covering is Metal Hurlant Chronicles on the SyFy channel. (It’s ok. I hadn’t heard about it either when I was originally assigned to it.)

But after watching the trailer, I’m excited to see it. It’s a sci fiction book based on a comic book series. Meaning, yes it’s a geeky show.

Synopsis from Wikipedia: Métal Hurlant Chronicles is an English-language Franco-Belgian television science fiction anthology series based on the popular comics anthology magazine Métal Hurlant, known in the United States as Heavy Metal and in Germany as Schwermetall. All the episodes are a self-contained story taking place on a different planet with a different cast, linked together only by the idea that an asteroid, the “Métal Hurlant”, passes the planet in question during the events of the story. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tal_Hurlant_Chronicles)

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea and that’s ok. The next few weeks I’m going to spend time doing some research on the show and comics so I can familiarize myself as best I can. Either way, this should be a fun time! If you follow me on Twitter or on my Facebook page, you’ll find out when I’ve posted!

Addendum: This is a really interesting opportunity for me. Unlike the other folks that are also going to be writing, I am not a journalist. I didn’t plan on writing about entertainment for a living (though it’d be pretty cool) and except for a few years as a high school correspondent for my local paper, I haven’t really tried my hand at journalism. I have a career outside of this. Yes, I like writing. Yes, I like to blog. Yes, I love entertainment. But it’s not what I was originally planning on doing. So it feels a bit weird to get chosen to do this and sometimes I really question why I got picked. Also it doesn’t help when I go online and see articles saying that I shouldn’t be doing this and that “exposure” doesn’t count as compensation and how I’m just screwing things up for “real writers”. It’s really easy to have all the insecurity slip in right now, and tell myself “you’re not that good!” or “you shouldn’t be doing this!”. But you know, I’m not going to focus on that. Right now, I’m ok with just getting experience and exposure. And no, nothing is wrong with me for wanting that. I’m also looking forward to learning things that I wouldn’t have I not been granted this opportunity. This isn’t a full time job for me and I’ll always have this blog to fall back on. So if next year I’m right back where I started, it’ll be ok. I’m excited to do this and we’ll see what comes out of it. I’m also going to have to grow a thicker skin it seems.