I usually like to put a decent amount of planning into a story before I start to write it. With the last story I wrote (G.A.IA.: ROGUE STATE) I probably underdid the planning. It was a lot more seat-of-the-pants than usual, which is probably why it didn't turn out like how I'd wanted. Not that I consider it really bad--nothing I write is bad, ever--just that it seems to have a few plot holes. That it ended up at only 47,000 words is a good indicator it wasn't the best thing I ever did.
Again I think a lack of planning was key. I already described in one post (Out of Nothing At All) how I created a character out of thin air and ended up giving her a major role. Then I decided about 3/4 of the way through to make an otherwise unrelated character into a villain as part of some big conspiracy. The end result is that where it ended and where it began didn't necessarily line up the way thy should.
Reading through the first draft I couldn't help thinking that it really needs to go back to formula. So I struggled with that for a little while and maybe by the time this post airs I'll have gotten something figured out. I think a large part of the struggle was that I didn't really have much in mind for the setting. In the first draft I ended up using some little generic town in central Africa and jungles around there. Obviously I've never been to central Africa, small towns or jungles. So I think that presented a little bit of a challenge.
This time around I'm trying to make better notes and get a better idea of where things are happening. Also they say if you're writing a mystery (and there are mystery elements here) then you should start and the end and work backwards. I did some of that, deciding who the villains are and what their whole scheme is supposed to be and how it's supposed to work--before it's unraveled by our heroes of course. I'm hoping the end result will be a bit stronger. But maybe not.
Anyway, that's why I try not to do seat-of-the-pants writing much anymore. Ultimately it leads to a lot more shitty drafts than if I'd just figured things out from the start.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Friday, June 27, 2014
Do the Angry Newbie or How Not to Respond to Criticism
Ever since the early days of the World Wide Web in 1996 I've had a talent for making enemies. I'm pretty much like Charles Bukowski's barfly getting into one brawl after another at the great watering hole that is Internet forums. Although as I near middle age I've mellowed a little, but sometimes I still get into the occasional dust-up. I've found a certain pattern concerning these dust-ups on writing critique sites--or just one site really.
What happened a couple weeks ago is a pretty good example of how it goes down. Someone posted a proposed third version of a query letter that was just godawful. I mean it was a huge step back from the first two versions. It was like she (I'm assuming from the screen name) had gotten bonked on the head and forgotten everything she'd learned about writing query letters.
So because I'm a Grumpy Bulldog and tired and this was pretty bad I couldn't resist a smart-ass comment comparing it to someone else who had recently written some really awful queries. (That guy was a real piece of work. I mean the more people tried to help the worse he seemed to get.) Now of course we cue the histrionics.
Step One: Sarcastic Whining:
The first thing she does is give me the old "Thanks for being so unhelpful." Followed by "I thought this place was supposed to be for people to help each other!"
Which really people (including me) did try to help you twice already and instead of getting better you actually got worse. Also apparently my previous attempts to help didn't count. What have you done for me lately?
Step Two: Passive Aggressive:
The next thing she does is make sure to heap lots of praise on everyone else who replied. And in most cases they'll be sure to thank those people by name while making sure to exclude me. Ooh, take that! I find that more childish than hurtful.
Step Three: Hypocritical Personal Attack:
When our paths crossed again (because a low-traffic forum is like a small town that way) then it was time for her to bring out the big guns. Basically saying, "I've read some of your work recently and it's not good at all!" They also like to sprinkle in words like "troll" and "bullying" too, though I think they have a pretty low standard for bullying.
The fallacy here is that first of all you attacking my work doesn't sting because A) You're obviously not objective and B) You're not anyone important. Or to put it succinctly, some unpublished nobody who's mad at me saying they don't like my work doesn't really matter to me.
Sometimes they might try to go deeper into other personal areas. The thing is if I put something on my profile on the forum or on Twitter or this here blog or wherever then it doesn't hurt when you throw it back at me. Obviously if I wrote and posted it then I didn't care who reads it.
The other thing is this is so hypocritical. You're attacking me personally because I said something you didn't like about your writing. Not you, personally, but about your writing that you posted. And I'm the big bad bullying troll? Maybe you should look in the mirror, honey.
Step Four: Bid for Martyrdom:
Usually these people leave pretty shortly after. I don't even think it's me so much as this type of person isn't really joining the group so much as looking for free critiques. (Or really just validation.) Once they've used that up they take off. Though often enough they have to throw a little tantrum on the way out. "You're mean so I'm going to take my ball and go home!" Which usually then only brings the response of, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
The thing here is usually this person hasn't made any other contributions other than asking for free critiques. They don't seem to realize that them leaving isn't really that big of a deal because they haven't added anything of value for people to miss. Such a tantrum is certainly not going to make me run after them shouting, "No, come back!" Which is what I'm sure they want so they can say they won't come back or only come back on their terms. But really if you want people to do that then actually give something back first.
I don't think I've met anyone yet who's understood I'm trying to be helpful in my own tough love Grumpy Bulldog way. It is a dog-eat-dog business; if you can't handle one not nice comment, how are you going to handle all the rejection that's sure to come? I've run into some nasty critiques and I don't know if it really made me better, but it probably did help to knock me down a peg. It's so easy when you're starting out to think you're the hero of the story, the Chosen One who's going to stand out among all the others because you're you and how can anyone deny your greatness?
As they say though it's how you deal with such incidents that show your true colors. The Angry Newbie schtick outlined above is not how to handle it. If you don't like my "bullying" then take the high road. Don't respond or say something bland like "I'll consider that." And don't go into all that passive aggressive crap either like in step two. You're better than that, right? That's why you're the Chosen One and I'm not, right? Don't become what you profess to hate; that path leads to the dark side.
What happened a couple weeks ago is a pretty good example of how it goes down. Someone posted a proposed third version of a query letter that was just godawful. I mean it was a huge step back from the first two versions. It was like she (I'm assuming from the screen name) had gotten bonked on the head and forgotten everything she'd learned about writing query letters.
So because I'm a Grumpy Bulldog and tired and this was pretty bad I couldn't resist a smart-ass comment comparing it to someone else who had recently written some really awful queries. (That guy was a real piece of work. I mean the more people tried to help the worse he seemed to get.) Now of course we cue the histrionics.
Step One: Sarcastic Whining:
The first thing she does is give me the old "Thanks for being so unhelpful." Followed by "I thought this place was supposed to be for people to help each other!"
Which really people (including me) did try to help you twice already and instead of getting better you actually got worse. Also apparently my previous attempts to help didn't count. What have you done for me lately?
Step Two: Passive Aggressive:
The next thing she does is make sure to heap lots of praise on everyone else who replied. And in most cases they'll be sure to thank those people by name while making sure to exclude me. Ooh, take that! I find that more childish than hurtful.
Step Three: Hypocritical Personal Attack:
When our paths crossed again (because a low-traffic forum is like a small town that way) then it was time for her to bring out the big guns. Basically saying, "I've read some of your work recently and it's not good at all!" They also like to sprinkle in words like "troll" and "bullying" too, though I think they have a pretty low standard for bullying.
The fallacy here is that first of all you attacking my work doesn't sting because A) You're obviously not objective and B) You're not anyone important. Or to put it succinctly, some unpublished nobody who's mad at me saying they don't like my work doesn't really matter to me.
Sometimes they might try to go deeper into other personal areas. The thing is if I put something on my profile on the forum or on Twitter or this here blog or wherever then it doesn't hurt when you throw it back at me. Obviously if I wrote and posted it then I didn't care who reads it.
The other thing is this is so hypocritical. You're attacking me personally because I said something you didn't like about your writing. Not you, personally, but about your writing that you posted. And I'm the big bad bullying troll? Maybe you should look in the mirror, honey.
Step Four: Bid for Martyrdom:
Usually these people leave pretty shortly after. I don't even think it's me so much as this type of person isn't really joining the group so much as looking for free critiques. (Or really just validation.) Once they've used that up they take off. Though often enough they have to throw a little tantrum on the way out. "You're mean so I'm going to take my ball and go home!" Which usually then only brings the response of, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
The thing here is usually this person hasn't made any other contributions other than asking for free critiques. They don't seem to realize that them leaving isn't really that big of a deal because they haven't added anything of value for people to miss. Such a tantrum is certainly not going to make me run after them shouting, "No, come back!" Which is what I'm sure they want so they can say they won't come back or only come back on their terms. But really if you want people to do that then actually give something back first.
I don't think I've met anyone yet who's understood I'm trying to be helpful in my own tough love Grumpy Bulldog way. It is a dog-eat-dog business; if you can't handle one not nice comment, how are you going to handle all the rejection that's sure to come? I've run into some nasty critiques and I don't know if it really made me better, but it probably did help to knock me down a peg. It's so easy when you're starting out to think you're the hero of the story, the Chosen One who's going to stand out among all the others because you're you and how can anyone deny your greatness?
As they say though it's how you deal with such incidents that show your true colors. The Angry Newbie schtick outlined above is not how to handle it. If you don't like my "bullying" then take the high road. Don't respond or say something bland like "I'll consider that." And don't go into all that passive aggressive crap either like in step two. You're better than that, right? That's why you're the Chosen One and I'm not, right? Don't become what you profess to hate; that path leads to the dark side.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Movie Round-Up or I Watched These Movies In the Last Month and You Should Watch Some of Them Too and Some You Shouldn't, So Read This Entry to Find Out Which is Which!
Crave: a movie I have no idea how it got on my queue. It sounds like a good zombie movie title, or something about drug addiction, but does not involve either one. It's kind of like that Walter Mitty movie only the main character is a crime scene photographer who envisions himself saving damsels in distress or killing people who piss him off--in one case with a chain saw. Fantasy starts bleeding into reality when he finds a gun at the scene of a robbery and pockets it. It's kind of slow, but most of us introverts have probably felt like this guy, only maybe not the part about cutting Edward Furlong in half with a chainsaw. (2.5/5)
The Toxic Avenger: I'd heard OF this movie, but never actually watched it. Then late one night I did and soon wished I'd put on something a little better like "Galaxy of Dinosaurs"--see last month's post. Basically a skinny guy who looks like he could be Jon Heder's dad falls from a window at a health club into a barrel of toxic waste. (Because the truck company doesn't bother to put lids on barrels of deadly radioactive toxic waste. Well I guess it was the Reagan era.) Then for whatever reason he starts beating up bad guys. There was really no aspect of this movie that was well done: used car dealer commercial-level acting, a horribly cheesy 80s workout theme song that we get treated to during the opening AND closing credits, the way the Toxic Avenger's voice is clearly dubbed, even the nudity because the women who get naked really needed to work on their tan lines. It's hard to believe there are at least 3 sequels. Having watched part of the other three (before I fell asleep) I guess the only reason to watch is for the cartoonishly inventive ways he kills and/or mutilates bad guys like crushing a guy into a ball and playing basketball with him. (0/5)
Blue Jasmine: I haven't loved Woody Allen movies all that much, but I guess since Netflix kept advertising this on the disc envelopes I decided to put it in my queue. It was pretty bad. Not in the same way as the Toxic Avenger, which is just bad bad. This was more pointless bad. Basically Cate Blanchett is the wife of Alec Baldwin, who's like a Bernie Madoff-type con man. After he gets busted she goes to San Francisco to stay with her lower-class sister. What I could never figure out is if we're supposed to be glad the snooty Jasmine is getting her comeuppance or if we're supposed to hope she gets her shit together. And it's one of those where at the end we're pretty much little farther along than the beginning, so thanks for wasting 98 minutes of my life, Woody Allen. Also I really hated that awful torch singing or whatever that stuff from like the 20s was that he used for the soundtrack. Basically I could sum it up by saying that an hour in I checked the time and saw there was still half-hour left and thought, "Oh God, there's really that much time left?" Really you should just watch/read "A Streetcar Named Desire" which this is pretty much borrowing from, though Bobby Cannavale is no young Marlon Brando to be sure. (1/5)
Gravity: I know I already reviewed it earlier. I just wanted to note I liked it as much on the small screen as on the fake IMAX screen in 3D. It probably is the best disaster movie I've seen. It did occur to me watching it again that a disaster movie is what this movie is at its heart, which if the Academy had thought way maybe they'd given it some more Oscar love. (5/5)
Sex Sells: Have you ever wanted to know how a porno is made? That's the subject of this mockumentary involving a veteran porno maker who's making one last film featuring film's largest orgy scene. The heart of the movie though involves the relationship between the veteran porno actress and a new girl with a secret and the documentary filmmaker who comes between them. For a low budget movie it's surprisingly entertaining. (4/5)
DCU: Son of Batman: This is a loose adaptation of the 2000s comics by Grant Morrison where it's revealed Batman has a son with the evil Talia al Guhl. The son named Damian comes to Gotham after Deathstroke nearly wipes out the League of Assassins. Eventually Damian becomes Robin, which Batman hopes will help rein in some of that assassin training. It was OK but I never got that much into it. BTW, at the moment Damian is dead in the comic book universe; I'm not sure if they have plans to adapt that. (3/5)
Funny People: Sometimes you know a movie is going to suck--and then you're completely not surprised when it does in fact suck. It starts out all right as Adam Sandler basically plays Adam Sandler: an aging comedian who's gotten rich via a bunch of terrible movies. Or similarly he's like Krusty the Clown in the Simpsons. Then he's diagnosed with a rare disease and the movie gets all maudlin for the next 90 minutes. At about 2 1/2 hours this is much, much too long and not nearly funny enough. About the only good thing to come from this was it finally slowed the Apatow train down; it was really annoying that every comedy was advertised as "by the guys who brought you Knocked Up!" Unfortunately Apatow learned nothing from this movie as his next movie "This is 40" was just as bloated and similarly he uses his entire family in major roles. There needs to be an intervention against people like this in Hollywood who keep shoving their kids into major parts--I see you, Will Smith! Anyway, life imitated art as after this dud Sandler went back to making crappy movies like "Jack & Jill." (1/5)
Her: I liked the core concept but at 126 minutes it's really slow. A lot of times it felt like I was watching an Apple commercial, one of those "What's your verse?" ones with all the montages to dreamy indie music, which I guess makes sense since Arcade Fire did the music. As much as I want to rip on the dude for falling in love with a computer, it's really the ideal scenario for me, so I hope Apple or Google makes it happen soon. Come on a Russian computer just passed the "Turing Test" so let's get cracking on this! This does suffer from a couple of typical movie problems. First, for a guy who has a nothing job like writing fake letters, he lives in an apartment that probably costs over $2000 a month and he has all these fancy gizmos. Similarly Amy Adams is a terrible documentary filmmaker and she is also living high off the hog. In LA? Yeah, right. Second at one point the computer sends his letters off to a publisher and of course they decide to publish them as a book. Come on, unless you're a celebrity you haven't been able to just mail in a book and get it published in probably 40 years! A movie has to be slow to really pay attention to that stuff. (3/5)
Pompeii: The pitch meeting must have gone like this: "It's Gladiator meets Volcano!" "Genius!" Most of this does pretty shamelessly rip off Gladiator, like when he teaches them how to use a shield and fight together and then rides a horse around the arena. They even use the same joke when the battle reenactment goes awry. Then finally the volcano erupts and it becomes a disaster movie. Which really I thought the eruption happened so fast that people were actually frozen by the ash having dinner and so forth. The whole thing was lame and cliche, which is to be expected from Paul WS Anderson; he's not Uwe Boll but pretty close. Poor Jon Snow (who I thought in the commercials was Orlando Bloom) is probably doomed to be typecast in sword-and-sandal type movies. (1/5)
Batman Mask of the Phantasm: This was from the mid-90s based on the animated series of the time but I'd never gotten around to watching it. It was really good, more aimed at adults than kids really. It presents yet another Batman origin only in this case he adopts the Batman disguise because of a broken heart. Awwww. The identity of "the Phantasm" was pretty easy to figure out, but really there were only 2 possibilities I suppose. (5/5)
Unknown: Liam Neeson punches his way through Berlin on a quest to figure out why his identity has been stolen. It was fine except then the big twist near the end is a ripoff of "The Long Kiss Goodnight" or maybe "Total Recall" with maybe a little "Bourne Identity" thrown in. So that was kind of lame. He doesn't kill as many people as the "Taken" movies, which is a good thing or bad thing depending on your point of view. (2.5/5)
The Time Being: It probably would have helped to read the description before putting this on. I mean at first when the old guy (Frank Langella) has the young painter (Wes Bentley, the creepy kid from "American Beauty" all growed up now) film kids on a playground and stuff you think he's going to escalate his weird demands into filming a murder or kinky sex or something terrible. But actually this is a heartwarming story about art, artists, and family. Kind of like "Finding Forrester"--only with painting! It's a little slow but really enjoyable. (4.5/5)
Don Jon: I'm not sure there's much more uncomfortable for straight guys than listening to a dude talk about how many times he jacks it. Which is mostly what this is about. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt writes, directs, and stars in this movie about a Jersey Shore type guy who despite nailing lots of hot chicks still jerks it to porn about 5 times a day, even when he's nailing Scarlett Johannson. Really I think if you jerk it 35 times in a week you'd have serious chafing issues. So um I guess it's a PSA about porn addiction? Gross. But there are plenty of beefcake shots for those who aren't straight guys. (1/5)
Nurse: A movie about a sexy nurse who also murders people seemed like right up my alley for late night watching. Basically this nurse works in a hospital where they still wear those old school sexy nurse outfits because I guess they never heard of scrubs. And the one named Abby likes to go out and murder cheating men. Then a new really dumb blonde nurse shows up and Abby becomes fixated on her. Mayhem ensues. As I said the blonde was so dumb that she can't see the obvious going on right in front of her. And the evil nurse really needed some makeup to hide the bags under her eyes. (2/5)
3 Days to Kill: One side-effect of "Man of Steel"'s success is that it reminded people Kevin Costner still exists. So this was the second of 3 Costner movies released this year and I think it did the best of the three. Basically he plays the Liam Neeson role in another reliable action movie from the Luc Besson factory. Costner is a CIA agent in Paris who is dying and has (you guessed it) 3 days to find and kill some bad guy known as "the Wolf" and also to bond with his estranged daughter. There are some kind of corny situations as he teaches his daughter how to ride a bike and dance intermingled with numerous gun fights, elevator fu, subway car fu, and the mandatory car chase. Overall it's OK, but not as good as "True Lies" for instance. (2.5/5)
Jobs: The problem with biopics is that people are complicated and thus it can be hard to paint a full picture. (Or some like "The Social Network" just throw out most of the facts to make reality fit their hackneyed script.) I think the one thing this does right is depict the contradictions of Steve Jobs. On one hand he was visionary and he could really motivate engineers to create great products. On the other hand he was a prick. Most of his old friends who helped him build the company he cut out of it once they made it big. For years he refused to his see his illegitimate daughter. Most of the movie is dedicated to the creation of the company and the dirty corporate politics of the mid-80s and mid-90s. It would have been nice to get a little more of the personal stuff. I mean like when they show him in bed with some woman and I think, "Who the hell is that?" And while it's nice they didn't gloss over all the bad stuff, I still can't wish they had a better actor than Ashton Kutcher. It'll be interesting to see what the more official Jobs biopic looks like. (3/5)
(And I also wonder if at this point Apple isn't back to the late 80s after they pushed Jobs out, when it became far more corporate, which led to stagnation and then falling market share. If so they're in trouble, unless they find a way to reanimate Jobs's corpse.)
Bonus: TV I watched:
Fargo: I could never remember when this was on FX so I just watched it On Demand. Which I think worked better since each episode on TV was 90-120 minutes whereas On Demand it was 60-70 minutes, so do the math to see how many commercials they jam in there. Anyway, this isn't exactly like the 1996 movie but there are certain elements that are similar. The female deputy is brought into it when a car goes off a road in a snowy field in Minnesota. Who was in the car and left to freeze to death soon is revealed and is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It also involves a crime concerning a mild-mannered middle-aged guy and his wife, though it's not a kidnapping gone wrong.
This manages to replicate the feel of a Coen Brothers movie with the mixture of graphic violence and deadpan humor. While there are a number of characters and plots I find every scene not involving Billy Bob Thornton's diabolical hitman Malvo to be largely a waste of time. I'm sure at some point someone will count just how many people he kills in the course of the 10-episode season. At one point he kills about two-dozen in one fell swoop.
One thing I really didn't like was in the middle of 8/10 episodes they suddenly jump a year. So here we are like 4/5 of the way through the season and all the sudden have to adapt to another reality. It is a bit confusing to say the least. I'm not sure why it was necessary, though maybe it's because it's "based on a true story." Well that's what they say and then Oliver Platt finds the money Steve Buscemi hid in the movie and I start to wonder just how much poetic license they're taking.
The final episode was pretty disappointing at the end because the female deputy who was to that point the only one to really know what was going on isn't involved in the captures of the two bad guys at all. Her husband, a mailman who before the one year jump had been a cop who let Malvo go, doesn't exactly tell her "No, this is man's work" but pretty close to it. It's like, you're going to put up with that and just stay behind barefoot and pregnant? Really? Frances McDormand wouldn't have taken that crap; she was right there at the end when Steve Buscemi got fed to the wood chipper! So I guess the whole thing was really about Colin Hanks getting his balls back by taking down Malvo. Who knew? (3/5)
Monday, June 23, 2014
Double Feature: Godzilla (2014) & X-Men Days of Future Past Reviews
For as many movies as I watch I don't watch many in the theater. It's just too expensive and Saturdays I usually spend writing so when I'm working on a story I don't really want to take time off to go watch a movie.
So I decided since I wasn't working on a story at the moment I should catch up with a good old-fashioned double feature. I know people used to do that a lot like in the 30s-50s; I'd have to go ask the Chubby Chatterbox about that. I've done it a few times in the last 10 years. In 2004 I saw "Garden State" and "Spider-Man 2" and the next year "Revenge of the Sith" and "Batman Begins" and in 2007 it was "Transformers" and "The Simpsons Movie." In 2008 I saw "The Dark Knight" twice the day it came out, which I suppose would count as a double feature, right?
Anyway, in the old days you'd just stay in the same theater and watch one and then another, but it's harder to manage that these days. Especially since the movies I wanted to watch were older and didn't have as many time slots.
So anyway at 10:55am I went to the theater and watched "Godzilla." Y'all on the Internet had given me high hopes--which this did not live up to. When I pay $6 to watch a movie called "Godzilla" I want to see more than 10 minutes of Godzilla! They needed to adhere more to Ken Watanabe's character's line: Let them fight.
First off it took over an hour to even get to Godzilla showing up. In that time they killed off Bryan Cranston's character, which seemed pretty lame since he was the only one worth giving a crap about. All we had left then was his son, who was basically just a ripoff of Josh Duhamel's character in "Transformers." Oh and hey since it's 2014 maybe we could have his wife be something other than a freaking nurse. Why couldn't she be a doctor? There are women doctors these days movie writers.
Anyway, so finally Godzilla shows up in Hawaii to take on Bat-Monster and does his famous roar. Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuumble, right? (I probably owe Michael Buffer a quarter now.) Nope. Instead we cut back to the lame humans and only see part of the fight on a TV screen. Whaaaaat? Then it probably takes another forty-five minutes for Godzilla to throw down with the monsters in San Francisco and even then they'd get going and we'd have to cut back to the annoying humans.
The thing is the humans were so freaking stupid. Their grand plan is to set off a nuke out in the water to draw in the monsters and kill them. Well since the Muto monsters emit EMPs we can't use a conventional bomb from an airplane or anything so we have to deliver by train and then put in some old-timey clockwork detonator that can't be called back. So when the Bat-Monster takes the bomb and gives it to his sweetie in San Francisco the dumb humans have now put a timebomb in the heart of San Francisco. So they send Bryan Cranston's son in via a HALO jump to stop it. And the whole movie we hear all about how he's this hotshot bomb disposal expert...and he doesn't even defuse the fucking bomb! He just pushes it out to sea so it can blow up. WTF? Why establish the guy as a bomb disposal expert and then have him "dispose" of it like Batman or Tony Stark? Those guys at least have an excuse. And really the gist of it was he was saving the city from himself! WTF?
But when Godzilla does finally figure out how to use his nuclear breath or whatever that was pretty sweet. In his limited screen time Godzilla was probably the best character, with Bryan Cranston a close second and then I didn't give a shit about anyone else.
People can bash "Pacific Rim" but at least it had some sweet monster vs. robot fights. But the little Indian kid behind me in the theater liked it, so there.
Anyway, I know we have to waste all this time on lame humans because we need characters we care about blah blah blah (which incidentally I didn't care about them, as noted above) but really guys if I want to watch a movie with human characters I'd go watch "Grand Budapest Hotel" or something more dramatic. When I watch a movie featuring monsters and/or robots I want to see monsters and/or robots! (1/5)
After that I went and got lunch and hung out at the library. Then I went to another theater that was showing "X-Men Days of Future Past" at 4pm, which was the earliest available in the area.
I liked it a lot better, though it wasn't exactly a perfect movie. Basically as you know they're trying to mash together the first three X-Men movies of the 2000s with "X-Men First Class." And they ignore the two Wolverine solo movies. So having seen all of those it can get a little mushy. Like wait Angel is dead? Wasn't he in X-Men 3? And how is it Beast came up with a sort of mutant cure back in 1973? And why the hell would that allow Xavier to walk? The Geek Twins linked to an article that had some of the more significant errors, such as: why does Wolverine have metal claws in the future when he lost them in "The Wolverine?" And didn't Xavier's body get vaporized by the Phoenix in "The Last Stand?" (Though a cookie scene showed he'd transferred his mind to another body.) The good thing is that after this movie any problems can be explained away as it's a different universe now because time travel, ie the Star Trek reboot.
Something funny to note is that since the original 2 comics came from the early 80s we're probably right now at or past the bleak future it predicted. So there. Anyway, I'm sure you know that in "the future" mutant killing "Sentinels" have run amok so the last mutants band together to send Wolverine back into the past, only in this case it's by beaming his mind back to his younger body in 1973, which originally was supposed to be done by Kitty Pryde but no one really gives a shit about Kitty Pryde whereas Wolverine is the most popular character.
Just like in the comics they were supposed to stop the assassination of the senator guy whom Magneto killed in the very first X-Men movie, so instead it's Mystique is going to kill Tyrion Lannister, the inventor of the Sentinels. (Wouldn't that be an awesome crossover?) Anyway, Wolverine has to get the band back together to find her and stop her. Though why they really needed Magneto I don't know. Basically they just needed Xavier to stop being such a wuss and man up about his psychic powers. Come on, you wouldn't see Patrick Stewart being such a whiny bitch about it!
One dumb thing I remember some people bitching about is Quicksilver is supposed to be Magneto's son and some people were like, "But they don't mention that anywhere!" Um, yeah they do. In the elevator Quicksilver's like, "My mom knew a guy who could move metal around." Hmmmm, I wonder who that could be? But I guess 1973 was too early to go on Maury Povich to see if Magneto is the baby daddy. Though I don't know why they really needed Quicksilver either; Wolverine couldn't just punch the glass with his bone claws?
In the end Magneto lifts up a whole stadium to surround the White House, which seemed kind of dumb. I mean sure it kept out cars, but we have these new things called helicopters. And airplanes. Yeah, even in 1973 we had those! Sure there were still the Sentinels, which really I seriously doubt we had the technology in 1973 to make giant sophisticated robot killing machines.
In that finale it's surprising how little Wolverine actually does. Basically he gets wrapped in metal and drowned in the Potomac, though obviously he can't die. You'd think since he's the most popular character he'd get more involved.
Like "Watchmen" the Nixon impersonator was pretty lame. Is it really that hard to depict Nixon on the big screen? I guess there's a tendency to make him too cartoonish with the nose putty and stuff. In which case maybe they should have set it in 1974 and Ford could have been the president. Similarly there seems no way to make Beast not look ridiculous in his blue beast mode. It might help if they did like the Hulk and used CGI and maybe lost the clothes so he could be more beast-like.
This was the type of movie where as long as you didn't think too hard about anything it was fine. Obviously the whole point was so they could launch a broader X-Men universe, because it's not enough to have a franchise; now you need a whole cinematic universe thanks to Marvel. I think at this point they're running second behind Marvel in that department. We have yet to see how DC's result is going to look and Sony's just sounds awful.
Of course the next X-Men movie is due out in 2016, providing Bryan Singer isn't in jail--or probably even if he is. I mean Brett Ratner is probably available.
The only thing going forward is I assume we'd be seeing the McAvoy and Fassbender Professor X and Magneto, not Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, which kind of sucks. The younger actors don't have the same gravitas for obvious reasons. Overall I'd give this a 3/5.
So there are the results of this year's double feature. I suppose I could do another one at some point, but it's hard finding two movies I want to watch at the same time. If you're a single guy with a lot of free time you could always try that for yourself.
So I decided since I wasn't working on a story at the moment I should catch up with a good old-fashioned double feature. I know people used to do that a lot like in the 30s-50s; I'd have to go ask the Chubby Chatterbox about that. I've done it a few times in the last 10 years. In 2004 I saw "Garden State" and "Spider-Man 2" and the next year "Revenge of the Sith" and "Batman Begins" and in 2007 it was "Transformers" and "The Simpsons Movie." In 2008 I saw "The Dark Knight" twice the day it came out, which I suppose would count as a double feature, right?
Anyway, in the old days you'd just stay in the same theater and watch one and then another, but it's harder to manage that these days. Especially since the movies I wanted to watch were older and didn't have as many time slots.
So anyway at 10:55am I went to the theater and watched "Godzilla." Y'all on the Internet had given me high hopes--which this did not live up to. When I pay $6 to watch a movie called "Godzilla" I want to see more than 10 minutes of Godzilla! They needed to adhere more to Ken Watanabe's character's line: Let them fight.
First off it took over an hour to even get to Godzilla showing up. In that time they killed off Bryan Cranston's character, which seemed pretty lame since he was the only one worth giving a crap about. All we had left then was his son, who was basically just a ripoff of Josh Duhamel's character in "Transformers." Oh and hey since it's 2014 maybe we could have his wife be something other than a freaking nurse. Why couldn't she be a doctor? There are women doctors these days movie writers.
Anyway, so finally Godzilla shows up in Hawaii to take on Bat-Monster and does his famous roar. Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuumble, right? (I probably owe Michael Buffer a quarter now.) Nope. Instead we cut back to the lame humans and only see part of the fight on a TV screen. Whaaaaat? Then it probably takes another forty-five minutes for Godzilla to throw down with the monsters in San Francisco and even then they'd get going and we'd have to cut back to the annoying humans.
The thing is the humans were so freaking stupid. Their grand plan is to set off a nuke out in the water to draw in the monsters and kill them. Well since the Muto monsters emit EMPs we can't use a conventional bomb from an airplane or anything so we have to deliver by train and then put in some old-timey clockwork detonator that can't be called back. So when the Bat-Monster takes the bomb and gives it to his sweetie in San Francisco the dumb humans have now put a timebomb in the heart of San Francisco. So they send Bryan Cranston's son in via a HALO jump to stop it. And the whole movie we hear all about how he's this hotshot bomb disposal expert...and he doesn't even defuse the fucking bomb! He just pushes it out to sea so it can blow up. WTF? Why establish the guy as a bomb disposal expert and then have him "dispose" of it like Batman or Tony Stark? Those guys at least have an excuse. And really the gist of it was he was saving the city from himself! WTF?
But when Godzilla does finally figure out how to use his nuclear breath or whatever that was pretty sweet. In his limited screen time Godzilla was probably the best character, with Bryan Cranston a close second and then I didn't give a shit about anyone else.
People can bash "Pacific Rim" but at least it had some sweet monster vs. robot fights. But the little Indian kid behind me in the theater liked it, so there.
Anyway, I know we have to waste all this time on lame humans because we need characters we care about blah blah blah (which incidentally I didn't care about them, as noted above) but really guys if I want to watch a movie with human characters I'd go watch "Grand Budapest Hotel" or something more dramatic. When I watch a movie featuring monsters and/or robots I want to see monsters and/or robots! (1/5)
After that I went and got lunch and hung out at the library. Then I went to another theater that was showing "X-Men Days of Future Past" at 4pm, which was the earliest available in the area.
I liked it a lot better, though it wasn't exactly a perfect movie. Basically as you know they're trying to mash together the first three X-Men movies of the 2000s with "X-Men First Class." And they ignore the two Wolverine solo movies. So having seen all of those it can get a little mushy. Like wait Angel is dead? Wasn't he in X-Men 3? And how is it Beast came up with a sort of mutant cure back in 1973? And why the hell would that allow Xavier to walk? The Geek Twins linked to an article that had some of the more significant errors, such as: why does Wolverine have metal claws in the future when he lost them in "The Wolverine?" And didn't Xavier's body get vaporized by the Phoenix in "The Last Stand?" (Though a cookie scene showed he'd transferred his mind to another body.) The good thing is that after this movie any problems can be explained away as it's a different universe now because time travel, ie the Star Trek reboot.
Something funny to note is that since the original 2 comics came from the early 80s we're probably right now at or past the bleak future it predicted. So there. Anyway, I'm sure you know that in "the future" mutant killing "Sentinels" have run amok so the last mutants band together to send Wolverine back into the past, only in this case it's by beaming his mind back to his younger body in 1973, which originally was supposed to be done by Kitty Pryde but no one really gives a shit about Kitty Pryde whereas Wolverine is the most popular character.
Just like in the comics they were supposed to stop the assassination of the senator guy whom Magneto killed in the very first X-Men movie, so instead it's Mystique is going to kill Tyrion Lannister, the inventor of the Sentinels. (Wouldn't that be an awesome crossover?) Anyway, Wolverine has to get the band back together to find her and stop her. Though why they really needed Magneto I don't know. Basically they just needed Xavier to stop being such a wuss and man up about his psychic powers. Come on, you wouldn't see Patrick Stewart being such a whiny bitch about it!
One dumb thing I remember some people bitching about is Quicksilver is supposed to be Magneto's son and some people were like, "But they don't mention that anywhere!" Um, yeah they do. In the elevator Quicksilver's like, "My mom knew a guy who could move metal around." Hmmmm, I wonder who that could be? But I guess 1973 was too early to go on Maury Povich to see if Magneto is the baby daddy. Though I don't know why they really needed Quicksilver either; Wolverine couldn't just punch the glass with his bone claws?
In the end Magneto lifts up a whole stadium to surround the White House, which seemed kind of dumb. I mean sure it kept out cars, but we have these new things called helicopters. And airplanes. Yeah, even in 1973 we had those! Sure there were still the Sentinels, which really I seriously doubt we had the technology in 1973 to make giant sophisticated robot killing machines.
In that finale it's surprising how little Wolverine actually does. Basically he gets wrapped in metal and drowned in the Potomac, though obviously he can't die. You'd think since he's the most popular character he'd get more involved.
Like "Watchmen" the Nixon impersonator was pretty lame. Is it really that hard to depict Nixon on the big screen? I guess there's a tendency to make him too cartoonish with the nose putty and stuff. In which case maybe they should have set it in 1974 and Ford could have been the president. Similarly there seems no way to make Beast not look ridiculous in his blue beast mode. It might help if they did like the Hulk and used CGI and maybe lost the clothes so he could be more beast-like.
This was the type of movie where as long as you didn't think too hard about anything it was fine. Obviously the whole point was so they could launch a broader X-Men universe, because it's not enough to have a franchise; now you need a whole cinematic universe thanks to Marvel. I think at this point they're running second behind Marvel in that department. We have yet to see how DC's result is going to look and Sony's just sounds awful.
Of course the next X-Men movie is due out in 2016, providing Bryan Singer isn't in jail--or probably even if he is. I mean Brett Ratner is probably available.
The only thing going forward is I assume we'd be seeing the McAvoy and Fassbender Professor X and Magneto, not Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, which kind of sucks. The younger actors don't have the same gravitas for obvious reasons. Overall I'd give this a 3/5.
So there are the results of this year's double feature. I suppose I could do another one at some point, but it's hard finding two movies I want to watch at the same time. If you're a single guy with a lot of free time you could always try that for yourself.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Comics Roundup
I know you still don't care about comics. Objection noted. But if I review these then it sort of legitimizes my purchases so I feel less guilty about wasting all that money. So here we go:
Marvel 1602: This predates steam power so maybe you'd call it horsepunk. Is that a thing? I just made it a thing! Me and Neil Gaiman, who wrote this story set in (duh) 1602 mostly in England. It features Elizabethan versions of Nick Fury, Dr. Strange, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, the X-Men, and Brotherhood of Mutants. Peter Parker and David Banner appear as their human selves. Weird things are happening in England, continental Europe, and America while Queen Elizabeth is dying and James of Scotland is likely to take the throne. It's a fresh take on the Marvel universe, though the concept starts to wear a bit thin after 8 issues. (4/5)
Spider-Man Reign: This is the Spider-Man version of The Dark Knight Returns. Only instead of 80s Reaganism it's concerned with post-9/11 paranoia. In this case in the future New York's autocratic mayor is about to cut the city off from the outside world via "the Webb" which is some kind of force field. When an ancient J Jonah Jameson pays the elderly Peter Parker a visit he has to swing back into action. Though he spends about 3/4 of it whining about Mary Jane dying from his irradiated sperm. (Seriously) Like TDKR the art leaves a lot to be desired. (2.5/5)
Fray: This is basically Joss Whedon taking Buffy and setting it in a more Blade Runner-type universe. Melaka Fray, a 19-year-old thief, is chosen as "the Slayer" to kill a bunch of "Lurks" (ie vampires) in a futuristic city. Mayhem ensues. The whole idea of conflicting ancient orders, the way she's chosen, the snarly trainer (in this case a weird goat demon dude), and the age of the heroine reminded me of my Scarlet Knight series--the second volume of which is only 99 cents if you recall. Though Melaka is a lot different than Emma Earl, being a loudmouth with purple hair and a bunch of tattoos, which I suppose is more what people think of as a tough female lead. This was written in 2003 so I must have ripped Whedon off. But seriously I am as great as Joss Whedon, so there Marvel, go give me a multi-million dollar franchise to helm. (3.5/5)
Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, Vol 1: If you read my post back in April called Xenophobia then you'd know I wrote some Transformers fanfics back in the late 90s during college. I must have been a genius because this comic book series kinda uses the ideas from both my series. The first being that the Autobots have won the war and Optimus Prime has stepped down as leader. Only instead of humans being pissed about Autobots on Earth it's about neutral Cybertronians who return home and get pissed at the Autobots' seeming military dictatorship. The second was a group of Autobots exploring deep space. In mine it was a Voyager-type situation but in this Rodimus Prime and some others go out to look for the mythical "Knights of Cybertron." Anyway, this seems like a kind of Marvel-ized version of the Transformers, featuring a lot of bantering and quipping. It would be better than the crappy Michael Bay movies for sure. It would probably help if you'd read the IDW comics that come before this, but I hadn't and I still got the gist of it. The art is a lot better than the last batch of old Transformers comics in the early 90s when Andy Wildman would draw the Transformers with drool and spit despite that they're fucking robots. The designs for a lot of the characters have been tweaked from their toy versions to make them look a little more streamlined and futuristic, but not as weird and clunky as the Bay movie versions. (4/5)
Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Vol 1: This is the B-side to the More Than Meets the Eye volume. It focuses on the Autobots who stayed on Cybertron to deal with the influx of refugees and remnants of the Decepticons after the war. Ostensibly Bumblebee is in charge but like Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones even though he's smart and capable, Bumblebee has a hard time being taken seriously because of his size. He struggles in vain to create a coalition government with a refugee named Metalhawk and the ever-shifty Decepticon Starscream. Meanwhile Prowl tries to deal with renegade Decepticons with help from the female Autobot Arcee, who is his bad ass assassin. I should give this to my brother to read because Prowl was one of his favorite characters and in this he's kind of a Batman figure as in he does what he thinks is right to keep order, but it tends to piss off a lot of other people. What I really like about this and the other volume is that it focuses only on the Transformers; there are no humans at all in the book. That's the problem with the movies where the Transformers are used largely as props to create destruction, like smaller versions of Godzilla. But true fans know that the Transformers have their own culture and are in many ways like humans; while they're robots they can actually feel and hope and dream like we do. And they have personalities that are more than ethnic stereotypes used for comic relief. I'm just saying. (5/5)
Hellboy: The Midnight Circus: When I bought this "on sale" from Amazon I just assumed it was a graphic novel. Not really. At about 58 pages it's really like two plus-sized issues or maybe 3 smaller-sized issues. For $2.99 it was a gyp. Anyway, the story itself was good. Young Hellboy runs off to a weird circus that brought to mind Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. The problem as noted is this is so short it's over before it even begins. There was obviously a lot of material to work with, but this just scratches the surface. (2/5)
Journey Into Mystery, Volume 1: Much like Superman started in Action Comics, Batman in Detective Comics, Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy, etc. Thor began in Journey Into Mystery. It's actually very different from the Thor we know today from the Marvel movies. Basically it starts as a pretty straight forward superhero story. In Norway, a visiting American named Dr. Donald Blake is being chased by rock monsters from Saturn (this being the early 60s, before there was a Neil deGraase Tyson to point out how inaccurate everything is) when he finds Thor's hammer in a cave and becomes Thor. But only when he's holding the hammer; if he lets it go for a minute he changes back. Maybe since Stan Lee didn't actually write all of these early issues (he's credited with "Plot" on most of them) there seems to be some inconsistencies about how the powers work. Anyway, it's not until the 3rd issue that he runs into Loki and not really until the second time Loki appears that the idea of them being brothers is mentioned. Though I don't understand that since the dude isn't really Thor, is he? I suspect there will be some retconning on that soon. Other than Loki there isn't much of a rogue's gallery, just random space creeps and the occasional mob guy. It's fairly typical of the Marvel comics of 1962. Hard to believe these were cutting edge at the time, or that this character could last over 50 years. (2.5/5)
X-Men Age of Apocalypse Volume 1: I'd been waiting a while to read this hoping the second volume would go on sale at some point but it hasn't so finally since I saw the recent movie I decided I might as well read this. This is from that time in the 90s when Xavier's son killed him in the past or something and so Apocalypse takes over America and Magneto is leading the X-Men. The problem with this book is since this story spanned all 15 or however many different X-Men titles at the time there's no real cohesion to the story, which makes it hard to know what's going on. At one point Rogue mentions a husband and it's like, "When the hell did she get married? And to who?" It's probably Magneto since they're a couple in this (ick) but she was also with Gambit a lot, so I dunno. Then there are these side stories about some kid brewed in a laboratory from Cyclops and Jean Grey's DNA and Blink going to the Negative Zone and stuff like that. From the Goodreads description there are issues from 1995-1997 and then the 4-part Blink series is from 2001, which is probably why it seemed to have a more modern Marvel universe feel. On Amazon I think people complained you should really start with Volume 2 and maybe they're right because most of this seems like filler you'd put last. (2/5)
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Reading Challenge: First Half Report
BTW, today through Sunday you can get the second Scarlet Knight "collection" The Wrath of Isis for only 99 cents! That's 5 huge books for less than a buck. (Seriously they're all over 100,000 words, especially the last one.) The first collection is only $2.99 in case you haven't bought it yet.
In 2013 I read about 250 books. This year I only set my Goodreads reading challenge to only 200 books, which includes graphic novels (or trade paperback volumes of comics), short stories, etc--whatever is listed on Goodreads or that I add to it. I've reached the halfway point so here's what I've read so far:
| Title | Author | My Rating | Date Read |
| Age of Ultron | Brian Michael Bendis | 4 | 1/1/2014 |
| League of Evil (Girl Power #3) | P.T. Dilloway | 5 | 1/2/2014 |
| Cinderella Sims | Lawrence Block | 4 | 1/10/2014 |
| Superman: Earth One | J. Michael Straczynski | 5 | 1/12/2014 |
| X-Men: Age of X | Mike Carey | 4 | 1/15/2014 |
| Player Piano | Kurt Vonnegut | 4 | 1/15/2014 |
| Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk | Damon Lindelof | 4 | 1/16/2014 |
| Siege | Brian Michael Bendis | 4 | 1/17/2014 |
| Fear Itself | Matt Fraction | 4 | 1/17/2014 |
| Stardust | Neil Gaiman | 4 | 1/17/2014 |
| Silverlock | John Myers Myers | 4 | 1/28/2014 |
| Girl Power Stories Volume 1 | P.T. Dilloway | 5 | 1/29/2014 |
| Secret Invasion | Brian Michael Bendis | 3 | 1/31/2014 |
| The Ultimates, Vol. 1: Super-Human | Mark Millar | 3 | 2/1/2014 |
| Girl Power | P.T. Dilloway | 5 | 2/1/2014 |
| Secret War | Brian Michael Bendis | 4 | 2/1/2014 |
| Marvel Universe: The End | Jim Starlin | 4 | 2/2/2014 |
| The Triumph of Evil | Lawrence Block | 2 | 2/7/2014 |
| Tales from the Cobra Wars: A G.I. Joe Anthology | Max Brooks | 3 | 2/7/2014 |
| Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Captain America, Vol. 1 | Joe Simon | 5 | 2/9/2014 |
| How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage | Sterling Archer | 4 | 2/10/2014 |
| Such Men Are Dangerous | Lawrence Block | 4 | 2/11/2014 |
| 69 things I do with my Wang: Test to see how dirty your mind is | A. Paz | 5 | 2/12/2014 |
| X-Men: Season One (Marvel Season One) | Dennis Hopeless | 4 | 2/12/2014 |
| Cassafire | Alex J. Cavanaugh | 3 | 2/13/2014 |
| Call Center of Doom (Comedy Sci-fi Short Story) | Nigel G. Mitchell | 5 | 2/14/2014 |
| Punisher: Enter the War Zone | Greg Rucka | 4 | 2/16/2014 |
| Hollywood | Charles Bukowski | 4 | 2/17/2014 |
| The Topless Tulip Caper | Lawrence Block | 5 | 2/19/2014 |
| Chip Harrison Scores Again (The Chip Harrison Mysteries) | Lawrence Block | 4 | 2/21/2014 |
| X-Men: Curse of the Mutants | Victor Gischler | 3 | 2/23/2014 |
| The Lay of the Land: Bascombe Trilogy (3) | Richard Ford | 4 | 2/23/2014 |
| Make Out with Murder | Lawrence Block | 5 | 2/24/2014 |
| No Score | Lawrence Block | 5 | 2/26/2014 |
| Pale Moonlight | Tony Laplume | 5 | 2/27/2014 |
| Sucker's Portfolio | Kurt Vonnegut | 4 | 2/28/2014 |
| Still with Me | Thierry Cohen | 2 | 3/1/2014 |
| JLA, Vol. 3: Rock of Ages | Grant Morrison | 4 | 3/1/2014 |
| Enough of Sorrow | Lawrence Block | 4 | 3/3/2014 |
| The Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris | 4 | 3/5/2014 |
| Raising Steam | Terry Pratchett | 4 | 3/7/2014 |
| A Hero's Journey (Tales of the Scarlet Knight, #1) | P.T. Dilloway | 5 | 3/7/2014 |
| Black Widow: The Name of the Rose | Marjorie M. Liu | 4 | 3/8/2014 |
| JLA, Vol. 6: World War III | Grant Morrison | 5 | 3/8/2014 |
| Operation: Masquerade | Nigel G. Mitchell | 5 | 3/9/2014 |
| Justice League Dark, Vol. 1: In the Dark | Peter Milligan | 3 | 3/13/2014 |
| The Natural | Bernard Malamud | 4 | 3/13/2014 |
| Shazam!, Vol. 1 | Geoff Johns | 4 | 3/16/2014 |
| Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland | Tomie dePaola | 5 | 3/17/2014 |
| The Burglar on the Prowl | Lawrence Block | 4 | 3/18/2014 |
| Burglars Can't Be Choosers (Rhodenbarr, #1) | Lawrence Block | 4 | 3/20/2014 |
| Green Arrow, Vol. 1: The Midas Touch | Dan Jurgens | 4 | 3/29/2014 |
| The Flash, Vol. 1: Move Forward | Francis Manapul | 3 | 3/29/2014 |
| Sydney's Spaceship | Jo Banks | 5 | 3/29/2014 |
| Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas | John Scalzi | 4 | 4/3/2014 |
| Dragonfly Warrior | Jay Noel | 5 | 4/10/2014 |
| Man Overboard And Other Short Stories | Nigel G. Mitchell | 5 | 4/14/2014 |
| Photobomb and Other Stories | Tiny Johnson | 5 | 4/16/2014 |
| The Burglar in the Closet (Rhodenbarr, #2) | Lawrence Block | 4 | 4/16/2014 |
| Race Against Time | Tiny Johnson | 5 | 4/18/2014 |
| Carnage | Zeb Wells | 4 | 4/19/2014 |
| Carnage, U.S.A. | Zeb Wells | 4 | 4/19/2014 |
| Captain America: Reborn | Ed Brubaker | 4 | 4/19/2014 |
| The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (Rhodenbarr, #3) | Lawrence Block | 4 | 4/19/2014 |
| The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (Rhodenbarr, #4) | Lawrence Block | 4 | 4/21/2014 |
| Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1 | Stan Lee | 4 | 4/22/2014 |
| House of M: Spider-Man | Mark Waid | 4 | 4/23/2014 |
| Green Arrow: Year One | Andy Diggle | 5 | 4/25/2014 |
| The Accounting | William Lashner | 4 | 4/26/2014 |
| Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 1: Power and Responsibility | Brian Michael Bendis | 4 | 4/29/2014 |
| Spider-Man: Big Time | Dan Slott | 5 | 4/29/2014 |
| Spider-Man: Dying Wish | Dan Slott | 5 | 4/30/2014 |
| Buddy Holly Is Alive & Well.. | Bradley Denton | 4 | 4/30/2014 |
| Spider-Man: Ends of the Earth | Dan Slott | 5 | 5/2/2014 |
| The Universe Versus Alex Woods | Gavin Extence | 2 | 5/3/2014 |
| The Wowzer | Frank Wheeler Jr. | 5 | 5/8/2014 |
| Deadly Honeymoon | Lawrence Block | 3 | 5/9/2014 |
| Spider-Man: Spider-Island | Dan Slott | 5 | 5/9/2014 |
| Green Lantern, Vol. 1: Sinestro | Geoff Johns | 4 | 5/10/2014 |
| Aquaman, Vol. 1: The Trench | Geoff Johns | 5 | 5/10/2014 |
| The Time Machine | H.G. Wells | 4 | 5/10/2014 |
| Dark Origins (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #0) | P.T. Dilloway | 5 | 5/10/2014 |
| The Superior Spider-Man, Vol. 2: A Troubled Mind | Dan Slott | 5 | 5/11/2014 |
| The Superior Spider-Man, Vol. 3: No Escape | Dan Slott | 4 | 5/11/2014 |
| Ultimate Galactus, Vol. 3: Extinction | Warren Ellis | 3 | 5/12/2014 |
| The Superior Spider-Man, Vol. 4: Necessary Evil | Dan Slott | 3 | 5/12/2014 |
| Moving Day: A Thriller | Jonathan Stone | 3 | 5/14/2014 |
| Changed into a Little Girl | Mindi Flyth | 3 | 5/15/2014 |
| Thunderstruck & Other Stories | Elizabeth McCracken | 4 | 5/17/2014 |
| Green Arrow, Vol. 4: The Kill Machine | Jeff Lemire | 3 | 5/18/2014 |
| The Crack in Space | Philip K. Dick | 3 | 5/19/2014 |
| Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) | Jim Butcher | 5 | 5/22/2014 |
| A Strange Kind of Love | Lawrence Block | 4 | 5/23/2014 |
| Marvel 1602 | Neil Gaiman | 4 | 5/25/2014 |
| Fray: Future Slayer | Joss Whedon | 4 | 5/25/2014 |
| Spider-Man: Reign | Kaare Andrews | 3 | 5/26/2014 |
| 2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey, #2) | Arthur C. Clarke | 3 | 5/28/2014 |
| 2061: Odyssey Three (Space Odyssey, #3) | Arthur C. Clarke | 2 | 5/29/2014 | |
| 3001: Final Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #4) | Arthur C. Clarke | 3 | 5/31/2014 | |
| Breaking News | Nigel G. Mitchell | 5 | 5/30/2014 |
A lot of comics, Lawrence Block books, and my own books in there. Well I read most of Vonnegut's and Ian Fleming's books last year so I guess someone else had to take over.
Most Unexpectedly Good Book (by someone I don't know):
The Wowzer by Frank Wheeler
I'd be lying if I said I didn't buy this because the title made me think of Inspector Gadget cartoons. Of course it has nothing to do with that. It's actually about a corrupt deputy sheriff in a little Arkansas town. If you like shows like Justified, True Detective, Dexter, The Shield, or Breaking Bad then you'd probably like that book because it's in that same anti-hero vein.
Most Unexpectedly Bad Book (by someone I don't know):
Still With Me by Thierry Cohen
This is one of those where I don't know when I bought it or why. I just saw it in the To Read folder on my Kindle and since it was fairly short I put it on while on a trip up north. It's something about a guy tries to commit suicide and then he keeps waking up years into the future to find out he's been living all that time and fucking up his life...and I don't know what the hell was going on. The moral is don't try to commit suicide--unless you're sure you're going to be successful. Because otherwise you might still live but a demon will take over your life--or something like that. Probably didn't help this was written by a French person; as if I don't have enough reasons to hate them already!
Monday, June 16, 2014
The Clone Wars TV Show Should Have Been the First 2 Star Wars Prequels
(I'm trying a Michael Offutt-style title to see if that gets more views...)
BTW, starting today through Sunday you can get the second Scarlet Knight "collection" The Wrath of Isis for only 99 cents! That's 5 huge books for less than a buck. (Seriously they're all over 100,000 words, especially the last one.) The first collection is only $2.99 in case you haven't bought it yet.
Now back to regularly scheduled programming.
Having finished watching the complete Clone Wars series on Netflix (including the Netflix-exclusive sixth season) I have to say watching that really helped the prequels make more sense. Not that I'm going to change my tune on the prequels sucking. What I'm saying is if the prequels, really the first two, had used more elements from this series they would have been a lot better. There were two areas especially I think the show helped to make sense.
Which to get into Andrew Leon mode makes for a good writing tip. If you want to sell a character transforming from a hero to a villain, you have to have enough to support that. I mean in the movies his mommy dying and having some bad dreams, does that really justify slaughtering a bunch of little kids and helping to kill millions throughout the galaxy? OK, maybe my scenario doesn't justify it either, but it's stronger.
As my title suggests really I think the highlights of the show should have been the bulk of the first two movies. One of my problem with most prequels is they always have to try to make up some mythical origin for characters. The thing I joke about in X-Men Origins Wolverine is they even had to create an origin for his leather jacket. Because clearly everyone was wondering where he got that coat from. So instead of Anakin just being some rogue Jedi who turns evil he has to become a prophecized Christ child who will be The One. Which doesn't make much sense since he helps kill the Jedi and only kills the Emperor after almost 25 years of brutal oppression and strangling gods know how many poor starship captains and other people who piss him off. That's your Messiah? To its credit the show tries to gamely salvage this notion of him bringing "balance to the Force" in an overly literal fashion, but it still never makes sense.
Sometimes less is more and I think in this case less origin story would have been better to focus on the war that really shaped Anakin into the future Vader. But probably Lucas thought that would have been too mature. From the first movie he obviously wanted something kid-friendly to sell action figures and Happy Meals. The brutality of war is not PG-rated. Which kind of makes you wonder what direction Episode VII will take. I suppose with Disney owning it now they'll have to go more towards kid-friendly.
While I really did like the Clone Wars show there were a few things I thought lacking.
Other than that my only complaint is that not every single story needed to be a 4-episode arc. In the last few seasons especially it seemed that every story had to be 3 or 4 episodes long. The Jedi kids making their lightsabers didn't need to be 4 episodes. R2D2 and the droid A-Team stealing some Enigma chip didn't need to be 4 freaking episodes. Sometimes you can do a stand-alone show, people! Incidentally the comic book industry today has this same problem. Not every story needs to be a year-long arc! Of course they do that mostly so they can collect them into trade paperbacks and charge a bunch of money for them.
Just like every blog entry doesn't need to be 1200 words long, as Michael Offutt has mastered. So I'll just end this with a random video:
BTW, starting today through Sunday you can get the second Scarlet Knight "collection" The Wrath of Isis for only 99 cents! That's 5 huge books for less than a buck. (Seriously they're all over 100,000 words, especially the last one.) The first collection is only $2.99 in case you haven't bought it yet.
Now back to regularly scheduled programming.
Having finished watching the complete Clone Wars series on Netflix (including the Netflix-exclusive sixth season) I have to say watching that really helped the prequels make more sense. Not that I'm going to change my tune on the prequels sucking. What I'm saying is if the prequels, really the first two, had used more elements from this series they would have been a lot better. There were two areas especially I think the show helped to make sense.
- The cause of the war: Just watching the movies, can anyone explain why the hell there was a war? I mean I think we can all get that Palpatine instigated all this stuff so he could bring down the Republic (and Jedi) to launch the Empire, but could anyone say why all these "separatists" go along with it? In one of the later seasons there's a scene that helps this make more sense. Basically the bulk of the "separatists" is made of these powerful guilds and unions, kind of like intergalactic mega-corporations. The reason they go along with "Darth Sidious" (aka Palpatine) and Dooku is that as the Ferenghi say, "War is good for business." Basically a huge war means war profiteering. Especially when your army is made of stupid droids you're not taking a huge risk while raking in huge profits. They probably figured win or lose their buddy Sidious would take care of them and they'd have shitloads of money. That makes a lot more sense to me. Maybe that was Lucas's original intent or maybe it was the showrunners's idea based on all the Occupy and economic meltdown that came after the movies.
- Anakin Skywalker: The problem with the two prequels is in the first Anakin is a whiny little kid and the second he's a whiny teenager. And no one except George Lucas and Tony Laplume ever wanted to see that. In the TV show we can see by the end what made Anakin finally crack. (Spoilers ahead!) It all boils down to the horrors of war. What the movies got right was orphaning Anakin, though instead of two movies this could have been done in one simple flashback like the Batman movies. So he's already lost his mom and he never had a dad--something that's stupid beyond belief; I mean his mom's a slave in like her late 30s and we're supposed to believe she was still a virgin when she got knocked up? Sha, as if. Anyway, so like I said he lost his parents in a brutal fashion. Then as we see during the show as a general he loses a lot of buddies in the army and a few Jedis too--but the soldiers are clones so it doesn't really matter, right? Then at the end of season 5 he loses his Padawan Ahsoka Tano. So years of fighting, losing his loved ones and friends, and then the threat of losing his wife seems like enough to break someone enough to become a psychotic warlord, right? But since we gloss over pretty much the whole freaking war in the movies, we missed out on all that so his transformation into Vader didn't make as much sense.
Which to get into Andrew Leon mode makes for a good writing tip. If you want to sell a character transforming from a hero to a villain, you have to have enough to support that. I mean in the movies his mommy dying and having some bad dreams, does that really justify slaughtering a bunch of little kids and helping to kill millions throughout the galaxy? OK, maybe my scenario doesn't justify it either, but it's stronger.
As my title suggests really I think the highlights of the show should have been the bulk of the first two movies. One of my problem with most prequels is they always have to try to make up some mythical origin for characters. The thing I joke about in X-Men Origins Wolverine is they even had to create an origin for his leather jacket. Because clearly everyone was wondering where he got that coat from. So instead of Anakin just being some rogue Jedi who turns evil he has to become a prophecized Christ child who will be The One. Which doesn't make much sense since he helps kill the Jedi and only kills the Emperor after almost 25 years of brutal oppression and strangling gods know how many poor starship captains and other people who piss him off. That's your Messiah? To its credit the show tries to gamely salvage this notion of him bringing "balance to the Force" in an overly literal fashion, but it still never makes sense.
Sometimes less is more and I think in this case less origin story would have been better to focus on the war that really shaped Anakin into the future Vader. But probably Lucas thought that would have been too mature. From the first movie he obviously wanted something kid-friendly to sell action figures and Happy Meals. The brutality of war is not PG-rated. Which kind of makes you wonder what direction Episode VII will take. I suppose with Disney owning it now they'll have to go more towards kid-friendly.
While I really did like the Clone Wars show there were a few things I thought lacking.
- Who is General Grievous? This was never really answered in the series or in the last prequel. I know I said we need less origin, but really this guy just appears on the scene as a major character. In one of the early seasons they did sort of get into his background, but I still never got how he became a cyborg and the head of the droid army. I always wondered if he was supposed to be like the prototype Vader as in a combination of man(ish) and machine. Really, what was his whole deal?
- The secret marriage. In the last season there are a couple of episodes where Anakin and Padme's marriage is strained by an old flame of Padme's returning onto the scene. It would have been nice if they'd referenced the secret marriage a little more. I mean keeping that secret for like 5 years had to be kind of difficult, didn't it? Most of the time you can probably forget they even are married since they're hardly ever together.
- Loose ends: If you watch Episode III (and IV-VI) you know what happens to a lot of the characters. Still there are some who simply vanish after Season 5. Like what happened to the revived Darth Maul? After he tangled with Palpatine and lost, Palpatine said he had something in mind for Maul but it never comes up in season 6. And what happened to Anakin's former Padawan Ahsoka Tano? The only time she's shown in season 6 is when Yoda is tripping on the Sith homeworld. Commander Cody is in Episode III but what happens to Captain Rex? Maybe they had been planning more episodes but it'd have been nice to find out what became of some characters.
Other than that my only complaint is that not every single story needed to be a 4-episode arc. In the last few seasons especially it seemed that every story had to be 3 or 4 episodes long. The Jedi kids making their lightsabers didn't need to be 4 episodes. R2D2 and the droid A-Team stealing some Enigma chip didn't need to be 4 freaking episodes. Sometimes you can do a stand-alone show, people! Incidentally the comic book industry today has this same problem. Not every story needs to be a year-long arc! Of course they do that mostly so they can collect them into trade paperbacks and charge a bunch of money for them.
Just like every blog entry doesn't need to be 1200 words long, as Michael Offutt has mastered. So I'll just end this with a random video:
Sunday, June 15, 2014
The Adventures of Couch Potato Cover Reveal!
Tweet: Check out the cover for THE ADVENTURES OF COUCH POTATO by @nigelgmitchell! http://nigelgmitchell.blogspot.comCarl Potter was a fat, bald, lazy guy until a freak accident transformed him into a fat, bald, lazy superhero named Couch Potato. Now he's forced to get off his beloved chair to fight an invasion of alien furniture, a ruthless cult of Elvis impersonators, and an army of groundhogs trying to plunge our world into an eternal six months of winter. Couch Potato: he'll save the world, if there's nothing good on TV.
I read the first story and it's hilarious. So be sure to go buy it!
And happy Father's Day...if you are one.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Cost of Doing Business
Ooh it's Friday the 13th! Remember to throw your black cat over your shoulder while standing on a ladder or however all that works. Anyway, I ran into some bad luck recently where I actually lost money for selling books.
It was maybe late last year or early this year that Amazon changed its royalty payment policy from paying only once $10 had been earned (which B&N still does) to just paying whatever the hell you had earned no matter how low. Which in some ways is great because it's not like B&N where if I only make $9.60 I have to wait a whole extra month (providing I sell another book) to get paid. That has happened a couple of times and it's annoying.
The problem though is sometimes your royalty really is too low so you end up getting royally screwed. In April I got a payment of $0.59 or something like that from one of the European Amazons. Hey great 59 cents, don't spend that all in one place. Well the problem is the next day or so I check my account activity and realize my bank charged a $1 fee for this foreign wire. So I actually LOST 41 cents!
Yup, it actually cost me money to sell a couple of ebooks overseas. I didn't think too much of it at the time; I just shrugged and said, "Whatever." But then it happened AGAIN the next month, leaving me out another 41 cents or whatever it was.
At that point I decided something needed to be done. First I had to track down where these wires were coming from. Using the new charts on the sales dashboard I realized they were coming from Spain. My first thought was to just stop selling books there. But then I realized what a pain it is to go into each book and try to select where you want to sell it. My second thought was to just make the price in Spain so high no one would ever buy any. But again that would be a real pain in the ass to do for like 40 books.
So I decide to go ask Amazon's customer service. For once they actually had something helpful to say. Basically you can go in and change your payment method from EFT or wire or whatever to check. Which also means you won't get paid until you hit $10. Which in Spain means probably never. While I was at it I changed that for the rest of Europe, except the UK. And India, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil as well.
The thing is I don't sell a lot of books in continental Europe. Or pretty much anywhere except the US and UK. And in the UK it's mostly one book of short stories under a pen name that for some reason sells over there but has sold maybe 1 copy in the US. The last thing I want is to lose money when I do manage to sell something over there.
So there you go, a Pro Tip: unless you sell a lot of books in those other countries, don't use the wire or EFT payments--unless you have a bank that doesn't charge a fee for that. Ha, yeah right, a bank not charging fees? ROFTLOL
It was maybe late last year or early this year that Amazon changed its royalty payment policy from paying only once $10 had been earned (which B&N still does) to just paying whatever the hell you had earned no matter how low. Which in some ways is great because it's not like B&N where if I only make $9.60 I have to wait a whole extra month (providing I sell another book) to get paid. That has happened a couple of times and it's annoying.
The problem though is sometimes your royalty really is too low so you end up getting royally screwed. In April I got a payment of $0.59 or something like that from one of the European Amazons. Hey great 59 cents, don't spend that all in one place. Well the problem is the next day or so I check my account activity and realize my bank charged a $1 fee for this foreign wire. So I actually LOST 41 cents!
Yup, it actually cost me money to sell a couple of ebooks overseas. I didn't think too much of it at the time; I just shrugged and said, "Whatever." But then it happened AGAIN the next month, leaving me out another 41 cents or whatever it was.
At that point I decided something needed to be done. First I had to track down where these wires were coming from. Using the new charts on the sales dashboard I realized they were coming from Spain. My first thought was to just stop selling books there. But then I realized what a pain it is to go into each book and try to select where you want to sell it. My second thought was to just make the price in Spain so high no one would ever buy any. But again that would be a real pain in the ass to do for like 40 books.
So I decide to go ask Amazon's customer service. For once they actually had something helpful to say. Basically you can go in and change your payment method from EFT or wire or whatever to check. Which also means you won't get paid until you hit $10. Which in Spain means probably never. While I was at it I changed that for the rest of Europe, except the UK. And India, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil as well.
The thing is I don't sell a lot of books in continental Europe. Or pretty much anywhere except the US and UK. And in the UK it's mostly one book of short stories under a pen name that for some reason sells over there but has sold maybe 1 copy in the US. The last thing I want is to lose money when I do manage to sell something over there.
So there you go, a Pro Tip: unless you sell a lot of books in those other countries, don't use the wire or EFT payments--unless you have a bank that doesn't charge a fee for that. Ha, yeah right, a bank not charging fees? ROFTLOL
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Around the Block
I became acquainted with the books of Lawrence Block about three years ago when I bought a couple of paperback reprints from a discount book store. I was finishing with a big book of Raymond Chandler stories and I wanted something in a similar vein, so I thought those might do. Which they did. I eventually bought more in paperback and then for Kindle. I actually snapped up 20-30 of them last December when they were on sale, so I've been going through those a little at a time.
Anyway, in many cases the afterword of the book is just as interesting as the book itself. Block started out in the late 50s on the fringes of the publishing system, so on the afterwords of the older books you get to hear his war stories about the publishing industry in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which often as not is unflattering.
A lot of his earliest work was the kind of thin paperbacks like I first bought. These were printed only in paperback by publishers who dealt a lot in erotica and potboilers. Something Block mentions a few times in his Chip Harrison series is how the editors insisted on having sex scenes thrown in every so often, because that's what the readers wanted. Which I can't really argue with, because what's wrong with gratuitous sex scenes?
In his early career he also used several different pen names. One of them was female, which was used for a couple of lesbian romances. Something I admire is how he didn't stick to any particular story type, but worked in a few different areas. I don't think that was always by choice; I think sometimes it was an editor would want a certain kind of book and hey I need the money so OK.
One of his earliest ones I read recently, A Strange Kind of Love, outlines the publishing world of the late 50s. There were a couple of different tiers:
It was apparently a lot easier to get an agent back then than it is now. You probably didn't have as much competition either. I think instead of querying mostly you sent in the whole thing for a short story or a chapter or two with outline for something longer.
Also in the afterword for A Strange Kind of Love, Block mentions how he interned at a fee-charging publisher, going through the slush. He'd send form letters to terrible writers telling them it was the plot that was the problem so they would submit something else, thus making more in reading fees. Which is another reason not to put much stock in those letters agents or publishers send you. Even if they don't charge fees they're probably not much more honest today than 60 years ago.
So it is interesting to hear how things have changed and how things have stayed the same. And besides all that Block's books are pretty reliable entertainment. They don't have the best writing, but it's solid. Really I think his career is something a guy like me could aspire to: not flashy but good enough to keep him employed for almost 60 years.
One way he's like me is he's in the anti-George RR Martin mold. After he got married, Block would sometimes get a hotel in New York City, take his typewriter with him (this being the 60s or 70s after all), and pound out a book in a few days or a couple of weeks. I'd probably have a lot more books written if I could do that.
If you're interested, one of his Matthew Scudder books, 8 Million Ways to Die, was adapted into a Jeff Bridges vehicle back in the late 80s. I don't know if it's on Netflix right now or not. It's an OK late 80s action-mystery. Or if you want to go to the source, most of his books aren't that long. Given the R-rated material of most of them they might not be in your local library. There should be something at the used or discount bookstores. I mean Block literally has hundreds of books written so something is bound to turn up. Last year while on vacation in Cadillac, MI I scored an original copy of The Specialists, which was kind of like The A-Team in that it involves a bunch of ex-military guys. The year before that in Manistee, MI I got a copy of Hit Man, the first in his series about a professional assassin named Keller who also collects stamps. So like I said, if you look you're bound to find something.
Anyway, in many cases the afterword of the book is just as interesting as the book itself. Block started out in the late 50s on the fringes of the publishing system, so on the afterwords of the older books you get to hear his war stories about the publishing industry in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which often as not is unflattering.
A lot of his earliest work was the kind of thin paperbacks like I first bought. These were printed only in paperback by publishers who dealt a lot in erotica and potboilers. Something Block mentions a few times in his Chip Harrison series is how the editors insisted on having sex scenes thrown in every so often, because that's what the readers wanted. Which I can't really argue with, because what's wrong with gratuitous sex scenes?
In his early career he also used several different pen names. One of them was female, which was used for a couple of lesbian romances. Something I admire is how he didn't stick to any particular story type, but worked in a few different areas. I don't think that was always by choice; I think sometimes it was an editor would want a certain kind of book and hey I need the money so OK.
One of his earliest ones I read recently, A Strange Kind of Love, outlines the publishing world of the late 50s. There were a couple of different tiers:
- Hardcovers were the big publishers. If they wanted your book they'd take you to a martini lunch and so forth.
- Paperbacks were the lesser publishers. They'd maybe give you a letter or phone call and a check.
- Slicks were the big magazines like Life or Saturday Evening Post or such, which were fairly exclusive.
- Pulps I think people are more familiar with from the 30s and 40s but they were still around. For lesser-known or otherwise desperate writers they could be a quick source of cash.
It was apparently a lot easier to get an agent back then than it is now. You probably didn't have as much competition either. I think instead of querying mostly you sent in the whole thing for a short story or a chapter or two with outline for something longer.
Also in the afterword for A Strange Kind of Love, Block mentions how he interned at a fee-charging publisher, going through the slush. He'd send form letters to terrible writers telling them it was the plot that was the problem so they would submit something else, thus making more in reading fees. Which is another reason not to put much stock in those letters agents or publishers send you. Even if they don't charge fees they're probably not much more honest today than 60 years ago.
So it is interesting to hear how things have changed and how things have stayed the same. And besides all that Block's books are pretty reliable entertainment. They don't have the best writing, but it's solid. Really I think his career is something a guy like me could aspire to: not flashy but good enough to keep him employed for almost 60 years.
One way he's like me is he's in the anti-George RR Martin mold. After he got married, Block would sometimes get a hotel in New York City, take his typewriter with him (this being the 60s or 70s after all), and pound out a book in a few days or a couple of weeks. I'd probably have a lot more books written if I could do that.
If you're interested, one of his Matthew Scudder books, 8 Million Ways to Die, was adapted into a Jeff Bridges vehicle back in the late 80s. I don't know if it's on Netflix right now or not. It's an OK late 80s action-mystery. Or if you want to go to the source, most of his books aren't that long. Given the R-rated material of most of them they might not be in your local library. There should be something at the used or discount bookstores. I mean Block literally has hundreds of books written so something is bound to turn up. Last year while on vacation in Cadillac, MI I scored an original copy of The Specialists, which was kind of like The A-Team in that it involves a bunch of ex-military guys. The year before that in Manistee, MI I got a copy of Hit Man, the first in his series about a professional assassin named Keller who also collects stamps. So like I said, if you look you're bound to find something.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Overpowered Cover Reveal--Most Dramatic Post EVER!!!!!!!!
OVERPOWERED will be released on August 1, 2014
(There are spoilers below if you haven't read book 1!)
After rescuing her twin sister Nova from a life of evil, Maci fears she's made a huge mistake. As if she didn't have enough trouble fitting in with her fellow Supers, Nova outshines Maci in personality and power.
In the midst of this one-sided sibling rivalry, humans are dropping dead from a powerful drug that originates in the underground tunnels of King City. Someone is a traitor and Maci wants to capture the villain before anyone else—especially Nova.
With Nova in the spotlight, Maci needs to set aside her jealousy before more humans die and the future of King City is changed forever.
In the midst of this one-sided sibling rivalry, humans are dropping dead from a powerful drug that originates in the underground tunnels of King City. Someone is a traitor and Maci wants to capture the villain before anyone else—especially Nova.
With Nova in the spotlight, Maci needs to set aside her jealousy before more humans die and the future of King City is changed forever.
Add Overpowered to your Goodreads list.
Buy Powered, book 1 on Amazon.
Want a FREE signed Powered Trilogy bookmark? Fill out this form and Cheyanne will send you one.
Buy Powered, book 1 on Amazon.
Want a FREE signed Powered Trilogy bookmark? Fill out this form and Cheyanne will send you one.
###
Cheyanne is a native Texan with a fear of cold weather and a coffee addiction that probably needs an intervention. She loves books, sarcasm, nail polish and paid holidays. She lives near the beach with her family, one spoiled rotten puppy and a cat who is most likely plotting to take over the world.
From that title maybe you figured out I'm talking about dramatizing--and OVER dramatizing!!!! Just imagine someone shouting most of this post at you.
About a month ago now I read Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken, one of my favorite authors. If you can remember my original blog, through process of elimination I decided I would save her of all my favorite authors in event of some global catastrophe. But now that I know thanks to the Twitter that she's married and has kids maybe I'd choose differently. Or not. It's not like it matters. I mean she's in Austin, TX and I'm in Detroit, MI so if there's a catastrophe I'd probably never be able to get there in time and even then she'd think I was some creepy stalker--of which only one part is true; I don't stalk people.
Anyway, the thing I both liked and didn't like was the lack of drama in the stories. The titular story especially I commented could have made a good Jodi Picoult novel that would then be adapted into a Lifetime movie where there'd be a lot of sobbing and wailing and teeth gnashing after a couple's daughter has an accident that puts her into pretty much a vegetative state. Instead in the story there's not a lot of crying and no wailing, "Why God, why? Take me instead!!!!" Or any melodrama like that. Which I thought was a good thing because it makes the story seem more realistic and mature--basically something no one ever accuses me of being.
The problem is sometimes it felt like a little more drama would have been a good thing. Or really I think it was intimacy that was often lacking. In professional circles it's referred to as "distance." The reason 3rd-person omniscient fell out of favor is that it's too stand-offish; you as the reader don't feel like you're there with the character so much as floating above them. When 3rd-person limited wasn't enough then 1st-person became all the rage. That way it's like the character is talking to you! Which is sometimes great and other times not.
The majority of the stories in that book are 3rd-person omniscient I think, which is largely I'm sure what gave me that feeling that I was hearing most of these stories third-hand rather than experiencing them myself. It's like your second-cousin you only see sometimes telling you something that happened to your first-cousin you hardly ever see. Or one of those awful family letters someone will send around at the holidays that you immediately throw away.
And sometimes I might have appreciated a little more melodrama worked into it. But then if you listen to some people I have characters cry on every page of a story. I also label my novel Where You Belong as a "literary soap opera."
So what do you have to say? You talkin' to me? Are YOU TALKIN' TO ME???!!!
Friday, June 6, 2014
The Long & Fat of It
 |
| Big is Beautiful? |
That doesn't mean I condone the anorexic model thing either. I mean a lot of models are so skinny they look like they're on coke or meth or something like that. It's gross. By the same token fat people are gross too. Especially when you get to about now when it's warming up and these oblivious fat people wear short-shorts and tube tops. Gag.
I'll admit I'm shallow, but then so is most everyone else. (If you claim you're not then you're a liar on top of shallow.) But as I said, fat is not something to aspire to. Anorexia is a medical danger, I think everyone except those models would agree. So too is being fat. Don't take my word for it, ask any reputable medical doctor on the planet. Being "curvy" can lead to serious medical conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. all of which can kill you. Dead is not beautiful.
Not that I want to start stoning fat people or rounding them up to put into forced labor camps. I just don't think we should try to gloss over the seriousness of the problems related to being fat by saying everyone is beautiful in their own way and other PC junk like that. It's like taking an alcoholic or drug addict and saying, "Hey it's OK, you're beautiful." (You're also probably going to die of an overdose or end up in jail within the next six months, but that's OK!)
I definitely don't think we need fat heroes in literature, movies, TV, etc. With this generation of kids that's already at record levels of obesity the last thing we need is to encourage them to be fat slobs. It's more important to encourage them to be healthy rather than placate them about being overweight. But hey this is America and we're lazy so it's much easier to say, "You're beautiful the way you are!" than to say, "Get your fat ass off the couch and stop eating those Big Macs!"
I do include fat characters in at least two series. Emma Earl's best friend Becky Beech in the Scarlet Knight books is fat. How fat she is depends on what's going on as she tends to get bigger the unhappier she is. In the Children of Eternity series Samantha's best friend Prudence is the fattest girl on the island. But I don't think either case I'm trying to use them as a role model or, conversely, as an object of ridicule; I think it was more about having opposites. I wrote a short story called "The Fat Girls Club" where a fat girl (duh) organizes a group of fat girls so they can hang out and eat and actually encourage each other to get bigger. That is until she realizes the harm it's doing and then they flip the script and start encouraging each other to lose weight and live healthier, which I think is a good moral.
Anyway, I know this isn't a popular stance. Especially as a fat person I should be trying to legitimize being fat, right? I should be out at a rally or something, but as someone who tries to be progressive, I don't think rampant obesity is something we should strive for and by glossing it over or sanctioning it we're making things more difficult for our children and gods know we already have plenty of other problems in this world. It certainly would be easier and there's nothing we like more than easy, which is largely how we got into this mess to start with.
Michael Offutt raised the argument that people in the inner-city are poor and don't have as much access to healthy food. It's true there's not a lot of Whole Foods in the ghetto. And the kind of supermarkets operating in those areas, the meat isn't necessarily the best quality. Still there are a lot of suburban people who are fat; what's their excuse? I was one of those suburban kids and there really was no excuse for it, especially since we had a big yard to play in.
We just need people to actually make being healthy a priority. I know Republicans won't because it's Michelle Obama's pet issue. Though they should realize that healthier people don't need to see doctors as much, thus have less need for Obamacare and Medicare.
Anyway by the time you read this I'll have probably already stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. [UPDATE: I got donut holes and chocolate milk from Kroger.] I don't practice what I preach in this instance. Though for the hell of it here's my somewhat low fat menu:
Meat (usually chicken) topped with bread crumbs
Frozen vegetable (usually beans, peas, or carrots)
My doctor encouraged me to get on a low carb diet so here's my somewhat low carb menu:
2 Chicken breast (grilled or baked, no breading), chopped into pieces
6oz (estimated) of frozen onions, red/yellow/green peppers
1 small can of mushrooms
4 low carb tortillas
Salsa or Fat free dressing (try to go easy on that, but enough to taste)
After you cook the vegetables you put that and the chicken into a tortilla for a wrap. Or alternately tear the tortillas to pieces and dump it all into a bowl for kind of a tortilla "salad."
Actually just meat and veggies would probably be lower carb without breading, but the other is pretty tasty.
For lunch I usually have a low-carb shake not just for health reasons but also I'm lazy and hate making a sandwich and stuff in the morning. Breakfast is my real bugaboo as I hate yogurt (even with strawberries!) and again in the morning I hate cooking so I don't want to make eggs or anything. Yet I really don't want just a shake or something either. It's kind of annoying.
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