Bev Vincent

Another balmy day here in southeast Texas. If Santa were on Galveston Island at the moment, he’d probably be decked out as in the accompanying picture. The temperature is supposed to drop 20° on us between today and tomorrow so it will be more seasonal for the holidays. This is my last day at work for 2009 — I won’t be back until 20010. That doesn’t look quite right…

Watched the third episode of Men of a Certain Age last night after catching my wife up with the first two. We both tend to agree that Ray Romano is the show’s weak link, although the subplot with Joe and his son was probably the least awkward and uncomfortable of all of Romano’s storylines so far. However, I really liked Owen and Terry’s respective stories this week. Best line to date: Monday I go back to making little girls cry.

Still working on short story revisions. Not sure if I’ll get back to them this year, but I hope to. I have about 9000 words of fiction to whip into shape for this project, with the possibility of revisiting a reprint, too.

Can’t wait for Doctor Who, part 1 of which will air on BBC America on Saturday evening (it airs in the UK on Christmas Day). Part 2 a week later and that’s that for the current doc.

Unseasonably warm today — just a hair shy of 70° and it’s supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. However, we’ll dip into the 30s on Thursday night, so it might feel a little more seasonal by then.

It’s hard to believe that the first decade of the new millennium is almost over. I remember all the Y2K hubbub almost as if it were yesterday, although when I stop to think about everything that has transpired in the ensuing years it hardly seems that ten years could have held all of those developments. I got my first-ever acceptance letter for a short story almost exactly ten years ago. Of course, the market folded before the issue containing my story was published, but still…

Still working hard on the writing, and still getting acceptance letters and rejections and requests for revision. Today, for example, I received official word that my story “Zombies on a Plane” will be part of the charity anthology Dead Set, to be published in 2010 by 23 House Publishing. One of my earliest publications was a story in another of their charity anthologies, an eBook that benefitted the Make a Wish Foundation, so when I heard that they were putting something else together I decided to submit. I happened to have a zombie story kicking around, one that started as a title and turned into a plot, so it seemed like a good fit.

I’m continuing to work on two other stories under revision. I’m hoping to have them both up to snuff by the end of the year, but my writing schedule is going to become catch-as-catch-can after tomorrow so I’m not entirely sure that’s going to happen. We’ll see.

The Closer was pretty clever last night. I thought I had it all figured out as a collusion between the supposedly battered wife and the cop who arrived on the scene, but it turned out that the story was even more devious than that. Mary McDonnell always brings out the best and worst in Brenda. The evolving drawing of the Wicked Witch of the West was an amusing running joke. The subplot about Fritz’s potential new job made for a good motivator for both Fritz’s behavior and Chief Pope’s inexplicable anger as well.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through Don Quixote. Sancho Panza is deep in discussion with the Duchess, the one who is humoring him and Don Quixote because they are fans of their published exploits.

Three more days of work for the rest of 2009, including today, which is almost over. Day job work, that is. I still have some work on fiction to do before December falls off the calendar. I also stumbled upon a character’s voice for another short story that I plan to work on in early 2010, so I need to cultivate that one for a while and come up with his story.

We watched a few films this weekend. On Saturday we went out to see Have You Heard About the Morgans? I’ll give that one the award for the lamest, most irrelevant title of the year. Sure, one of the characters utters that line, but it is hardly reflective of the story. Hugh Grant is his usual bumbling, self-effacing self, which is a good thing if you like him, which we do. Sarah Jessica Parker wasn’t annoying, which was about the best I could hope from her. Bonus, though, for discovering that the film also stars Sam Elliott as his gruff usual self and Mary Steenburgen as his wife, Wilfred Brimley as an even gruffer guy, and Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss as a modern incarnation of her character on that show. It’s light, amusing fare, entirely predictable but really funny at times. One wonders why New Mexico had to stand in as Wyoming, though.

Then we watched Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, which is based on the memoirs of the main character, the president of town council who managed to bring the Woodstock concert to town after its permit was killed elsewhere. Elliott is a young closeted gay man who is trying to break free from his domineering mother but who keeps getting sucked back in by the latest financial problem. The family owns a fleabag motel in a tiny, out of the way town, and the bank is about to foreclose. Elliott runs a festival every summer, mostly a record player set up in public, and there’s a traveling theatrical group living in the barn. The guy who comes to evaluate the terrain for the concert looks like a cross between Jim Morrison and Leo Sayer from Godspell. The concert is both a blessing and a curse, of course. Eugene Levy plays Yasgur, the farm owner who rents out his property, Richard (John Boy) Thomas is almost unrecognizable as one of the organizers, and Liev Schrieber is hilarious as the cross-dressing former marine who now goes by the name Vilma who is hired to head security. The concert itself is very much in the background in the film. At best we here a few strains of music in the distance. Mostly it’s about the people who come for the spectacle and the ones who are impacted by its arrival. I liked the motorcycle cop who came out to bust a few heads and ended up with a flower stuck in his helmet visor. I’m sure the real event was much more like bedlam–it comes off as a very mellow time for all.

Last night we watched Easy Virtue, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play starring Jessica Biel as an American who marries a younger English man from a landed family headed by Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth. Really lead by Thomas, as Firth is perpetually on the outs because he didn’t come straight home after the Great War but instead caroused around Europe until he came back with his tail between his legs. Larita (Biel) is thought to be a floozy by most and is instantly despised by Thomas, though not for the reasons that seem apparent at the beginning. The biggest threat Larita poses is in taking her new husband John away from the family home, which he is expected to save from financial ruin. Larita has a history (she’s a widow) and also likes to drive fast cars and was pictured “winning” a race in Monte Carlo until her gender disqualified her. It’s a costume drama with lots of UK/US humo(u)r and the usual friction between classes. Larita finds a sympathetic ear in Firth (and vice versa) and she relates better to the servants than her new family. Firth makes the movie, as he so often does.

Jeff Strand predicted the outcome of Survivor several weeks ago. I think it was pretty much ordained, too. Russell blustered his way through to the end, leaving corpses and mangled bodies in his wake. He couldn’t have gotten as far as he did without using the tactics he did, but in the end the ones who held his destiny in his hands were the ones he’d treated so poorly, so what did he expect? I don’t think I believe him when he says that he’s not like that in real life. I also thought he demonstrated poor grace as a loser, and the gag where he threw yet another pair of socks into the fire came off as feeble, too. I thought it was pretty funny, after watching the Ponderosa videos, to realize that Jaison was drunk during his first appearance as a juror, having just chugged a glass of wine from losing wine pong with Eric on top of several previous glasses! It was a pretty strong season, all in all, and I have little doubt that Russell will be one of the villains in the spring. I suspect that there are people out there studying his strategy and trying to solve the enigma — how do you scheme and backstab and plot and connive your way to the end and still have more than a couple of people willing to vote for you?

Funny moment of the reunion show: when one of the early contestants told Jeff that he made her break out in a sweat every time he spoke to her. His reaction was priceless. I wish the reunion show ran for two hours instead of just one.

Upgraded to Word Press 2.9. Cross your fingers it doesn’t go ka-blooey!

Publisher’s Weekly has a starred review of Peter Straub’s next novel, A Dark Matter. After comparisons (favorable) to Roshaomon, it ends: “Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror.” I was fortunate to be able to read the book several  months ago so I could review it for Cemetery Dance and I agree with the PW review completely. The title, by the way, has more meanings than I could possibly ever list.

Another editing round on the short story under revision. It has crept up from 3500 to 4300 words over the course of the past week or so. I hope to get it back to the editor tomorrow so I can focus on whipping the other short story he wants into shape. The current story was locked in my mind for a long time and now I’ve had to re-evaluate it and re-envision it, which has been a process with a learning curve. It’s hard to un-think the story.

Each season on Survivor it seems that someone emerges from the pack late in the season and it’s like: where did this guy/gal come from? This season, of course, it’s Brett (is that his name?) who has just been a face in the crowd until he became the last surviving member of Galu and all of sudden pulled off two immunity wins in a row to save his ass. I saw lots of eye-rolling among the jury member when they saw who was evicted this week, but I’m not sure if that was a reflection on their opinion of the vote or a reaction to having to share quarters with this particular evicted individual. Only one episode left, and this is where it gets interesting — where a long-standing alliance (although it seems much longer for us, where two days equals a week than for the players, probably) will be forced to make the difficult decisions.

CSI was just plain weird last night. The final shot seemed like a riff on an earlier episode that ended with a silly star-crossed lovers shot, except this time the stars were in a different alignment and the suicide pact had an unexpected outcome. I’m not sure exactly what was wrong with the episode, but it just didn’t work for me. Parts of it felt overly contrived, especially the shootout at the beginning. How many shots were fired before anyone was hit, let alone the dumbo standing in the middle of the crossfire hoping to get shot? It just felt totally off.

The Mentalist was okay. I’m not sure we really learned much about Jane that really helps us to understand him any better. Sure, he was able to use his own childhood experience to put the ball players’ ordeals into context, but it didn’t seem worth all that effort. I’m growing to like the exchanges between Van Pelt and Rigsby even more, especially now that Van Pelt is really starting to step up her game as a cop.

Today’s Storyteller’s Unplugged entry is called Alternate Reality and it’s about my experiences pretending to be the 13-year-old character Scarecrow Joe for a couple of months as part of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) associated with the release of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Check it out.

I finalized my review of Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton and posted it at Onyx Reviews last night. It’s not a terrible book, but one has to wonder in what form it would have been published — if it all — had Crichton lived to be consulted about it. It has the feel of an early work, one of the books he published under pseudonyms to put himself through med school. The moral of the story, from the writer’s perspective, is: make sure you leave clear instructions about what you’d like done with any existing, unpublished works after you die.

Criminal Minds obvious scene of the week: Dangerous killer in the back seat of a car being taken into custody by two officers. The camera lingers on the car while it navigates a dark, lonely back road. You just know he’s going to escape. Still, the scene of his daring “rescue” was one of the tensest I’ve seen on that show in a while. The ending, though it was upbeat, felt poorly timed to me, though. Overlong and needing something more dramatic.

I made another revision pass through a short story I’m working on for a 2010 anthology. The editor provided some good notes on the last draft and I was able to incorporate most of them easily. I still have one more note to address that deals with the ending that’s going to take a little more thought before I’m ready to tackle it. Endings are hard — the pacing and the payoff. I have the latter, now I just need to play with the former a little to accentuate the latter.

It’s been rainy, overcast, soggy and foggy here for most of the week. Tuesday the fog hung around all day long, which is very unusual for this area. After suffering a drought this summer we’re pretty much caught up in terms of average annual rainfall.

Christmas takes a pretty sound thrashing on most TV shows. It’s easy prey, especially when there are dysfunctional families involved. Carl Reiner’s appearance on Two and a Half Men was one instance where the family ended up munching on turkey and not speaking to each other while Reiner’s character makes passes at Berta and jokes about incontinence. “Fa-la-la-la-la” became one of the punch lines on Big Bang Theory, an ironic comment on the lack of Christmas spirit by one character or another.

NCIS did it right, in my opinion. It brought family together, in the form of Gibbs’ father, played by the ultimate TV dad, Ralph Waite from The Waltons. This is his second appearance in the role. The episode wasn’t schmaltzy or trite–there are real issues between father and son, years of distance that can’t be bridged in one hour of TV, but they made inroads, especially after Papa Gibbs told what happened to him. Normally vapid Tony’s secret Santa gift to the dragon lady in HR was another moment. Abby is like the spirit of just about every holiday in existence and her  Gingerbread Abbies were absolutely typical of her joie de vivre. The video conference that McGee set up was perhaps the only trying-too-hard part of the show, but it wasn’t too overboard. Plus they managed to cram in a whole plot about religious intolerance and family honor. Not too shabby.

Still working on Don Quixote. I’m up to the scene where our intrepid knight-errant challenges a couple of wild lions.

I wrote my Storytellers Unplugged essay for tomorrow and posted it on the dashboard so it will show up morning. I also received a good set of notes on a short story I’m revising for a 2010 project. I revamped the story completely in a second draft and now have only a little more tweaking to get it into shape. I have one other story that’s in about the same condition–have to get them both ready by the end of the year, which isn’t all that far off.

Issue 63 of CD magazine is special for one particular reason: I believe this is the very first time that my name appears on the front cover.

This week’s episode of The Closer was much better than last week, getting away from gang plots and into transgender issues and black widows. Both of these have been done before, many times, but getting Beau Bridges into a dress and high heels made for a hilarious episode. The former George, now Georgette, came to terms with his self identification after leaving the police force but now he makes a rather unreliable witness in an old homicide case (if he’s uncertain about his gender, how can he be certain about anything, a defense lawyer would argue). George refuses to commit purjury by appearing as his former male self on the stand, but he’s not against going undercover as a man to try to get the all-important confession. His old friend, Lt. Provenza, of course has serious issues with George(tte)’s new appearance, and he’s even more incredulous to discover that Georgette still likes women. “You went through all that to become a lesbian?” he shrieks.

I’m still on the edge with Men of a Certain Age. Both episodes so far have had some excellent moments and some tedious/awkward ones. I think, though, that the awkward moments come from uncomfortable truths. The funniest scene is the one where Scott Bakula throws his cup at a guy who ran a stop sign and then ends up stealing the guy’s car when he gets out for a confrontation. I don’t know enough about gambling to know if Ray Romano’s character won or lost his bet. He seemed excited about the 3-pointer at the buzzer, but then he punched out the Hulk, so I’m thinking he’s down $2 grand.

I wrote the first draft of my review of Pirate Latitudes last night and should get it posted sometime later this week. I’m working on revisions to another short story for a 2010 project that hasn’t yet been announced and I have to write my essay for Storytellers Unplugged. Never a dull moment. I’m almost 1/4 of the way through the second part of Don Quixote, where the Don and Sancho have a run-in with another deluded knight-errant in a grove after encountering “Dulcinea” among a group of homely village girls.

Big Bang Theory was pretty funny last night — the appearance of a parental unit is always a source of high comedy. In this case, Leonard’s mother, played by Christine Baranski, who brings with her a lot of news that Leonard hasn’t heard, her peculiar and offbeat insights, and an untapped fondness for shots of tequila.

No, not the bourbon. I saw one of these critters strolling across the road this morning after I dropped my wife off at the park and ride lot. At first I thought it was a turkey vulture (buzzard) because we have a lot of those around here, but they normally fly away when you drive near them and this guy just strutted across the road, bobbing his head back and forth. He was huge, too. I’ve never seen a wild turkey around here before.

We saw Invictus, the new Clint Eastwood/Morgan Freeman film about Nelson Mandela and the South African World Cup of rugby. Great movie — a feel-good kinda film. You don’t need to know much about rugby to enjoy it (though a passing knowledge of US football helps). Matt Damon is very good, especially in his delivery of the South African accent. Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela. You never question it for a moment. Some of the film’s most poignant elements are little nuanced side stories, many of them without dialog. The little boy playing near the police car in the parking lot outside the stadium, for example. There is an entire drama told in snapshots. The evolving relationship between the black security guards and the white guards who used to work for DeClerk. The game itself is filmed in all its grit and glory. The ball whistles through the air when passed. You can feel the bone-crunching tackles. The game is much like US football except no one wears any protective gear–not even helmets. It’s hard to imagine the damage done to their bodies on any given day.

I hear via the grapevine that there will be a fourth season of Torchwood, perhaps a full 13 episodes. That would be great!

Now we have to wait until September 2010–we being those who watch Dexter. I’m not going to offer up any spoilers here at the moment other than to say that the ending was a punch in the gut and a kick in the nethers. This season we saw Dexter reinvented as husband and father. Next season, he’ll be something entirely different. Perhaps a suspected killer? That would be a switch!

Russell survives to scheme another day on Survivor. Whip out that hidden immunity idol and wear it proud! How audacious. Of course, it was a poorly kept secret that he had it, so why not flaunt it? Monica did well at the end to get in some parting cracks at the big R, but she might have hauled out this unspoken nature earlier in the contest to keep herself in the game longer. Only two more episodes to go, I think they said.

I think fruit cake gets a bad rap. I even made one myself a few years ago when I was feeling nostalgic for the kind we used to have when I was a kid. My sister just sent me a supply to get me through the holidays, three different kinds (dark, light, and light without nuts). Yum.

Shades of Fried Green Tomatoes on C.S.I. last night. They managed to combine one of the occasional funny episodes with the lab rats getting out into society with the more serious plot of the killer who surgically alters people.  The entire roadhouse story was hilarious, starting with the guy with the racoon stuck to his face. The Mentalist took a lighter tack this week, too. Not as uproarious as C.S.I. but witty.

I finished Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes last night. A fun book that starts out a bit like a caper of the Ocean’s Eleven variety, where the captain goes around to gather together a crew with the particular talents needed to pull off the gag. Then there’s the marine stage, the island invasion, the getaway, more marine battles, the requisite storm scenes and the reversal at the end. Not as serious or as intricate as some of his other works. It’s hard to guess exactly when it was written. It has the sure hand of his mid-career books but the frothiness of his med school books.

I received the proofs for “A Murder of Vampires,” my story in the Evolve anthology. Need to go over them and get any changes back to the editor asap since the book will be launching at World Horror. Though March 2010 seems like a long way off, it’s really only three months away. I finally bit the bullet and bought my plane tickets yesterday. I’d been waiting for a more favorable airfare, but the prices have been all over the map and don’t seem to be trending downward at all. I wanted to fly into Gatwick, but Heathrow will have to do.

Criminal Minds has been concentrating on some emotionally difficult material lately, what with the death of a secondary character last week and its repercussions this week, though it seems like the official period of mourning will last for only one episode. Hey, at least CBS is still cranking out new episodes at this time of year–there’s even another new one next week–when most other shows are on hiatus. I suspect that at some point the writers will explore Emily Prentiss’s backstory. It’s clear from the way she reacted to the perp at the end of this week’s shows that she has some serious issues bottled up. Gun pressed against forehead to accentuate proclamations of delight at the perp’s future behind bars as someone else’s bitch.

It’s always good to see John Larrouquette, who was a guest star on Law & Order: SVU this week. He had a neat role on Boston Legal in its last season or so, and I’ve enjoyed watching him since the days of Night Court, when he was another smarmy lawyer, Dan Fielding.  He played that part with panache. On L&O he got to trot out his southern drawl and range from advocate to outrage. The show needs to get rid of its unfortunate tendency to turn every episode into a protracted public service announcement. As an aside, I caught an old episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets this weekend and Munch hasn’t changed a bit in all those years.

Double elimination week on Survivor. Can’t wait to see if/how Russell manages to make it through.