Bev Vincent

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to upset the apple cart on Survivor. But this week it helped. So, let’s see. I can sit back, keep the tie vote and stand a finite chance of drawing the black stone and being sent home, or I can change my vote, evict a strong player, and guarantee that I’ll be around to play another day. Hmmm.

The tribal councils the last three weeks have been great. First there was the Eric blindside, where he was so taken by surprise that you could see realization oozing out of his ears. Then there was the “no way he has another immunity idol” gaffe last week followed by the zoinks! when he produced it. And this week there was John’s decision. I thought it was a very gutsy move by Russell to keep the immunity idol, play for the draw and let the chips fall where they may.

Fringe was pretty awesome this week, too. The mythology expands a little bit to show us that there are multiple observers, and then one of them is humanized. Inklings of their interference in Walt’s early life, but most importantly the personal story that emerged when the observer went off the reservation, so to speak. In fact, all the characters had personal moments — Olivia with her niece, for example — and the only shame was that Walter didn’t figure out the missing ingredient in his ice cream recipe. A mystery for another week, perhaps.

And just when you were counting The Mentalist down and out they hit you in the gut. Even though I’d seen the previews, I wasn’t expecting the shooting scene, and I certainly didn’t expect the culprit to be who it was, nor was I expecting Sam’s fate. It was almost like the writers and Red John were in sync. We’ve introduced this complication and it’s derailing Jane from the investigation so we have to wipe the slate clean. I’m still not impressed with Robin Tunney’s acting skills, but it was a hell of an episode. Perhaps the best one yet.

Fast Forward, on the other hand, tread water more or less tread water this week. Brice’s story is vaguely interesting, but it’s so far afield from the main trajectory of the series that it felt like an unnecessary diversion. I want the mosaic team to go to Hong Kong, but now we have to wait two weeks to see how that plays out. And I want the Dominic Monaghan character to come clean. Ditto: two weeks.

I received my semi-annual statement from Penguin via my agent for The Road to the Dark Tower yesterday. I keep expecting to open these and find several pages filled with zeroes, but that hasn’t been the case yet. Exactly five years after publication, it is still selling at a pace of about 2.5 copies every day. Of the sales in the last six months, fifty were for electronic versions of the book, eighty copies were sold in Canada and the rest in the U.S. At the current rate, I should earn out my advance in three more years!

I received my contributor copies of Issue 62 of Cemetery Dance magazine yesterday. Didn’t have time to do more than scan through it yet. Looking forward to reading all the Blatty material.

I tried to watch the AMC reboot of The Prisoner last night. I recorded it, but found that it is available On Demand on Comcast so I went there instead. I made it about 3/4 of the way through the first hour and gave up. It simply didn’t interest me or hold my attention. Did anyone watch it and like it? Hard to compare to the original. Caviezel is no McGoohan.

Last night’s Criminal Minds seemed like a mash-up at first. The swimming pool scene needed the theme music from Jaws to be complete, and of course there was the obvious Hannibal Lecter influence. Prentiss was a pretty convincing flirt. L&O:SVU took on the new DNA controversy, where people are able to spin the DNA out of blood cells and replace it with DNA from another source to fake evidence. Sinister scientists rubs his hands together in glee and cackles at the end. Mwaaa-ha-ha.

I had to laugh at the clip of Al Gore’s cameo for this week’s 30 Rock: “There’s an old African proverb,” he says, “that I just made up…” I’m also getting a kick out of Ellen Page’s commercials for CISCO. She’s funny and natural. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.

In the rejection department: I received one that featured the tell-tale word “alas.” Any guesses as to where it came from? I have this 10,000 word contemporary urban fantasy story that is really tough to market. The protagonist is a teenager, and it’s a little flippant, but it’s also too damned long for most venues.

The editor of the anthology where “The Fingernail Test” will be published said that I could take one more polish pass at it before sending it to her for editing, so that’s what I did this morning. I remembered being pretty happy with the story when I submitted it to the Apex contest. I think I made all of three or four changes. Punctuation, better word choice, one slightly stilted sentence restructured. Off it went.

For the third year, I’m a judge for the literary equivalent of science fair. The past two years the number of entries has been very low–last year particularly because of the effects of Hurricane Ike–but this year I have something on the order of 75-80 short works to evaluate. I have to score them on creativity, artistic nature and, most importantly, the way they express the given theme. About half of the submissions are short stories or personal essays, the other half poems. I have grades 5, 6, and 7-12. I’m always fascinated to discover that some of the younger kids put more thought and work into it than the older ones.

This week’s NCIS was a hoot. We’re used to all these crime shows using ultramodern techniques and gadgets. Thanks to a power outage, they had to resort to searching through paper files (with attendant paper cuts), using Polaroid cameras to record the crime scene (when’s the last time you saw an SX-70?) and a gestetner to reproduce the eye witness sketch. Gibbs was in his glory in this low-tech universe. The actual crime itself was secondary.

Castle was fine this week, too, though I did guess the surprise twist at the end about halfway through the episode. His daughter helps to humanize his character, and it’s cool that she’s starting to connect to Beckett.

Thanks to a warp in the space/time continuum, I was able to watch the latest Doctor Who, Waters of Mars. (No spoilers here.) Let’s call it: Under the Biodome. We’re getting very close to the end for Doc #10, and this episode sends him in an interesting and unexpected direction, especially in the last 10 minutes or so. This episode is a rare instance of a near future adventure, and it took me most of the hour to figure out where I knew the main guest actress from: she was the wife on A Year in Provence. Tennant has seen the Doctor through a fascinating character arc, from wide-eyed kid to world-weary and almost jaded. This special was reasonably tense and only featured a tad of goofy Doctorisms, most notably the chorus of annoying, shrill screams. The interaction between Lindsay Duncan and Tenant was very nice.

I finished my Storytellers Unplugged essay (Location, Location, Location) this morning, which is the latest I’ve gotten my monthly contribution done in a long time. Usually I have it ready a week or two in advance, but this month I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff, plus I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about until yesterday morning. As you might guess from the title, it has a little bit to do with the placement of my book in B&N last week, but it also tells the whole story of how the book came about and how it came together in such a short time.

I received a rejection letter of a different sort yesterday. I’d applied for a travel grant for WHC 2010. Shot in the dark, but it’s like the lottery. If you don’t buy a ticket you won’t win, guaranteed. Alas, I did not win this lottery.

I didn’t have the gumption to stay up late — or get up extra-early — to see the meteor shower last night. Sleep trumps spectacle.

The writers of Dexter must have a great time plotting out each season. It’s so fiendish. The revelations this week about Debra’s shooter (I’ve heard speculation about this, which may be right after all) and “Kyle’s” heroic actions and their repercussions are great. The series still has a lot of mileage left to it. Not sure I trust the guy who’s sniffing around Rita. Where is that going to go?

I read this morning that the actress who plays Cameron on House doesn’t know any more about her character’s fate than the audience does at present, that the writers are only a couple of episodes ahead of production. I’m not sure I believe that. I think 13 is the critical character–she is the perfect foil for House. She isn’t as smart as he is…yet, but she understands his motivations, perhaps even better than he does himself.

The Big Bang Theory was hilarious last night. Hash brownies are always good for a chuckle (the Barney Miller episode ranks as one of the funniest sitcom episodes of all time), but even funnier was the Sheldon/Penny fiasco. Although I had to laugh at Leonard when he realized that his name has the name “nerd” in it.

I went to Atlanta on Friday (the 13th, no less) to attend King’s signing at the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead. We were supposed to meet up for lunch or something beforehand, but the scheduling gremlins got in the way. I had a VIP wristband awaiting me at the store and decided to just hang out at one of the tables outside the Publix grocery store next door and people watch. I met up with a virtual friend from the SK message board, and a number of other people, including Anya Martin and her father, RJ Sevin from Creeping Hemlock Press, and Dave and LeeAnn Hinchberger from Overlook Connection. We hung around until about 45 minutes before the signing was to begin, then went to the end of the line.

It went amazingly fast. Once the line started moving, it barely stalled. Once inside the store, we saw a huge sign over a table. It read “The Dan Brown Experience” but all the books on the table were Twilight novels. Dave took a photo of that for failblog. On the way through the bargain books section, I saw one that was about how to curse effectively in Spanish, complete with a playback machine so you could perfect your pronunciation.

King was on a dais at the back, curtained off on three sides. When we reached him, I introduced the people in our group who’d never met him before. After we went outside again, I signed a bunch of copies of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion for Dave and for others. Every single copy in the store was sold that night except for one that looked like it had been through the wars. A Charlie Brown’s Christmas kind of book. We met up with Jim Argendeli from CNN and his brother. Jim had escorted King through the network headquarters earlier in the day for his interview session with Robin Meade. A bunch of us went to an Irish pub afterwards and talked until midnight.

One of my favorite groups to listen to while writing has a new album coming out at the end of the month. Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland. I can feel a trance coming on. I became aware of the group after Simon Posford contributed to Alan Parsons’ most recent album. The music is mesmerizing. Absolutely ideal to accompany a writing trance.

I read Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston while traveling this weekend. It’s the second book in his trilogy, and a brutal novel. The main character escaped with a ton of mob cash at the end of the first book and now people are after it so he has to figure out how to keep his parents from getting tangled up in the whole mess. It’s a violent book, and the brunt of the violence is directed at the protagonist, who takes one beating after another. It’s not limited to him, though, as most of the people who come into his orbit also fare poorly. Good stuff. I think I’ll go straight into the final installment, A Dangerous Man.

I received a rejection letter from On Spec with brief but encouraging comments, and an acceptance note for a Southern Gothic anthology that I had been invited to contribute to. The anthology won’t be out until late next year, or perhaps until 2011. I also received my contract for “The Fingernail Test,” the story that won the Apex contest, and payment for an interview I contributed to an upcoming catalog, so it was a busy weekend for business.

We watched the remake of Taking of Pelham 123 this weekend. Though the gist of the story is the same, they deviate significantly. I read the John Godey novel back in the 1980s, but I can’t remember it that well. The original film for me is the story that everything else gets compared to. One of the biggest differences is that the other three criminals (besides Travolta) have very little presence in the story. In the original, they were known by colors and had individual personalities and stories. Of course there are lots of high tech updates, including the guy who is broadcasting the whole thing via his webcam. The Japanese visitor comedic subplot in the original is turned into backstory involving Denzel Washington’s character, and the mayor of New York isn’t the lazy slug from the original. Not a bad movie, overall, though Travolta is a touch over the top.

The Prisoner remake is on AMC this week. I think I’m going to record all three parts and watch it straight through. I thought The Mentalist was better than average this week. I didn’t fall to the lure of the CSI trilogy because I refuse to watch the Miami version and have little interest in the New York spinoff. So I went straight into the Las Vegas story and let them catch me up on any important details required to understand what was going on. Fast Forward is starting to do some interesting things with perception. At the end of last week, we decided that the future could be changed but this week it seems that despite some deviations, things are still falling into place for the envisioned future.

My Barnes & Noble sales rank continued to improve over the course of the day yesterday until it bottomed out at 132. That means it was in 132nd place on the overall bestsellers at their store, a combined list that includes fiction, non-fiction, music, videos, and e-books. The boost in sale was helped, no doubt, by a flier sent out to their membership that cross-promoted the Companion with Under the Dome. I don’t know if store sales contribute to the sales rank, but you can’t complain about placement like this, can you? I haven’t checked the local store yet to see if I got as nice a display, but I’ve heard from readers in Michigan (the one who took this photograph) and from California. Too cool.

To put the 132 sales rank in perspective, the final slots in the top 100 list are occupied by the new Michael Crichton (pre-order), Michael Connelly’s newest novel, the second book in the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and Patrick Swayze’s memoir. I was just 32 places behind them!

So, two serial killers go for a ride in a van out into the wilderness. How many come back home? That’s just one question posed in this week’s episode of Dexter. It seems that we have not yet plumbed the depths of the Trinity killer, who seemed to have gone through his homicidal phase and is now on to something else. Something that he’s done in the past, or is this new? Definitely something that he’s manic about, anyway. I had a strong suspicion about Dexter’s most recent kill that was proved correct. Or at least so we’re lead to believe at the moment. Next week looks even more full of awesome. Excellent season thus far.

Today is my 14th wedding anniversary — fourteen years of wedded bliss. I highly recommend it.

The lowest (best) Barnes & Noble sales rank my new book, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, had reached before today was about 327. It had been creeping upward into the thousands. Then, this morning, it suddenly dropped to 304 and by mid-morning it was sitting steady at #196. It’s not a top 10 bestseller, but a top 200 bestseller! Clearly it’s being carried along by the release of Under the Dome today.

Did you notice who directed last night’s episode of Castle? Jonathan Frakes, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. I loved the scene where the two detectives and Castle were sitting on the couch covered with cats as the mistaken “terrorist” told her tale. Glad, too, that they didn’t go the route of the pompous, uncaring senator, and the end was a real surprise, though I was sure the repeat mentions of the stolen ring were a clue, as they were. The one loose end: no one seemed to care enough to find out where the young woman’s body was.

I finished Awaiting Your Reply and am looking for time to write my review. There was a very neat story reversal at the end. I think he laid it on a little heavy in terms of pounding the theme home time and time again, but it was effective, and a fascinating novel.

I watched Mortal Causes, the fourth of the Rebus adaptations and the last starring what’s-his-name as Rebus. Gotta see if I can track down the second series to see if the quality improves with the new actor. The voiceovers are the worst part. I guess someone figured that a hardboiled crime show had to have a morose voiceover, but I could have done without.

I’m liking the new and improved House. He still isn’t above drugging a friend, but he’s more awake, alert and oriented to the world than ever before. Looks like he’s going to be up to his old tricks next week, though, when he messes around more with Chase and Cameron.

I saw one of these little guys crossing the road when I went out at lunchtime. It’s not as unusual as seeing a dodo or a roc, but they’re not exactly common in this part of East Texas, either. No coyotes giving chase, though.

I have been reading with interest some of the articles about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Back in 1986, I had the fascinating and memorable experience of crossing through the wall at the infamous Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. I was on my way to Leipzig in (then) East Germany for a scientific conference. I first approached the US outpost near the checkpoint, uncertain of the protocol, but the bored-looking guy behind the counter said he had no interest in who went into East Germany. (I’m sure he was lying and that he recorded my every move!)

The Berlin Wall was an impressive sight. On the Western side, it was covered with graffiti. All of the brush was cut back from it, so it looked like a no-man’s land for about 20 yards. Depressing looking, actually.

Checkpoint Charlie was both an automotive and pedestrian gateway between the East and the West. The route for vehicles was a deliberate maze so that someone couldn’t just floor the gas pedal and break through. There were concrete barriers every few feet that required careful navigation to those who were permitted to pass through. For pedestrians, the course was no less daunting. Inside the Checkpoint, I had to pass through four different chambers. When you passed one stage, the door in front of you opened and then locked behind you, so there was no backing out once you were in play. I think that you could easily apply for a day pass to go into East Berlin, too, but I was prepared in advance with my visa for the conference. There were plenty of questions along the way, and at one stage you were required to exchange a certain amount of money into Ostermarks, East German currency that had no value outside the country. The money was cheaply produced. The coins were aluminum and the color on the bills came off if you rubbed it against something. While in the country you were required to convert a certain amount of money every day, and it was unlawful to take Ostermarks out of the country while you left. This guaranteed an influx of hard currency that the country needed to purchase goods.

After I made it through to the other side and was in East Germany, I had no idea what to expect. I thought that I would be stopped frequently and asked to justify why I was there and where I was going. I went to the train station in East Berlin and, after an arduous negotiation, figured out how to get a train ticket to Leipzig. No one would speak English. I had to take the U-bahn (subway) to a certain stop and then the S-Bahn (regular train) from that point on. Fortunately I saw a station stop that sounded like what I heard and guessed correctly where to change. Again, I expected that people would stop me and demand to see my papers, but no one did. I was free to travel inside the country without issue. However, when I checked into the hotel in Leipzig, I had to surrender my passport to the local police for the duration of my stay.

East Germany was drab and dreary looking. Pollution coated concrete and glass buildings that had been erected hastily after the war. Though there was nothing overt, I was convinced I was under constant surveillance. I tread carefully. I took absolutely no photographs during my 10 days behind the Iron Curtain. I got the impression that people crossed the street to avoid direct contact with me–I was obviously a westerner with my brightly colored clothing. I was a little surprised that the professors and other faculty at Karl Marx University spoke so openly about their dissatisfaction with the government. A couple of attendees from Czechoslovakia, when they discovered I was Canadian, wanted to know if I could help them join a hockey team.

It was a truly surreal experience that will stay with me as long as I live, I suspect. When the time came to leave, I traveled to Berlin with an American who had come in via India. He had a lot of things in his suitcase that interested the East German police when we made the reverse trek through Checkpoint Charlie. They opened his suitcase and spread out everything. I expected to get the same treatment. However, there was a shift change right at that moment and the guy who came on as a replacement seemed to assume that I’d already been searched, so I was waved through. The world seemed brighter and less oppressive once I was back in West Berlin, an amazing, ultra-modern city that seemed to be constantly partying in the shadow of the Evil Empire that completely circled it.

When the wall came down a few years later, I was one of the people who bought a little piece of it as a memento. Kitschy, of course.

An excellent season finale of Mad Men last night. Some shows choose to rip apart the status quo and leave viewers dangling during hiatus. On this show they managed to disrupt the status quo but give us the promise of a new beginning. Should be interesting times when the new season picks up again. I knew who Roger Sterling was going off to fetch to help them decode the arcane records of the business.

The folks over at Cemetery Dance have done some site re-organization. After installing WordPress, my online column has a new URL. Of course, you can still use NewsFromTheDeadZone.com to get there, too.

I watched Hanging Gardens, the third episode of the Rebus series. Not as good as the second, not as bad as the first. Some good, realistic twists. I find it interesting how proximate the criminals and the cops are. Without guns to defend themselves, a lot of the exchanges end up like bar room brawniness and high school smackdowns.

So, is Wendy going to get to be a “field mouse” on C.S.I.? Hodges is a funny character. So geeky and pompous but he has his moments of redemption, too, as when he told Wendy he just wanted her to be happy. Usually the acting on the show is at least solid, but I thought Nick’s reactions in the final scene when the brother was released from jail were forced and obvious.

Mice seemed to be a theme on Thursday night, with Jane using one (Mr. Jingles, is that you?) to effect an escape from the lockup. Of course, he psychoanalyzed everyone in jail with him and solved the murder almost without leaving (like Nero Wolfe, solving his crimes from the brownstone). Getting one of the suspects “brought to him” was funny. Still, I find the show teetering on the balance, trying to decide whether to be serious or comedic. NCIS pulls off the comedy. The Mentalist hasn’t figured out the right recipe yet.

Finishing up revisions on Chapter Two and plan to send it off to my agent tomorrow.

I read quite a bit more of Awaiting Your Reply this morning. The title comes from the end of one of those Nigerian scam e-mails, the one that everyone is familiar with. My husband died and I’ll give you millions of dollars if you’ll help me get his fortune out of the Ivory Coast. The e-mail itself doesn’t play a part in the story, which is about identity–what it means, and what it doesn’t mean. You have a university kid whose biological father (who he knew as his uncle until the revelation) contacts him. The kid’s pissed that the people who raised him never thought it was important enough to tell him who he really was. After he runs away, he’s declared dead. He’s working with his father (but is he really his father?) on some elaborate scam involving identity theft. The kid travels around the country under different aliases, making transactions, creating lives for these fabricated identities. Then there’s the guy whose twin brother is scizophrenic, who likes to tell him made-up stories about things that supposedly happened when they were kids. So the brother has his original memories of childhood and, imprinted on top of them, the wild fantasies his brother has spun. Confusion ensues. The mentally ill brother has been traveling around the country, adopting different pseudonymns, and fooling people into believing he’s a professional this or an expert that. And then there’s the young woman who’s traveling with her former high school history teacher, a man who probably isn’t what he claims to be (what history teacher could afford a $70,000 car?).

Speaking of identity, we watched The Burning Plain, with Kim Bassinger and Charlize Theron. The movie was a tad confusing at first, because it’s told out of sequence and there are characters who are supposed to be older versions of themselves but it takes a while to unravel who’s really who. An interesting film about rejection (Bassinger’s husband couldn’t make love to her after her breast was removed for cancer treatment) and new love, about children disliking the people they love, about love happening between people who were supposed to hate each other, about punishment gone wrong, and about chances to atone.

One of the best blindsides in the history of Survivor last night. You could just see it in his face as the votes came against him one after another after another. Wiped the smug grin off his face. Two immunity idols gone in one fell swoop — I wonder if they’ll be tossed back into play again. Laura’s victory in the immunity challenge was the first event that set it all rolling. Brilliant.

Good to see Fringe back after its World Series hiatus. I guess I’d call this one a standalone as it didn’t seem to play into the Walter/William mythos, and introduced a bit of otherworldly influence. Neat effects when the actors turned to smoke and crumbled, but I didn’t fall for the fake-out with the little girl at the end.

A lot of new characters and situations to keep up with on Private Practice, as the practices divide like miosis. I’m glad Amy Brenneman’s character has returned from the abyss, and her patient’s solution for an awkward problem was unorthodox, to say the least. Annoying guy in a wheelchair — hasn’t that been done before? Oh, yeah–on Judging Amy!

I posted my review of Ian Rankin’s The Complaints last night and listed the book for $5 on eBay. It’s not available stateside yet, so here’s a chance to get it early and cheap!

A week from today I’ll be heading off to Atlanta to Stephen King’s Under the Dome signing. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been in Atlanta, and this will be a quick trip — arriving on Friday afternoon and leaving before noon on Saturday.

Still reading Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply. Not clear yet who the story is going to ultimately be about. The former schoolgirl who has run off to Nebraska with her former teacher or the guy who’s up in the Arctic Circle looking for his paranoid delusional twin brother. Or the boy who had his hand cut off (above or below the wrist?).