Little Miss Sunshine

I finally got the new short story out the door. I did a lot of rewriting, sent it off to my first reader again, got back a good report with only a couple of minor suggested adjustments, some of which I took and some that I didn’t. I reread it one last time this morning and e-subbed it. I spent more time on this story than on any other in recent memory because I really wanted to get it right. It didn’t turn out the way I intended—but I think it turned out better. My horror stories have an annoying tendency to wander off into reality, and never has that been more the case than with this one. For that reason, it might not meet the expectations of the editors for the market that inspired me to write it in the first place, but that’s okay. If they don’t want it, I’m pretty sure I can find some other home for it.

I plan to write more about this story for my upcoming Storytellers Unplugged essay, which goes up on Saturday.

We watched Little Miss Sunshine on Saturday evening. I’d heard a lot of good things about it in general but absolutely nothing specific, so we essentially went into it cold. I like the actors involved, Kinnear and Toni Colette especially. For the first ten or fifteen minutes I thought choosing the movie had been a big mistake. It went achingly slowly and the interpersonal relationships were difficult and awkward—in their utter reality and truthfulness. Then it started to roll along. We chuckled when the little girl hears the good news and she’s all over the house shouting with unabandoned glee. And then it just kept getting better and better. By the end I was laughing harder than I have at any movie in recent memory. I won’t spoil it by giving away how it turns out, but we started getting suspicious when we realized who had been left in charge of choreography while everyone else in the house was battling their own demons.

The interesting thing is that at the end of the movie, nothing is resolved for anyone. Their lives still suck. None of their crises have been resolved and hard days lie ahead. And yet you come away from it feeling good because of the way they all pulled together. Funniest low-key delivery line of the movie: He’s in the trunk.

I finished Carl Hiaasen’s Nature Girl this weekend and wrote up a review for Onyx. The book itself is now up for auction on eBay along with promotional material from the publisher. Also on auction is a neat copy of the annotated Cat in the Hat, a coffee table book that delves into that classic book. I’m not quite sure why Random House sent it to me. I leafed through it, but I thought I’d pass it along to someone else who might appreciate it more.