bev_vincent

The guy who’s watching you

2009-07-10T16:07:43Z

I revised my Storytellers essay and, having made few changes, posted it to the dashboard so it will show up a week from today. Then I moved on to another essay that I’m trying to get finished as part of my desk-clearing process to get me back to work on the novel. I’d really like to get everything that’s piled up on my left-hand pull-out tray cleared by two weeks from today, but realistically it may be the first of August before I can turn my attention fully to the book rewrites. That’s not a bad thing. I like starting things on 1sts. August 1st. Sounds like a plan.

I got hooked on Big Brother a few seasons back, and the new summer season started last night, but I’m not convinced that I’m going to watch it this year. What a lame bunch of contestants, and having Jesse thrown into the mix does nothing to win me over. The one guy I thought might be interesting (maybe because he’s closer in age to me than any of the others) doesn’t impress, and the Ph. D. neuroscientist is too whiny. Did the tae-kwon-do lady think she could get away with reducing her age by 25%? Ha! She got called out on it right away by the interior decorator. I’m going to try my best to resist the temptation to get drawn into their dramas. Must resist.

Burn Notice, on the other hand, was pretty good, although it relied on the stereotype of the Rainman-esque character. The actor even sounded like Dustin Hoffman. The bit where Michael punched him (”you can’t talk to him when he gets like this”) was funny, as was the scene where Fi and Michael were outside the car trying to shut him up long enough to explain the plan. The funniest thing about the episode was the fact that the guest star’s name was: Michael Weston. I did a double-take when I saw that in the credits.

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

Free Agent

2009-07-09T16:13:44Z

Of course, now that I have a Kindle, Amazon goes and lowers the price by $60.

I wrote the first draft of my Storytellers Unplugged essay this morning, 1000 cathartic words. My wife thought it was great, and I hope it stirs up some interesting discussion. Look for it on July 17th. It’s called “Apparently I Write Like a Girl.” If you’ve been following along at home for the past couple of days, you’ll have a good idea what it’s about.

I spent an hour on the phone yesterday talking with my agent about the novel under consideration while I scribbled notes madly all over a sheet of paper. We came up with some interesting modifications to the plot that help get around fundamental issues he had with the book, and, more importantly, a plan of attack for the revision process. With my previous novel, I tended to work for long stretches of time and then show him what I’d done, which necessitated long waits while he perused hundreds of pages. This time we’re going to get the first chapter nailed down. Treat it like a standalone short story so that the voice and the timing and the style are in place, which will give me a solid foundation to build from. I’m looking forward to it. Now I just have to get my desk clear of other obligations so I can focus my attention on it. I always come away from these discussions with him feeling energized and revitalized. He’s such a smart guy and generous with his time and insight.

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

21st Century Breakdown

2009-07-08T19:41:49Z

I’ve been listening to two things lately. At the gym on my iPod I’ve been playing “left right left right,” the free live album that Coldplay offered on their website. Their songs have an energy that lends itself to the elliptical trainer. In my car I’ve been listening to the new Green Day album. I pre-ordered the special edition that has four extra tracks, songs that include covers of The Who and Bob Dylan. There’s a lot going on in this album, and I like it pretty much from track 1 to track 22. Last Night on Earth reminds me of early 1980s E.L.O., for example. I wish their lyrics were easier to parse, but the music alone is enough to keep me flipping back to the beginning of the album whenever I reach the end.

I bought a new monitor yesterday to replace the one that was DOA when I got up in the morning. Went for the cheapest I could find, since I’m not all that demanding. So long as it can show words and the occasional video I’m happy. No video games, not my style. I got a 20″ Acer like the one pictured. All of a sudden I have a lot more monitor real estate to play with–love these wide screen monitors. Used to be that a monitor would set you back serious coin and break your back. This one was lighter than a briefcase and just about as easy to carry out of the store. Does anyone know if I’m saving anything by setting it up in 16-bit mode as opposed to 32? Or the opposite? I’m partly colorblind, and the color of the words on the page is fine so long as they’re black. I thought maybe I’d free up some CPU crunching or memory by stepping down, but that might be just wishful thinking.

The new Torchwood five-part series started airing in the UK this week. Thanks to a friend abroad, I’m going to have the first couple of episodes to see in a day or so. I’ve heard good things about it so far.

It seems to me that Raising the Bar is aiming for lack-of-resolution stories this season. The past two episodes have ended that way, at least. The cop who was culpable for Jerry’s patient’s death isn’t in any trouble (other than a potential civil suit and perhaps some interesting questions to answer from his girlfriend). I’m starting to think that the other lawyer’s stalker isn’t her soon-to-be-ex husband–but maybe we’re meant to think that.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever withdrawn a work from publication after it was accepted and scheduled. There may have been other instances where the publisher couldn’t get his act together and get the book out the door where I’ve withdrawn work, but this was an entirely different situation. As I mentioned yesterday, after 18 months the publisher decided to send the manuscript out to a different editor for review. This is after the editor acquired the story, defined the table of contents and went through revisions with the authors. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. In any case, the report on my story was pretty brutal, and one of the central themes was that I hadn’t successfully captured the voice of a male protagonist, being that I am a female writer and such things are a challenge. No, I’m not joking. The editor even identified passages that a male would never write. Huh. The rest of this editor’s critique may have been entirely valid and acutely perceptive, but I couldn’t take any of it seriously after such a stunning declaration. I wish I knew who he or she was so I could present myself and see the reaction.

Anyhow, the acquiring editor, who was perfectly happy with the story 18 months ago, enough to enter into a contract to publish it, decided that the story needed major work based on the external editor’s remarks, and would I undertake to rewrite the entire story in two weeks, since the book is going to press in six. Normally I’m a very agreeable writer, willing to cooperate with editors who make reasonable requests. In this case I found myself saying “no.” I would make small modifications if deemed necessary, but I wasn’t going to re-imagine the story or change the approach. That wasn’t the story I wanted to tell–nor the one the editor acquired back in 2007. I drew the line in the sand — take it as is (with minor polish) or not. The decision was “not,” so I asked for a written release from the contract, which I obtained. This is going to leave a 4000-word hole in their manuscript, and that doesn’t make me happy, but that’s life. Sometimes you have to take a stand for something you feel strongly about.

The one good thing to come out of this — now I have something to write about for my next Storytellers Unplugged essay!

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

Delicate Sound of Thunder

2009-07-07T18:35:26Z

My short story “Charlie’s Voice” is now online at Story Station. As I mentioned yesterday, this is a YA site and the story probably qualifies as YA, but it’s also good for an OA audience, too (old adults!) as that’s what I wrote it for originally.

I couldn’t fathom the plot of The Closer last night–or at least the crucial discovery about how the victim died. We never found out why he was outdoors at the time, though that’s a minor issue. The bullet wound, however, looked like it came from a low angle, shooting up into his skull. If the shooter fired “over the heads” of the carjackers and the bullet traveled two blocks, I would have thought that it would still be ascending or on a downward arc of its trajectory, which means the bullet should have entered from the top of his head.

Tricking the suspects into confessing to a felony murder by association is getting a little old as a plot device, too, although the two actors who played the gangbangers were very good and amusing to watch as they thought they were being clever.

Seems like my essay in progress might end up close to the target of 2500 words after all. I added quite a bit to it this morning and hit 2400 words, though some of that will certainly go in the editing phase. I still have some more to write, though, so it should be comfortably at the limit when all’s said and done.

Woke up to the sound of thunder this morning, a welcome sound after the recent drought. It’s been raining fairly steadily ever since, which is very good. Sometimes we just get a brief deluge, most of which runs off immediately, and the ground doesn’t really get wet more than a few millimeters down. This gradual, persistent rain might actually do us some good. It’s also nice to go outside and lunch time and discover that is below 80° instead of pushing for 100.

My computer monitor died this morning. No services will be held in its memory.

I had an editor offer the opinion that it was a challenge for someone of one gender to write convincingly from the point of view of the other, and that I hadn’t done a convincing job of it. Problem was, the story’s protagonist was male. Hmmm. Makes me seriously wonder about the validity of any of the editor’s other comments. Unfortunately, since I’m one layer removed from the editor, I can’t even flaunt the mistake in his/her face. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to be able to correct that person’s assumption face to face. I don’t even know his/her name, alas.

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

YA

2009-07-06T15:26:35Z

We stand a better chance of getting rain this week than we have in a long time, with the POP at about 30% every day, and high temps below 95° for at least the next couple of days and below 100 all week°, which is a nice change. The only upside to this drought and heat is that I haven’t mowed the lawn in a few weeks. It’s a little bit ragged at the moment, but it seems cruel to assault it when it’s struggling for its life.

My short story ”Charlie’s Voice” will appear sometime in the next week or two at Story Station, which is billed as “The Finest Children’s & Young Adult Stories of Fun & Adventure.” Since the story has a juvenile as a protagonist, I decided to try to sell it as a YA story, even though I don’t really consider it much different from my other stories. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale inspired by Mark Twain, after a fashion.

I received word today that the Canadian anthology Hard Ol’ Spot will be going to the printer in August or September. However, a second layer of editing took place, and I am expecting a request for revisions this week, so it looks like I’ll get a chance to revisit my story, “Adrift,” one more time. This is good news in a way, because there was at least one change that I wished I could have made long after the story was accepted for publication and maybe now I’ll get that opportunity.

I watched Sleuth, the 2007 version, directed by Kenneth Branagh and written by Harold Pinter, wherein they reinvent the classic play and film. Michael Caine switches roles to the elder of the duo and Jude Law plays the role originated by Caine in the 1972 movie. The film is very claustrophobic–the only shots taken outside of Caine’s house are a few glimpses of a car approaching the house toward the end. The house is stark and modern, infested with cameras as part of an elaborate security system, which allows Branagh to offer some very interesting perspectives from camera POV. He goes a bit overboard with this at the beginning, as the first few shots are from jarring perspectives. Completely overhead as Law’s character, Milo Tindall, greets novelist Andrew Wyke at the entrance of Wyke’s mansion and then, a few seconds later, an out of frame shot that captures the two only from about mid-chest down as they talk. It’s always a delight to watch Caine chew up the scenery, and he doesn’t often get the major showcase for his talents that he’s offered here. Law has moments where he’s over the top, but his performance in the second act is amazing, though I won’t explain why because it would give something crucial away about the story. It’s a very talk-y film, more of a stage play on celluloid, but that’s not a bad thing. It was savaged by the critics, but I enjoyed it, mostly because of Caine, who is one of my all-time favorites.

Got a lot of work done on the 2500-word essay this weekend, both reading reference material and writing the actual piece, which now stands at about 1700 words. I don’t think it is going to go to full length, although I may surprise myself. I’m waiting for a book to arrive so I can begin reading for the final article I need to write for this project, a 500 word essay about a subject I’m not as conversant with as the others. This one has been on my to-do list for ages, and I’d love to get it out the door by the end of August.

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

We’re happy — not so sure about the squirrel

2009-07-05T16:21:53Z

We like our back deck, but so do the flies, so last summer I bought this canopy thingie that fits over the patio umbrella and forms an enclosure around the table. The bottom is weighted by a water-filled tube. We didn’t get any chance to use it last summer, though, and I took it down before Ike struck and only yesterday got around to re-installing it. It was a hot, hot evening for the Fourth, but we enjoyed sitting in the back yard as we barbequed all the same. The flies came, but they were stymied by the netting and we laughed at them as they landed on the mesh and glared at us with their complex eyes. The squirrel that liked to cool himself on the concrete base of the table probably isn’t going to be happy about this turn of events. If I find him chewing through the base to get inside, he’s history, though.

I finally got to see Gone, Baby, Gone, the movie adaptation of one of Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro novels and, wow, what a powerful movie. Usually, child abduction stories are based around middle or upper class families, but here is one where the mother is reprehensible and totally unsympathetic. There is a lot of moral ambiguity built into the story, and I think the fundamental question it asks is: what is the nature of moral certitude. Several characters acted out of the belief that what they were doing was fundamentally right, even if it was legally wrong. On the other hand, a character acts on the side of the law and what he felt to be right, but did his sense of moral rectitude make a victim out of an innocent? Very nicely done. Casey Affleck strikes exactly the right note as the baby-faced PI who has a lot more spine than anyone gives him credit for. Michelle Monaghan, who I’ve never heard of before, was also fine as Angie.

We also watched Last Chance Harvey, a romantic comedy with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Harvey’s a jingle writer in London for his daughter’s wedding–in one fell swoop he misses a flight, gets fired and finds out that his daughter wants her stepfather to give her away at the wedding instead of him. He meets up with Thompson, a lonely woman who works as a statistics interviewer at Heathrow and they click, and spend a wonderful day together that culminates with the wedding reception. A nice, light film with two great actors and a couple of fine moments, including the one where Hoffman stands up for himself to deliver the toast to the bride.

Eureka! returns to SyFy (formerly SciFi) on Friday evening, the first of 10 new episodes. It’s been a while since the end of season three, so I’m not sure exactly where the story left off. It’s a fun show that appeals to my inner geek. The stars of The Big Bang Theory should go on a field trip to Eureka someday.

I’m working a little this weekend, tinkering with an essay and reading material that I need to complete it. Also learning the best ways to get Word docs onto my Kindle, which isn’t an exact science. A couple of times I’ve sent files over only to discover that there are no indents at the start of paragraphs. Saving them as HTML files seems to be more reliable, except that the smart quotes and other special characters don’t always translate. I think I’ve got a reliable formula down.

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

Let’s split the difference

2009-07-02T20:02:39Z

Huh — I typed “combination US Canada flag” into my search engine and darned if that isn’t exactly what I got–and what I was looking for. It’s gotten to the point where if you can think of it, you can find it.

Anyhow, this is right smack dab between the two national birthdays, so it seemed apropos. Being an expatriate, I get to celebrate both, but I only get a holiday for one.

I spent most of yesterday evening on a WebEx meeting with my colleagues in Japan. Darned time difference. There was a time when it worked to our advantage, though. I was working on a software project with my peer in Japan. I would work on the code all day long and upload it to the project management database at the end of the day. My colleague would extract it and pick up where I left off during his work day, which was completely out of sync with my own. So we had almost round-the-clock development.

I’m in the middle of too many books. I’m reading one novel for pleasure, one for review and another as research for an essay I have to write. The latter is Children of the Night by Dan Simmons, which I just started last night. I read the book when it was first published, but I’ve forgotten most of the details. Reading about the demise of Ceausescu reminds me of Iraq’s situation post-Saddam for some reason, though the parallels are slim at best.

It’s only 98° today. What a relief. No rain, of course. We’re 7″ behind annual average at this point. Of course, we’ll make that all up on one horrific day sometime soon, I fear.

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

Happy Canada Day

2009-07-01T19:28:25Z

I posted some new details about the Stephen King Illustrated Companion on its page on my web site, including the table of contents, ISBN and approximate dimensions. As I’ve mentioned before, this is going to be a large-format book, slightly larger than a standard sheet of paper. Another book from the same publisher in a similar format weighed over 3 lbs.

Last night’s episode of Raising the Bar was interesting, especially in the way it concluded. Or rather, in that it didn’t exactly, but it doesn’t seem to be a story that will continue. The trial ended with a hung jury and both sides committed to not backing down, which means a new trial in six or eight months, even though the defendant said that he couldn’t go through it again. The alternative was a difficult pill to swallow. Maybe the guy will show up again toward the end of the season.

I finally decided enough is enough with the essay I’ve been tinkering with off and on for several months. This morning, I shifted around paragraphs and sentences yet again, and everything sort of fell into place. I managed to read through it once without making a single change, which is the first time that’s happened. So I pulled the trigger and sent it off to the editor. Time to move on to the two remaining articles I have for the book, one at 500 words and the other at 2500.

I found out through passing correspondence yesterday that Chaney Kley, the guy who played Steve, the lead character in our short film Gotham Café, died two years ago, apparently from sleep apnea. He was only 34 years old. Man, that sucks. Here’s his obituary.

It looked for all the world like it was going to rain yesterday afternoon, and then again this morning, but nothing so far. Just that one downpour on Monday evening.

Here’s a funny op-ed piece in the NY Times written by famous expatriate Canadians about what they miss about the terre de nos aïeux, starting with Rick Moranis and including Kim Cattrall (bet you didn’t know she was one of us!) and a writer for The Simpsons, and includes someone waxing philosophical about the Coffee Crisp bar. Today marks 142 years since Canada became a country. Per Moranis, “We call our dollars loonies because the coin has an image of a loon. Another old bird, the Queen of England, is on the other side of the coin.” Long may she reign!

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

Apres moi, le deluge

2009-06-30T18:50:33Z

We received our first significant rainfall for the month of June yesterday evening. Of course, it started when my wife and I were halfway through our constitutional, at the point of no return. It started with a few sporadic drops, which I misattributed to a lawn sprinkler we’d just passed. By the time we rounded the last corner, it was coming down in sheets and we were soaked. We didn’t care–it felt good. I had almost started to believe that the sky had forgotten how to rain around here. Of course, when we got back into our air conditioned house, getting soaked to the skin no longer seemed like such a great idea. Brrrr.

Today we received notice that our voluntary water conservation measures have become mandatory. That means watering the lawn only twice a week and no more than an inch per week, with fines of up to $200/day for violations. Lawn irrigation is the single biggest drain on the pumping station, they say.

Good episode of The Closer last night, as Fritzie and Brenda both relied on their knowledge of the other’s behavior to further their individual causes. The whole “LAPD doesn’t care about X crime” has been done before, so I recognized it for the trick it was, but that didn’t make the moment when the dufus who fell for it realized his mistake any less rewarding. I had no idea what Brenda wanted the money for, though, which made for a nice payoff at the end, pun intended.

Because the book still isn’t available for pre-order, I haven’t been saying much about my new publication, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, due out from Barnes and Noble in November, but I finally decided it was time to blow the wraps off this puppy. Those of you who played along with my jigsaw puzzles last week got a sneak preview, but for the rest of you, you can read the publisher’s copy and back-of-the-book text here. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the book, and I’ll be adding more details in the coming days and weeks. This is going to be a large book, what you might call a coffee table volume, and it will have all manner of neat little documents and surprises inside pockets that you’ll be able to take out and explore. I can’t wait to see the finished product myself.

I spent the morning revising a 1000-word essay that I’ve been toying with for months. I think I finally (finally) have it in the form that I’ve been trying to figure out all this time, so now it’s down to simply perfecting the wording. Soon I’m going to send it in, because if I don’t I’m going to start hating it.

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

Where did June go?

2009-06-29T16:12:31Z

I read Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain cover to cover yesterday and posted my review last night. A fast-paced serial killer novel, third in the series. It doesn’t come out until September but since I had to review it for Amazon’s Vine program I figured I might as well post the review on Onyx as well.

I definitely think that WordPress 2.8 is peppier than the previous version I had. I also like the fact that I was able to move the LiveJournal crossposting banner to the bottom of the messages on LJ. I might have been able to do that before, but I neglected to check the configuration until now.

I figured out the culprit on the first Law & Order: Criminal Intent last night the minute he lied to the police “on his friend’s behalf,” and everything else I saw during the show simply reinforced it. Whenever you see someone hovering at the back of a group photograph as if he doesn’t really belong to the group, it’s a dead giveaway on shows like this. However, I misread the Goran and Eames episode completely. I was sure that it was going to be the wife who’d been missing and presumed murdered for a decade who was the culprit. Of all the crime-solving duos on TV, Goran and Eames have the oddest relationship. They know a lot about each other, but they aren’t really friends, and there seems to be a constant level of discomfort between them. Maybe they know too much about each other.

I can’t believe that June is all but over. Wherever did it go? (The two suggestions I’ve had so far are: “Myrtle Beach” and “on the top of the fridge.”)

While I was working on other things yesterday afternoon, I watched The Three Kings on AMC, the George Clooney movie set in Iraq after the first Gulf War. It’s a fascinating film, both from an artistic point of view and a political one. The way these soldiers were able to move through the country as if they weren’t even there was an interesting concept. The story of the Iraqi soldier who took the Mark Wahlberg character prisoner was one of the most humanizing scenes in the film.

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

Squirrely behavior

2009-06-28T14:48:23Z

We have a patio table with umbrella on our back deck, the base which is supported by a large, tapered stone. Lately, one of the local squirrels, of which there are many, has taken to sprawling on this stone in the hot afternoons, spread out much like the critter in the accompanying photograph. The pose is strikingly possessive, as if he’s thinking, “mine, all mine.” I don’t know if he is enjoying radiated heat from the stone (though it’s certainly hot enough without it) or if there is some sort of cooling effect through the stone, which is somewhat shaded. It’s just funny to see him sprawled out like that.

I read Chelsea Cain’s new novel, Evil at Heart, yesterday. For readers of her novels, villainess Gretchen Lowell has grown large enough that she doesn’t even have to appear on the page very much to remain threatening and menacing. The novel is, in large part, an indictment of the cult of personality that has grown up around certain serial killers (Ted Bundy, for example, though no specific examples are cited–Gretchen stands in for all), where there are tours that will take “fans” past famous sites from the lives and crimes of these murderers. Cain’s “hero” isn’t exactly cut from whole cloth, either–in the last book he was a drug addict and in this one he starts out voluntarily committed to a mental ward. Some of Archie’s behavior is puzzling, but on the whole this is a solid entry in the series, and there is enough ambiguity toward the end to give you plenty to think about when it’s over.

There’s never any moral ambiguity in an episode of Eli Stone. The show was never quite as quirky as Boston Legal, but its moral compass isn’t that much different. Of course, quirky comes in different flavors, so if you can’t have a rampaging partner with incipient dementia and a predilection toward shooting people, you should at least have someone who receives somewhat ambiguous visions. There are only two episodes left, and I hope they manage to resolve the Eli/Maggie issue, which is all that really matters about the show, when you get right down to it. It’s a star-crossed love story with hallucinations.

Burn Notice episodes are particularly good when our heroes get to burn someone else, as they did this week. I thought the audit subplot started out good and then went a little screwy when Sam “suddenly” recognized the auditor, though. The game of chess with the local cop is an interesting twist, but she hasn’t really posed a serious threat to Michael yet. No new episode this week, however, probably because of tennis.

Had to go appliance shopping yesterday–our 14-year-old drier is in the process of giving up the ghost. It’s not dead yet, to toss in the obligatory Monty Python quote, but it’s painful to listen to it lumber through the cycle like a racehorse trying to make it to the finish line on three legs.

T-Mobile is so funny. Their solution to my customer complaint about the impossible situation I ended up in with their prepaid phone was to add $25 worth of minutes to the account, two weeks after I terminated the service and returned the phone to Target. They expressed their hope that I would continue to work with their customer service agents to resolve the problem. I’ll bet that somewhere in the heart of a computer, a program is still trying to activate the number.

And the letter wasn’t even signed by Catherine Zeta Jones, which would have made everything all right.

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

Another puzzle to while away the hours

2009-06-26T18:21:53Z

Or at least a few minutes. Click on the image to get to the puzzle.

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

Feedback

2009-06-26T16:20:30Z

I received a two-page e-mail from my agent yesterday with detailed feedback about my most recent novel. He’s a very perceptive reader, and picked out some thematic elements that I hadn’t planned but are obvious in retrospect. He also had some very useful suggestions about how to develop some of the characters so their presence has deeper significance and resonance. We’re going to talk sometime next week to map out a strategy for revising the manuscript, and then it’s off to the races. Looks like I have my summer’s work cut out for me. Something useful to do in the air conditioned office while it’s 104° outside.

Not a good day for celebrities yesterday. The King of Pop was all the rage when I was an undergrad in college, with Thriller dominating the TV waves more than the airwaves.

My daughter rented some movies for us to watch last night. First up was Penelope, the fable about the girl (Christina Ricci) born under a curse with a pig’s snout. A cute story with the predictable moral but some fun getting there. Funny appearance by Reece Witherspoon, and a bit part by the guy who plays Owen on Torchwood. Peter Dinklage is an interesting and under-rated actor, I think.

Next up was Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was goofy and silly. It took me a while to recognize the main character’s best friend until I realized she was the actress who played Jessie’s ill-fated girlfriend on Breaking Bad. Kristen Scott Thomas was hilarious, and John Goodman was funny (as was his hair), but the plot was simply absurd, and painfully awkward at times. Sort of like Bridget Jones’ Diary, but not as good.

Kellerman’s solution to the crazy judge problem on Raising the Bar was inspired. It seemed for a while like his client was getting the shaft in this duel, but it all worked out in the end, and Kellerman might actually have a judge who views him somewhat favorably now. The “hate crime” plot was interesting, especially since the camera kept panning past Charlie, the judge’s gay clerk, as if we were meant to understand where his sympathies lie, only to discover later that they weren’t that simple. The show is starting to find its legs. I wasn’t sure about it last season, but I’m sticking with it (especially since there’s damn all else on the tube during the summer).

Law & Order: Criminal Intent fans: set your DVRs for an extra hour on Sunday. Two new episodes, back to back, starting an hour earlier than normal.

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

Some Like it Hot

2009-06-25T18:15:16Z

I was one of the millions of people who had Farrah plastering their walls in the 1970s. Not just the famous poster, but pretty much every poster available. I’ve always been partial to the one at the right (left in some browsers!), from the set of a forgettable movie called Sunburn. My college friends and I made a trek to an outlying movie theater in Halifax to see Saturn 3, which offered as its raison d’être a brief glimpse of Farrah’s breast. Just one of them, mind you, but it was enough! I never considered her a terribly strong actress. Even her most acclaimed roles were simply okay in terms of performance. I think they garnered accolades because they were better than anyone expected them to be, or because Farrah’s presence drew attention to societal issues in a way that few other people could. And yet I would watch her in pretty much anything she chose to do. She was fascinating. Glamorous. Sexy. And brave—there’s no denying that the pose she struck in her famous poster was a gutsy one. We saw the recent documentary, also brave, and it was hard to watch at times because the disease and time had ravaged those familiar features, the ones that had adorned my bedroom walls for years. Still, when I saw the news on CNN when I got to the gym a short while ago, I felt all the wind go out of my lungs for a second. Her passing wasn’t as unexpected as, say that of Lady Di, but I felt it all the same.

I bit the bullet and upgraded my Wordpress installation from 2.6.3 to 2.8. Instructions that begin with multiple warnings to back up your files and your database and then say 1) Delete all files, followed shortly thereafter by “except…” I’m sure there were choruses of “oh, shit” from people who didn’t read to the end of that sentence in the instructions. The upgrade took about 30 minutes altogether, and went off without incident. I would say that the new version seems snappier than the previous one. Beyond that I haven’t had a chance to explore new features.

I received the ARC for Chelsea Cain’s third novel, Evil at Heart, from Amazon Vine yesterday. Looks like the publisher is going all out for this one. The ARC even contained a CD with an extract from the audio version. I enjoyed the first two novels in the series, Heartbreak and Sweatheart, and the latter is reviewed at Onyx. Looking forward to diving into this one.

A while back, Charlie Huston offered some of his early novels as free pdf downloads. I grabbed them at the time, but as I did I wondered when I would spend the time reading these books on my computer screen. Certainly I had no intention of printing them out. Then it dawned on me this morning: this is a perfect situation for my Kindle. So I e-mailed them to Amazon’s free conversion site and got the PDFs back as Kindle files, which are now on my reader and ready to go. Though pdf conversion is still considered an experimental feature, these seemed to go over pretty well.

I received a sample contract for the project I’ve mentioned the past couple of days. All looks to be in order. Now I just have to figure out what to send them.

My goal this week is to lose “a ton” of calories (i.e., 2000 calories). My workout goal when I go to the gym is to burn 400 calories and go at least 3 miles on the elliptical trainer. If I hit 400 calories but not 3 miles, I keep on going, and vice versa. Most weeks I go two or three times, but I’m trying to make it a daily thing during the week, and I’m four for four so far this week.

My car’s thermometer read 118° when I got into it after work yesterday afternoon. The real temperature was 104°. Ouch. Same deal today. The forecast is for a gradual trend toward sub-100 temps over the next few days. Even a 30% chance of rain today. No signs of any yet, though.

We watched New in Town, with Renée Zellwegger and Harry Connick, Jr., OnDemand last night. Cute and predictable, with a few logic gaps here and there. J.K. Simmons’ performance was worth the price of admission alone. Having just watched him in the most recent episode of The Closer, the transformation couldn’t have been greater. Some of the expressions that came out of his mouth were hilarious. Zellwegger’s charm is starting to wear off a little. Her Jessica Rabbit face isn’t drawn quite the same as it used to be.

Speaking of The Closer, three episodes, three interrogations, no interrogation rooms. This week, Brenda got the job done in a hospital room. It’s like she’s taking her show on the road. Mixes things up a little.

Coldplay is offering a nine-track live album for free download on their website. I’ve never owned any of their albums and am only slightly aware of some of their songs, but this is a neat gift and a veritable greatest hits album. Good workout music, I discovered at the gym today.

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

Advanced Math

2009-06-24T19:20:06Z

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

It’s another scorcher out there today. 101° by late afternoon. It’s not too bad so long as you stay in the air conditioning. It’s supposed to “cool off” by Sunday, when the forecast high is only 94°.

A little more progress with that neat project that I mentioned yesterday. I’m going to be looking at a sample contract next and, assuming everything is in order–or at least negotiable–it should be a done deal. Should be a fun gig, if all goes according to plan.

My daughter wanted to watch the Jon/Kate Plus 8 episode on TLC last night, so we checked it out. I know the show title is supposed to have an ampersand instead of a slash as I’ve shown it, but it seems like a division sign is more appropriate to their status. Last week they sat on the same couch but as far from each other as possible and visibly leaning away from each other. This week, they sat on the couch individually, but Jon sat on one end when it was his turn and Kate sat on the other end when it was hers, as if they still felt the presence of the other person and still needed the distance. Little wonder that the show is now going on hiatus for a few months.

The closer it gets to NECON date, the more I regret deciding not to go this year. It’ll probably turn out to be the best one yet. Besides, I’ll bet it won’t be 101° in Rhode Island.

Three little digits

2009-06-23T16:14:38Z

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

It was 100° according to my car thermometer when I left work yesterday afternoon, and the same is predicted for the rest of the week. The heat index adds about 8-10° to that. Chance of rain: an optimistic 15% each day through Friday, which is more than it’s been lately. And it’s still June, which is when summer is only supposed to start. What’s August going to be like at this rate? Phew. I tried to find a picture of a melting thermometer for this post, but this was the best I could do.

It’s always nice to be invited to do things. I received a very flattering invitation yesterday to participate in an upcoming project. Can’t say anything more about it than that at this point. Only that I was pleased as punch to be asked.

It is coming

2009-06-22T16:20:47Z

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

The long awaited return of Torchwood is nearly here. The five-part miniseries event “Children of the Earth” will air in the UK starting on Saturday, July 4. BBC America will start it on July 20th. See a trailer here, along with a teaser for the November episode of Doctor Who, “Waters of Mars.”

Goran got to exorcise his religious demons in last night’s episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Quoting chapter and verse, he was able to batter the religious zealot into submission, presumably while Eames was outside fetching coffee or something.

I watched a two-part episode of House yesterday that I’d never seen before, the one with the cop who starts laughing during an arrest and leads to he and Foreman in isolation together. The end of the second part hints that Foreman may have suffered some neurological damage, but apparently that thread was dropped, because I’ve seen the next episode in sequence, and there’s no mention of the left/right confusion he exhibited at the end.

I’m still reading and enjoying A Twisted Ladder, the upcoming novel by Rhodi Hawk. Didn’t have much time to read yesterday, but I hope to get back to it soon. I finished revising my Cemetery Dance column for #63, due on Friday, but I’ll probably take another run at it before I submit it.

Still no rain in sight—the seven-day forecast is hot, hot and hotter (perhaps our first > 100° day on the horizon). Water restrictions have been implemented, which means you can only water your lawn 1″ per week on assigned days. It’s voluntary now, but if the water supplies drop, it will be come mandatory, with attendant fines for violations.

Not a city in Italy

2009-06-21T13:50:36Z

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

I read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to my wife last night as a follow up to seeing the movie the night before. As I expected, there was very little overlap between film and story beyond the basic conceit–person born old and aging backwards. In the short story, Benjamin is adult-sized upon birth (his mother’s condition after such a delivery is never revealed), looks to be 70, and can speak. He marries a woman who likes older men, and then ages back to the point where she no longer attracts him and ends up an embarrassment to his son as he progresses to the point where he is younger looking than his offspring. There are some funny bits about his attempt to enter Yale and his ultimate revenge on them many years later but, unlike in the film, more is made of his condition. In the movie, few people comment on his condition–they simply accept him as different, whereas in the short story, his condition is a social embarrassment to everyone associated with him. (Fitzgerald wrote that he was inspired to write it by a remark made by Mark Twain: “It is a pity that the best part of life comes at the beginning, and the worst part at the end.”)

We watched Gran Torino last night. Eastwood is a fascinating filmmaker. His Walt is a thoroughly unlikable character at first, who growls like a dog at the many things that irritate him, an unrepentant bigot and curmudgeon. Over the course of the movie, he undergoes a transformation, an awakening of sorts, but it is a credible change. He doesn’t become a saint (not exactly)–his final words in the movie are as racist as any others he uttered earlier–but he becomes more tolerant. He actually becomes a father of sorts, for a brief while. Perhaps a better father than he’d been to his own children. His lack of patience with the youthful priest is understandable–cripes, the guy looked like he was barely out of high school, let alone the seminary. But everyone gets their due, with the assistance of Su, the nominal head-of-household next door and the ambassador between the Hmong and Eastwood’s “Wally.” His solution to the movie’s problem is a surprise, not exactly the Make My Day answer I was expecting. A fine movie, one that gave us plenty to discuss over breakfast. It has some very funny moments to balance it out.

Who’s got the button?

2009-06-20T21:42:22Z

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

Got the first draft of my Cemetery Dance column for issue 63 written today. It’s due with the editor next Friday, which gives me lots of time to revise and polish it. Once upon a time, these articles ranged anywhere from 5000-7500 words, if you can believe that. Bob Morrish tamed me of my excesses, though, and lately they’ve been more in the 2000-3000 word range.

I’m reading the galley of A Twisted Ladder, an upcoming novel by Rhodi Hawk, a friend I know from NECON and other conventions over the year. When she asked if I’d read it with an eye twoard reviewing it, I happily accepted without even asking what the book was about.

Accepting a review copy from a friend can be a risk. I mean, what happens if I don’t like the book? Sorry, my dog ate it doesn’t work for eGalleys (I transferred it to my Kindle). Fortunately in this case I needn’t have worried. This is an impressively accomplished novel, sort of Southern Gothic but not quite. Set in modern-day and simultaneously in the early 1900s in the bayous, towns and cities of southern Louisiana. I’ve never read any of Rhodi’s fiction before, so I was bowled over by her literary skills, both as a wordsmith and a novelist. The book is due out from Tor/Forge in early September, so I’ll hold my detailed review until closer to that date, but I’m sure my recommendation when I complete it (I’m 40% of the way through now) will be: go buy it!

Speaking of New Orleans, we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. I’d heard mixed things about the movie, but the premise was intriguing and the cast (Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett) strong. We enjoyed it, though at 166 minutes it was a tad overlong. Afterwards, I found myself analyzing the story in terms of what they could have cut. The scene where Daisy falls, for example, did absolutely nothing to advance the plot–her daughter didn’t need to be born prematurely. There were all sorts of places where it could have been trimmed back to the usual length for movies, but in reality, the movie didn’t seem overlong at the time. It was self-indulgent, but we were happy to go along for the ride. My biggest quibble was about what happened to him at the end. Why did he get small, when he was born small and grew normally? I also argue that he could have had another good 15-20 years with Daisy.

Curious about the inspiration for the story, I downloaded the F. Scott Fitzgerald story to my Kindle to be read at a later date.

Remember, Eli Stone fans (all three of you)–ABC is burning off the final four episodes starting tonight at 9 p.m. (Central), and continuing on each of the next three Saturday evenings. I have no idea if there is a wrap up or if it just peters off into nothingness.

I got nothin’

2009-06-18T19:35:06Z

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

It’s a good thing I don’t Twitter. I wouldn’t want to inflict my uneventfulness on any. I can’t think of anything at all to blog about today. I didn’t start any new books, didn’t watch anything on television last night (interesting or otherwise). I spent most of the evening on a WebEx conference with my colleagues in Japan. This morning I worked on a couple of encyclopedia entries for a project I’m contributing to later on this year. I have a Cemetery Dance column due a week from tomorrow, but I haven’t started it yet. There was nothing interesting in the post today. It hasn’t rained yet, and I don’t expect it will in the near future.

So I got nothin. Nothing to see here. Nada, zip, zilch.

On Target

2009-06-17T18:02:05Z

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

This month’s entry in Storytellers Unplugged is called Adventures in Reading.

I wouldn’t mind at all if it rained one of these days. I’m not sure when we last had any (it was a pretty heavy downfall, as I recall), but it wasn’t during the month of June, for which our cumulative rainfall is listed as “trace.” We’re getting temps in the high 90s every day. We went out for our early evening constitutional last night after supper, and fifteen or twenty minutes in that temperature completely resets your internal thermometer. Makes the inside of the house feel cool by comparison, which helps save on air conditioning. At least that’s our theory.

I finished rereading my novel last night, and transferred some of my notes into the master document. I know there are some rough spots–it’s as if I dropped a paragraph in from some other place (always a possibility) or lost my train of thought in places. The book is only 73,000 words long, so there is room for some expansion, too, and I have a few ideas about that. However, before I start any major renovations, I’m going to wait for an upcoming conversation with my agent.

Reading it on the Kindle made it seem like I was reading a “real,” published novel. And not having looked at it this year at all made the prose fresh to me, and there were places that absolutely delighted me. I sure hope my agent likes it and thinks it’s worth working on to get it ready for submission.

Walter Jon Williams quoted my comment about his book This is Not a Game on his blog. If he has trackback for links on his blog, and I have trackback for comments on mine, this cross link might cause an infinite loop that brings the internet to a hault. Don’t blame me if that happens. I didn’t mean it. Honest.

I actually have a lot more time to read these days, during the summer TV doldrums. I watched The Closer and Raising the Bar from Monday night yesterday. The latter is inheriting the trope of the crazy judge from Boston Legal, I think. Jane Kaczmarek’s wasn’t bad enough, so they had to bring in a new, pistol-packing, rule-slinging judge. And the theme of The Closer this season seems to be: where can the final ten minutes, the big interrogation, be staged instead of an interrogation room? Last week it was at a prison visiting station and this week it was in an abandoned house in a failed subdivision. I get a huge kick out of Provenza. The actor who plays him (Sgt. Rizzo from M*A*S*H) looks like he’s having a blast. By the way, if you are one of the few other people who watched Eli Stone, I think this Saturday evening is when they start rolling out the final few episodes of this canceled series.

The final nail in the T-Mobile story: Target took back the phone and the pre-paid card, even though I had written all over everything during my arduous attempts to have the account correctly activated. Bless them, every one. The customer service agent even apologized for my hardship, even though it wasn’t Target’s fault in the least.

To quote the famous philosopher, Meat Loaf…

2009-06-15T15:31:55Z

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

…two out of three ain’t bad. I posted three new reviews to Onyx Reviews yesterday. Two out of three books are currently available (the Lansdale isn’t released until July) and two out of the three are very good (I’ll leave it to you to figure out which isn’t—it’s not much of a challenge!)

Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale
Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams

I’m still working away through a re-read of my own novel, and I’m still liking what I see about 20% of the way in. I’m not sure when my agent will be ready to talk about the novel, hopefully later on this week, but I hope to be done with the readthrough by then.

I think they’re trying a little too hard to turn the new Jeff Goldblum character on Law & Order: Criminal Intent into a hybrid of Patrick Jane from The Mentalist and the guy from Lie to Me, able to divine sophisticated details from minimal data and a dollop of intuition. Stating without a doubt that someone is going through a divorce because he called his spouse “his wife” instead of calling her by name, or figuring there will be a second corpse because a man’s gun is missing from his holster. I like him, but I think he needs to be less perfect in his analyses. In fact, I’d love to see him miss the mark completely from time to time.

T-Mobile saga continues

2009-06-12T19:34:42Z

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

I received my subscriber copy of Cemetery Dance #60 earlier this week, so it should be in the hands of most people by now or will be shortly. Now all I need is some time to read it. My work schedule has been pretty crazy this week, and next week is only going to be marginally better. I had a neat web conference with my Japanese counterparts last night (6 p.m. central time, 8:00 a.m. the following day in Japan!) We used WebEx and Skype together, and it worked out brilliantly. I could even hear the jet fighter from the US air base near the Japanese factory fly overhead during the conference.

I now loathe and detest T-Mobile. Yesterday I merely disliked them. I’ve never had such a problem with a company before. They are simply incapable of clearing a flag in their software that says the prepaid phone I purchased is awaiting activation. In fact, the phone has been activated for 2-1/2 days now, but because the software insists it isn’t, I can’t add any time to it. I spent over 45 minutes on the phone with them at one point today (at least half of that on hold) and was nor farther ahead at the end than at the beginning. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” one person asked. “You haven’t helped me at all,” I replied. Interrupting their pre-canned scripts is a real challenge. “Stop talking and listen to me,” I’d say when they would start spouting the same crap I’ve heard ten times in the past two days already. I’m rarely rude to people, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want them to lead me around in the same circle that I’d already worn into the ground. The case has been escalated so high that it must soon come to the attention of Catherine Zeta Jones. And yet I still can’t do one simple thing — add time to the phone. Give them money, in other words. Idiots. Oh, boy, is the letter that I write to Customer Service going to scathe. I’ve been drafting it in my head for two days now. They’re going to need asbestos gloves to get it out of the envelope.

I finished Cemetery Dance (Child & Preston) this morning. Dreadful, dreadful book. It was like a long episode of Scooby Doo in the end. I remember enjoying both Relic and Ice Limit, but this one was bad, bad, bad.

I found out today that AT&T is dropping usenet, so I had to find another nntp server. Fortunately, a helpful poster on rec.arts.mystery pointed me to a free server. It doesn’t have binary groups, but I don’t want them, anyway.

I enjoyed the first episode of the new season of Raising the Bar (although the Chief Prosecutor –or is he the D.A.? is getting sleazier all the time), and Burn Notice was pretty good, too, although the reverse interrogation was a tad of a stretch. Fiona’s birthday present to Michael, referencing trench warfare, was pretty funny.

I Reckon

2009-06-11T19:03:44Z

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

The season debut of The Closer was pretty good. Gruesome, horrible crime, diversions and misdirections, personal issues, and a tense interrogation through a sheet of plexiglass.

I thought I knew what was going on with Law & Order: Criminal Intent this week, but I got fooled. I thought that the father overheard complaints about the robberies and used it as a cover to get rid of their sick child, but it was even cagier than that. Ms. Redgrave was a nice addition.

I sat down to watch Burn Notice last night, before I realized it was only Wednesday evening.

Issue 5 of Dead Reckonings is back from the printers and on its way to contributors and subscribers alike. I have two articles: Enter Ghost (a combined review of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle) and Living on a Powder Keg, a review of Joe Hill’s, Gunpowder. As a rule, I like Hill’s writing a lot, but this novella didn’t do it for me, for reasons you can learn by reading the essay. The full table of contents is available via the hyperlink above or by clicking on the bold yellow cover.

I’ve been wrapped up in meetings at work for the past three/four days, and I have a web video conference with my colleagues in Japan tonight, so I’ve been out of the loop. However, let me take a moment to rant about T Mobile. I bought a prepaid To Go phone the other night for someone to use while on an upcoming trip. Activated the phone very early yesterday morning and then attempted to add minutes to it. The automated system told me there was a problem with the account, even though the phone works. It received the activation verification message and I’ve been able to both make and and receive calls. Since then, I’ve spent, oh, conservatively 465 hours either dealing with automated systems or live people simply trying to add $25 worth of minutes to the damned thing. Everyone is very sympathetic to my plight, but seemingly unable to get the phone out of its stuck “still activating” mode. They keep telling me to try back in two hours. I do. No go. What a huge PITA. I would never buy another T Mobile system again. We used AT&T last year for the same process and it was effortless and painless. I’m not much of a complainer, but I plan to write the company about my experience (since you can’t apparently file a complaint message online). Does the “T” part of “T Mobile” stand for “terrible”?</rant>

Reruns

2009-06-08T15:20:12Z

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

I received a royalty check this weekend for On Writing Horror. This is our second dispersement, and thought he checks are paltry, it’s still revenue, so I ain’t complainin’.

I also received my contract for my essay in the forthcoming 2010 Stephen King desk calendar. This will be the second year that I have content in the calendar. It’s a fun little gig, and the remuneration is excellent.

I finished a book review for Cemetery Dance #63, and received my contributor copies of issue #60 this weekend.

Working my way through Teatime for the Traditionally Built with my wife, and Cemetery Dance (the novel) on my Kindle. I didn’t mean to put aside This is Not a Game, but I did, inadvertently, so I’ll get back to that one as soon as I finish CD. I also received my first eGalley for my Kindle, though not through official channels. It’s the ARC of a forthcoming novel by a NECON friend. The MS Word file converted to the Kindle really well.

Went to see Star Trek for the second time yesterday afternoon. It stands up very well to repeat viewing. I still don’t understand why Nero didn’t age during his 25 years lingering around in space waiting for Spock to show up (or what he did during that time) or why no one put up railings inside the Romulan ship to keep the crew from accidentally tumbling to their deaths, but it’s a very good movie.