There are days when it’s a real struggle to get words on the page. Sometimes just writing a short, easy statement can help with that. Some days is doesn’t help at all. Sometimes the stress of life puts a real, genuine damper on the production of words.
Most days I will tell people that I eat stress for breakfast then head out to take on the day. Most days.
Last week really pushed the needle on the stress meter. There was simply a ton of things that went pear shaped – not just for me, but for family and super close friends. Losses of jobs, medical diagnoses, calls from the consulate regarding a certain family members ability to get a visa, court dates, project deadlines, last minute school arrangements… It was an awful lot. I’d say I need a vacation, but that doesn’t help a whole lot these days either. The pandemic has made things so much more challenging across the board.
Long, deep, soulful sigh ~ insert here.
I’m back at the keys and clacking away. I’ve got a deadline tomorrow that I can’t miss for work and a deadline I can’t miss tomorrow for the kiddo. Work should be easy. Writing an essay about what I’ve learned as a parent as part of my daughter’s journey in martial arts? That’s going to be a challenge.
One of my favorite authors once said, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage”.
I struggle with this constantly. I really am a mood based writer. It’s terrible because there are times when something springs forth from my forehead as if a Greek god headache has produced something whole and complete. There are other times when I simply can not force myself to sit at the keys and work.
I think that’s a significant part of this. It IS work. There is time and effort and a willingness to give up a piece of yourself to the consumption of others. It is draining to me. I’ve heard of others that are energized by the completion of some piece of their art but when I am finished working on something like this I am spent. Pouring out some of myself onto a page is a challenge, but I really do love to tell a good story.
I’ve got a story that’s been “in production” for a quite a long time now. No, not the 2 novels that I’ve been so called writing for a decade now. A story. I know there’s a seed of a good idea in this story, but it’s just not working.
Today I think I caught a little of the right mood. I listened to a scary story. I know – sounds childish to say it that way, but that’s what it really is. It’s a scary story. There are a large number of other scary stories where I found this one. The particular scary story I found happened to be ‘Take a Walk In The Night, My Love‘. It’s from the podcast Pseudopod as presented by Escape Artists ~ folks who deliver some genuinely excellent content all the time. I mean consistently over years. Go, support them.
I’ve never been good at telling a scary story. I’ve got an excellent handle on the ridiculous. That’s easy, I just have human interaction, mess it up the way I normally do and then write that down. Easy. Scaring somebody? Scaring somebody is a far more challenging concept ~ at least to me.
So here, on a bright, sunny summer afternoon I sit behind the keys and attempt to tell a scary story. I’ll let you know if it turns out to be as scary as I hope.
This post was originally published in Watch The Skies fanzine – July 2020
Netflix has been dominating in the production and release of new works. It has recently released two comic adaptations, and I am going to recommend one of them. Warrior Nun was released at the beginning of July and it has committed the most egregious of transgressions. It just stops. You invest, you watch, you reach the 10th episode and it just stops. There is no ending and there is no part two. Netflix as a network churns shows at a massive rate and even reasonably successful shows never get more episodes made. I can’t in good conscience recommend Warrior Nun. Instead, I can and will say that you should invest two hours and watch the movie The Old Guard.
The movie tells part of the story of Andromache the Scythian (Andy), an immortal warrior and the other immortal warriors that make up her small team. These warriors join various battles across time working toward some unknown, unclear goal. They fight, sometimes they are killed and every time they survive to move on to another battle in another place at another time. There is no competition between them, there is a connection and a drive to find others. They may not understand the goal, but they do understand the battles. The film itself takes place in modern times. A new immortal warrior is found and the team sets out to fight a new, modern battle.
The movie is self contained. The story, the clips of history, character motivations and action all fit neatly into the allotted time. The acting, the action and the emotion is all extremely well done. The writer of the comic was also the writer that adapted the story for the screen. I believe that genuinely helped make this tight package successful. The actors were all fantastic. Fair warning for those that don’t like action / violence / fighting – there’s a lot of it in this movie. They are after all warriors. Fighting is what they do, and they are very good at it.
Another part of what makes this story work is that we buy in on what the characters are feeling. They are numb to the violence that surrounds them, but they’re all still searching. Living for hundreds and hundreds of years has not dulled the need for them to connect. They have each other, but connections to others slip away as people age and die while the warriors stay as they have always been. Pain and loss are constant companions. Searching for family and a place to fit with others gives this decidedly action flick enough depth to keep non-action fans on board.
The movie isn’t perfect, but it’s easily worth the time to watch it. Yes, there is a set up at the end for more but you can be satisfied with the ending as it stands. I hope the film is successful enough that they decide to produce more. I would love to see the old guard in action again. This is definitely a movie you should be watching.
The desire to soar like an angel was overwhelming. Driven to madness by continual failure to achieve the glory of divine flight extreme measures were needed. The faithful would see. The faithful would understand.
The longer I go, the more I accept that I enjoy doing many things on my own. I am clearly headed directly to the land of curmudgeon ~ however there can be something said for a shared experience. Having the musical Hamilton released on a streaming service lately brought that into focus for me. During these trying days of “shelter in place” and “social distance” to avoid the plague those shared experiences can be difficult to find. To enable that, some people have turned to technology. What did we do for Hamilton? A Watch Party.
You can’t have your friends over to watch a movie any more. So? Jump on your streaming service of choice and have a watch party… except.
I like the concept of the watch party for certain circumstances. Those circumstances are remarkably similar to when I’d actually like to go and see a movie with somebody… that is to say not very often. A watch party exacerbates the one thing I really hate about watching a movie with others. You’re listening intently in the middle of a deep and moving scene and the person next you says, “Wait. I thought she didn’t like that guy…” or “I think I missed something. What’s he doing that for?”.
Rage.
Just watch the movie. Nobody knows because we haven’t seen it before. Shut up and pay attention. Stop distracting me from my experience. NO, I don’t want to chat about it now, I’ll wait until the end thank you.
Now – If I’ve seen the movie in question before and we’d like to all watch it together to talk about various parts of the film, that’s fine. If it’s a goofy comedy and you’re tipping a couple of adult beverages back on a Saturday night and you want to share that with some friends, excellent plan.
Technology then becomes the barrier.
Are you all on the same streaming service? Are you all in the same region? Yes – services like Netflix change what they have to offer by region. Are you in the same time zone? My daughter is communicating with some students in other countries and they’re off our time by 6 hours. When can we all actually do this? Schedules are still a real thing, even if you can’t go out to do certain activities anymore. Technology is the main barrier here. What platform will you use for watching? Are you all on Discord? Oh, wait, I thought we were doing this through the Chrome app… But what about Facebook? Wait – I run my streaming service through a Roku, how does that work? I don’t want to sit at my computer screen when I have a large TV in a room with a comfy recliner. There are lots of folks out there making this work, but it is very dependent on shared tech and preferred method of consuming media. I suspect this shared preference will not be something that happens to me much as we go forward.
I am not opposed to the concept of the watch party. I don’t suspect I’ll find myself participating in many. I like to view a film and talk about it later, perhaps watching it again for a more nuanced view. Enjoy the entertainment for what it is. Get drawn in by a good story. Go along for the ride… tweet about it when you’re done. Your phone won’t miss you and ‘yousuckland’… I mean twitter, will be there when you’ve got time.
In the end, you could also try reading a good book and joining a group to chat about that. Those don’t seem to have changed as much as the movie going society.
Book 1 of the Lady Astronaut series telling the story of the first lady astronaut deserves the praise it has garnered. Following Dr. Elma York’s journey in a post apocalyptic alternate history where a meteorite has slammed into the earth and wiped out most of the eastern US.
The story is set in a time when many cultural norms do not fit the views of our current society. This put me very much in mind of the movie Hidden Figures, set in something close to the same time period (off by a few years I believe). The author does not shy away from the norms of the day and her writing is such that the outrage is felt through the page. I was quite frequently angry with characters on the page – and that is a sign of damn good writing. They’re not real. It’s a made up story – and I was still irritated with these “people”.
I downloaded this book for free when it was offered by the publisher and I’m glad I did. I will be going out and getting the rest of the series (just as they hoped). This book is absolutely worth your time to read if you’re a fan of science fiction / alternate history. IF you’re not, I would also suggest reading some of the author’s other work. I am particularly a fan of ‘Shades of Milk and Honey’ in the magical / fantasy category. I love this author’s work and hope she continues to write for a very long time.
All the struggles, all the sacrifice to get here. Her past was as ruined as the temple where she stood facing the oracle. Now, in that moment she hesitated. There was no going back once the question was asked.
I actually finished reading this book within a couple of days of starting it. I’ve held off writing my review until I had time to give it some thought. I also wanted to put this review here on my own web site. There are a couple of reasons for this – but mainly because I’m going to own what I say and putting that here feels like it makes a difference to me.
This book was a gift to me – I was asked to give it a review.
There are going to be lots of spoilery parts in here – so if you don’t want to have the story spoiled for you, read it first then come back.
Let me start by saying that I also write. I don’t like to give reviews like this because I know how difficult it is to get a good book both finished and published. I also fully intend to be honest about how I feel about the books I read. It’s the only thing that gives a reviewer any credibility or integrity in their reviews. I know I’m not much of a reviewer, but I do try to be consistent about these things.
I gave this book one star. The one star setting in Goodreads is “Did not like it”. Clearly, I did not like it. It was very hard to read. I think I skimmed a lot toward the 2/3 mark. I did finish it. I could have walked away early, but it was a gift and a request so I didn’t.
At least it’s not the tramp stamp view.
So – first – the author generally has no control over cover art related things, but the character portrayed on the cover looks like an urban fantasy knock off, holds the wrong weapon and is dressed like she could have just walked off the street next to you. I think those things tie together with the world building things I had trouble with.
World building – there’s no clear definition of the world. There’s very little description of the in, the outfits, the stadium, or any of the atmosphere that would surround a world wide event. Consider something like the Olympics by comparison. When the Olympic games happen you hear about everything from the stadiums new and amazing features all the way down to the villages where the competitors are to be housed. There’s a little something about everything that goes on surrounding the games. In this book there’s one part that describes a paved road, but walking or wizardly teleportation are the only modes of transportation ever mentioned. Why would the road be specifically “paved” if not for automobile traffic? IF it is for autos of some kind – where are they? Where is the structure that supports them? There is literally no description for this. The main stadium where all the action takes place is described like this, “It was a beautiful stadium about the size of a large city within any kingdom. The outside was made from grey stone and was carved with the intricate details of battles that had taken place centuries ago.” That’s it. The main location for a large amount of the story and that’s the whole description. No other places in the story fare better. BUT for those people that have followed my other reviews you may know that I tend to be big into world building as part of a good story. Fair enough.
Characters – Melanie Atax (from the guild Inferno Serpents) has no adjectives. I don’t know what she looks like, perhaps beyond the cover. I went back and checked – after 4 chapters there’s still not any mention of hair length, skin color, eye color, scars, crooked teeth… nothing. There’s not much more about the other players in the wizard games either… but back to Mel. She states at the start of the book that it’s this super lofty goal to reach an elite guild. Awesome. Hard work and having your foes underestimate you based on a lower guild I get. She puts all this effort in to these battles, yet gives zero thoughts to what happens if she wins. Zero. When she does actually win a spot at an elite guild it’s an afterthought. The stated goal has NO impact on her. None. She doesn’t grow, she doesn’t change, she never loses. That is not a character (lack of) arc that works for me.
So it’s got to be about the action, right? I mean, wizard game would be just like the Tri-wizard tournament or something like that, right?
No.
It’s human wizard Pokemon. Fire-whip lady I choose you!
It took me a while to figure out the pattern. The fights, the tournament, the battles and duels are exactly the sort of thing you see in anime shows where the names and statistics of the brawlers in question get displayed on the screen. You know them in the same way you know or recognize the queen of spades. These wizards (and dragons!) hurl the devastation of lightning and tornadoes, fire and acid along with whippings, dagger slashes and sword cuts… to zero lasting effect. There’s not a single bit of danger to the competition here – or to Mel. Everything is healed when the “round” is over. Go team magic healer! The impact of these massive weapons amounted to a cool light show. No danger, nothing other than missing some points on the scoreboard.
Speaking of the scoreboard, there’s a mystery of two of the top players in the games being kidnapped for a day or two right in the middle of the tournament week, but that doesn’t seem to really impact their chances of winning and didn’t really grab my attention. It felt like a distraction. There’s a cult and another dragon and I don’t even remember her name.
The dragons really bother me the most of all this. There’s a seed of a great story there. Dragons were hunted to the point where they disguised themselves as humans, then lost the knowledge or ability to change back into dragons. That could be such a cool story – and it’s a side note… until the very end of the book. That’s when we suddenly switch from Mel to the second dragon and get “set up” for the next book. Ugh. NO.
Long sigh. In all, I struggled with this. I did not like it. I think that if you’re a fan of Pokemon or anime battle type shows that you might actually enjoy this. Maybe. It might also be something that could be turned into an anime to great effect. I’m not sure – but I am sure I’m not moving on with the series.
I started off earlier this year with a very gung-ho thought of rereading the entirety of the Dresden Files series, in order, before the publication of the next book. The next book is due out in July… and I am still back at Grave Peril.
There is an awful lot of Dresden out there at this point.
I will continue on this quest, but there is no way I’ll finish before the publication date of the new book. Likely I won’t finish before the publication of the second new book this year either, but I still intend to try. Looking at the series again, with other questions in mind has given me the opportunity to revisit the way I write my own work. It is certainly a worthy endeavor.
Onward to more random destruction (that is *clearly* not Harry’s fault)!
