Losing My Mind

Well, it's actually losing myself in story over the weekend and the last couple of weeks.

High school soccer season started six weeks ago, so DH has been gone most nights since he's the timekeeper for both the boys' and girls' varsity and junior varsity games. His absence has actually been a good thing as I try to wrap up pre-production on Ravaged.

My writing is amusing from an editorial point of view. I mean, how many "to"s can an author manage to leave out of a manuscript? Let me put it to you this way, my original word count for the first draft was 83K. I'm halfway through the final proofread, and the word count is closing in on 89K. *smh*

Then there's trying to get A Modicum of Truth written. As any writer will tell you, the middle of a novel is the dangerous place. It's where the story has a tendency to bog down in minutiae.

I'm trying hard not to have the heroes heads disappear under bullshit. Unfortunately, that's meant a few false starts and the ripping out pages that don't work. Don't worry. It'll get there. A fabulous idea will pop into my head.

Probably when I'm in the middle of my shower.

And I just can't hop out these days and scribble something down because I recently colored my hair blue and purple. If you've done this before, you know about color bleed over the first couple of weeks after dyeing.

But cool hair definitely makes me feel more creative!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

When you have to do things your own way...

Farewell, Cassini

NASA/JPL Image of Rings and Pan

I woke up shortly before eight a.m. this morning, which is highly unusual for me. Let's face it I'm very much a night owl. After my morning ablutions, I did what I always do--check the news. And I realized I'd jerked awake about the same time the Cassini probe died in Saturn's atmosphere.

The Cassini-Huygens mission lasted far longer that the folks at NASA, ESA, ASI, and JPL at Caltech originally planned or envisioned. It launched in 1997, twenty years ago or way back when I was in my second year of law school.

After using the inner planets and Jupiter to slingshot its way to Saturn, Cassini-Huygens arrived in June of 2004. In December, Huygens separated from Cassini and landed on Saturn's largest moon Titan. The pictures and data they both sent back to Earth were freaking incredible. When Cassini's original four-year mission was a success and she was still chugging around Saturn, they extended her mission twice more before she started running out of power.

The mission directors had to make a decision. There was strong evidence that life may be or could form on a few of Saturn's moons. Titan, Enceladus and Europa are likely candidates. Cassini no longer had enough power to leave orbit. If it remained, it could disrupt or contaminate any proto-life on these moons. So the directors choose to send Cassini into Saturn's atmosphere.

At 7:55 a.m. EDT, NASA lost Cassini's signal as planned.

Farewell, Cassini! Thanks for all the cool pictures and the inspiration!

Risky Business

I've lost count of the number of posts I've written on writers and fear. Because of that fear, many writers refuse to take risks and they want guarantees that they'll make money if they get into this industry. Just this weekend I had yet another conversation with a relatively new writer about taking some risks with their books.

You want to know something. I think this person will be just fine in a writing career because they're willing to take those risks.

Folks, any business where you work for yourself is risky. It's your time and your capital on the line. You succeed or fail on your merits, no one else's. There's no one you can blame if you didn't do your research.

Oh, there'll be writers who try to blame someone. The current favorite target is Amazon. But a lot of the new kids haven't bothered to learn their craft. Their dialogue is stilted and unnatural. Their alpha males are total dweebs. And their heroines are Too Stupid To Live.

Even worse, they overanalyze a current bestseller, thinking if they write a book exactly like Big Name Author, then they too will be rolling in the dough.

If a reader already read BNA's book, why would they want to read the exact same book with the serial numbers filed off?

"But, but, but..." I can hear you say. "What about Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey?"

Let me ask you this is return, what else has E.L. James written? First of all, I'm not slamming Ms. James. A lot of us started our writing life with fan fiction. And that's exactly what FSoG is--fan fiction. It was basically risk free. Has James taken a risk with her own ideas? No, because doing so does not guarantee her any money.

On the other hand, J.K. Rowling's name became synonymous with her creation, Harry Potter. She took a major risk by adopting what was a secret pseudonym in order to take on a new series in a new genre. Her alter ego Robert Galbraith did pretty damn well for a debut author. Or he did until "he" was outed as Rowling.

Rowling could have continued milking Harry Potter. In fact, she's been accused of exactly that with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, even though she only helped write the outline of the play. However, Rowling the writer has stretched her artistic muscles and delved into other characters on other genres when she could have given up and coasted.

If you want a career as a writer, ask yourself how much risk are you prepared to take on. If you aren't willing to take chances, get yourself a job and buy lottery tickets. Trust me it will be a lot easier than pounding out words for a living.

Monday Movie Mania - Warcraft

Once again, we used an HBO free weekend to catch up on movies we missed in the theaters last year. Warcraft is one of those movies that had a lot of potential, and...

OMG! It sucked so bad!

This one of those cases when the best cast in the world making a movie based on the most popular MMORPG ever can't save a turgid turd of a script.

Warcraft wants to be Lord of the Rings for a new generation. Except Tolkien wasn't trying to recoup millions of dollars of investment when he wrote his saga. Warcraft is trying to be too much to be everything to everyone and succeeds at nothing.

1) I don't have a problem with viewpoints from multiple characters in a story. However, in most good stories the POV characters start out together with a unifying purpose. The Starks and their duty in Game of Thrones. The gathering of the Fellowship to destroy the One Ring in LotR.

Here the POVs are convoluted. Are we supposed to care about Durotan and his dying world? Lothar, whose home is being invaded by the desperate orcs? Khadgar, who starts as a total chickshit wizard before taking over as Guardian of Azeroth? Who exactly am I supposed to be identifying with and rooting for here?

Unfortunately, the story doesn't carry the soapish fascination that Game of Thrones has where there are characters you love to hate. Which bring me to...

2) The character development is rather lazy and half-assed. All the characters are reactive, rather than proactive. If we are given a reason for a certain action, it is never really fleshed out. We don't know why Gul'dan or Medivh succumbed to the Dark Side of the Force fel, and the sad part is you don't really care either.

3) I have nothing against CGI, but you can't use it sell your movie without a fucking story behind it. This isn't a story. It's a part of a story.  It ends near the beginning of the middle, so you're left with a feeling of incompleteness. And going back to the other two points, you're not given to a reason to want to find out what happens next.

4) I wanted Dominick Cooper to shut up so fucking bad because whatever the hell accent he was using sounded awful!

I'm so fucking glad I didn't spend my valuable popcorn money on this piece of crap. In a very rare case, because I can usually find something redeeming in a movie, I give Warcraft 0 out of 10 stars.

Yeah, it WAS that bad.

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

What time is it?

Authors Helping Houston

Carrie Pulkinen put together a master page on her website called Authors Helping Houston. It's a listing of writers living or from the area hit by Hurricane Harvey last month. While the title is simple and catchy, the money is going to all the communities along the Texas coast devastated by storm.

Basically, buy a book between now and September 17th from one of these authors, and they will send all proceeds from those books to one of the charities listed on the page.

While I don't know Carrie, I know a lot of these folks personally from my time in Houston, back when we were all writer wannabes. While Tess St. John and Melissa Ohnoutka came out okay, their extended families were not so lucky. I haven't heard from Sarah Andre, but I have dog-sat for her two adorable puppies. Others like Lori Wilde, I've only heard speak at events and read her books.

There's a wide variety of tales available, so you should find something to your liking and the proceeds are going to good causes.

Monday Movie Mania - The Hitman's Bodyguard

This is the typical buddy action-comedy. If you go into the theater expecting exactly that, you'll love The Hitman's Bodyguard.

If you don't, I suggest going to Wonder Woman, which just started its fourteenth week in theaters.


* * *


SPOILERS


* * *


PROS
1) Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson have some serious onscreen chemistry.

2) The chase sequence through the streets of Amsterdam was pretty rockin'. And there was only two totally unnecessary pyrotechnic scenes.

3) Salma Hayek matched Samuel L. Jackson curse-word for curse-word, and you really believed she'd cut your throat for grabbing her spectacular ass, which brings me to...


CONS
1) Poor Salma was totally wasted. It would have been a much better movie with her not being locked up, and running with the boys shooting things.

2) They tried to cram too many trope plots into the movie--professional rivals forced to work together/getting critical witness to court on time/assassin with a heart of gold/"bad" guy fixing "good" guy's relationship with girl, etc.

3) Wasting a wonderful villain like Gary Oldman!


Overall, The Hitman's Bodyguard was a fun, end-of-the-summer, non-thinking movie. I give it a solid 7.5 out of 10 stars.

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Yep, still on that '80's kick thanks to Sirius Radio XM offering a free week of play. '80's on 8 RULES!

Helping Fellow Writers Affected By Harvey - Part 1

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to plug Houstonian authors affected by Hurricane Harvey. If you're a writer whose been affected or know a writer who has, drop me a note.

The Houston Metropolitan area probably has the single largest concentration of romance writers in the world. It's the birthplace of Romance Writers of America, and it boasts three chapters all by its lonesome. I learned a hell of a lot about writing from those folks over the years I lived in Houston.

Alison Kent is one of those awesome people. While I don't know Alison personally (one of those friend-of-a-friend things where you almost feel like you do), I do know she's a hell of a writer. I couldn't let go of her books on my shelves during the Great Book Purge prior to our move to Ohio.

Her husband Walt tells the tale of their rescue by local folks on his Facebook page. It's wild and a little scary. Not to mention the fur kids panicked a bit, but none of the rescuers were harmed. However, the cats let Walt know just how displeased they were with the situation. I suggest you read his account. I remember the same type of cooperation among neighbors during Ike and Tropical Storm Allison.

Here's the link to Alison's books. Why buy a book? Because her family will get that money far sooner than federal aid, and you'll get a damn good read in return.