Bev Vincent

I thought I had beaten the jet lag. I got back from Tokyo on Friday afternoon, went to bed at the usual time that night and slept soundly. Saturday night was fine, too. But the last two nights I’ve awakened at about 1 a.m. and had a hard time getting back to sleep. Yesterday morning I slept in later. Today I didn’t, hoping I’ll be sufficiently tired to sleep through the night tonight.

It’s a funny thing, shifting time zones. When I got into Tokyo on Monday afternoon (having left Houston on Sunday morning), I was sleepy. I kept nodding off during the 2-hour bus ride to Akishima. But I wasn’t tired later that night and all four nights I was there I woke up at about 3 a.m. for an hour.

Tuesday and Wednesday were rainy. Bicycle riders carried umbrellas like lances, making traveling down some of the narrow streets challenging. Thursday it was nice, and I had the afternoon off so I went to nearby Showa Kinen park. The cherry trees were in blossom. The park also has a Japanese garden that features a bunch of bonsai trees like the one pictured here. They look like full-sized trees, just miniaturized. Some of them were 80 years old and others might have been 150. Their trunks are thick and gnarled. If you’re on Facebook and want to see a few more pictures, go here.

To ward off hay fever, a lot of Japanese were medical face masks. I’d say that at least 30% of the people on any given train were wearing one. Made me think of writing a caper story where the culprits get away by wearing face masks and blending in with the crowd. I had some good meals (curry, sashimi, yakitori, things I didn’t recognize, things that had eyes). French pastries for breakfast, except one day when I had a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich that had lettuce on it. That seemed odd, but it worked. I also had one smelt as an appetizer one night. We used to eat those by the plate when I was younger.

The Dark Tower Companion was published last Tuesday. So far the reviews have been really good. You can read them here. I was also featured in an interview in The Big Thrill, the monthly newsletter of the ITW.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been mostly busy catching up, both at home and at work. I wrote an essay for an Italian publication this weekend. For the next couple of days I have to review page proofs for another project that hasn’t been announced yet. I have one more essay to write, a Storytellers Unplugged blog entry for next week, and three book reviews to do. Then I should be clear to tackle that novel. I hope.

I thought I’d have a lot of time to read while traveling, but I didn’t. The book I was reading when I left (Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet) I only finished this morning. I did see a lot of movies and TV shows. I didn’t watch any Japanese TV because I didn’t have a clue what any of it was about. I did see about 10 minutes of an episode of Bewitched the morning I left. The dubbing was really well done. I could almost convince myself that Samantha and Darrin were speaking Japanese.

On the trip back I watched the first five episodes of the second season of a show called Episodes, which stars Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends) as himself. I didn’t see the first season, so it took a bit of catching up, but the gist is that these two TV producers from the UK have come over to the US to create some shows, one of which stars LeBlanc. It’s set in LA but filmed in England. It has its moments. I’m curious to see how the season wraps up, anyway. I also saw one episode of Louis CK’s show, which has been recommended to me, but it was only okay.

I watched two movies going over and two more coming back.

1. Cloud Atlas. This one was intriguing. Six vignettes intercut, set over a huge time span, from the mid-nineteenth century to a couple of hundred years in the future. Many of the same actors (including Tom Hanks and Halle Berry) appear in each segment. The implication is supposed to be that we have future lives that give us a chance to vindicate our past actions. I almost understand it—almost. But it’s a fascinating movie. I really liked the 1973 story, which felt like a TV crime show from that era.
2. Silver Linings Playbook. If Jennifer Lawrence can remain grounded, she has a great future in front of her. She’s such a natural actress. Bradley Cooper is intense as the untreated bipolar who goes on these long-winded rants. When he and Chris Tucker go off on each other in the car at the beginning, I found myself thinking, “This is exactly what the internet is like. Everyone talking on top of everyone else and nobody listening.” Robert DeNiro is Cooper’s OCD father. A nice film.
3. Jack Reacher. I’ve never read the Lee Child books, so I can’t judge this as an adaptation, but it’s a serviceable thriller. I was a little disappointed by Rosamund Pike, who has been very good in other films. In this one, I found her far less than credible much of the time. At least they resisted the temptation to turn her into an action hero or a love interest. Robert Duvall is great, as always. There are some moments at the end that I didn’t care for—Reacher doing something patently stupid purely for the sake of creating drama.
4. The Girl. This is the flip-side of Hitch, the story of Tippy Hedren and The Birds (and, later, Marnie). Toby Jones, who I met on the set of The Mist, plays Hitch as a much darker, more twisted and manipulative Hitchcock. Based on other things I’ve read, this seems like the truer representation of the man than Anthony Hopkins’ rendition.

The weather is whacked. On Saturday afternoon I went for a post-prandial stroll along the artificial riverwalk with my daughter. Yesterday afternoon I was out mowing the lawn. By last night it was down near freezing again. Whacked, I say.

I got a lot of work done this weekend. Satisfying work. Things crossed off the master to-do list. On Saturday, I concentrated on responding to interview questions for something that will be published this week in conjunction with another review of The Dark Tower Companion, which comes out a week from tomorrow. Through a strange piece of unfortunate timing, I’ll be in Tokyo on publication day.

Yesterday I wrote and revised (and revised, and revised) a 2500-word afterword. That’s the first one of those I’ve ever done. My contribution to the work in question hasn’t been announced yet, so I can’t reveal more details until the editor does. He read the essay this morning and deemed it “absolutely superb,” so I guess I found the right note for the piece.

I watched Zero Dark Thirty on Friday night. I had a rough idea of what it was going to be about, and of course everyone knows how it turns out, but it’s a film worth seeing anyway. The first 30 minutes are terribly grim. Pretty much wall-to-wall torture. You can see how people end up saying absolutely anything to make it stop. They aren’t necessarily lying, especially when they don’t know the answer to the question. In those circumstances, they almost have to lie because no one believes they don’t know anything. The final 30-45 minutes are the raid on the compound in Pakistan. I have no idea how true to life the staging was, but in my mind it was a fairly straight forward operation and this shows how complicated it was for the men on the ground. How many doors they had to breech and the general chaos and uncertainty involved. The middle section is mostly Jessica Chastain’s character trying to get people to listen to her theory (every day she’d rub out a number on a glass wall and replace it with a new one: the number of days since she developed what she believes is solid intelligence about bin Laden’s location) and the way her team amasses enough credible evidence to convince others. She’s a powerful actress. When her character stands up to her superiors, you expect them to run off and hide in a corner.

On Saturday, my daughter and I saw Olympus Has Fallen. I think I saw a trailer for it a few months back, but I couldn’t have told you much about it beforehand, other than that I was fairly sure it had Morgan Freeman in it. I’d skimmed Ebert’s review to see if he liked it or not, without reading any of the details. So it was a blank slate experience. Think of Independence Day without aliens crossed with Die Hard (with Gerard Butler in the place of Bruce Willis) and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s like. It’s an intense action film. My daughter (who’s 26) watched a lot of it through her fingers. The ammunition budget must have been nuts. Thousands and thousands of rounds. And the ground battles are brutal. There are more shots to the head (and knives to the brain) than in many zombie films. The movie was a good bookend to Zero Dark Thirty as it showed a less-than-successful incursion by helicopter forces. There aren’t many opportunities to take a breather until it’s all over. If you were disappointed with the latest Die Hard, check this one out.

I was interested to see Botswana on last night’s Amazing Race. We’ve read all the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, which are set there, and have even “been” to Maun in a couple of them. I dream some day of going on a safari, and Botswana looks like a good destination. The tribesmen were so funny. I wonder how serious they were about being afraid of that lion. They made for the top of the tree in a hurry without seeming to care what happened to the contestants (or the camera operators). Reading the translations of their conversations in the back of the SUVs was entertaining, too.

I wonder what the tribal shakeup will do for the Fans vs. Favorites version of Survivor. It looks like the Favorites have an opportunity to pick off the Fans one by one, regardless of which tribe wins immunity on any given day, since they have the majority numbers in both. Is that something they’d want to do? Does it make sense to end up at the merge having to compete against mostly somewhat experienced players? It’ll be interesting to see how that develops.

Constable Bob was the hero of last week’s Justified. Not only did he take a major pummeling and kept his mouth shut (well, not exactly shut, but he kept his secrets), he came up with the perfect way to get Drew (aka Drewbacca) out of Harlan. As Raylan said, people under­estimate Bob at their peril. The episode was basically a Western (they’re circling the wagons), and it was chock full of great little moments. Art frustrated that no one smokes (“this is Kentucky not Sausalito”) and then the miscue over who would throw the Molotov cocktail. Shelby’s story about meeting Arlo in Vietnam, high on LSD and trying to find the culprit in a Louis L’Amour novel. Colt’s young Gerard Derpardieu line to Tim after Tim phoned him up during the standoff. I was liking Nicky Augustine until his verbal assault on Ava, but she got the upper hand with her brandy attack. Johnny’s machinations have been exposed though, so that doesn’t bode well for him. The showdown at the high school put Boyd and Raylan back into their alma mater (“a flawed redoubt”). I wonder if Boyd appreciates that Raylan saved his life again during the confrontation at the door to the principal’s office. Who would have guessed that Art was a Guns N’ Roses fan? Only two episodes to go.

Nearly 10 years ago, I was invited to be a guest of honor at a mini-conference in Maine called Palavercon. I didn’t have high hopes for the event, but I agreed to go. My first book was just out, so I thought I’d arrange a signing at a Portland bookstore since I was going to be in the area. I don’t remember how I got the word out (this was pre-Twitter and pre-Facebook), but I must have let some people know about the event.

The “con” was pretty much a bust and the attendees were either too hung over or otherwise occupied, so none of them got their acts together in time to make the longer-than-expected commute into Portland from Neptune or Jupiter or Pluto or wherever we were staying. The bookstore people were kind and set me up with a podium and far too many chairs, but otherwise left me to my own devices. It looked like I was going to be talking to myself for the allocated hour. A couple who used to live near us in Texas showed up for a while, but they didn’t stay long. And then in came Rick Hautala and Holly Newstein, along with Glenn and Sheila Chadbourne. They became my audience, and I couldn’t have had a better one if the room had been full. We had a wonderful visit that afternoon.

That’s the kind of guy Rick was. Friendly and supportive. I knew him primarily through Necon. Some of my favorite moments at the convention involved finding Rick sitting by himself in the quad or the courtyard, usually smoking a cigar, often with a beer at his side, invariably with a book in his hands. We’d sit and chat about everything under the sun, catching up with each other since our last chance to visit. He was outspoken and funny, a fine writer who had careers both under his own name and as A.J. Matthews. He played softball with us, and I had some great times playing minigolf with him and Holly. An even better time with him bowling a couple of years ago when it was too hot in Rhode Island for us pale writers to stand outside on a golf course for an hour or two. We had an absolute blast that morning. I treasure the memory.

I was devastated to hear the news yesterday that he had passed away from a heart attack. I had just returned from a business trip to Austin and that was the first thing that I saw when I went online. I’m pretty sure I swore out loud when I processed the information. It was quickly confirmed by multiple sources and I was struck by the outpouring of grief and appreciation. So many people considered him a friend, as do I. I can’t imagine what his family is going through at the moment. It was so sudden.

Last year, the Horror Writers Association awarded Rick with its Lifetime Achievement Award and there can be no doubt that it was both deserved and timely.

There’s always one clock that you forget to reset. It’s in an out-of-the-way location and it completely slips your mind. And yet, that’s the one that you notice and believe the next day. The one that makes you wonder why on earth the morning is going by so slowly. Then you realize your mistake and you leap forward an hour once again.

I really did not want to get up at 5 a.m. today for my writing session, but I did anyway. I’m on a mission to clear off my desk. I have two more book reviews to write (one of them is all but finished), a short story to finish and a Storytellers Unplugged essay to write. Then I have to reread a novel and write something about it. Then I’m going to spend a day or two cleaning up my short story submissions. I have a bunch that have been out far too long. A couple of them have probably been rejected by default, but I want to check up on a couple of others and then get all the ones that are lying fallow out to new potential homes.

Once all that’s done (before the end of the month), I’m going to start working on a novel again. I’ve been putting that off for far too long. It’s time.

I posted my review of The Burn Palace by Stephen Dobyns yesterday. It’s a really cool book that keeps you guessing all the way through. The omniscient point of view reminded me at times of the opening of Black House. I was never sure how supernatural the story was going to be. I’ve only read one other of Dobyns’ novels, but I think I’ll check some more out when I have the time.

The folks at The Tomb of Dark Delights posted a new review of the revised and updated edition of The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book this weekend. In part: “Stephen King fans will love this entertaining and completely updated collection of minutiae about the author and his work. Opening this book is like opening a bag of Cheetos—you just can’t stop once you get started.”

More than one person has been evicted from Survivor with an immunity idol in his pocket, but no team has ever gone home from The Amazing Race with an Express Pass in their back pack before. I can’t help but appreciate the irony that the team they gave the second pass to won the leg, and one of the contestants is in a cast. John seemed very que sera sera about it all. Jessica, not so much. They were also the team that went to some random address and started building something and it wasn’t even part of the race. No wonder the old guy there looked so perplexed.

We watched Anna Karenina this weekend. It’s only about the fourteenth time someone has made a film out of this novel. Playwright Tom Stoppard scripted this one, and it might be tempting to assume that he was responsible for the theatrical staging, but apparently that was the director’s idea. It’s a little disorienting at times. Characters walk through the set, changing outfits on the fly. Flats move into and out of frame as the scenes transition. It’s all quite stylish and fascinating, but the story is so complex that adding an extra layer of complexity doesn’t serve it well. This film concentrates on the love story, jettisoning some of the politics and other subplots of the novel, but it’s a difficult story. There was a waiter at a local restaurant that I go to after work sometimes who saw that I was reading and engaged me in conversation. He was a young Hispanic guy with a pony tail and he proclaimed that he had just finished reading a book. I admit my prejudice when I assumed that it might be Twilight or something of that ilk but, no, it was Anna Karenina. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not yet—he was still working that out. I have to say that I wasn’t terribly fond of this story. Keira Knightley was just fine, but her character is a difficult one to like.