My Storytellers Unplugged essay Contests? No Contest is now live for your reading enjoyment.
There’s a new review of On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association at Famous Monsters of Filmland today. The book continues to sell well and we all get royalty checks every six months lo these many years after publication. My essay is called “For Love or Money: Six Marketing Myths.”
My goal this morning was to get started on a 350-word flash fiction story for a contest. It took me a while to come up with a concept, but then I started noodling around with a situation. I figured out who the main characters are and their complication. I wrote by hand, with plenty of strikeouts, one full page. Didn’t worry about word count, as I was still figuring things out as I went along. Then, while I was doing my morning stretching exercises, the story kept percolating in my mind, and a new character spoke to me. That sounds creepier than it really is. It was loud and clear and gave me the framework for the story. I love it when that happens.
Fathers and sons, fathers and daughters—that’s been the theme of the past few episodes of NCIS. Ziva is estranged from her father, who left her for dead, but is now in the position of having to be his bodyguard, along with her own director. Three terrorists are after Eli David, but by the end of this two-parter we are left with the impression that there might have been someone else involved. An insider who knew where the safe house was. My bet is on Liat, the female Mossad agent, the “new Ziva,” played by Israeli model turned actress Sarai Givaty. She’s the one who shot one of the terrorists three times and then said perfunctorily, “Drop your weapon.”
Castle took on The X-files this week, and it’s an apt fit. Beckett is a perfect Scully to Castle’s Mulder. He so much wants to believe in incredible explanations and she always looks for the mundane. There was a nice bit of misdirection in the episode when the secretary at the place where the murdered woman worked looked nervous and guilty. Lyle Lovett (“I’m going to have to put you on my Friends and Family list”) was fun as the agent from an unknown agency. When Castle asked him where all the expected dramatics were (predator drones, black helicopters, SWAT teams rappelling down ropes), he deadpanned, “Budget cuts.” Funny Bat-phone reference when Beckett talked into a box of bugs that had been removed from her car to communicate with the agency, and a great Close Encounters scene in the stalled car, and the ensuing hilarity surrounding their “hickeys.” We learned, too, that Castle has half a million followers on his Twitter account. My favorite bit, though, because I’m a geek, came when Castle started spouting Firefly-sounding Mandarin. (“My partner is crazy and may start firing at any second.”) Beckett turned to him and asked, “Semester abroad?” to which he answered, “No, a TV show I used to love.” And the closing shot of them strolling off together was perfect. They could have been holding hands.
Of all the gin joints in all the survivor camps near Atlanta, Rick had to walk into this one (on The Walking Dead). The very one that his wife and son were in. What are the odds? Pretty good, apparently. I wonder how long it’s going to take him to find out that his best friend, Shane, told his wife he was for-sure d-e-a-d dead and was keeping house with her. Shane’s not taking the new status quo all that well, working out his frustrations on the redneck wife-abuser. I like Jeffrey DeMunn’s character, especially his philosophical ruminations on the inadequacies of words. “There goes them words, falling short. Paltry things.” I’m still trying to figure out why Rick went to such lengths to get all the way back to camp, only to turn around and take most of the group back into town again. Shouldn’t he have had those second thoughts earlier? The post-apocalypse new social order in the camp seems to have very quickly gone south. “I’m beginning to question the division of labor,” one of the women said as they pounded laundry with rocks in the stream while Shane and the boy frolicked. The unlikeable character quotient in this series is pretty high. Sure there are bound to be some hillbilly bigots, but where are all the nice folk? The closing shot was a good surprise, though. I know they made some comment last week about how long it would take to saw through the metal pole, but still.
