Make sure they spell my name right

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Almost finished doing the taxes and looking forward to a refund, which is always nice. Listening to Split Enz and getting ready for a productive day of writing. The plan: finish first draft of short story, revise proposal, get two short stories back into circulation, start essay that is due in about a month.

Caught up on Thursday night programs. C.S.I. had some interesting moments, though I didn’t believe the resolution to the murder for a second. The perpetrator wasn’t a sociopath, clearly, but the crime was coldly calculating and, to my way of thinking, way beyond the capability of the person who ultimately confessed. It should have been a crime of passion, but the cover-up was too well thought out and executed. Also, wasn’t that the best looking thrift store you ever saw? Greg had a couple of good scenes—most notably when he took out the two fleeing crooks who had outwitted both Greg and the cop, Frankie Reed. And, of course, when you suspect there are hidden sex tapes somewhere, who else would you send to look for them? Special appearance by Hank from Breaking Bad as Ray’s ex-wife’s new husband.

I often miss bloopers that other people catch, so I feel good when I catch one. Early in the episode, when Gloria, Ray’s ex-wife (though his colleagues don’t know he’s divorced) shows up, Nick recognizes the situation for what it is and makes a hasty departure from the awkward scene. As he goes out the door he turns to say “Nice to meet you,” except his lips and mouth don’t move. It looks like a few seconds were trimmed, including the part where he actually said the dialog.

I had some problems with the plot of The Mentalist, too. I found it hard to believe that the U.S. Marshals would rely on one lone agent to secure a valuable witness, especially when the agent had to do hourly checks of the house’s perimeter. That was just too convenient. Clearly, there couldn’t be two, as that would have spoiled the story. I picked out the likely culprit from the very beginning and felt proud of myself when he turned out to be the killer—except in a nice twist at the end it turned out that he wasn’t, though he was meant to be. This was the evening for little girls to kill their fathers, apparently. Always good to see LaRoche. He’s a fascinating character. I don’t remember exactly when Grace met the FBI agent who proposed to her this week, but I want to throw this out there: who thinks he’s going to turn out to be the person who set the killer on fire? And did we already know that Lisbon’s father abused her?

Now that Olivia is back home on Fringe, the writers have to go to unusual lengths for us to get information from the alternate universe. So, this week, they had to concoct a totally irrelevant plot to convey one bit of character development and one shocking revelation. The whole thing with the bugs (very Creepshow, I thought) had no bearing on anything whatsoever, except it got us back “over there,” where we discovered that Walternate has some lines he won’t cross: he won’t experiment on children, unlike our Walter, thereby making him slightly less loathsome. And then there was the dramatic revelation about Fauxlivia, which is a real game changer. Did you hear the ballad version of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me”  playing in the background of the early scene between Fauxlivia and her would-be future fiancé? There was a nice switcheroo at the end where we were led to think that Fauxlivia was infected. A perceptive viewer might suspect the slight of hand and think that it was actually her boss, Lincoln, the guy who replaced Alternabroyles who was infected instead, and even that proved wrong. I liked the exchange from the preview for the next episode: Walter says, “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” to which Peter replies, incredulous, “That’s where you draw the line? Ghosts?”

Posted in CSI, Fringe, Mentalist | Comments Off on Make sure they spell my name right

Well, she did set him on fire

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Bev Vincent

It’s warming up—it’s all the way up to 28°, which is a major improvement over 22°. Forties today, fifties tomorrow and Saturday, sixties on Sunday and seventies on Monday. I like that trend.

Still laboring at the work in progress. Didn’t get it finished, but will do so tomorrow, I swear.

It’s been a while since a new comedy intrigued me, but I checked out the new Matthew Perry show, Mr. Sunshine, last night. I like the opening sequence, which basically repeats the show’s title followed by a severely half-hearted “yay” as the sun’s smile turns into a straight line. What has the show got going for it beyond Perry, who plays Ben, the manager of a busy San Diego arena? Well, how about Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost) as the maintenance guy. “Two years ago you told me you only wanted to hear me say ‘yes.’ It’s tricky, because you don’t always ask yes or no questions.” And James Lesure (Mike Cannon from Las Vegas) as Alonzo, Ben’s perpetually upbeat, every glass is more than half full, ray of sunshine. He confirms the rumor that Ben’s new assistant once set a guy on fire. “But the guy’s okay, though, right?” Ben asks. “Well, she did light him on fire, so…he’s not great.” Perfect delivery. And then…and then…there’s Allison Janney, who plays a cross between Phoebe from Friends and Walter Bishop from Fringe. Generally oblivious pill-popping racist who runs the whole show. “See that oil painting? They don’t do oil paintings of people who don’t own things.” Her cultural insensitivity is trumped only by her obliviousness. She tells an audience of kids (and her estranged adult son) that the reason she does things like this is because she never had any kids of her own. One of Ben’s main jobs is paying off people to keep her foot-in-the-mouth disease out of the press. I even laughed at the ax-wielding clowns (longest joke setup ever) and the exchange between Perry and Jorge Garcia about the runaway elephant. (“You can’t possibly mean that. Say it in Spanish.”)

During Justified I saw a preview for a new FX show called Wilfred that looks odd and intriguing. It stars Elijah Wood as a guy who is about to commit suicide, gets interrupted, and from that point forward believes that a friend’s dog is actually a guy in a dog suit. I’ll have to check it out at least once.

Speaking of Justified, it’s back for season two, and it looks like we’re in for a re-enactment of the Hatfields and the McCoys, with one family being the Givens and the other being the Bennetts. The matriarch of the Bennetts, Mags, seems like a sweet, kindly old lady who runs a country store as a front for her well-known marijuana operation. By the end of the episode, we get to see her true grit. Her “tads” as she calls them (presumably tadpoles) consist of Doyle, who happens to be the local law enforcement, Dicky, played by Jeremy Davies (Daniel Faraday from Lost), and Coover, who shoots rats in their kitchen. Doyle and Dicky seem smart enough, but Coover is straight out of Of Mice and Men.

The new episode starts off exactly where Season 1 ended, and gives Raylan a reason for staying in Harlan County, sort of. He makes “peace” with the Miami mobster who’s been trying to have him killed and turns down an offer from his former boss to have his old job back. Funny scene when the former boss shows up just when Raylan has given the mobster a standing 10 count (including a time out to take a phone call). The Fed has to take them well away from the house to find a place that isn’t bugged.

Back in Lexington, Raylan just wants to go home, even if home has crime scene tape across the door, a prominent blood stain on the bed and two body outlines on the floor, the type that you always saw in old crime stories but hardly ever see any more. He has to surrender his weapon into evidence. When queried about what he’ll get to replace it, he says he’ll probably get another the same. “Should probably think about an Uzi,” his boss tells him. He gets debriefed about the shootout (“Just because I’ve shot the occasional person doesn’t make me a thief.”)

On to a new case, to take his mind off the ongoing investigation. Rachel asks him to ride shotgun on a trip out to “Rabbit Holler,” a backwater community known for rednecks, moonshine and marijuana. As a black woman, she’s not comfortable there. Turns out Raylan knows everyone in town, and they all know him. The case involves a sexual predator named Jimmy Earl Dean, who happens to work for the Bennetts. They claim they didn’t know anything about his proclivities. “We’re reefer farmers,” Mags says. “We don’t consort with sexual deviants.”

When they finally track the guy with three first names down (after he has a chilling run in with razor wire that looks like a spider web), there’s an amusing confrontation at a gas station. Raylan is itching to shoot the perv, but he knows what sort of paperwork will be involved if he does, so he tries plan B. He shoots the guy with the gas hose. The guy produces a weapon (he’s not the brightest candle on the cake) and Raylan schools him on the chemistry of weapons and gasoline. “The key word in ‘firearm’ is ‘fire.’ That should be a concern to a man soaked in gasoline.”

At the end, we see that Boyd is plying his trade by working as a dynamite specialist in a mine (“fire in the hole”), though he probably has an ulterior motive. And then there’s the most chilling scene of the episode, when Mags confronts the father of the girl who the perv was after, reprimanding him for “going outside” the community by calling a tip line. She brings along some of her special moonshine, a blend called apple pie that tastes of cinnamon. Except she laced his glass first with a relatively fast-acting poison. Even if they got him on a life-flight helicopter, it was already too late, she says. She reassures him that the poison was all-natural, from plants up in the hills. She consoles him as he dies in front of her. “You get to know the mystery. You get to see your Sally Ann,” referring to his recently departed wife. It’s tender and it’s cold at the same time. Amazing scene. Mama Bannister is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

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NCIS on a couch

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Bev Vincent

I wrote another 600 words on the WiP this morning, then realized after I finished where the story really wanted to go. The realization means that I need to go back and revamp most of what I’ve already written, because a crucial event is going to take place a day earlier and some of the floundering around that the characters have been doing will go away. Should make for a more streamlined story that cuts to the chase faster.

The temperature fell a lot more quickly today than anyone anticipated. By late morning it was down below 30° and that could spell trouble for the late afternoon drive time because it’s also been raining. A hard freeze tonight. Then we’re up in the seventies next week.

A nice episode of How I Met Your Mother this week. I’m rooting for Ted and Zoe, and now that Zoe is getting a divorce she and Ted can move full speed ahead.

After binging on Sherlock Holmes for a couple of weeks, I’m back to The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths. I’m also reading Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith to my wife. A change of pace for him: a mix of Celtic mythology and contemporary stories influenced by the myth.

I wasn’t giving NCIS my full attention this week—I was working on a jigsaw puzzle on the far side of the room from the TV set—but at some level I registered that the psychologist assigned to perform psychological evaluations of the team seemed to know an awful lot about them. Stuff that would never appear in their personal records. It was a Sherlock Holmes moment: I saw but I didn’t observe. Didn’t piece it together until the truth of the situation dawned on Tony and was verified by Gibbs. Nice work, writers.

The “evaluating the team” gimmick has been done so often that I easily anticipated the report: they’re all crazy or dysfunctional but they work together as an excellent team. The episode (titled “A Man Walks into a Bar” after the riddle the psychologist poses to Gibbs) was also a clip show, a series of flashbacks throughout the show’s history, with a particular concentration on the early years. Clip shows can be boring or by the numbers, but this one was done well and served to evaluate the status quo of the characters. It also seems to foreshadow a couple of things. Perhaps McGee and Abby getting (back) together? And perhaps something ominous happening to the team.

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Did the butler do it?

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Here we go again. A nice, sunny day, highs in the fifties. Not summer weather by any stretch of the imagination, but I can go outside without needing a jacket. And then tomorrow we get hit with an 80% chance of rain and temperatures as low as 25°. Parts of north Texas are under a winter weather advisory again. I doubt we’ll see anything here—just depends when the rains come and when it freezes.

House was convoluted this week. Cuddy’s supposedly hypochondriac mother is hospitalized and the family connections make her treatment far more complicated that it might be otherwise, especially when the mother (Candice Bergen) fires House from her case. Which means that he has to resort to bugging the patient’s room and surreptitiously (and illegally) switching out medications because the new doctor refuses to cooperate, and hiding everything they do from Masters, the goody two shoes. Meanwhile, Taub goes into business with his soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law, a man who punched him in the nose and called him the worst husband ever when he found out that Taub had been cheating on his sister (“he shouldn’t have punched you,” his estranged wife said, letting the indictment stand on its own). By the end of the episode, Taub’s nose is once again the center of attention.

So that’s how authors do cover blurbs. On Castle last night, Rick gets a bunch of copies from his publisher for blurbs and he holds each book up to his head and issues a Carnac-like quotable pronouncement about it. It was inevitable that there should be a story with a butler just so Rick could do a “the butler did it,” but the story wrapped around until it started looking like that might be the case. And then it seemed like it was going to be the exact antithesis of that, the dreaded suspect we never heard of until the very last minute. And then the wheel turns once again and the moving finger points at the original suspect, which was much more satisfying. The plot was all about how windfalls can change people. Rick wrote a bestseller in university, his mother just inherited $1 million from a man who died before she had the chance to break up with him, and the murder victim had won over $100 million in the lottery. Money doesn’t change you, it just magnifies your personality, Rick says, and is bemused and flattered later to hear Beckett quote him anonymously to his mother, who’s trying to figure out what to do with her windfall.

The notion of what someone might do if they suddenly fell heir to $1 million is the story’s ongoing gag. Everyone has an idea, even Captain Montgomery, except Beckett. Rick bought a Ferrari (as fast as any other car in rush hour traffic) that Beckett insists on driving when they go undercover. He bought property on the moon. (“When the earth is a desiccated husk, you’ll be begging to come live with me in the Nectaris basin.”) When he sketches out his progression, saying that the money ultimately allowed him to write, spend time with his daughter and live life on his own terms, Beckett says, “You grew up.” Rick’s not quite ready to cop to that, saying that the moon purchase was only a month ago. The murder victim had also purchased moon real estate. “Get out of town,” Rick said, “He’s just down the crater from me.”

Two of the suspects (and there was no shortage of them in this episode) were burgeoning rap singers. When the cops break in during a recording session, Rick says, “Three armed cops and writer makes four…you’re under arrest, so get on the floor.” The next suspect is arrested during a scene that gave Beckett the chance to put on her party dress and flirt with Rick. Someone has already intercut the rap with that scene and posted it on YouTube. While Rick was off getting them drinks, Beckett downs the suspect and kicks his bodyguard in the ‘nads. She extends a hand to Rick, who tries to hand her a martini instead of the cuffs she wanted!

In the end, Rick decides what Beckett would do with a windfall and rushes over to her place to tell her. “You just can’t stay out of my private life,” Beckett says, and it looks for a moment like she’s going to be mad, but she softens and says “Thank you.” That’s progress for the couple. They still banter with each other (“Detective Beckett, did you call to tell me a bedtime story,” Rick teases) but there’s no question they like each other now.

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House and Justified for the win

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Bev Vincent

I love it when people e-mail me out of the blue and offer to pay me money to do something. That doesn’t happen nearly often enough, but it’s very nice when it does. More on this later, if it works out.

Didn’t get as much done on the new story over the weekend as I would have liked. I hope to get the first draft wrapped up by Thursday. Then I have a non-fiction piece to write that is probably going to take at least the rest of the week.

I found it amusing that Grey’s Anatomy decided to show one possible outcome of 21st century technology in hospitals. For the past few episodes, the new kids on the block have been driving everyone crazy with their constant texting during rounds. This week it was Bailey who adopted the new technology to tweet her complicated procedures while they were in progress. The chief wasn’t impressed by this, but he didn’t understand the technology. Frustrated, sitting in front of his computer, he declared, “I’m trying to find Bailey’s teats on the internet.” Understandably confused, Owen responded, “You mean, ‘tweets.'” The chief said, “Whatever,” to which Owen said, “No, trust me, this is one you want to get right.”

It’s pretty sad when most of the best ads during the Super Bowl are promos for Fox shows. Other than the Darth Vader Passat ad, the other commercials didn’t have a lot going for them. (By the way, the star of that ad is a 6-year-old boy who has had multiple heart surgeries.) My favorite of the night was the House promo that was a take-off of the legendary Mean Joe Green Coke ad from 1979. The other great one came right after the game ended, a promo for Justified (which starts up again on Wednesday night, by the way). This one was a riff on Dirty Harry.

The Ozzy Osbourne/Bieber spot was amusing, though when it was over I wasn’t entirely sure what the ad was for. Many of them I found to be mean-spirited, crude or simply in bad taste, such as the Groupon one with Timothy Hutton. The Doritos ad with the finger sucking was icky. I did chuckle at a few of the punch lines, and liked the Richard Lewis/Roseanne Barr Snicker ad. The only movie trailer that intrigued me was the one for Super 8. I’m not a big fan of superhero films, Iron Man being the exception. That one at least has a sense of humor about itself.

Oh yeah, the game? It started to look like a blowout, but it got interesting in the second half. I didn’t really care who won so long as it was reasonably close. And I never was a big fan of the Black-Eyed Peas, so their half-time show “debacle” didn’t mean much to me one way or the other. Did anyone like it?

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Brief notes

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Bev Vincent

A nice review of When the Night Comes Down from Mario Guslandi at Horror World. I’ll answer to Ben, if you like.

I wrote to the Canadian Archives in Ottawa sometime last year to get copies of one of my uncle’s war records. They responded that due to the backlog it would be some months before they could fulfill my request. I received the documents on Friday. This particular uncle, who is the source for my middle name, was killed in Hong Kong just before Christmas in 1941 and his body was never found. That was the inspiration for my short story Unknown Soldier in All Hallows #36. I’ve been fascinated with the story of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong ever since I visited the former colony in the early 1990s. Some interesting details in these papers, including the medals he had received, and when he was deployed and took leave.

Two TV shows from late last week featured brief handwritten notes. The first was The Mentalist, which was a decent whodunit with excellent use of misdirection. The super-obvious suspect was the rogue cop who carelessly missed a filing deadline in an earlier case that invalidated a search and allowed the prime suspect to go free. Then, another equally valid, though more subtle, suspect was the mayor, who acted suspiciously. I didn’t guess who the real killer was until he was exposed. I didn’t quite buy into Patrick’s slo-mo escape from the cop who wanted to ticket him, but that was the only glitch in the episode. Patrick was in fine sarcastic form, getting off zingers left and right. Especially biting was his response to Lisbon, who suggested he get the hostage taker to release the wounded hostage. “Good idea. I didn’t think of that.” I laughed at his reaction to the hostage taker’s relief that he had been cleared of his wife’s killing. Prison wasn’t going to be bad now that he could breathe easy. “We’ll see how you feel about that in two years,” Patrick said. The message Patrick left for the killer was funny, especially when he made the killer read it out loud: “Arrest me.”

The other show with a note was Fringe, a disturbing message for Olivia and one that has serious implications for the future of her world. “He still has feelings for her.” After last week’s revelation that Peter is being changed by the machine, the storytellers backed away for the most part and handled a standalone case involving a gas that dissolves bones. The chuckle from the doll and the burst of purple gas made me think of the Riddler from the Batman TV series. Peter said, “Bonus points for the creepy factor.” Ironic, too, that the victim had just consulted his magic 8 ball and read the message “Outlook not so good.” Indeed.

I had to laugh at William Bell’s museum, which contained a book by Dr. (not Mr.) Spock. Olivia cleaned up really good for her undercover job at the fundraiser. I have no idea where she hid that great big gun she produced once the first bad guy was detected. Lots of good, quotable lines this week. “Good thing lunatics still use the postal service,” Peter says after they use surveillance video to identify who sent the poison. I especially liked this exchange. Astrid: “You used to work for President Nixon?” Walter: “It was uncomfortable. His wife kept coming onto me.” And Peter’s reaction after his father said, “Why would anyone want to kill a scientist? What did we ever do?” Peter says, simply: “Really?” My only quibble with the episode was the obligatory suspect who runs away and gets hit by a car. I think we can safely shelve that one for a while.

When Walter was on the roadside after running out of gas, his demeanor reminded me momentarily of Noble’s portrayal of Denethor in Lord of the Rings. “Do you think I enjoy eating greasy fried food?” he asked Astrid. Of course he does, but so, too, did Denethor as I recall.

We watched two movies this weekend. First up was The Social Network. A fascinating look at a character who reminded us of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory with just a tad more social aptitude. Not exactly Academy Award material, though, in my opinion. A fairly by-the-numbers recounting of events. It was interesting to see how the software developed, and how cut-throat things became along the way. I hadn’t known before about the guy from Napster being involved. Shown to be a sleazy guy but without his connections the site wouldn’t have taken off the way it did, I think.

Last night we watched Conviction with Hillary Swank (Betty Ann) and Sam Rockwell (Kenny). Based on the true story of a woman who essentially gave up her life to go to college, then law school to try to get her brother’s murder conviction overturned. The two were closerthanthis as kids growing up in a bad home, but were separated in foster care and shipped around. Kenny is a reprobate, and Rockwell, fantastic as always, allows viewers to believe that he might be guilty as charged, especially after the way he flips out on a guy in a bar who makes an offensive comment. Some great performances. Juliette Lewis is creepy-scary as one of Kenny’s former girlfriends who testifies against him. She looks old and haggard, like she’s been doing crack. Her scene in later years when Betty Ann and her law school buddy (played by Minnie Driver), accompanied by Barry Sheck (yes, the guy from the OJ Simpson trial, played by Peter Gallagher) re-interview her is gripping and mesmerizing. Melissa Leo (Homicide: Life on the Streets) plays the small town cop who “cracks the case.” Betty Ann (and Kenny, of course) had one stroke of good fortune that saved the day; otherwise she would have been out of luck. Apparently the real Betty Ann continues to work for Project Innocence.

Posted in Fringe, Mentalist, movies | Comments Off on Brief notes

The Fizzle of ’11

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Bev Vincent

I was greatly disappointed this morning. I fully expected to open the blinds and gaze out upon a snowy white lawn, with snow clinging to the trees and adorning the roofs of our neighbors homes. Four inches, ideally, but one or two in a pinch. Instead: nada. The Houston area got predominantly freezing rain instead of snow. Cars that were left outside overnight were coated with a thin layer of ice, but the streets were mostly dry. I don’t have to cross any bridges/overpasses on my way to work, so the way was clear. Many, many accidents and closed roads elsewhere around the city, and a lot of people weren’t able to make it into the office because of the road conditions outside of the community. I know this isn’t a popular opinion among those who have been getting hammered with snow this year, but I was heartily disappointed. I’ll get over it. Eventually.

Editor Nancy Kilpatrick has announced the table of contents for Evolve Two – Vampire Stories of the Future Undead. You can see it here.

Instead of writing this morning, I worked on financial matters. Mostly getting ready to do taxes. Installed TurboTax last night and got a start on things today, but I’m still waiting on a few forms from one source. I pat myself on the back each year for diligently recording all writing expenses and income in Microsoft Money so I can simply run a report, transfer the data into TurboTax and that part’s done. Easy peasy.

It was good seeing William Petersen back on CSI this week, even if only by video chat from Peru. Also funny to meet his mother and to see her interactions with Sara. And Marlee Matlin was a welcome guest star, too, as the prime suspect who has a past with Grissom.

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The Blizzard of ’11

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Bev Vincent

The worst recorded snowfall in Houston’s history likely occurred on Feb. 14 -15, 1895. In all, the city received about 20 inches of snow. (Click the photo for a larger version.) Measurable amounts of snow would not be recorded again in Houston until 1912. We’re not going to get anything like that (I think), but they’re still predicting up to as much as 4 or 5″ between now and tomorrow. I’ve lived here for 21 years and I’ve never seen more than a few flurries hit the ground. We’ve had a couple of very bad ice storms, but never what I consider “snowfall.” Should be interesting. Continental has already announced plans to shut down flights out of IAH starting at 3 p.m. today until noon tomorrow. Seems like a bit of an overreaction to me, but we’ll see.

I managed 700 words this morning, bringing the total to 4000. I should be able to finish the first draft by the end of the weekend.

Today is the first day of the Year of the Rabbit, if you keep track of such things. “Money can be made without too much labor. Our life style will be languid and leisurely as we allow ourselves the luxuries we have always craved for. A temperate year with unhurried pace. For once, it may seem possible for us to be carefree and happy without too many annoyances.” Sounds good to me.

Law & Order: SVU was low on the preaching content and it had the always awesome Colm Feore (Storm of the Century) as a guest star. The Canadian actor (see, there’s another one) got to brush off his French in a few scenes. He played a rather smug billionaire (is there any other kind?) who pulled every trick in the book to get out from under a rape accusation, including reporting that he himself had been raped instead. Question: do the detectives spy on their captain with that little parabolic device all the time? Second question: did that guy on the airplane press charges against the doofus who decided to turn vigilante and bash his head into the luggage compartment? Robert Klein was there, too, as Feore’s lawyer, though his part wasn’t given much to do beyond the obvious.

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Puzzling

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Bev Vincent

It’s amazing how warm 32° feels compared to 21°. The latter is the temperature reading on my car’s dashboard when I got to work this morning and the former is the reading when I got back from thy gym at noon. What’s the coldest temperature you’ve ever experienced? I was in Minneapolis once when it was -40° with a wind chill that made it feel like -70°. It was so cold they shut the Mall of America. People were advised to stay indoors because of how quickly flesh froze.

The newspapers warned of rolling blackouts across the state today because the power grid was overloaded by people reacting to the cold weather. Some places did lose power for up to an hour at a time, but we didn’t.

I only got 5-600 words written this morning. Floundered around for a while doing intermediate research, which took up some of the time.

Edge, the publisher of the Evolve anthologies, would like your input. They have produced two possible covers for Evolve Two and you get to have your say on which will actually be used. Go to this page and post a comment that answers the two questions in the body of the post. I’m not steering you in any particular direction by adding this one to the post today. I like ’em both.

They’re still adamant that we might get snow here in the greater Houston area this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow afternoon. Vehicles heading south on I45 from Dallas still had snow and icicles on them when they reached here yesterday afternoon. Things start looking up for us on Saturday, with a high temp in the fifties, and we’re into the sixties by Sunday.

I swear just about every actor or actress I look up these days is Canadian. The guest star on this week’s NCIS, Christina Cox, for example. I wasn’t familiar with her, though apparently I saw her before on an episode of Dexter. Apparently she’s also a stuntwoman and worked on Million Dollar Baby in that capacity. It seems like they’re recycling subplots on the show. Wasn’t Tony the victim of identity theft a season or two back? This week it was Tim who, for all his computer acumen, didn’t know that about credit card fraud protection. “When did banks get so mean?” he complained to Tony. “Oh, sometime back in the 1400s,” Tony replied. The writers wrote themselves out of a potentially sticky situation when it seemed like the gunnery sergeant had killed her abusive husband and Gibbs sympathized with her. Would he have arrested her if she’d been the culprit? We’ll never know, because they came up with a last-minute substitute perp.

I always have a jigsaw puzzle going. It’s something I do when there’s something on TV that I’m only vaguely interested in. The one I started yesterday is different from any I’ve done before. I went through the box and picked out all the edges, per usual. It didn’t occur to me until I started assembling them that I didn’t have any corner pieces. Sure, I might miss one or two, maybe even three if I was distracted, but all four? Highly unlikely. There was also a batch of small “edge” pieces that had either a single tab or a single slot, nothing else. Once I assembled the edges, I discovered that they all belonged to the top and bottom. No sides. Then I realized that four of the single-slot edge pieces fit onto the ends of the top and bottom like caps on a pipe. So, these other edge pieces get stacked up to form the right and left-hand sides, but they don’t join to each other. They’re just lined up like bricks and it takes inner pieces to join the whole thing together. Neat.

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Continuing Evolution

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Instead of plowing forward with the work in progress this morning, I did an editing pass on the 3000 words I have already. The story was written in an odd manner, so I wanted to make sure it held together. Certain passages required historical research, so I skipped those and continued on, then went back and filled in the details later. I think it stands up fairly well, and I only deleted a net handful of words during this pass. Changed quite a few sentences around, added a bit and took a bit away, but it’s still sitting at around 2900 words.

I’ve known about this for a little while but I kept quiet until the publisher made their announcement. My story “Red Planet” will appear in EVOLVE Two : Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, scheduled to appear this fall. “Twenty-two of the world’s finest dark fantasy and horror writers presenting their visions of how vampires will evolve beyond 2012 and into the distant future.” Also in the anthology are stories by: Kelley Armstrong, Tanith Lee, John Shirley, Thomas Roche, Eileen Bell, David Beynon, Heather Clitheroe, Ivan Dorin, Erika Holt, Sandra Kasturi, Michael Lorenson, Ryan McFadden, William Meikle, Anne Mok, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Jason Ridler, Peter Sellers, David Tocher, Leanne Trembley, Steve Vernon, and Sandra Wickham. I did a double-take when I saw the name Peter Sellers!

I received my first royalty statement and check from Cemetery Dance for the Kindle version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: 8 Secondary Characters from The Dark Tower Series. I was surprised and impressed. I’m also expecting the check for the Italian version of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion this week, so the year is off to a good start.

I also got a copy of Emma Straub’s story collection, Other People We Married, last night. Name sound vaguely familiar? She’s Peter’s daughter and I look forward to reading her work.

Thrillers: 100 Must Reads is the Readers’ Choice winner in the Best Dark Genre Book of Non-Fiction category of the 4th Annual Black Quill Awards. Yay us!

I know a large part of the country is facing a massive winter storm, so our little bit of winter probably isn’t of much interest. However, the cold front blazed through at about 6 a.m. when I was writing. I’d had a call from the emergency services a few minutes before, advising of strong winds and possible large hail. Changes in weather roll through here like a freight train. I’ve never seen anything like it elsewhere. We’re already down to 34° and still have another 10+ degrees to go before we bottom out. We won’t see 40° again until sometime after Friday, and the forecasters are currently saying there’s a 60% chance we’ll see snow, perhaps 1-3″ of it, on Friday. That’s unheard of. If it snows here, which it has been known to do a handful of times over the past twenty years, it almost never reaches the ground. Significant accumulation is going throw this place into a tizzy. Might just have to stay home (rather than risk my life to the crazy drivers out there who’ve never seen a snow tire in their lives) and make a pot of soup.

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