Life on Queen Street

Oops.

Hi. Been awhile.

Sorry about that. The end of August through September so far has been a little nuts. I packed a whole summer's worth of cottaging into the end of August and then it was time for International Hussy Weekend in Rochester over Labour Day Weekend. cretkid hosted the annual gathering of thassalia, rubberneck, fbf and I at Casa a Rock Doc (now with fire). A fine time was had by all I think and this time I was the only one who came down with Captain Trips (original flavour). Two weeks later, I've finally managed to shake my cold in time for the first meeting of the Polaris concom - announced guests: Ben Browder, Adam Baldwin and Armin Shimmerman.

Yes, Ben Browder... 8D

In other news, if you haven't seen Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I recommend it. To paraphrase the great Kim Pine, if Michael Cera's career had a face, I'd punch it. So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed SP. As an insufferable Torontonian, I loved seeing Toronto playing Toronto on the big screen in a movie that proudly declares its location and influences - no passing Osgood Hall off as an Opera House or made-up hospital and university names (WTF, Rookie Blue). Michael Cera is an effective slacker hero but the movie really belongs to the supporting cast of Alison Pill, Keiran Culkin and Ellen Wong as Scott's bandmate, roommate and fake high school girlfriend respectively. Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim the movie suffers from the same problem as Scott Pilgrim the comic book - you're never quite sure what Ramona sees in Scott and she suffers from a not-dire but disappointing lack of agency in the third act. Never totally objectified but never truly in charge of her own destiny, Ramona coasts on Mary Elizabeth Winstead's ability to project a depth and certain badassery to what could easily have become a rote 'dream girl' cipher. Director and adapter Edgar Wright never really pushes the rebarbative qualities of Scott and Ramona, which undercuts the climax somewhat but if you liked the book, you will love Scott Pilgrim vs the World. For the rest of us, Scott Pilgrim is well-made summer flick with more than enough fun to overcome an underwritten female lead.

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30 (non-consecutive) Days of Writing

8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?

Lately, fanfic (if you can call it a genre; I think you can) is winning by volume. However, while my fanfic is all SF (Farscape, Roswell, The Sarah Connor Chronicles), my original writing is a mixed bag: contemporary horror, historical fiction, short fiction, poetry, fantasy. I think my favourite to write it fantasy. I like the grandeur of high fantasy, the ability to blow life up to maximum magnification it provides without the limitations and responsibilities of historical fiction. Historical fiction is life recreated in miniature, a revelation of exquisite detail. Fantasy is high drama, operatic and soaring; self-gratifying to write.

That said, I firmly believe there's a special hell for writers who create quasi-medieval settings without the least understanding of medieval society, economy and culture. Perhaps it's not surprising that my favourite genre to read is actually non-fiction, particularly histories of the late middle ages and the Italian Renaissance. I find books like The Devil's Broker and A Distant Mirror are not only more compelling and more dramatic than contemporary fantasy fiction, they're better written, while Caterian Sforza would find Cersei Lannister a silly and insipid creature.

I'm currently reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, which is a Swedish Twilight for adults with a Joss Whedon size zero faux-riotgrrl playing second fiddle to the Gary Stu protagonist and depictions of grotesque sexualized violence replacing Twilight's angsty teen vampires in love.

Solar by Ian McEwan, which is a hard book to like even thought McEwan's prose is itself a rich reward for reading. The protagonist, Michael Beard, is a loathsome solipsist of such extent that I rather hope the book reflects some sort of psychic purge for the author rather than think McEwan finds such a figure worthy of his time.

The Dancers Dancing by Eilis ni Dhuibne, an exquisitely observed bildungsroman set against the particularly Irish backdrop of an summer college in the Gaeltacht. It's taken me a tremendously long time to read as ni Dhuibhne's sharply observed depictions of the lives of 13-year-old girls has the habit of triggering unpleasant flashbacks to high school.

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

I just do? My ideas for stories tend to start as a sentence, a line of dialogue in my head. It repeats until I know who's speaking it or who's point of view I'm seeing and I build out from there. Normally by the time I can put a few paragraphs down, I've a sketch in my mind of who the character is. Over time, the sketch is finished, inked in and coloured... and then I normally throw it out and start over with a line here and a shadow there. Secondary characters, like baby horses, tend to emerge more or less fully-formed and capable of running on their own within moments. They are also more likely to be based on people I've met or inspired by other characters (fictional and otherwise). Protagonists are definitely anthropoid creatures and need time and effort and resources to thrive. The diptych of Katharyne and Rosyaln are probably the two protagonists who've emerged most fully-formed and changed least over time: Katharyne because she's drawn rather strongly from Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I (and less so her historical counterpart) and Rosalyn because she was intended to be Not-the-heroine-of-every-sword-and-sorcery-novel-I'd-read-since-high-school, which is rather a more concrete character description than I normally have to begin. Since then, though, Rosalyn's character has been refined some with experiences thieved from Héloïse d’Argenteuil and Eileen Power's seminal^a-chem Medieval Women.


( The Questions (and answers) )

1) I'm reading Nathaniel Fick's ONE BULLET AWAY: The Making of a Marine Officer and it is a compelling piece of writing. Fick commanded the Marine Recon platoon that Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright embedded with to report on the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Wright's RS articles were the foundation for the book and later HBO series, GENERATION KILL. Recommended for G-KILL fans, military historians and anyone interested in a view of the "terror war" from the ground.

2) Fick's old unit, the Marine's 1st Reconaissance Battalion is what's known in the US military as a "special operations force". Anyone wanting to get an idea of the training and mindset of SOF officers (like, say, STARGATE fanfic writers *cough*) might find Fick's book interesting.

3) Finally read A VENETIAN AFFAIR wherein I learned, not for the first time, that the course of true love ne'er does run smooth, 18th century Venetian patricians were kinky, and the Catholic Church in Venice used to keep a registry of secret marriages while French convents were a convenient place to conceal an illicit pregnancy.

4) When I finish OBA, I will only have to read three more books before I'm allowed to bring any new ones into my house (library books don't count).

5) I buy too many books.

An afternoon spent herding cats has left me all sorts of out of sorts. I worked through lunch to deliver drafts to production for EOD. There's a problem with not eating. It makes you kind of stupid.

So now I'm sitting in front of the computer somewhat idly websurfing. For example, there's a rather pointless piece in the LATimes about whether or not Megan Fox's mouth is going to hurt her career. I think at the point you begin quoting pseudonymous comments on skin sites, is the point at which you've stopped doing journalism.

Personally, I can't help liking Megan Fox. She says things like "I didn't decide I'm going to be an actress cause I want to be respected for how I play chess" that make me think there might be a real person inside the Hollywood packaging. I think she'd be fun to watch onscreen, if she ever made a movie that I was prepared to spend the time and money on watching.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has waded into the affray over the sexist attitude towards women horror writers - good column, I didn't even look at the comments. For his part, Umberto Eco laments the loss of handwriting - clearly, he and I are kindred spirits: I am currently labouring over hand-written letters to a number of friends, which is why if you haven't received an e-mail from me lately, it's probably in the mail.

The second season of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES is out on DVD now. If you believe my twitter feed, the extras are fantastic. I haven't picked up mine yet but plan to shortly. As should you because the TSCC is one of the few examples of truly female-driven TV of the last few years. Smart, dark and serious, it deserved better than to be dragged to death under the wheels of FOX Broadcasting's He-Man Woman Haters Club bus.

Not only is TSCC worth watching for its own sake, but the Resistance over at SaveTheSCC.com are giving away a Blu-Ray DVD player and copies of TSCC season one autographed by Thomas Dekker as part of their "Freaking Big Push" campaign.

Send them your receipt and the proof of purchase from your TSCC DVDs to enter.

Booker Prize winning author AS Byatt gives an interview to the organizers of the Man Booker Prize:

"The children of great writers for children often came to unhappy ends... My initial thesis was that the writers wanted to prolong their own childhoods and that the children thus had no place to be themselves...

"One impact of writing on families is that the writer has to spend long periods alone with a pen, and this time, and this attention, is taken from the family. I knew a writer's family where the children buried the typewriter in the garden...

"As I get older I increasingly understand that the liveliest characters - made up with the most freedom - are combinations of many, many peope, real and ficture, alive and dead, known and unknown. I really don't like the idea of "basing" a character on someone, and these days I don't like the idea of going in to the mind of the real unknown dead. Oscar Wilde appears in this novel, but the novelist doesn't say what he thinks. I am also afraid of the increasing appearance of "faction" - mixtures of biography and fiction, journalism and invention. It feels like the appropriation of others' lives and privacy. Making other people up, which is a kind of attack on them [twaddle about how blogs and Facebook lead to suicide]...".

Byatt... does not make me want to read her books, frankly. This artificially high-minded wanky "oh, no. One does not in front of the children" tone of hers impresses me more as an indicator of her character than anything else. Some children of some children's authors are suicides? So are some children of some teachers. Writing takes time away from your family, yeah, well, so does my fucking job. I ain't got no horseshoe up my ass and nobody but me is going to pay my bills, so it's off to work I go.

Now maybe Byatt has a patron or family money or she's the last of those raised to believe that their family was their job and time away from them was theft of... parentage or love. Some goddamn thing. Whatever. I don't care but the rest of us? Have to work for a living and sometimes that is incompatible with perfect domestic harmony and motherfucking tragedy results. It was always thus.

So Byatt can step off the 'writers damage families through their monomania' or whatever Freudian guilt she is expiating and back the hell off historical fiction writers while she's at it. History is good but novelists do an important job of synthesis and reinterpretation when they deal with historical figures as well as keeping history alive in the popular mind. Byatt can take her concerns about "faction" and shove them and her Booker up her ass and spin on them.

slammerkinbabe has a post that deals with the disingenuousness of Byatt's hierachy of imagination and characterization in more detail but suffice it to say "oh, horseshit".

I have the 'flu, which is like my eighth flue this year.

Dear Ireland, pls. send back my immune system. kthxbye!

I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Twilight is quite possibly the worst book I've read since I stopped reading the white-cover Harlequin Romances when I was 17.

However, Twilight makes Laurell K. Hamilton look like freaking Austen (porny, porny Austen - why Mr. Darcy, I can never look at you the same way ever again) in comparison.

LKH still hasn't learned how to structure a narrative but someone's paying her by the on-page orgasm so she doesn't care?

No, really, the Children's Aid should be allowed to intervene in cases of parents allowing their teen daughters to read Twilight - mmm, yes, abusive, controlling relationships for $500, Alex.

Did I mention that I have the 'flu.

*drags sorry self to bed*

Would dare buy me a copy of TWILIGHT.

FOUR Hussies would autograph it, then dare me to read it and write a review.

>>Having already seen Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted and Hellboy II this summer, I'm beginning to feel that The Dark Knight is getting overhyped in that "it's so fabulous because it's really a real movie not some comic book movie" way that makes me fear I'm going to really, really hate it.

Batman is hot, brooding, gothic, violent, deductive and an inherently absurd concept. It's when you loose sight of that last one (as much as when you fixate on it) that things go pear-shaped.

>>Fringe has potential but is ridiculously open-ended. I was on board until the one specific weirdness blossomed into a plethora of weirdnesses in the final act for our heroes to invetigate, leaving me with a sick "oh, good - a TV show with all of The X-Files and all of LOST's weaknesses rolled into one." It's also worth remembering that Abrams was spectacularly unsuccessful at making anything coherent or interesting out of Alias's wacky Rambaldi subplot of doom. So while the pilot itself was good, the series could go either way. Just once, I'd like to get up from watching one of these things feeling like the writers knew how the story was going to end. Ultimately, the series will depend on how whether or not people will embrace what is essentially an X-Files update with Pacey as Scully.

>>I actually wrote a post today breaking down the footage in a new SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES trailer shot by shot. I'm rather horrified.

>>The second episode of The Middleman is slightly better than the first, slightly funnier and the in-jokes are slightly better integrated into the whole so that we're not stopping for someone waving and pointing at how cute the script is every other minute. The deliberate messing with people's Character-of-Colour expectations would be better without the Chinese villain ripped from Big Trouble in Little China but I'm genuinely amused by Ida's onboard coffee maker. If episode one was an F (for fast-forwarded to the end), I'd give this one a C for watchable and mildly amusing.

>>Elizabeth Hoyt needs to get over the fake fairytale epigrams at the beginning of each chapter and the backwoodsman who comes to London is beyond incredible - a corporal in the colonial militia would never be invited to socialize with the aristocracy. Never. Let alone one who was so disdainful of fashion as to parade about London in moccasins. I can only surmise that the either character was intended to be Native American until Cassie-gate broke or Ms. Hoyt has watched Last of the Mohicans once too many times.

Hello flist,

Until I actually finish my thesis project and then my novel after that, I'm going to be scarce(er) on ellejay. However, if you could use your communal powers for good and not evil and help me find a novel that begins in media res to use as an example in the intro to my thesis project, that would be awesome. I know they exist but, typically, I can't think of one right at the moment.

See, my novel begins with a discussion of an incident that we never actually see or return to in the novel. It happened and the repercussions leave my character in the position we find her in at the start of the book. I think of it a bit like an episode of Farscape - I'm simpling skipping over what would normally be the first act and jumping right into the second.

Needless to say, I can't write in my introduction that "I based the structure of the opening of my novel on an episode of Farscape where we jump over the trip to Katrazi and open with our crew about to infiltrate the Scarran space station." I'm in treacherous water as it is, submitting a "gothic" (I say horror) thriller for my thesis to be graded by some stuffy litfic writer from Trinity College (wankers!).

So, if any of y'all could help a sister out, that would be marvellous, mates. Utterly bloody marvellous.

Also - being compared to John Updike... good?

My life writing assignment drained my batteries pretty dry this week. This is what's left:

Saw:

Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr. was great as Tony Stark, the effects were cool, the script funny and Jon Favreau dialed Gwyneth Paltrow back from gratingly annoying to tolerably charming. On the other hand, the big bad was ludicrous and in our post-The Incredibles media reality, there's no excuse for a bad guy to be caught monologuing ever. Stay until after the credits.

Persepolis - awesome and intense and searing - at some point I will have more to say about this but it's too rich in my mind right now. I need to digest a little more.

Bones - Booth, Brennan and a baby made for fun TV. Bones is definitely my favourite forensic procedural - not only do the girls get to be smart but it manages to avoid much of the female death porn that is CSI's stock-in-trade.

Speaking of CSI - the most recent episode was boring even as background viewing while I caught up on a week's worth of newspapers in my room. And last week's Supernatural was even worse. Couldn't make it through either episode. Ick.

Read:

Half of Anna Karenina - stupid Russians! Write shorter books. Also the title is a lie: the book is really about this dude Levin who's Tolstoy's Gary Stu and thinks well-intentioned and terribly patronizing ideas for how to improve the lives of the Russian peasantry. I should look up how the Leninists felt about Tolstoy - I can see it going either way.

On Writing by Stephen King - the dude knows his stuff. A bit of a refresher, particularly after this past year, but all stuff that needs to be said.

Realized:

Lena Headey as Sarah Connor (TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) pretty much saved my sanity in February: grad school in a foreign country - lonely and depressed and February. It was ugly up inside my head and watching Sarah Connor kick ass helped, put me back in touch with the 18 year old inside of me, her enthusiasm and her passion. I should probably send a thank you card.

I write really well about my own life. I need to find that same voice and momentum in my writing about my fake lives and that probably comes from rewriting, rewriting and rewriting until I find the truth in it. Writing about myself is more about how much truth I leave out (I'm no James Frey - it's all true but it's not all of the truth - there are things, even when you're writing confessional memoirs, that no one else wants, needs or has a right to know about my life). It's finding that line that's the hard part.

If you're feeling oppressed by your grad school advisors, all of who think you're wasting your time writing a horror novel, there's no one better to read on writing than Stephen King.

I suspect as my response was "what's wrong with that" I've missed the point of this meme. Nevertheless,





take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.


and go to mewing.net. not as good as reading a good book, but way better than a bad one.


I think THE HOBBIT is cool, myself.

I'm writing poetry again. English Literature is afraid.

Meanwhile, THE GOLDEN COMPASS is a really, really good book and I recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy and hasn't read it yet. I'm about 100 pages from the end and really enjoying the ride but I think the people behind the film adaptation completely screwed the pooch. Also, if like me, you've heard bad things about Pullman's religious beef, so far I haven't found it much of an issue. Unless you find any criticism of organized religion offensive (in which case, you won't enjoy THE NAME OF THE ROSE either), I think Pullman's much-discussed atheism isn't really apparent in this book. I'm not sure I'll continue with HIS DARK MATERIALS: I don't really have the time or the money these days and I've heard that the final volume isn't that great. There's a certain attraction to leaving while the party is still fun.