Bev Vincent

Tomorrow morning, I’m packing up my laptop, a powerpoint with enough slides to choke a camel, and a box of books to be used as props. Heading south across Houston to Sugar Land, which always makes me think of Candyland but, no, not quite like that. I’m presenting a seminar titled Skills Learned on the Path to Publication at the Sugar Land Library from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. I understand there are still some open seats, but at last count something like 40 people have indicated their willingness to get out of bed on a Saturday morning to come listen to me. I hope they’re a talkative bunch. Two and a half hours? If I play the slides fast enough, maybe they can turn into a movie and we’ll be out of there by noon.

My Storytellers Unplugged essay “Gap Year(s)” also goes up tomorrow morning. It deals with the lost decade when I didn’t write. At all. Not even letters or grocery store lists.

Second batch of physical therapy treatment this morning. Another 15 minutes hooked up to the electrodes followed by ten minutes of stretching followed by something new. A technique called “spine mobilization” which basically consisted of the therapist pushing rhythmically up and down my spine. Interesting. I’m definitely becoming more aware of my sitting posture. This lumbar roll they gave me to put at my back when sitting at a desk isn’t all that comfortable, but it makes me aware that I’m slumping.

Burn Notice was pretty good this week. It’s starting to look like the new guy is going to stick around. The torture plot got less attention than I thought it would, but it resolved well. I really liked the “help a friend” plot, which featured the actor who played Charles Widmore on Lost. I was sure the real culprit was going to be his head of security so, like Fiona, I did not see that coming. Well played.

So, Big Brother’s surprise twist for the season turned into a fizzle. The “saboteur” was the first person evicted, and the house guests don’t even know it yet. They just kicked her out because she was playing too hard and was too brash. The editors did a good job of making it seem like she might have won over enough people to survive, but then the vote was 10-0. The contestants are starting to come into focus a little better. Britney, who seemed okay at the beginning, is turning into a big bitch. Her message to Annie was just tacky. I still wonder if the saboteur’s comment about two house guests knowing each other from before is true or not. Britney and Kathy could easily be daughter and mother.

Two new Alan Parsons songs available on iTunes this week. One is a single, All Our Yesterdays, and the other is the B-side instrumental, Alpha Centauri. YouTube videos available via the hyperlinks. The one for All Our Yesterdays is interesting because it is a behind the scenes look at the recording process. I’ve been a big fan since the early project days. I remember how delighted I was by the picture on the back of the Ammonia Avenue album (yes, album. Vinyl.) that depicted a room full of scientists with their heads in the sand.

Sold another short story today, but the TOC hasn’t been revealed yet so I won’t say where until the editors spill the beans. I got halfway through revisions of the space opera story in progress this morning. Strangest thing, though. I started out at 4400 words, and I felt like I was deleting things left, right and center, trimming, tightening, streamlining, but at the end of the session I was at 4500 words. Maybe I miscounted yesterday. Must have.

I watched Rizzoli and Isles last night. Not bad, though the wrap-up at the end was very rushed. They could have spread this out into a two-parter, but I guess they wanted to grab viewers early. The trope of the stalking serial killer who decides to get out of prison at the most opportune moment is a little over-worked, and the trail to his partner was, well, weak and convenient. Still, I’ll give it a chance to find its feet. Is that the first time someone has said “tits” on a TV series?

Does anyone know if it’s possible to download a personal document to the Kindle app for iPhones/iPods? I know how to do it with my Kindle, but I can’t seem to work out a way to do it for the smaller gadgets.

NECON starts tomorrow but, alas, I won’t be there. The schedule was just posted in various places, and it features intriguing entries for appearances by Mr. X and Mr. Y. Sounds like there’s going to be algebra involved this year. The game show could be really difficult, if that’s the case.

Working two 15-minute muscle stretching sessions into my daily schedule as part of my physical therapy. As if the days weren’t short enough already.

Crowded House fans, take note. Their new album, Intriguer, is available in the U.S. today. I downloaded the audio tracks from iTunes this morning and then left my computer running to download the associated videos. I’ve only listened to part of the album, but it sounds good.

Today I was jolted by electricity for fifteen minutes straight. No, I didn’t get hit by the world’s worst bolt of lightning, nor did I stick my knife in the toaster. I started physical therapy for some lower back pain I’ve been experiencing this year caused by a ruptured disk. (“Shit wears out,” a friend warned me a number of years ago and, yea verily, it is true.) Part of the treatment involved lying on my stomach with four electrodes attached to my lower back while a stack of pads were laid across me atop a heating pad. The electricity was…interesting. Tingly. I remember when I was a kid pulling a plug out of a wall socket and coming into contact with the prongs with my thumb and index finger. It felt like that. Surprisingly pleasant!

I finally got my Storytellers Unplugged essay written for this month, too. It goes live on Saturday morning, the same day that I’ll be in Sugar Land talking to the Houston Writers Guild. Naturally, my essay is inspired by that, though not in the usual way. I also have a new first draft of the older story that I rewrote as a space opera. Now comes the real work—the editing! It stands at about 4500 words at present, which means I’ll probably trim about 4-500 words during revision.

A surprise check in the mail last night. Well, it shouldn’t really have been a surprise—I just forgot it was coming. Payment for my 300 word essay in the 2011 Stephen King Library Calendar. Best. Gig. Ever. I make more for that little article than for most short stories ten times as long.

A good debut episode for the new season of The Closer last night. They found a way to reboot the show without messing with the chemistry—by putting the major case squad in new digs. Gives Brenda something new to bitch about. My only problem—and this is getting to be a generic issue—is that the moment I saw the ultimate culprit, I figured it was him/her because he/she was played by a somewhat prominent actor. They weren’t going to just stick him/her in for one scene as a character providing background on the victim.

I didn’t get to see Rizzoli and Isles, but I have it recorded for this evening, when there’s nothing else on. I did finally get a chance to see the first episode of Haven and I thought it was okay. A good companion to Eureka. It has enough levity to keep it going. I liked the scene where the sheriff’s son and Agent Parker were in a standoff, pointing guns at each other, when she reaches inside her jacket for her ID. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” the local LEO says. “What am I going to do—pull out another gun?” she quips. Her character is going to take a little getting used to because she’s monotone and brusque, but I like Duke, the guy on the boat with a bad reputation. The putative male lead is a little bland, too, but his “talent” (not being able to feel pain) is probably useful in law enforcement. The show has a Dead Zone vibe, which is only enhanced by the presence of Nicole de Boer.

One goal every 120 minutes. Be still my heart. I watched most of the World Cup final yesterday afternoon. I don’t think my pulse rate got up over 60. It was a relaxing way to spend a few hours while reading and doing other things. I see that Paul the Octopus has retired with a stellar record.

I still haven’t managed to see the first episode of Haven. Both times I recorded it our SyFy was out. Guess I’ll have to see if they have it on the SyFy website. Most of the comments I’ve heard about it thus far have been lukewarm at best.

I did see Eureka, though. I liked the first episode of the new season. They often find a way to reinvent themselves to get rid of annoying and unproductive plot points. In this episode, a handful of characters were sucked back in time to the point where Eureka was founded (the 1940s, I believe) and while there they managed to create enough of a butterfly effect to alter their present reality. An autistic boy is no longer autistic. Henry has a wife. A marble statue is now bronze. Jo’s fiance is an inmate in her jail. And Tess, ah, yes, Tess is living in Carter’s house. That’s a terrific development–I’m very happy to see Tess back. I wouldn’t have minded it, though, if they’d spent more time–even a few episodes–back in the 1940s, but such was not to be.

My wife asked me over breakfast this morning what I found so interesting about Big Brother. It took a while to come up with an answer. Finally I decided that I like the voyeuristic aspect, but not from a prurient point of view. I live a relatively sedate, quiet life, and it gives me a chance to observe real people in stressful circumstances. I am fascinated to see how the contestants responded, for example, to the news that there’s a saboteur in their midst. True paranoia reigns. And then when the saboteur put tape across the faces of two random contestants, the paranoia quotient in those two amped up even more. Granted, the show is edited so it isn’t a true chronicle of reactions, I still find it fascinating.

I’m about half way through Mr. Peanut by Alex Ross. It’s an interesting book, hard to classify. You could call it a crime novel, because there are at least two equivocal deaths. The initial protagonist fantasizes about different ways his wife might die. At first, by misadventure, but later by his hand. He’s working on a novel that expands on these fantasies. When she dies, he naturally becomes a suspect, especially when the manuscript turns up. However, though the cause of death is clear (anaphylactic shock from eating a peanut), it could be suicide or murder. One of the officers investigating the case is Detective Sheppard, who used to be Dr. Sam Sheppard, the man who is reportedly the inspiration for The Fugitive. His wife was murdered in the 1950s and he was convicted for the crime and later exonerated. The other detective has a wife who went to bed one day and refused to get up for five or six months. No one seems to have a happy marriage, or at least it isn’t happy for long.

I was disappointed to discover that Burn Notice was a rerun last night. I was looking forward to the torture interrogation episode. Not until next week, I guess. I watched the first episode of Big Brother. I have two guesses who the saboteur might be based on their reactions at various times: Kristen and Andrew.

I upgraded my iPod Touch to iPhone software version 4.0 last night. Mostly a painless process. Apparently this a major step forward–the new software apparently supports multitasking (though I haven’t seen how yet) and folder creation. My only complaint is that Safari now crashes on one of the sites I visit frequently. It’s a secure site with an invalid security certificate. After I accept the certificate, the page starts to load and then Safari goes away. At least Opera still works there. I found a message board where other people are finding the same problem on similar pages.

On the other hand, the Facebook app is a lot peppier. Likes and comments now post immediately instead of after a long delay.

I started working on my review of Stories: All-New Tales last night. This morning I got a couple of short stories back into circulation. Received a nice rejection letter from Asimov’s yesterday and an implied rejection from the 2010 HWA anthology when my name didn’t appear in the TOC. The audio version of my short story “Harming Obssion” (read by me) appears on the NECON 30 audio CD, which will be given out to attendees. Alas, I won’t be able to go this year. The CD also has stories by Rick Hautala, Yvonne Navarro, Weston Ochse and some other people whose names you’ll probably recognize.

Apparently all the rain we’ve been getting lately (2.3″ at the airport yesterday, a record for that day) is because of a tropical depression that still could become Tropical Storm Bonnie if it manages to muster up a little more strength. Things are getting soggy around here, with some local street flooding, but nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times before.

I installed the Kindle app on my iPod Touch and downloaded a free eBook from Amazon: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, which I’ve never read before. I like the horizontal finger swipe way of changing pages.

I downloaded No Frills by Nik Kershaw last night and then updated iTunes on my laptop, a lumbering old creature that only has a 24 Gig hard drive. It wheezes and gasps over anything onerous, like iTunes. Took the better part of an hour to upgrade. Then I tried to upgrade my iPod Touch to 4.0 but the computer hung up during the download, so I’ll have to try again tonight. No Frills is great. Highly recommended. Just a guy, his guitar and some terrific songs.

If you’re in the Houston area the weekend after next with some time on your hands, I’m giving a mini-symposium for the Houston Writers Guild. The name of the talk is Skills Learned on the Path to Publication, and will essentially be a retrospective of the past 10-11 years, from before my first published work. The presentation takes place at the Sugar Land library on Saturday, July 17th from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Nonmembers: $35 or free for HWG members.

June was drought month; July is inundation month. We’ve already had over 6″ of rain in July, and some regions around Houston could get another 3-5″ in the coming two days. We’ve officially caught up with our average annual rainfall as of today. Yesterday we were over 10° cooler than New York City and over the noon hour today we were 21° cooler than the Big Apple.

The second half of my interview at BIFF BAM POP! went up today: Illustrated King: Andy Burns Talks To Bev Vincent, Author Of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion Part 2.

I posted my review of The Passage by Justin Cronin last night. It’s long and it might have what some consider mild-to-medium spoilers.

I’m 2/3 of the way through The Liar’s Lullaby by Meg Gardiner. One of the other subtexts of the book is a pretty damning treatment of televised news services and the lengths reporters will go to get a story and spin it to suit their preconceived notions or the ideology of the channel’s audience. One reporter comes off only slightly less wacky than the white supremacist group.

Two episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent made up the season finale last night. The first one was pretty lame and boring, perhaps because I have very little interest in boxing. The second one, however, pulled out all the stops. I had an inkling about what was going on after less than 20 minutes–even before we met the creepy doctor–but that didn’t matter.  F. Murray Abraham appeared as Nichols’ father (Jeff Goldblum), and what a treat that was. Nichols and his father have a complicated relationship. The father, a prominent psychologist (or psychiatrist?), wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and has little regard for his chosen profession. They duelled and fenced with each other, hurling past injuries at each other like grenades, but they reached an entente at the end, and “they took a trip to Lourdes,” in his father’s vernacular. They had a good day.

Next Tuesday is the release date for the new Crowded House album, Intriguer. Can’t wait–they’ve long been one of my favorite groups. I also missed Nik Kershaw’s latest, No Frills, which I’ll have to remind myself to download from iTunes this evening. I saw him in concert a few times back in the 1980s when he opened for other performers (including a memorable appearance at the Summer of ’84 concert at Wemblay Stadium in London), and I’ve kept up with his releases ever since. He has a clever way with words, and often twists figures of speech around. I came in second in the Twilight Tales flash fiction contest at World Horror a few years ago for a story called “Your Shoes” that was inspired by one of his most famous songs. No Frills would be a good place for people to start, as it is essentially a greatest hits album except the songs are all solo acoustic.

I’m also very much looking forward to the October release of The Union, which is a collaboration between Elton John and Leon Russell, with T. Bone Burnett producing. Duelling pianos.  The album features a variety of musical genres from R&B, soul, gospel, country,  pop and rock. Icons Neil Young and Brian Wilson provide guest vocals on the  16-track record along with legendary R&B organist Booker T. Jones, steel guitarist Robert Randolph and a 10-piece gospel choir.

Every now and then I hear about an idea that frankly makes no sense whatsoever. When I was looking up the time and location of the local fireworks on Sunday, I discovered that they were also being simulcast. On a radio station. The curious side of me considered checking it out to see exactly how one broadcasts fireworks over the radio. Sounds of explosions and a color commentator saying, “That one was blue. Oooh. Nice red one with sparklers.”

I finished the first/second draft of a new/old short story this weekend. This is one I’m recasting from historical fiction into science fiction, an idea that struck me recently. Now that this new draft is finished, I can see where the story falls apart, so now I have to rethink it completely. Fortunately, while I was shaving this morning, I figured out how to make it work. Of course this revelation was about character rather than plot. The story had a plot and a couple of people wandering around doing things, but it didn’t really have any characters, if you get my drift.

I also wrote 1700 words of a new story. I think I know where it’s going, too, which is a something I wasn’t so sure about when I started it.

I answered a bunch of questions for Andy Burns at BIFF BAM POP! Part one of the interview went up yesterday: Illustrated King: Andy Burns Talks To Bev Vincent, Author Of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. The second part will go up later this week.

We watched Sherlock Holmes last night. We saw it in theaters when it first came out. My daughter got it on DVD and I liked it enough to watch it again. One day I’m going to put on the closed captioning, because I’m still missing about 10% of what Robert Downey, Jr. says.  The sweeping scale of London loses its oomph on the small screen. I remember coming out of the theater dazzled by the scenes of the London Bridge. Unlike some purists, I wasn’t at all upset by the way they re-imagine Holmes, and I especially like Rachel McAdams’ Irene Adler. Looks like we have to wait until December 2011 for the sequel. Bummer.

Tonight is the two-hour season finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and it starts an hour earlier than usual. I’m looking forward to the return of Eureka! on Friday (back to back with the new series Haven, which I’ll at least check out). Then next week we get The Closer and the new series Rizzoli & Isles, which brings back NCIS‘s Sasha Alexander and Law & Order‘s Angie Harmon. Another series, based on the novels of Tess Gerritsen, that I’ll check out.

I’m about halfway through The Liar’s Lullaby by Meg Gardiner. A solid thriller. The protagonist performs psychological autopsies in cases of equivocal death–when there isn’t enough evidence to say whether a death is homicide, suicide or natural or accident. The victim in this case is a popular singer who dies during a spectacular entrance at a concert. She’s the POTA’s ex-wife, has a long history of bipolar illness. She also has a deranged stalker and is being used by a white supremacy group to further some members’ bizarre conspiracy theories.

Last night we watched The Oxford Murders, starring Elijah Wood as Martin, an American math student looking to study under a famous mathematician (John Hurt) in Oxford. The mathematician (his name is Seldom, which made me think about Hari Seldon from the Foundation series) is a bit of a bastard, but he and Martin are thrown together when a serial killer starts taunting them with math problems. The first victim is Martin’s landlady, who also has a history with Seldom and was involved with the Enigma system during WWII. The landlady’s slightly wacky daughter falls for Martin, as does a fetching young nurse who also has a history with Seldom. The murders are interesting in that the victims are people who were on the verge of dying anyway. The movie has shades of the Da Vinci code. John Hurt is good, but Elijah Wood isn’t really all that convincing as a mathematics whiz on par with the great legend. It has some interesting twists and turns and reversals, but the fact that it was filmed in 2008 and is only now being released via OnDemand says something about the overall quality.  Also appearing in the movie were Dominique Pinon from Amelie and Burn Gorman (Owen from Torchwood), who plays Martin’s office mate, a crazy Russian. It sounded like his dialog was overdubbed.

Today we watched the Pixar animated film Up, which was a lot better than I expected. I’d seen about 5 minutes of it in a waiting room once, and it seemed cute, but it was a lot more emotionally touching than the little snippet hinted. The first ten minutes encapsulate an entire life far better than anything I’ve seen in a long time.

I finished Stories: All-New Tales last night.

“Parallel Lines” by Tim Powers is about two sisters, one alive the other dead. The dead one isn’t content to stay that way, so she tries to co-opt the body of the young girl who comes in to help out, unaware that she’s broadcasting her messages on two lines, the other of which is being picked up by her sister.

“The Cult of the Nose” by Al Sarrantonio is an interesting conspiracy theory story about a guy who uncovers a strange organization through historical photographs.

“Human Intelligence” is another story that has a subtle Christmas element to it, as if someone suggested the writers should try to find a way to work in Santa Claus! The main character is a spy who has lost contact with his handlers, so he’s continuing to carry out his mission while hoping that they’ll make contact again. It turns into a science fiction story once its revealed that his central base is a space ship that was once located below the ice near the North Pole.

“Stories” by Michael Moorcock tells the complete lives of a small circle of influential writers over the courses of their lives. Their fights and breakups and reunions, loves and losses. It’s a very dense story, packing a ton of story into relatively few pages.  It’s completely mainstream, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of evil to it.

Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight Of McCauley’s Bellerophon” made me think of Ray Bradbury. Though it takes a while longer than necessary to get to the meat of the story, it ultimately proves to be about a woman who is dying of cancer and a friend who wants to give her one last gift, a recreation of an apocryphal 20-second film depicting an unconfirmed flight that happened before the Wright Brothers. An oddball group, including two teenagers, head off to a strangely abandoned barrier island where the original film was shot. A touching story with elements of the surreal lurking below the surface.

I started The Liar’s Lullaby by Meg Gardiner today. It gets off to a great start, with an unstable rock star about to mount a daring stunt on a zipline from a sky box in an auditorium to the stage below while fireworks go off around her and helicopters pretend to strafe the stage. At the last minute, the woman locks herself on the balcony and produces a gun. Someone fires on the helicopter and the woman–who just happens to be the President of the United States’ ex-wife–is dead when she hits the stage. Self-inflicted wound, accident or murder? A terrific opening.

The rains that we expected earlier this week because of Alex are finally arriving. It’s a lot worse on the south side of I-10, I understand, but it’s been a dark and rainy day up on the north side, too. Now there’s thunder. It’s supposed to remain rainy and overcast throughout the weekend. Guess I won’t be mowing the lawn tomorrow. Shucks. A good weekend for writing, it looks like.

A while back I contributed a few essays to Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture, edited by S.T. Joshi. I found the cover on Amazon yesterday, so I thought I’d post it here. It’s an expensive book. Due out at the end of November.

By the way, the official publication date for Thrillers: 100 Must Reads is July 5. My essay is on Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. I think I’ve said that a few times already.

I read one more story from Stories: All-New Tales last night: The Therapist by Jeffery Deaver. It’s about a therapist (naturally) who attributes violent tendencies to invisible creatures he calls “nemes” (riffing off the word “memes”). He encounters an angry young woman, a teacher and a mother, who he feels called upon to assist, though his advice isn’t appreciated. He takes drastic measures. Of course, the existence of these ghostlike entities entirely depends on character perspective, and the story does tend to go on and on for a while.

Burn Notice is in a bit of a rut, I think. Even the introduction of a new regular character isn’t giving it much new life. Every episode is this: Michael has to tend to some business with the people who burned him or someone related to the people who burned him while at the same time trying to solve a problem for a client, usually someone who comes to him via his mother or one of his friends. One or the other gets short shrift. Last night, it was the Kendra storyline that got crammed in where possible. Next week might be more interesting, though, with Kendra “in custody” and spitting out nails instead of information.