bev_vincent's Journal

Night Court

I received the proofs for “A Murder of Vampires,” my story in the Evolve anthology. Need to go over them and get any changes back to the editor asap since the book will be launching at World Horror. Though March 2010 seems like a long way off, it’s really only three months away. I finally bit the bullet and bought my plane tickets yesterday. I’d been waiting for a more favorable airfare, but the prices have been all over the map and don’t seem to be trending downward at all. I wanted to fly into Gatwick, but Heathrow will have to do.

Criminal Minds has been concentrating on some emotionally difficult material lately, what with the death of a secondary character last week and its repercussions this week, though it seems like the official period of mourning will last for only one episode. Hey, at least CBS is still cranking out new episodes at this time of year–there’s even another new one next week–when most other shows are on hiatus. I suspect that at some point the writers will explore Emily Prentiss’s backstory. It’s clear from the way she reacted to the perp at the end of this week’s shows that she has some serious issues bottled up. Gun pressed against forehead to accentuate proclamations of delight at the perp’s future behind bars as someone else’s bitch.

It’s always good to see John Larrouquette, who was a guest star on Law & Order: SVU this week. He had a neat role on Boston Legal in its last season or so, and I’ve enjoyed watching him since the days of Night Court, when he was another smarmy lawyer, Dan Fielding. He played that part with panache. On L&O he got to trot out his southern drawl and range from advocate to outrage. The show needs to get rid of its unfortunate tendency to turn every episode into a protracted public service announcement. As an aside, I caught an old episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets this weekend and Munch hasn’t changed a bit in all those years.

Double elimination week on Survivor. Can’t wait to see if/how Russell manages to make it through.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

A Certain Age

I’m of a certain age. I guess that’s a figure of speech that means I’m not young any more. Not geriatric, not yet eligible for the early bird special at Denny’s. Probably middle aged, although I do not embrace that label.

The new TNT series, Men of A Certain Age, should more properly be called Actors Lying About a Certain Age, since according to the promo material they are all in their late 40s, like me, but the actors themselves are mostly in their mid-50s. Surprisingly, Scott Bakula is the oldest of the bunch, though he looks the youngest, and Andre Braugher is a year younger than I am, the only one who is as young as his character. Still, that quibble aside, this is a series that has a lot of fertile territory to explore. The three men have interesting problems. Ray Romano’s character is divorced, doesn’t relate well to his kids (though he tries), and has a gambling problem. Andre Braugher is overweight, burdened with family financial obligations, and still living in his father’s shadow, trying to impress him so that he will inherit the car dealership that bears the family name. Scott Bakula is an actor, though it’s not yet clear whether he ever really accomplished much, who resents having to go to cattle call auditions for Lifetime channel movies and who still trades on his good looks and charming demeanor. The first episode was pretty good — it had a couple of genuinely funny moments (Braugher’s faceplant during the drive to the hospital). Romano is a decent observer of men’s reality and so long as he can resist the goofier aspects he has the chance here to do something that men (of a certain age, especially) will identify with. Here’s hoping.

I got my H1N1 shot today. Now I have an unusual craving for pork chops and apple sauce.

The Closer is back for a three episode mini season. I’m not a cat person, but that is one seriously cute kitten Fritzy got for Brenda. It looks so fragile that I wonder how it withstands being manhandled that way. Though I know it is probably one of the realities of working homicide in L.A., I find the gang-related plots on this show less interesting than the typical episodes. Hopefully that won’t dominate the storylines.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Russian literature

I finally had a chance to get back to the story I’m revamping for an editor. I wrote a new beginning last week, and now I’m ripping the rest of the story apart, salvaging the good bits, and taking it off in a new direction for the final half. I’ve finally reached the stage in the creative process where the story is getting under my skin enough for me to think about it while I’m not working on it. I have some scrawled notes on a Post-It note, things that occurred to me after I finished work this morning. Questions that need to be answered–or at least should be asked by the characters. I hope to have a new first draft of the story done by the weekend.

I’m not sure if this is for real or not, but Barnes & Noble are showing the Stephen King Illustrated Companion to be sold out at their warehouses. There are, no doubt, still many copies left in their stores, and the ZIP code search will let you find a store near you that still has it in stock. I e-mailed my editor to get clarification. Apropos of this–Locus had a nice little blurb about the book in their “Books Received” column this month. Not a review, but they clearly did their homework about what the book really is.

Only one episode of Dexter left, and it’s hard to imagine how they’re going to get from where Episode 12 ended to where Episode 13 must in only 50 or so minutes of screen time. There were a couple of improbabilities in this week’s episode. First of all, it’s hard to imagine that Deb would go alone into the lair of the person who she believed killed her lover and shot her. Sure, Quinn was tagging along out in the hall, but it was a dumb risk to take for no good reason. Secondly, it’s hard to imagine that anyone could get into Miami’s homicide division and just wander around that way. I’ve been inside the Houston Police Department headquarters downtown and it’s a little like going through Checkpoint Charlie. Not all the elevators go to all of the floors and people are kept very compartmentalized. All of that notwithstanding, I’m still enjoying the hell out of the season and I look forward to a rambunctious finale.

“Good thing he reads Russian literature,” the homicide detective on Castle said last night. “If he was a Nicholas Sparks fan, he’d be dead.” Another cliché of the genre–the mysterious man with amnesia who may or may not hold the key to the mystery. As with other episodes of the show, they take the cliché in a different direction. I totally expected “Amber” from House to be the killer, and then again I totally expected him to react to the dog, but they did none of those things. I liked the final exchange between Castle and his mother, where she confessed to being afraid of getting hurt in her rekindled relationship. “That’s the cost of living,” Castle says, which I thought was a great line.

That was the second time in a few hours that I heard the same sentiment. In The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall Smith, a man who is about to be married muses that committing to marriage doubles his chances of being hurt. Since we’ve come to the end of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books (I’ve read all ten of them to my wife since June), we’ve moved on to another of his series, the 44 Scotland Street books. I received an ARC for the newest one so I decided to start with it. I feel like I’m missing a little bit of backstory on the characters from the previous three books, but I suppose that will come with time. I also have the ARC of the 11th Ladies’ Detective Agency book on the way. The author is supposed to be in Houston early next year, so we hope to meet him.

The Big Bang Theory continues to be one of the funniest shows on TV at the moment and by far the best exchanges are those between Penny and Sheldon. They must have an absolute blast making that show. There are times when they seem to be genuinely laughing at each other’s reactions to things.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Wonderful World

So that was winter, I guess.

We were released early from work on Friday because of freezing road conditions. When I left at about 3:15, I drove through the most wonderful blizzard. The snowflakes were large, I could hear them when they hit my jacket, and they were numerous. However, they never quite made it to the ground. In parts of Houston, the snow did actually accumulate for a while, but not up here. By about 3:45 it was all over and though it was cold overnight, I don’t think we got the severe hard freeze they were anticipating, and today it’s back up in the 60s and rainy. It was cause for excitement, but that’s probably it for us as far as real winter goes.

Yesterday was a lost day. I woke up with a stomach virus that took the wind out of my sails most of the day. I don’t get sick very often, and this was mild as far as these things go, but I had no appetite and no ability to focus on anything other than football games, which means I got no writing work done.

I was glad to see the young couple that had done so well throughout the entire race pull it out for a victory at the end of The Amazing Race. I thought they were screwed when they went to the wrong casino and ended up arriving at the roadblock in third place, but they focused on the task (counting out $1 million in chips) and beat the teams who had a head start. Frustration and bickering was the downfall of the other two teams.

We watched an advance screening of Wonderful World, starring Matthew Broderick, this weekend. He plays a former Raffi-like children’s entertainer who became disillusioned with the music business and the world in general, dropped out, got divorced and took up a mundane job copyediting for some un-named firm, shares a small flat with Ebu, a Senegalese man. His young daughter hides when he goes to pick her up for his regular visitation because he’s such a buzz kill. He spends most of his time smoking weed and haranguing the unfairness of it all. When Ebu goes into a diabetic coma, he meets the man’s sister and, through her, learns that he’s pretty much an asshole and the world isn’t a terrible place all the time. Thus begins his path back to the real (wonderful) world.

We also watched Nothing Like the Holidays, standard holiday fair about a dysfunctional, bickering family getting together for what might be their last Christmas together because their mother (Elizabeth Pena) has just dropped the bombshell that she’s divorcing their father (Alfred Molina) because he’s been cheating on her. It’s a big, bawdy, Puerto Rican family with the usual issues and the obligatory outsider (Debra Messing) and a Shane-like tree that provides some comic relief. The putative affair turns out to have a different explanation, of course, and there are other conflicts that find resolution, though not always in the idyllic way of seasonal films.

I’m reading Pirate Latitudes, the new, posthumous Crichton novel. The completed manuscript was found on his hard drive, but there’s been no indication from the publisher when it was completed. Since it’s a period novel, there are no clues in the text as to when it might have been written either. No pirates with cutting edge nanoparticle sails or anything like that. I also finished Part 1 of Don Quixote, so I decided to take a break with some pirates before getting back to the knights-errant.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

So far all I’ve seen is a few flurries, but the snow is starting to accumulate in parts of Houston. We’re expected to get 1-4″ over the next several hours, and a hard freeze overnight. This is the earliest in recorded history that Houston has seen snow on the ground. When I was outside a few minutes ago, it was about 40 degrees and the mercury is headed lower in the coming hours. It’s definitely a grey day. People are covering plants and the roads were treated against icing last night.

I received a royalty check for On Writing Horror last night. Since there is such a large group of contributors, the royalties get divvied up into a fairly small share per person, but the book has continued to sell since its release and this year’s check is about 25% larger than last year’s. Enough to buy a Happy Meal, at least.

I’m not sure that Survivor would have been this interesting without Russell, but it’s turned into a fun season. The look on John’s face last night when he got two votes was priceless. He had just finished talking about the two people whose names would be written down that night, and his wasn’t one of them. Turns out that outside of him and Shambo, everyone voted for John. Jaison was worried that this would flip Shambo back to vote with the others, and I suppose that’s a possibility, but the best that would lead to would be a 4-4 split of votes. Besides all of them voted for John, too, so it would be flipping from one bad bet to another. At some point, though, this group of four+1 is going to start looking at Russell very carefully. I wonder if he’ll have to whip out the idol again next week.

Fringe was good last night. Those critters were nasty — especially when Walter yanked that one out of the victim’s throat. Yech. Unlike other shows of its ilk, Fringe has a humanizing element, and that’s Walter. Sure, Peter can let his hair down and play basketball with a suspect’s son, but Walter is suffering at the same time as he’s enjoying himself. We sympathize with his plight — of course he’s an adult who should be allowed some freedom and independence, and yet at the same time we know that he’s not quite capable of looking after himself, and it’s not always him who bears the repercussions.

At least one show will have new episodes next week (Fringe). I was surprised to see that Flash Forward is going off until March. I guess they have to make way for the return of Lost in February but boy are they going to lose the fragile momentum they have going for them now. The show still hasn’t gripped me as completely as Lost did. I often find myself listening to the show while attending to other matters, whereas with Lost, I’m glued to the screen.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Hard Candy

When I was a kid, one of the treats that we got around Christmas was something called “barley toys.” I guess they were called toys because they were in the shapes of people or other seasonal objects: Santa Claus, snowman, Rudolph, things like that. Sometimes they came on sticks, like suckers, but mostly they were just standalone figurines. Too large to pop into your mouth all at once — you had to crack them into pieces to enjoy them. I discovered recently that the “barley” reference is because they were made from barley sugar. They had a unique flavor, even though they were little more than pure sugar. I think I’m going to get to resample some this year, so I’ll see how well my memory of them stands up.

When I was at the gym yesterday, I saw the middle section of a Bruce Willis movie on USA Network. I didn’t recognize it, so I looked it up and discovered it was Hostage, which I’ve never seen. Last night I checked to see if it was available on our On Demand system, but it wasn’t. However, while in the H listings, I noticed that Hard Candy was available. I remember hearing good things about it at the time, and I’ve been impressed with everything I’ve seen Ellen Page do so far, so I decided to check it out. Of course, I already knew the basic premise, so the reversal 1/4 of the way into the film was anticipated from the opening shot, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the movie. Page is so good–and she was only 17 at the time. I half expected her character to end up being older than the fourteen she said she was. It’s a pretty intense movie, all the more so because there are only the two characters from 95% of it.

Addendum: Bummed to hear about the death of Eric Woolfson from the Alan Parsons Project.

I had strange dreams last night. In one I dreamt that there was an artist whose work consisted entirely of potato chips mixed with water. I seem to recollect that modifying the amount of water was the secret to his varied works. In another dream, I was on an airplane and there was something to do with terrorists and an envelope that signified their presence. They were unusually vivid.

I received the new Michael Crichton novel last night and hope to get to it soon. I’m a little over 1/3 of the way through Don Quixote, at just about the point where I put the book down the last time. I finished the section where the travelers read the novel manuscript found at the inn, the tale of the ill-advised curiosity that features a character named Lothario. I find it interesting that most online etymologists track the use of the word Lothario back to a 1703 play without giving much credence to this earlier character. The word is defined as “a man who seduces women,” and that’s just what Lothario does in Don Quixote, though he does it at the bidding of his best friend. It’s a strange little interlude story, and you know that Anselmo’s proposal is a bad idea from the beginning, and Lothario does a good job of outlining all the reasons why it’s a bad idea, but it goes forward nonetheless.

It’s odd when the same conceit arises in two different TV series. Meredith gave a part of her liver to her estranged father on Grey’s Anatomy and this week Wilson gave a lobe of his liver to a friend/patient on House. In the former case, the plot was introduced to explain the actor’s maternity leave, whereas in the latter case it was a point of characterization.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Back in the Saddle

One of the keys on my work keyboard has worn itself blank, so the character it represents can no longer be distinguished. Two others are partially worn away. The rest are pristine. I wonder what it means. The blank key is the C. The curved part of the D is mostly missing. The only thing left on the E key is the top horizontal and about 1/8 of the vertical descending from it. It does not escape my attention that these three keys are adjacent to each other, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what I must be doing to this keyboard to achieve that pattern.

They’re still tossing around the idea that it might snow here on Friday. Given the fact that I only half believe them if they say it’s going to rain today, I have my doubts, but it would be neat. It would be the earliest recorded snowfall here ever, I do believe. It’s a crisp 48° outside right now, but it promises to get colder in coming days.

I’ve been discussing revisions to a short story with the editor who solicited it for the past couple of days. This is the sort of give-and-take that you rarely get in the small press, so I’m enjoying it greatly. Typically, an editor accepts a story, possibly suggests a few grammatical changes, and then prints it. Not so here. The editor is looking at the story in its context with the others in the collection and also making some interesting observations about my writing in general (how violent incidents almost always happen “off screen,” for one) and challenging me to try something a little different. It’s harder to do with a story that has been on my desk for a while, as this one has, because the chronology of events is firmly fixed in my mind and now I’m having to mess around with that. However, overnight I dream-plotted a new beginning to the story that puts some of the editor’s suggestions into effect and I wrote that passage in very rough draft this morning, about 600 new words. It’s the first new material I’ve written in a couple of weeks.

My writing music this morning was Tubular Bells II. I usually listen to the live concert performance of this album but I clicked on the studio version by accident. When it came time for the announcements of the instruments, I realized that I recognized the voice. It took a while to come up with it: Alan Rickman. Apparently he was only credited as “a strolling player” on the album liner notes.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Awards season

After some unseasonably warm weather (not complaining), a cold front is descending upon us, and there’s even a chance (they say) that we’ll get some snow on Friday. Not totally unheard of, but I can count the number of times there’s been real snowfall in the past 20 years on my fingers. Maybe even using just one hand. Last year we had one snowfall where there was accumulation on the trunks and roofs of cars, which is indeed rare.

I’m not a big fan of football. I’ve only ever attended one professional game, back when it was the Houston Oilers. I don’t know the names or the responsibilities of most of the positions, and I could fill a book with the rules that I don’t know. And yet I often watch a game with one eye while doing other things. I watched part of the Houston vs. Indianapolis game on Sunday, mostly because it looked for a while like Houston might win. Tuned out shortly after Indy disabused me and everyone else of that notion. Since most shows were reruns last night, I found the New Orleands vs. Patriots game and watched the Saints run roughshod over New England and read Poppy Z. Brite’s enthusiastic tweets. Concurrently, I edited and posted my review of John Grisham’s Ford County.

The Stephen King Illustrated Companion was just nominated for a 3rd Annual Black Quill Award. Members of Dark Scribe Magazine’s website can vote in each category. There will be both Reader’s and Editor’s choice winners.

I read yesterday that Raising the Bar has not been renewed for a third season. Apparently ratings dropped significantly in the second season and that the show lost a considerable chunk of The Closer’s lead-in audience. I thought the second season was better thant he first, but these things happen. By the way, there will be three week Closer mini-season starting this coming Monday.

Only two episodes of Dexter left to go, and the showdown with Trinity is bound to be a big one. Lots of surprises this week, including an expansion of Trinity’s pattern (does that mean he should now be called Quarternary?), and an unexpected arrest. The season’s theme is fatherhood and its effect on Dexter. I’m still waiting to see what happens when Matsuka tells Dexter what he saw at Thanksgiving.

House is House, but what happens when Wilson becomes House, too? Or at least sort of. This was an unusual episode of the show, with House in the background, his team running around like extras on an episode of Monty Python, and Wilson front and center. We rarely get a chance to see Wilson practicing medicine. We see him in the office, delivering good or bad news, but not very often making diagnoses. We suspect he’s probably a good doctor, but this week we got to see him in action, picking up clues from patient behavior and making difficult (and occasionally erroneous) decisions based on the evidence at hand. As House said at the end, small steps, especially after he outbid Cuddy for the loft.

Still reading Don Quixote. I’m determined to make it to the end this time. I’m up to the point where Dorothea is telling her sad tale in the presence of the barber, the priest and Cardenio.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Upgrade

I didn’t quite stay offline throughout the long weekend, but I didn’t do that much with my website or LiveJournal or any of my other usual haunts. Kept up with e-mail, read a few message boards, that was about the extent of it. Starting today I am a doctoral research widow for the next three weeks as my wife begins the final phase of her data collection, so I wanted to make as much of our four days together as possible. I took her to the bus stop this morning and I’ll see her again just before Christmas.

We cooked meals and ate too much (and yet, I somehow lost weight, much to my astonishment this morning — three pounds!) and watched movies and played cards. I also read John Grisham’s short story collection (review to come) and about 1/4 of Don Quixote. I started the book before, a couple of years ago, and I put it aside for one reason or another and never got back to it. So I found a version for my Kindle and I’ve been reading it before bedtime. It’s a fascinating concept, willing something into existence through sheer force of belief. I’m up to the part where Sancho Panza is returning to bring Don Quixote’s message to Dulcinea while Quixote deliberately “goes mad” in the mountains.

I sent out several press releases to the usual suspects when my new book was about to be released, and another one of them paid off today. I spent 10 minutes on the phone with the editor of the arts supplement of a newspaper and they want to do something about the book before Christmas. It wasn’t exactly an interview today, just a touching of bases as a preamble to whatever it is they decide to do.

I upgraded my message board from version 2.2 to 2.4 today. It’s not an easy process, nothing so slick as how WordPress gets updated that’s for sure. I had to do a clean install in parallel with the old version, set all the file permissions manually (thankfully I’m a UNIX wonk from ‘way back), migrate the configuration, users and old messages to the new install, decommission the old board and commission the new one so that any old hyperlinks to the MB still work. It took several hours and I was sure at two or three points in the process that I had absolutely screwed it up. But it seems to be working just fine. Remains to be seen if I have all of the anti-spam features configured properly.

I was sorry to see the Harlem Globetrotter duo get eliminated from the Amazing Race last night, but the minute they decided to take a 4 hour penalty I was pretty sure the writing was on the wall for them. Four hours is an eternity in this race. All because one guy couldn’t figure out how to make a word out of the letters AFNRZ. I was hoping the brothers were going to get dinged for breaking the gollem’s arm. Jeez, they’re annoying.

I received editorial feedback on a trio of stories that are going to be published next year. One of the stories required minimal revision, one requires a moderate amount of reconceptualization and the third one is going to take a fair amount of work to get it into shape for the editor. I tidied up the first one and got it back to the editor this morning. Should be a neat project, but it hasn’t been formally announced yet. I’m also expecting to receive the proofs of my story for Evolve this week, which I’ll have to review post haste.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Talking Turkey

When I saw the previews for this week’s Big Bang Theory, I thought they were making a test tube turkey. Though the episode had some very funny moments, I thought it was a little less well focused than most. Sheldon getting helium voice during his NPR interview was hilarious.

TV shows handle Thanksgiving in many different ways. Some simply ignore it, whereas others twist it around, as on How I Met Your Mother, which had more “slap” puns than you could shake an open hand at. I sided with Lily and thought Marshal was out of line. And the whole “slap happy” game wrapper will probably come back to bite them on the butt. Not one of their best efforts. The “you’re dead to me” clips were well done, though, including the falling coffee pot in the bodega.

And then there’s Dexter, which turns the whole affair into a hundred different kinds of awkward. One of the show’s strengths is the suspense that the writers consistently generate by putting Dexter up against the clock. When “Kyle” is having dinner with Trinity’s family, viewers know that he has to get back home to his real family, so when Trinity says, oh, but we have to watch the football game first, you feel that tension increase automatically. There have been many televised Thanksgiving meals, but I doubt that there’s ever been one like that. Ugh. With only a few episodes left, it’s only natural that things should be heading to something big…but how is it all going to play out? And the final two words of the episode changed the game dramatically. Who saw that coming?

Something happened to the video on ABC last night during Castle, but the sound came through so I listened to the episode while doing other things. The old “more than one wife shows up to claim the body” gag has been done before, but they managed to do something a little different with it, bringing in the corporate espionage subplot. The best moments of the show, though, involve Castle’s interactions with his daughter, and you can just feel him beaming with pride whenever he observes her.

Has any other member of House’s team gotten away with punching him in the mouth before? It’s funny that Chase’s stated motive was simply to get the others to stop bugging him about Cameron, and that House was okay with that. The whole three-hour diversion was a little bit mean, but given House’s intentions I guess Cuddy can be forgiven. Hopefully House will give up this futile quest and move on. That subplot is starting to wear a little thin.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Vantage Point

I had a lazy weekend. Watched way too much television and accomplished little of substance. Vantage Point was on one of our free movie channels so I decided to watch it, because the idea had intrigued me at the time. In fact, it’s an interesting premise but poorly executed in this case. The same scene is played out multiple times from the perspective of different characters, so that each time through we learn a little bit more about what’s happening. However, I think the failure in the concept is that the individual perspectives on events are all essentially the same. There are no unreliable witnesses, no faulty memories, no skewed perceptions. So the movie boils down to about 20 minutes of plot and a few twists. The linear story itself is moderately unremarkable, but it has some surprises. Unfortunately, there is little real screen time available to explore the source of these surprises and one character in particular is left as a gaping enigma. We never get to find out his motives. Not a terrible movie. It has some genuinely tense moments. But on the whole I would consider it a failed experiment.

I stumbled across The Rocky Horror Picture Show playing on Fuse so I decided to leave it on while I worked on other things. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the historian’s dialog before. Any time I’ve seen the film in theaters–and it’s been a loooong time–he is drowned out by the audience shouting “Boring!” Tim Curry really is very good in this film. He does a lot with eyebrow twitches and the shape of his mouth.

I found another potential market for my 10,000 word novelette, so I got it back into circulation this weekend. Probably my most significant accomplishment of the weekend. I really was lazy. It felt good!

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Rocket Science

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to upset the apple cart on Survivor. But this week it helped. So, let’s see. I can sit back, keep the tie vote and stand a finite chance of drawing the black stone and being sent home, or I can change my vote, evict a strong player, and guarantee that I’ll be around to play another day. Hmmm.

The tribal councils the last three weeks have been great. First there was the Eric blindside, where he was so taken by surprise that you could see realization oozing out of his ears. Then there was the “no way he has another immunity idol” gaffe last week followed by the zoinks! when he produced it. And this week there was John’s decision. I thought it was a very gutsy move by Russell to keep the immunity idol, play for the draw and let the chips fall where they may.

Fringe was pretty awesome this week, too. The mythology expands a little bit to show us that there are multiple observers, and then one of them is humanized. Inklings of their interference in Walt’s early life, but most importantly the personal story that emerged when the observer went off the reservation, so to speak. In fact, all the characters had personal moments — Olivia with her niece, for example — and the only shame was that Walter didn’t figure out the missing ingredient in his ice cream recipe. A mystery for another week, perhaps.

And just when you were counting The Mentalist down and out they hit you in the gut. Even though I’d seen the previews, I wasn’t expecting the shooting scene, and I certainly didn’t expect the culprit to be who it was, nor was I expecting Sam’s fate. It was almost like the writers and Red John were in sync. We’ve introduced this complication and it’s derailing Jane from the investigation so we have to wipe the slate clean. I’m still not impressed with Robin Tunney’s acting skills, but it was a hell of an episode. Perhaps the best one yet.

Fast Forward, on the other hand, tread water more or less tread water this week. Brice’s story is vaguely interesting, but it’s so far afield from the main trajectory of the series that it felt like an unnecessary diversion. I want the mosaic team to go to Hong Kong, but now we have to wait two weeks to see how that plays out. And I want the Dominic Monaghan character to come clean. Ditto: two weeks.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Be Seeing You…Not

I received my semi-annual statement from Penguin via my agent for The Road to the Dark Tower yesterday. I keep expecting to open these and find several pages filled with zeroes, but that hasn’t been the case yet. Exactly five years after publication, it is still selling at a pace of about 2.5 copies every day. Of the sales in the last six months, fifty were for electronic versions of the book, eighty copies were sold in Canada and the rest in the U.S. At the current rate, I should earn out my advance in three more years!

I received my contributor copies of Issue 62 of Cemetery Dance magazine yesterday. Didn’t have time to do more than scan through it yet. Looking forward to reading all the Blatty material.

I tried to watch the AMC reboot of The Prisoner last night. I recorded it, but found that it is available On Demand on Comcast so I went there instead. I made it about 3/4 of the way through the first hour and gave up. It simply didn’t interest me or hold my attention. Did anyone watch it and like it? Hard to compare to the original. Caviezel is no McGoohan.

Last night’s Criminal Minds seemed like a mash-up at first. The swimming pool scene needed the theme music from Jaws to be complete, and of course there was the obvious Hannibal Lecter influence. Prentiss was a pretty convincing flirt. L&O:SVU took on the new DNA controversy, where people are able to spin the DNA out of blood cells and replace it with DNA from another source to fake evidence. Sinister scientists rubs his hands together in glee and cackles at the end. Mwaaa-ha-ha.

I had to laugh at the clip of Al Gore’s cameo for this week’s 30 Rock: “There’s an old African proverb,” he says, “that I just made up…” I’m also getting a kick out of Ellen Page’s commercials for CISCO. She’s funny and natural. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.

In the rejection department: I received one that featured the tell-tale word “alas.” Any guesses as to where it came from? I have this 10,000 word contemporary urban fantasy story that is really tough to market. The protagonist is a teenager, and it’s a little flippant, but it’s also too damned long for most venues.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Days of Future Past

The editor of the anthology where “The Fingernail Test” will be published said that I could take one more polish pass at it before sending it to her for editing, so that’s what I did this morning. I remembered being pretty happy with the story when I submitted it to the Apex contest. I think I made all of three or four changes. Punctuation, better word choice, one slightly stilted sentence restructured. Off it went.

For the third year, I’m a judge for the literary equivalent of science fair. The past two years the number of entries has been very low–last year particularly because of the effects of Hurricane Ike–but this year I have something on the order of 75-80 short works to evaluate. I have to score them on creativity, artistic nature and, most importantly, the way they express the given theme. About half of the submissions are short stories or personal essays, the other half poems. I have grades 5, 6, and 7-12. I’m always fascinated to discover that some of the younger kids put more thought and work into it than the older ones.

This week’s NCIS was a hoot. We’re used to all these crime shows using ultramodern techniques and gadgets. Thanks to a power outage, they had to resort to searching through paper files (with attendant paper cuts), using Polaroid cameras to record the crime scene (when’s the last time you saw an SX-70?) and a gestetner to reproduce the eye witness sketch. Gibbs was in his glory in this low-tech universe. The actual crime itself was secondary.

Castle was fine this week, too, though I did guess the surprise twist at the end about halfway through the episode. His daughter helps to humanize his character, and it’s cool that she’s starting to connect to Beckett.

Thanks to a warp in the space/time continuum, I was able to watch the latest Doctor Who, Waters of Mars. (No spoilers here.) Let’s call it: Under the Biodome. We’re getting very close to the end for Doc #10, and this episode sends him in an interesting and unexpected direction, especially in the last 10 minutes or so. This episode is a rare instance of a near future adventure, and it took me most of the hour to figure out where I knew the main guest actress from: she was the wife on A Year in Provence. Tennant has seen the Doctor through a fascinating character arc, from wide-eyed kid to world-weary and almost jaded. This special was reasonably tense and only featured a tad of goofy Doctorisms, most notably the chorus of annoying, shrill screams. The interaction between Lindsay Duncan and Tenant was very nice.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Meteor Shower

I finished my Storytellers Unplugged essay (Location, Location, Location) this morning, which is the latest I’ve gotten my monthly contribution done in a long time. Usually I have it ready a week or two in advance, but this month I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff, plus I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about until yesterday morning. As you might guess from the title, it has a little bit to do with the placement of my book in B&N last week, but it also tells the whole story of how the book came about and how it came together in such a short time.

I received a rejection letter of a different sort yesterday. I’d applied for a travel grant for WHC 2010. Shot in the dark, but it’s like the lottery. If you don’t buy a ticket you won’t win, guaranteed. Alas, I did not win this lottery.

I didn’t have the gumption to stay up late — or get up extra-early — to see the meteor shower last night. Sleep trumps spectacle.

The writers of Dexter must have a great time plotting out each season. It’s so fiendish. The revelations this week about Debra’s shooter (I’ve heard speculation about this, which may be right after all) and “Kyle’s” heroic actions and their repercussions are great. The series still has a lot of mileage left to it. Not sure I trust the guy who’s sniffing around Rita. Where is that going to go?

I read this morning that the actress who plays Cameron on House doesn’t know any more about her character’s fate than the audience does at present, that the writers are only a couple of episodes ahead of production. I’m not sure I believe that. I think 13 is the critical character–she is the perfect foil for House. She isn’t as smart as he is…yet, but she understands his motivations, perhaps even better than he does himself.

The Big Bang Theory was hilarious last night. Hash brownies are always good for a chuckle (the Barney Miller episode ranks as one of the funniest sitcom episodes of all time), but even funnier was the Sheldon/Penny fiasco. Although I had to laugh at Leonard when he realized that his name has the name “nerd” in it.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Are you shpongled?

I went to Atlanta on Friday (the 13th, no less) to attend King’s signing at the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead. We were supposed to meet up for lunch or something beforehand, but the scheduling gremlins got in the way. I had a VIP wristband awaiting me at the store and decided to just hang out at one of the tables outside the Publix grocery store next door and people watch. I met up with a virtual friend from the SK message board, and a number of other people, including Anya Martin and her father, RJ Sevin from Creeping Hemlock Press, and Dave and LeeAnn Hinchberger from Overlook Connection. We hung around until about 45 minutes before the signing was to begin, then went to the end of the line.

It went amazingly fast. Once the line started moving, it barely stalled. Once inside the store, we saw a huge sign over a table. It read “The Dan Brown Experience” but all the books on the table were Twilight novels. Dave took a photo of that for failblog. On the way through the bargain books section, I saw one that was about how to curse effectively in Spanish, complete with a playback machine so you could perfect your pronunciation.

King was on a dais at the back, curtained off on three sides. When we reached him, I introduced the people in our group who’d never met him before. After we went outside again, I signed a bunch of copies of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion for Dave and for others. Every single copy in the store was sold that night except for one that looked like it had been through the wars. A Charlie Brown’s Christmas kind of book. We met up with Jim Argendeli from CNN and his brother. Jim had escorted King through the network headquarters earlier in the day for his interview session with Robin Meade. A bunch of us went to an Irish pub afterwards and talked until midnight.

One of my favorite groups to listen to while writing has a new album coming out at the end of the month. Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland. I can feel a trance coming on. I became aware of the group after Simon Posford contributed to Alan Parsons’ most recent album. The music is mesmerizing. Absolutely ideal to accompany a writing trance.

I read Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston while traveling this weekend. It’s the second book in his trilogy, and a brutal novel. The main character escaped with a ton of mob cash at the end of the first book and now people are after it so he has to figure out how to keep his parents from getting tangled up in the whole mess. It’s a violent book, and the brunt of the violence is directed at the protagonist, who takes one beating after another. It’s not limited to him, though, as most of the people who come into his orbit also fare poorly. Good stuff. I think I’ll go straight into the final installment, A Dangerous Man.

I received a rejection letter from On Spec with brief but encouraging comments, and an acceptance note for a Southern Gothic anthology that I had been invited to contribute to. The anthology won’t be out until late next year, or perhaps until 2011. I also received my contract for “The Fingernail Test,” the story that won the Apex contest, and payment for an interview I contributed to an upcoming catalog, so it was a busy weekend for business.

We watched the remake of Taking of Pelham 123 this weekend. Though the gist of the story is the same, they deviate significantly. I read the John Godey novel back in the 1980s, but I can’t remember it that well. The original film for me is the story that everything else gets compared to. One of the biggest differences is that the other three criminals (besides Travolta) have very little presence in the story. In the original, they were known by colors and had individual personalities and stories. Of course there are lots of high tech updates, including the guy who is broadcasting the whole thing via his webcam. The Japanese visitor comedic subplot in the original is turned into backstory involving Denzel Washington’s character, and the mayor of New York isn’t the lazy slug from the original. Not a bad movie, overall, though Travolta is a touch over the top.

The Prisoner remake is on AMC this week. I think I’m going to record all three parts and watch it straight through. I thought The Mentalist was better than average this week. I didn’t fall to the lure of the CSI trilogy because I refuse to watch the Miami version and have little interest in the New York spinoff. So I went straight into the Las Vegas story and let them catch me up on any important details required to understand what was going on. Fast Forward is starting to do some interesting things with perception. At the end of last week, we decided that the future could be changed but this week it seems that despite some deviations, things are still falling into place for the envisioned future.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Location, location, location

My Barnes & Noble sales rank continued to improve over the course of the day yesterday until it bottomed out at 132. That means it was in 132nd place on the overall bestsellers at their store, a combined list that includes fiction, non-fiction, music, videos, and e-books. The boost in sale was helped, no doubt, by a flier sent out to their membership that cross-promoted the Companion with Under the Dome. I don’t know if store sales contribute to the sales rank, but you can’t complain about placement like this, can you? I haven’t checked the local store yet to see if I got as nice a display, but I’ve heard from readers in Michigan (the one who took this photograph) and from California. Too cool.

To put the 132 sales rank in perspective, the final slots in the top 100 list are occupied by the new Michael Crichton (pre-order), Michael Connelly’s newest novel, the second book in the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and Patrick Swayze’s memoir. I was just 32 places behind them!

So, two serial killers go for a ride in a van out into the wilderness. How many come back home? That’s just one question posed in this week’s episode of Dexter. It seems that we have not yet plumbed the depths of the Trinity killer, who seemed to have gone through his homicidal phase and is now on to something else. Something that he’s done in the past, or is this new? Definitely something that he’s manic about, anyway. I had a strong suspicion about Dexter’s most recent kill that was proved correct. Or at least so we’re lead to believe at the moment. Next week looks even more full of awesome. Excellent season thus far.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

The Dome Bounce

Today is my 14th wedding anniversary — fourteen years of wedded bliss. I highly recommend it.

The lowest (best) Barnes & Noble sales rank my new book, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, had reached before today was about 327. It had been creeping upward into the thousands. Then, this morning, it suddenly dropped to 304 and by mid-morning it was sitting steady at #196. It’s not a top 10 bestseller, but a top 200 bestseller! Clearly it’s being carried along by the release of Under the Dome today.

Did you notice who directed last night’s episode of Castle? Jonathan Frakes, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. I loved the scene where the two detectives and Castle were sitting on the couch covered with cats as the mistaken “terrorist” told her tale. Glad, too, that they didn’t go the route of the pompous, uncaring senator, and the end was a real surprise, though I was sure the repeat mentions of the stolen ring were a clue, as they were. The one loose end: no one seemed to care enough to find out where the young woman’s body was.

I finished Awaiting Your Reply and am looking for time to write my review. There was a very neat story reversal at the end. I think he laid it on a little heavy in terms of pounding the theme home time and time again, but it was effective, and a fascinating novel.

I watched Mortal Causes, the fourth of the Rebus adaptations and the last starring what’s-his-name as Rebus. Gotta see if I can track down the second series to see if the quality improves with the new actor. The voiceovers are the worst part. I guess someone figured that a hardboiled crime show had to have a morose voiceover, but I could have done without.

I’m liking the new and improved House. He still isn’t above drugging a friend, but he’s more awake, alert and oriented to the world than ever before. Looks like he’s going to be up to his old tricks next week, though, when he messes around more with Chase and Cameron.

Originally published at Bev Vincent. You can comment here or there.

Meep! Meep!

I saw one of these little guys crossing the road when I went out at lunchtime. It's not as unusual as seeing a dodo or a roc, but they're not exactly common in this part of East Texas, either. No coyotes giving chase, though.

I have been reading with interest some of the articles about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Back in 1986, I had the fascinating and memorable experience of crossing through the wall at the infamous Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. I was on my way to Leipzig in (then) East Germany for a scientific conference. I first approached the US outpost near the checkpoint, uncertain of the protocol, but the bored-looking guy behind the counter said he had no interest in who went into East Germany. (I'm sure he was lying and that he recorded my every move!)

The Berlin Wall was an impressive sight. On the Western side, it was covered with graffiti. All of the brush was cut back from it, so it looked like a no-man's land for about 20 yards. Depressing looking, actually.

Checkpoint Charlie was both an automotive and pedestrian gateway between the East and the West. The route for vehicles was a deliberate maze so that someone couldn't just floor the gas pedal and break through. There were concrete barriers every few feet that required careful navigation to those who were permitted to pass through. For pedestrians, the course was no less daunting. Inside the Checkpoint, I had to pass through four different chambers. When you passed one stage, the door in front of you opened and then locked behind you, so there was no backing out once you were in play. I think that you could easily apply for a day pass to go into East Berlin, too, but I was prepared in advance with my visa for the conference. There were plenty of questions along the way, and at one stage you were required to exchange a certain amount of money into Ostermarks, East German currency that had no value outside the country. The money was cheaply produced. The coins were aluminum and the color on the bills came off if you rubbed it against something. While in the country you were required to convert a certain amount of money every day, and it was unlawful to take Ostermarks out of the country while you left. This guaranteed an influx of hard currency that the country needed to purchase goods.

After I made it through to the other side and was in East Germany, I had no idea what to expect. I thought that I would be stopped frequently and asked to justify why I was there and where I was going. I went to the train station in East Berlin and, after an arduous negotiation, figured out how to get a train ticket to Leipzig. No one would speak English. I had to take the U-bahn (subway) to a certain stop and then the S-Bahn (regular train) from that point on. Fortunately I saw a station stop that sounded like what I heard and guessed correctly where to change. Again, I expected that people would stop me and demand to see my papers, but no one did. I was free to travel inside the country without issue. However, when I checked into the hotel in Leipzig, I had to surrender my passport to the local police for the duration of my stay.

East Germany was drab and dreary looking. Pollution coated concrete and glass buildings that had been erected hastily after the war. Though there was nothing overt, I was convinced I was under constant surveillance. I tread carefully. I took absolutely no photographs during my 10 days behind the Iron Curtain. I got the impression that people crossed the street to avoid direct contact with me--I was obviously a westerner with my brightly colored clothing. I was a little surprised that the professors and other faculty at Karl Marx University spoke so openly about their dissatisfaction with the government. A couple of attendees from Czechoslovakia, when they discovered I was Canadian, wanted to know if I could help them join a hockey team.

It was a truly surreal experience that will stay with me as long as I live, I suspect. When the time came to leave, I traveled to Berlin with an American who had come in via India. He had a lot of things in his suitcase that interested the East German police when we made the reverse trek through Checkpoint Charlie. They opened his suitcase and spread out everything. I expected to get the same treatment. However, there was a shift change right at that moment and the guy who came on as a replacement seemed to assume that I'd already been searched, so I was waved through. The world seemed brighter and less oppressive once I was back in West Berlin, an amazing, ultra-modern city that seemed to be constantly partying in the shadow of the Evil Empire that completely circled it.

When the wall came down a few years later, I was one of the people who bought a little piece of it as a memento. Kitschy, of course.

An excellent season finale of Mad Men last night. Some shows choose to rip apart the status quo and leave viewers dangling during hiatus. On this show they managed to disrupt the status quo but give us the promise of a new beginning. Should be interesting times when the new season picks up again. I knew who Roger Sterling was going off to fetch to help them decode the arcane records of the business.

A New Home for the Dead Zone
The folks over at Cemetery Dance have done some site re-organization. After installing WordPress, my online column has a new URL. Of course, you can still use NewsFromTheDeadZone.com to get there, too.

I watched Hanging Gardens, the third episode of the Rebus series. Not as good as the second, not as bad as the first. Some good, realistic twists. I find it interesting how proximate the criminals and the cops are. Without guns to defend themselves, a lot of the exchanges end up like bar room brawniness and high school smackdowns.

So, is Wendy going to get to be a "field mouse" on C.S.I.? Hodges is a funny character. So geeky and pompous but he has his moments of redemption, too, as when he told Wendy he just wanted her to be happy. Usually the acting on the show is at least solid, but I thought Nick's reactions in the final scene when the brother was released from jail were forced and obvious.

Mice seemed to be a theme on Thursday night, with Jane using one (Mr. Jingles, is that you?) to effect an escape from the lockup. Of course, he psychoanalyzed everyone in jail with him and solved the murder almost without leaving (like Nero Wolfe, solving his crimes from the brownstone). Getting one of the suspects "brought to him" was funny. Still, I find the show teetering on the balance, trying to decide whether to be serious or comedic. NCIS pulls off the comedy. The Mentalist hasn't figured out the right recipe yet.

Finishing up revisions on Chapter Two and plan to send it off to my agent tomorrow.

I read quite a bit more of Awaiting Your Reply this morning. The title comes from the end of one of those Nigerian scam e-mails, the one that everyone is familiar with. My husband died and I'll give you millions of dollars if you'll help me get his fortune out of the Ivory Coast. The e-mail itself doesn't play a part in the story, which is about identity--what it means, and what it doesn't mean. You have a university kid whose biological father (who he knew as his uncle until the revelation) contacts him. The kid's pissed that the people who raised him never thought it was important enough to tell him who he really was. After he runs away, he's declared dead. He's working with his father (but is he really his father?) on some elaborate scam involving identity theft. The kid travels around the country under different aliases, making transactions, creating lives for these fabricated identities. Then there's the guy whose twin brother is scizophrenic, who likes to tell him made-up stories about things that supposedly happened when they were kids. So the brother has his original memories of childhood and, imprinted on top of them, the wild fantasies his brother has spun. Confusion ensues. The mentally ill brother has been traveling around the country, adopting different pseudonymns, and fooling people into believing he's a professional this or an expert that. And then there's the young woman who's traveling with her former high school history teacher, a man who probably isn't what he claims to be (what history teacher could afford a $70,000 car?).

Speaking of identity, we watched The Burning Plain, with Kim Bassinger and Charlize Theron. The movie was a tad confusing at first, because it's told out of sequence and there are characters who are supposed to be older versions of themselves but it takes a while to unravel who's really who. An interesting film about rejection (Bassinger's husband couldn't make love to her after her breast was removed for cancer treatment) and new love, about children disliking the people they love, about love happening between people who were supposed to hate each other, about punishment gone wrong, and about chances to atone.

Advertisement