Bev Vincent

This morning, I started my first new short story in a while. I was inspired by a British news article I saw last week and I’ve been building up an alternate storyline around it for the past couple of nights. It’s not there yet—I have no idea where it’s going—but I wrote out the opening scene that I dreamed up overnight. The characters don’t have names yet, just placeholders, but these couple of pages help set the tone.

I find myself reading two short works based around the Vietnam war. The first is Buddha Hill by Bob Booth, part of the Necon Novella series. It’s about an Air Force newbie who arrives in Vietnam and his experiences on base. It also ties into the monks who used to set themselves on fire in protest. There’s  a cute, oblique Stephen King: The protagonist picks up a copy of Startling Mystery Stories at the BX and likes a story called “The Glass Floor,” except, he says, “There is just no market for this kind of thing…the poor bastard was probably doomed to spend his life working in some factory.”

The other is Riders on the Storm by Ed Gorman, a short novel in his Sam McCain series. It’s set stateside and features a murder where a Vietnam vet is the prime suspect. It deals a lot with the war’s aftermath and the contradiction between its overall unpopularity and the attitude toward people who protested it.

I just finished Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta and posted my review. I tore through this one and now I have to go back and read his other books. Dude can write.

I’m hanging with The Leftovers, although many people are jumping ship because of its lack of incidents. There’s no identifiable villain other than the shadow of the past, the mysterious event that has rocked everyone’s understanding of reality. There are interesting developments, but no real goal. There’s no ultimate mystery to solve, no island to leave, no villain to vanquish. Still, I’m fascinated by it and curious to see where the story is headed.

I recorded the TCM James Garner marathon yesteday, so I know what we’ll be watching this coming weekend, and beyond…

I’d heard a lot of good things about Snowpiercer, so I found it OnDemand this weekend. It’s a fascinating post-apocalyptic story set entirely on a massive train that is a self-contained ecosystem, hurtling on a thousands-of-miles course around the world once per year. It’s been running for over 17 years when the story starts. The world outside is frozen because of an ill-advised strategy to end global warming.

The wealthy are at the front with lavish accommodations, food and perqs, while the poor are back in steerage, jostling for space and eating gooey protein slabs. After yet another insult to their dignity, they decided to press forward to the front of the train to take control and have a variety of encounters along the way, many of them violent. I especially liked the shooting match between train cars that happens when the train is in the middle of a sweeping curve.

Tilda Swinton is the face of the opposition, adorned with big teeth and a funny accent, reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher. Assisting the resistance is a Korean man and his daughter, the latter having been born on the train. He designed the security system, so he knows how to defeat the locks at each stage, and she is prescient, able to sense what they will face when a door opens. They perform this service in return for a drug. Nothing is quite what it seems, though, and there are surprises aplenty as they make their way from car to car. Some stunning visuals and a very clever plot. Though it’s been described as a horror film, I’d categorize it more as a thriller.

I haven’t read a Dean Koontz novel in quite a while. The last one, I believe, was From the Corner of His Eye, and I was not impressed. However, when NetGalley offered a proof of The City, I decided to give him another try. Again, not so impressed, as you might tell from my review. He’s off my list. I did like Linwood Barclay’s new thriller, No Safe House, even though I didn’t read the book to which it is the sequel, and enjoyed Dennis Lehane’s The Drop and Sarah Pinborough’s Murder, as well as JK Rowling’s new one, The Silkworm. I had some issues with the new Robert McCammon, River of Souls. (Reviews at the links).

I read Michael Koryta’s The Prophet last year and really liked it. I’ve been hearing a ton of good things about his new one, Those Who Wish Me Dead, so I picked up a copy at Necon and got him to sign it. The opening chapter is amazing, and the setup has me intrigued, so I’m looking forward to this wilderness adventure with two sociopathic killers (who remind me of the cousins from Breaking Bad, only chattier) in pursuit of a teenage witness who has been placed in a small group of troubled teens for survival training.

I went to Monty Python Live (Mostly) Encore last night with high hopes. I really expected to laugh my butt off. I watched Flying Circus a lot when I was in high school (it’s hard to believe there were only 45 episodes) and I remember seeing Holy Grail  for the first time in the dorm cafeteria—reels of film projected on a screen, not video—during my first year at university. We howled at everything, even the moose-themed credits and the sackings. There may have been beer involved.

I was the only person in the theater last night until about 15 minutes before the show started. The grand total was 11. Oh, what it must have been like to be at the O2 amongst 15,000 people. Laughter is contagious, and being with so many other fans enables laughter. Our audience was mostly silent. There were a few chuckles here and there, and I laughed a lot during the dead parrot sketch, which has long been a favorite. I laughed especially at the parts where Cleese messed up and lost the thread of the sketch, which he did here and in the “crunchy frog chocolate” sketch. I could have done without the long orchestral prologues (one per act), though I amused myself by noting that the conductor bore a striking resemblance to Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad. There were a lot of song-and-dance routines, some of which didn’t feature the Pythons at all. If you distilled all the live sketch work, that aspect took up maybe 45 minutes, an hour, tops, out of three hours (including a 30-minute intermission).

I wanted to enjoy it more, but I came away feeling a tad disappointed. I probably would have regretted not seeing it, but I won’t be lining up to buy the inevitable DVD release. Some of the sketches fell flat for me. I like Michael Palin a lot, but the Blackmail sketch just didn’t work at all, and the appearance of Mike Myers for no apparent reason simply baffled me. There are better ways to use cameos, like the one featuring Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking, which was pretty funny. I liked Cleese’s off the cuff remarks about the newspapers that have been bedeviling him lately and Palin’s advice to him across the counter to not waste oxygen on them or give them any publicity, which felt unscripted. It wasn’t dreadful, but at the end of the evening, my butt was still attached. I hadn’t quite managed to laugh it off.

Back from Necon. People ask me how many times I’ve gone, and I’m not entirely sure of the answer. I believe my first time was in 2003, the year I had a story accepted to Borderlands 5. I went six years in a row, and then missed out on 2009 and 2010. I was back in 2011, and attended last year and this year, but I’m not entirely sure about 2012. I don’t think I was there that year. So this would make my ninth.

Connections were a little dicey on the outbound trip. A squall blew through Houston while we were on the way to the airport, which delayed take-offs. My flight pushed away from the gate right on time, but we stayed on the tarmac for nearly an hour. Given that I had a 50-minute connection at Dulles, that was bad. I received a text from United saying they had rebooked me on the next flight between Dulles and Providence which, unfortunately, wasn’t until the following day. However, we made up most of the time en route, so I had fifteen or twenty minutes to scramble from gate C-high number to gate D-high number. Got there with a few minutes to spare and, fortunately, I didn’t have any checked bags to worry about.

I arrived at the Necon hotel by mid-afternoon on Thursday. Found Brian Keene via Twitter and hung out with him in the lobby for a while. The highlight of the evening was a concert given in the courtyard by Kasey Lansdale, the daughter of Joe R. Lansdale and a fine musician in her own right. Her concert brought everyone to the courtyard. On Thursday night, people tend to be scattered, so this was a good thing, and everyone stayed on afterward, so there was a lot of socializing. Surprise vocalist at the show was Chris Golden, along with backing vocals by Amber Benson (who you may recognize from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she’s also an author). Thursday was also the first appearance of the famous Saugies, which are cooked in the courtyard and consumed with the (usually alcoholic) beverage of choice.

I was very pleased to get a chance to meet and talk to another writer Guest of Honor, Michael Koryta, whose novel The Prophet I’d read recently and enjoyed. His newest book, Those Who Wish Me Dead, has been getting rave reviews. I haven’t read it yet, but I bought a copy at Necon and got him to sign it. Koryta has ten books out (nine of which are optioned), so I’ve got some reading ahead of me. He’s one of the people who seemed to get Necon right away, and I think he enjoyed himself. Also had a good talk with Amber Benson about Scandinavian TV shows.

On Friday, I was shanghaied into joining the “best books of the year” kaffeeklatsch in the atrium, which was well attended and interesting. With four people on the panel with varied reading interests, people were pretty much guaranteed to come away with a good list of potential material to read. I was also co-opted onto the non-fiction panel, which turned out to be an interesting discussion of book reviewing, primarily. Sixteen of us went out to Jackie’s Galaxy, our regular Necon restaurant, on Friday night. That evening was the toastmaster’s welcome, aka Jack Haringa’s pre-roast warm up. Then it was the mass signing, followed by a return to the quad until the wee small hours.

On Saturday, a group of us that included Brian Keene, Mary Sangiovanni and Nick Kaufmann took a meandering tour into Providence to track down a few sites that have Lovecraft connections. Last year we visited his grave. This year, we went to the house where he wrote many of his most familiar works, another house that was an inspiration for one of his stories, and a graveyard where he and Poe used to hang out. That’s where I’m standing in the accompanying photo, taken by Brian.

In the afternoon, Jack interviewed the writer guests of honor for two hours. Saturday evening’s entertainment consisted of the “even longer than the game show” talent-less show, which was enhanced this year by the presence of a gong, followed by the roast. Usually the people organizing the roast use one level of subterfuge to misdirect the victim. This year, there was an additional level as the person who was roasted thought he was hosting the event. When Nick discovered how he’d been tricked, the look on his face was priceless. The roast is a no-holds-barred insult fest, and the honoree isn’t the only victim. There is a lot of collateral damage. Afterward, a small group of us stayed in the bar until the even wee-er, small-er hours of Sunday morning. Then I had to get up and head for the airport for the return trip.

It’s hard to convey what Necon really is. It’s a conference unlike any other. Repeat attendance is high and it’s addictive. If I can only swing one convention a year and I have to choose between Necon and, say, World Horror, Necon usually wins. It’s a family reunion, in a sense, and there are people who have been to almost every one (and a couple of people who’ve been to them all). Sure, a little business is done on the side, but it’s more about making connections. Those connections often give rise to writing opportunities in the future, but that’s not what it’s all about. It’s something of a busman’s vacation. I always come away from the four-day weekend simultaneously exhausted (I don’t function well on 4-5 hours of sleep for three nights in a row!) and rejuvenated. The weekend is full of little moments that you could never really explain to someone who wasn’t there, but it’s kind of magical.

We were in a drought for so many summers here that we’ve almost forgotten what “normal” is like. Normal in Texas is temperatures in the high 90s / lower 100s with a 30% chance of rain every afternoon, which translates into about 30 minutes of heavy showers almost every day after 3 pm. That’s what we’ve been getting this year, and I don’t think many people are complaining (except those people whose houses have been struck by lightning).

I first discovered the Planet of the Apes around the time the TV series came on in the 1970s. I was hooked immediately. Because there weren’t video tapes or DVDs at the time, it took me a while to see the movies, so my introduction to them was via the novelizations, which were pretty good, and the graphic adaptations at the back of Planet of the Apes magazine, which I stumbled upon at the local drug store. I read the Pierre Boule novel that got this franchise started while in high school. I’ve now seen the movies any number of times, as well as the cartoon version, the ill-advised Tim Burton movie (Helena Bonham Carter made a cute chimp).

The most recent movies have taken the franchise to a whole new level. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a re-imagining of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and the new one, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the modern equivalent of Battle for the Planet of the Apes. These aren’t remakes in the conventional sense, which is why I used the word “re-imagining.” You can trace their ancestry, but these versions have bigger budgets, bigger visions and bigger ideas. They’re smart movies regardless of their heritage, and it seems like they’re getting the recognition they deserve, too, which is nice. Some interesting decisions were made in the latest film. First, only a decade has elapsed since the ape uprising, and the apocalypse came in the form of a simian flu rather than a nuclear war. Most of the apes haven’t learned to vocalize—they use the sign language that Caesar was taught. Unlike Battle for the Planet of the Apes, there hasn’t been a role-reversal, even though the scene where the apes pen up the humans is still there. Different context. Apes shall not kill apes is still a mantra, with as many exceptions as in the original. The characters, simian and human, are multilayered and textured. Even Gary Oldman, who is often just a big crazy meanie, has a human side. I am very impressed by the thought that went into this story and encouraged for what the future may hold. I liked all the little call-backs, too. Like naming the orangutan “Maurice,” a nod to Maurice Evans who originated the role of Dr. Zaius. Well done. Go see it, even if you aren’t familiar with the original series or the previous film. It’s good stuff.

I’ve been aware of Orange is the New Black in a vague way, but for some reason never got around to watching it until the past week, when I binged my way through all 26 episodes. I liked most of Jenji Kohan’s previous series, Weeds, and you can see the same hand at work. Piper isn’t exactly Nancy Botwin, but they have a common ancestor. Nancy even did a stint in prison. One thing I really enjoy about the series is getting to know the backstories of the various inmates. How they ended up in their current situation. These are interesting characters. My favorite is Nicky, the heroin addict with the crazy hair. She gets some of the shows best lines and situations. I just hope that she manages to resist the temptation that was placed in front of her at the end of the second season. Everyone gets interesting character arcs, too, even the guards. Healy, for example, started out as a nice guy and then turned into a bit of prick but, by the end, had sort of redeemed himself. You can understand where he’s coming from and how he could feel betrayed. Pennsatucky is a real trip. The show could make you feel bad for the old lady inmate who got dumped, and the one who had cancer (best use of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on a TV show ever). Like Piper, you start out wary of Red and manage to turn the tables with her. And “Crazy Eyes”—what a seriocomic tragic character. Gah! Now I have to wait another year for the third season. It will be interesting to see the repercussions of Piper’s actions with respect to Alex.

This season of 24 was one of the best ever. It helped, I think, that it was abbreviated to just 12 episodes. Putting it in England was a nice touch, but the producers also made it a no-holds-barred story, too. No one (except, perhaps, Jack) was off limits for terrible treatment and/or death. Nice cleaver scene, too. Jack is bad-ass, but pissed-off Jack is a wonder to behold. Of course he had to go mano-a-mano with the martial arts guy, but I’ll grant them that indulgence. Bonus points for the use of the silent clock.

Necon—which we regulars call “Camp Necon”—is coming up. It’s my writer’s vacation retreat each most years, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I won’t be on any panels (I was scheduled for one, but it conflicted with my departing flight), but I’m gonna have a good time all the same.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I went on a Maritime Canadian vacation. When we first planned it, we were only going to go to Halifax, where we both attended university, but I decided to turn it into a bit of a road trip adventure.

A rainstorm swept through Houston just before our flight, which delayed our departure. I was a little worried, since we had a tight connection in Detroit. Delta now lets you connect to their site in flight, even if you don’t buy WiFi, so I could check up on things. Unfortunately, the site wasn’t updated with our departure, so the alerts grew increasingly alarming: you’re going to miss your connection. Click here to make alternate arrangements. However, the alternate arrangements always involved new flights starting from Houston and we were well into the flight! As it turned out, we were only a few minutes late arriving, and our connecting gate was next to the one at which we arrived. One really nice thing about the Delta app is that you can follow your luggage, and we were able to confirm that our bags had made our connecting flight, too. Useful information, although it wouldn’t be so nice to see that your bags hadn’t made the connection, or were now en route to Katmandu.

Our first stop in Canada was Prince Edward Island. No, that’s not exactly true. Our first stop was at Tim Horton’s in the Halifax airport. We stayed over at the airport hotel and headed off to PEI the next morning. I haven’t been to the island in 40 years, give or take, and my daughter has never been. We crossed the Confederation Bridge for the first time ever on Monday morning and meandered our way to Cavendish, where we visited the Anne of Green Gables tourist attractions. There’s a small museum where we caught a short video about Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life. Then we went through the barn and toured the house that is set up to replicate the one Anne Shirley lived in. Apparently many international tourists come there thinking Anne was a real person. Across the road, there’s a site I’d never visited: the place where LMM grew up. Her mother died of TB when she was two, so she was raised by her grandparents. All that remains of the house now is the stone cellar and a water well, but there’s a bookstore nearby run by relatives. We were treated to a nice talk by a woman whose husband was the great-grandson of the people who raised LMM. She was old enough to have attended LMM’s funeral in 1942, though she didn’t say how old she was at the time.

After Cavendish we went to Charlottetown. If I’ve ever been there before, I don’t remember it. It reminds me a lot of Halifax, in condensed form. The waterfront even has many of the same businesses. Preparations were well under way for the July 1st (Canada Day) celebrations, and it’s the 150th anniversary of the conference that led to the formation of Canada. We walked all over, including a trip through Victoria Park.

The next day, we went to southern New Brunswick to spend a day visiting with my relatives. We had a lobster feast that evening, the first time my daughter’s ever had it. It rained hard during our drive back to Halifax on Wednesday afternoon. The rental car was prone to hydroplaning when there was standing water, so we took our time. We were in no rush, and the sun stayed up until after 9 pm.

When we got to the hotel, we were informed that there was a package for us in the room. The publicist for the Syfy series Haven, which films in nearby Chester, had delivered an amazing gift basket that contained Haven goodies along with chocolate and other delectables. I’m still working my way through it. There was also a DVD that contained an episode of the show and an hour-long behind the scenes feature, so we watched that during the evening. I wrote about our visit to the Haven set earlier: that took up our Thursday. We went to my daughter’s favorite pizza place when we got back into the city.

On Friday morning, I had a taped interview lined up with the German TV station VOX. They have a thing coming out this fall and had reached out to me a few weeks earlier. Rather than having them schlep all the way from NY to Texas, I suggested they come up to Halifax, which worked into their schedule. The interviewer and her videographer arrived on Thursday evening; unfortunately, their gear did not, so we had to push the interview until late in the morning. I spent nearly two hours with them, though the first 30 minutes mostly involved getting the lighting right in the hotel suite where they were set up.

Once that was finished, I walked down to the Public Gardens to meet up with my daughter. We toured the waterfront, had a beavertail (our first) and wound up at the farmer’s market, where we had my daughter’s favorite tamales. She met up with some friends and I had a beer and a salad at a sidewalk cafe on Quinpool, where my daughter joined me later.

All too soon, our Maritime adventure was over, and we headed back home on Saturday afternoon, after having a donair at King of Donair on Quinpool en route to the airport.

We watched the second season of Derek this weekend. Only six episodes, which we divided over two nights. Sad to see Dougie go in the first episode, but apparently the actor was terribly uncomfortable acting with other people, which explains why so many of his scenes in the first series were “diary” scenes, where he was talking to the imaginary documentary filmmakers.

The show doesn’t break a lot of new ground in the second season, but the stuff about the old folks keeping track of Hannah’s efforts to get pregnant are pretty hilarious, and Kev has his usual mix of godawful sexist / sexual obsession and occasional bursts of humanity. A nice arc with Derek and his dad, and it was good to see Hannah confront the new guy at the end and maybe get through a little. It’s a very sentimental show with a good heart. Tugs at the heartstrings.

We saw Non-Stop, too, the thriller featuring Liam Neeson that will probably never be available as an inflight film. It was decent and effective (except for the little bit of fortuitous levitation at the end). It’s sort of an Agatha Christie whodunit, too. Everyone is a potential suspect, including Neeson’s extremely and credibly flawed character. I was sure it was this person and then sure it was that person, and then someone else. Free-flowing suspicion. The actual resolution was, perhaps, a little less rewarding than many of my suspicions, but still, we enjoyed it.

Down to one more episode of Orphan Black. I don’t think I could explain to anyone else everything that has happened this season, that’s how convoluted it is. It was good to see Allison’s husband grow a pair and step up, especially after she out-jackhammered him in the basement. Still enjoying it, have no idea how it’s going to wrap up and basically I’m just along for the ride.