The Doctor has left the building

I spent a lot of time polishing my Doctor Who short story Leap Second this weekend. I hadn’t read it in about a week and found a couple of inconsistencies and several places to sharpen up the writing, plus incorporate a couple of suggestions from my test audience. This morning I read through it one more time, tweaked a couple of words and decided it was time to let it go. The deadline isn’t until October, but I didn’t see any reason to hold onto it until then. I’m sure the editor will appreciate getting the stories in dribs and drabs rather than all at once at the end. This way, too, if there are any major issues from his end there’ll be time to handle them at leisure.

I completed the book review of The Poe Shadow, but I didn’t really get around to the short story I planned to work on. Instead, I decided it was time to get back at the novel I’ve been ignoring for a while. I reread and edited the first three chapters yesterday afternoon and this morning. I happen to think that the first chapter is positively brilliant, but I’m sure that feeling will pass! Originally, I planned to wait until July 1st to restart the book. I do hope to get the other short story done, too, but I’m not sure if it will pan out. The story concept is still hovering in search of a reason for existing. I know the characters, the setting, and the situation, but it needs something more yet.

Watched two movies this weekend. The first was The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. It’s a contemporary story about a West Texas cowboy (Jones) who befriends a Mexican illegal vaquero. When Melquiades is killed and the reason for his death covered up, Jones takes justice into his own hands and forces the responsible person to dig Melquiades up and take him on horseback through the Mexican desert back to his home town. Barry Pepper costars, and he sure earned his pay! It’s a memorable film, with interesting characters and fascinating set piece scenes. It’s oddly constructed, with interspersed flashback scenes that have no transitional information to orient the viewer, which can be off-putting, and its pace is leisurely, but I found it effective and touching. The surprise revelation toward the end pretty much made my jaw drop, and there’s no effort made to explain why the involved character claimed what he did.

Until it ventures south of the border, the film is set in the part of West Texas where I set The Silent Desert, my NaNoWriMo novel from last year.

The other movie was a Robert Redford/Morgan Freeman/J. Lo film called An Unfinished Life, directed by Lasse Hallström. Redford’s cantankerous character saves the film from being schmaltzy. Freeman is the same, wise, placid character he is in virtually every film he appears in. Lopez is acceptable as the (once again) victim of domestic abuse who escapes her situation and returns to her home in Wyoming, where her father-in-law (Redford) still blames her for his son’s death. The other star of the film is Bart the Bear, whose presence screams metaphor from the moment he first appears on screen. It wasn’t a bad film, has some nice moments, but ultimately forgettable, where I think The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada will stay with me for a while.

Now reading: By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel, translated from the French. (Original title: Les âmes grises, The Grey Souls)