With World Horror less than a week today, there’s lots of business to do to keep me busy (and away from writing as much as I’d like). I’ll be leaving for Austin on Wednesday to get there in time for the preamble. It’s going to be a busy four-to-five days that I’m sure will zip by so fast that they’ll be a memory even before they start. Really looking forward to it, though.
The five-day weather forecast shows the same thing between now and Sunday. High of 90, low of 70. It looks like a copy and paste. No chance of rain, which we so badly need.
The Level Best crime anthology Thin Ice is now available for the Kindle. This is the collection of writings by New England authors that contains my Al Blanchard Award-winning story “The Bank Job.” The Kindle version costs $9.95 compared to the $15 trade paperback version, which is still available. Don’t have a Kindle? There’s a free application for Windows PCs and an app for iPads and iPod Touch devices that allows you to read Kindle files. Several of the other stories in Thin Ice have either been nominated for or won prestigious awards, including the Agatha, the Derringer and the Edgar Award.
Yesterday I received my contributor copy of A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock to be published shortly by Dark Scribe Press. It contains my first ever published poem, 24 Hour Psycho.
What a wild episode of Survivor this week. We only thought Philip was unpredictable before this. He sits there chanting to himself, which is mildly weird, and then goes ballistic when the smaller tribe won’t let him store his (bug infested but manually cleaned) rice in their container. It turned into a shouting match between him and Steve that suddenly became a race issue because of the way Philip responded to being called crazy (actually, I think Steve called him a lunatic, but that’s neither here nor there). When he started handling the machete later on, I thought that the elimination that day might be of a very different variety. No redemption island for you! Thwak! I wonder how many of the camera men and producers would have leapt between Philip (and his machete) and Steve.
The immunity challenge had Rob’s name written all over it, and he did indeed prevail, so he’s safe for two more weeks because of the hidden idol that he has (and still no one else knows about). Tribal Council turned into a rap session on the subtleties of prejudice. I thought Probst turned what could have been an inflammatory encounter into something fascinating to watch. I had to laugh at Julie, though, when she muttered “I guess you’ll never find your shorts now” to Philip as she was leaving. She was very pleased with herself for that little bit of mischief. Russell would have approved. Maybe Ralph will accidentally stumble upon them like he did the idol.
I totally called it last week regarding Justified. When everyone was wondering who had sent the two well-dressed guys after Raylan (and, by proxy, Winona), I knew who it was and this week the proof came out. And a lot of other stuff happened, too. The ending was a shocker. I really didn’t expect Dickie to live through the episode, but he seems determined to match Raylan’s body count. The final one was the worst, of course. Helen had been counselling Ava on the benefits of not knowing anything that could be forced out of her under duress, but it didn’t even come to that. She just ended up on the wrong end of crazy. Dickie had already crossed the line by dispatching the two muscle heads who decided to abandon ship after Boyd pulled his little sting operation. And wasn’t it fun seeing Boyd with a gun in each hand ripping off Dickie’s grow-op and letting the buyer go with all the weed he had just purchased.
Ava decides she doesn’t want to follow Helen’s advice. Despite the possible risk, she wants to know everything. She also has a few words to say on the subject of economic stimulus by getting Boyd to promise not to get involved with prostitution in Harlan County. Looks like he’ll have plenty else to keep him occupied. She’s a little like the cat among the pigeons when she’s hanging out in a cabin with Crowders, given her particular history with that family.
Art puts Tim on Raylan’s tail to make sure he doesn’t a) get killed or b) try to find out who is intent upon killing him. As good as Tim is, Raylan is better and he puts the sniper on notice that at some point he’s going to ditch his nanny. Which he does. A couple of times. He looks up the likely suspects and has a nice conversation with Mags who admits that she was the one who let Coover become a nitwit. She has problems of her own because some people haven’t taken kindly to the deal she made with the coal lady. Doyle arrives on the scene with a bunch of other local cops, stating that if he wanted someone dead he could arrange to have the fellow killed while resisting arrest. “You have one guy to back you up?” Raylan responds, “I thought you’d bring more guys.”
Later, the gang is all together under one roof. Gary, Winona, Raylan and their two minders, Rachel and Tim. “I feel like I’m in The Big Chill,” Tim says. “Except no one’s dead,” Raylan responds. “Yet,” Tim says, almost stepping on his line. “And the music sucks,” Rachel adds for good measure. I really liked the idea that Gary was “drafting off” Winona’s protection, hanging around the marshals so the guy he hired won’t kill him, too. I wonder if we’ll ever see old Gary again. Bad luck for him if Raylan sees him first. As he tells Duffy, “The next time we have this conversation, there won’t be a conversation.”
Dickie’s actions will, no doubt, push the old family feud into overdrive. I expect a number of people won’t make it out of the next two episodes alive.
We watched The Switch last night, a romantic comedy starring Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston and Jeff Goldblum (who looks a lot younger in that picture up top). Cute film made especially bearable by the little kid, who owned the film. He had so many good moments. My favorite was when he handed Wally the bag of peas after he got slapped. Loved the scenes between Jason Bateman and Goldblum, who was sort of a surrogate father figure. And Bateman was a most convincing drunk. I was impressed with him in general. He was very naturalistic in a film that could have been totally over the top. I think I’ve seen quite enough of Juliette Lewis, though.
Added another 600 words this morning, part of which was revision to earlier text to put in something that I had overlooked. I want to get this done by the end of the month because I have a couple of other projects I need to get started and I also have to read a few dozen short stories for a contest that I am helping judge. I’m not going to get much work done on the next couple of weekends, either. One of those times when I wished I had all the hours of the day to work.
Approaching 10,000 words on the novella. Thought of a couple of things that I need to address, so I’m going to have to backtrack a little on my next session. I’m still not sure exactly how the story is going to wrap up. I have to get the previous incarnation of it out of my head, because that’s not going to work any more.
Yesterday I got all my rewrites done on the first 7000 words of the novella in progress to change one event and propagate its impact through the rest of the story. The way people react to a disappearance is perforce different than they would to a death. One is more absolute, the other is nebulous, especially since there’s no clear reason to suspect something nefarious. Yet. Gives me a lot more to play with for the next 8000 words. The main character can spend more time trying to do something and less time flagellating himself. That comes later, of course. Maybe.
The acid-infused trip into Olivia’s mind was reminiscent of Inception. Her dreams and fears created a world that was hazardous for Walter, Peter and William Bell. Walter got to drive a car like a pro (Peter! I made us skid!) and the program runners found another creative way to bring back Leonard Nimoy: as an animated version of himself. “How wonderful,” the thought balloon next to Walter says when they make this discovery. It also allowed them to do things like bring in a bunch of zombies in lab coats to chase Peter into leaping from a tall building at a ladder dangling from a zeppelin. In addition to rescuing Olivia from her own mind, the episode allowed Olivia to put her biggest fear to rest. As Bell told her, “You have never felt safe. You are your own worst enemy. You took the opportunity to let your fears overwhelm you. But you just fought back. You’re just as strong as Walter and I always believed you were. And now you know it, too.” She’s not afraid to move forward any more, even if she thinks she’s going to be killed by the man with the cross on his chest. Just three episodes left, and the season finale is, according to Torv, mind blowing.
I started revising the section of the novella in progress that needs changing to come into line with my new theory of the story this morning, but I was interrupted by some business that required my attention so I didn’t get very far. I hope to get a lot done on it this weekend.
I added another thousand words to the novella this morning, reaching 7000, but I think I’ve hit the breaking-off point. The old storyline isn’t going to serve me for this version so I’m ditching the rest of it and going off in a new direction. In fact, I think I’m going to backtrack a little and change an outcome, too. Instead of a murder, I’m going to have a disappearance that gives the story some more momentum. There will be other murders, but if one potential victim is still alive, that raises the stakes considerably. Of course, all this occurred to me in the shower after I was done for the morning so I’ll have to deal with it tomorrow. I also have to come up with a new culprit now.
Made some serious forward progress on the novella this morning, jumping from just under 4000 words to a tad over 6000 by the end of my session. Not all of them are new words, exactly. Since I’m revamping an old, abandoned novel I’m making use of details and in some cases entire paragraphs from the existing text, though just about every word is being revised eventually. I’m reaching a point, though, where I have to decide whether I want to keep following the direction of the old plot or take off in a new direction. Remains to be seen.
Working my way back into the novella by reading over and editing what I’ve already written. Tomorrow I should be able to tackle new material. I’ve been cutting mercilessly so far. I’m hoping that it will be a very lean long story.
90% of Texas is in a drought and no rain was expected in the coming days. We had very little in March and none so far in April. There was a 12% chance of precipitation today, which seems paltry given that we’ve had days with over 50% chance when none materialized. It just started raining. Not a soaker by any stretch of the imagination, but it is raining.
We had a stretch of fence between us and our neighbors replaced this week. It included a gate. When the workers were finishing up we went to survey the results. Fenced looked good, but the gate was installed backwards! The latch was on the inside and the little doo-hickey (it must have a name) that allows you to lock it by sliding it into a tab was on the street side. Okay if you want to keep people in your back yard, but otherwise kind of pointless. They came back yesterday and got it properly oriented, so now we can no longer imprison people.