Three Moons!

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State of Myself

I am currently sprawled on the floor with my laptop because I put my shoulder out Saturday evening and trying to sit up creates a series of subsidiary pains in my back and hip. I feel like a very old woman now.

I am hopeful about my very first submission to flash-and-poetry market Raven Electrick; I have currently received two encouraging rejections for the story I sent there, Instructions For An Initiate. One market stated they had it longer than usual because it went high up their editing process; another sent me a rejection letter with "please try us again," hand-emphasized and a written note indicating that it wasn't the story quality, it was the fact that flash was a hard sell for them.

I am once again tempted to start a pantoum with the lines:

Change is inevitable
Except from vending machines

Oscars!

And now, like everyone else, I will venture my generally biased and uneducated opinion on the Oscars tonight. You have been warned. Sidebar - I love, love movies. However, since I dislike sitting in theatres, I generally only see them once they hit video. I reserve my theatre-going for special effects blast-outs where screen-size has an effect - King Kong, PotC (1 & 2), etc.

Best Picture: I've seen two of these films - Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed - and from all descriptions, Babel seems to be an unnecessarily depressing, unnecessarily complicated film ... in other words, the kind of movie everyone likes because they're supposed to. Though The Departed was an awesome ride, I have to put my personal hopes on Little Miss Sunshine, because a feel-good comedy - even a black feel-good comedy, if anyone who hasn't seen the movie can imagine that - always deserves some attention. Also, The Departed loses some points with me for the meat-headed casting of Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon in roles where it is very important to be able to tell them apart and it is inordinately HARD TO DO SO at times.

Best Performance / Actor Lead: Uh, dunno. I haven't seen any of these movies. I have a lot of respect for Will Smith, though.

Best Performance / Actress Lead: I've seen only one of these movies - The Devil Wears Prada - and heard some flap about the fact that Meryl Streep shouldn't have been nominated because her character is a supporting role, not a lead. I have to say the opposite. Miranda Priestly is more than a lead character, she is scenery, theme and mood, and her presence while she is on-screen had to be imposing enough to carry into everything that happens off-screen. And again, see my love of comedies. (I am somewhat anti Dench and Winslet here because both their characters are people I could never sympathize with / admire. I recognize pulling this off takes talent, so this is purely a personal preference.)

(And why are there two categories here anyhow? Is it because they wanted to give out two awards and gender was the most convenient division?)

Best Performance / Actor Supporting: I'm kinda stunned Mark Wahlberg was nominated for this with the reams of high-profile actors in The Departed. Then I thought back to the sheer amount of venomous hatred his character generates throughout the film, never letting up. Despite being a good guy, his is the character you most actively hate, and it's due to the portrayal. Yeah, my vote's with Mark.

Best Performance / Actress Supporting: No opinion here. I think Abigail Breslin certainly deserves the nomination - like Streep, she is more than a character, she is the heart of the movie, its tone and soul. But where does a ten year old kid go from an Oscar win?

Best Writing / Original Screenplay: It is possibly a duhism here that my vote is with Little Miss Sunshine. But I was blown away by that movie while still laughing throughout. It really is the best of both words.

Makeup: ... yanno, actually, the consistent aging effects in Click were pretty impressive. (And before anyone ribs me about seeing this movie, it was not the crude comedy I was expecting. It was far more serious - and far deeper - than the desperately miscast previews.)

Cinematography: I am only commenting here because I find it difficult to believe anything could surpass The Illusionist, but I'm watching The Prestige tonight so I may change my mind.

Costume Design: I watched the entirety of Marie Antoinette just to enjoy the costumes. Nuff said.

Visual Effects: I haven't seen the new Poisedon, but I can't picture anything blowing Dead Man's Chest out of the water. *flees from groans*

That's all, folks.

It's Common Sense

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. " -- Thomas Paine

"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot." -- Thomas Paine

(I confess that I don't know if either of these are from Common Sense, but they struck me.)

Good Riddance

Last mix, and last post ... this is my "Good Riddance" mix, filled with goodbye-and-I'm-not-sorry songs.

1. Big Boy On A Saturday Night -- Kirsty MaColl
2. Breathing -- Emma Bunton
3. I Will Survive -- Gloria Gaynor
4. Go Away -- Gloria Estefan
5. Misled -- Celine Dion
6. He Never Mentioned Love -- Kirsty MacColl (the obligatory "irony" entry here)
7. Life Goes On -- LeAnn Rimes
8. Strong Enough -- Cher
9. Who The Hell Are You -- Emma Bunton
10. Coulda Been -- Kimberley Locke
11. Prisoner -- Mariah Carey
12. Don't Think of Me -- Dido
13. Bye Bye -- Alana Davis
14. These Boots Are Made For Walking -- Nancy Sinatra
15. Wrong -- Kimberley Locke
16. Nah! -- Shania Twain
17. Get Over You -- Sophie Ellis-Bextor
(and for a sweet ending to a rather snarly collection:)
18. I Wish You -- Gloria Estefan ("Deceive me, hurt and mislead me: all that I wish you is love ...")

Bad Girls

A second CD mix - I haven't ripped it yet, but for amusement purposes, here's to ladies feisty, scheming and just misunderstood:

1. My Affair -- Kirsty MacColl
2. Some Girls -- Sarah Brightman
3. I Hate Men -- Kiss Me Kate soundtrack
4. No Angel -- Dido
5. I'm Going Out With An Eighty Year Old Millionaire -- Kirsty MacColl
6. I'm Not In The Mood (To Say No) -- Shania Twain
7. The Simple Joys of Maidenhood -- Camelot soundtrack
8. Baby, I'm A Star -- Helen Reddy
9. Hunter -- Dido
10. Julia -- Chantal Kreviazuk
11. Roxie -- Chicago soundtrack
12. Angie Baby -- Helen Reddy
13. In These Shoes? -- Kirsty MacColl
14. Wound Up -- LeAnn Rimes
15. Play The Field -- Debbie Gibson
16. White Flag -- Dido
17. Not That Kind of Girl -- Paulina Rubio
18. Bad -- Kirsty MacColl

Dance Music

I just made myself a CD for listening in the car where all the songs in some way involve dance - in a couple cases the connection is fairly tenuous, but I enjoy the songs. In order:

1. I Wanna (Shall We Dance) -- Gizelle D'Cole / Pilar Montenegro (Shall We Dance? soundtrack)
2. Dr. Beat -- Miami Sound Machine
3. Remember How We Danced - Dian Diaz
4. Overture / All That Jazz -- Catherine Zeta-Jones / Renee Zellweger / Taye Diggs (Chicago soundtrack)
5. Sway -- Pussycat Dolls (Shall We Dance? soundtrack)
6. Dark Waltz -- Haley Westenra
7. Anyone Can Do The Heartbreak -- Anne Murray
8. Cell Block Tango -- A Whole Mess of People (Chicago soundtrack)
9. Murder On The Dancefloor -- Sophie Ellis-Bextor
10. Refuse To Dance -- Celine Dion
11. Casanova -- Paulina Rubio
12. Breakout -- Ronan Hardiman (Lord of the Dance)
13. All I Ever Wanted -- Kirsty MacColl
14. Rhythm Is Gonna Get You -- Gloria Estefan
15. Nowadays / Hot Honey Rag -- Catherine Zeta-Jones / Renee Zellweger / Taye Diggs (Chicago again)
16. I Want You -- Alana Davis
17. A Whiter Shade of Pale -- Sarah Brightman vs

Judgemental Update

The Divine Jury officially placed second in the Fantastical Visions 5 anthology contest. So it was the second-best story they received. Hey, I'll take it. ;-)

Quote of Note

"A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, any more than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table." -- Jean Kerr

What's in a ...

This is an excerpt from a course essay I wrote about Frankenstein, the creature, and the use of names. It applies specifically to the book, but speaks sidelong to the importance of names:

The most famous character in Frankenstein, the creature himself, has no name at all. This is highlighted by the number of other names used throughout the story. Even the brother-in-law of a trial witness is given a name (Daniel Nugent on page 179). In many ways, the temperment of the creature is similar to that of the previous three narrators. He is self-educated, prone to fits of temper, and finds succor in the sublime world of nature, though for different reasons than the other two. But whereas for other characters we are given names that hint towards their nature or purpose in the story, the creature has none. The narrative omits this indicator of character and allows the reader more freedom to decide whether the creature is constructed of the same stuff, metaphysically, as Frankenstein, or whether he is a departure from his creator.

The lack of name can create other effects. With the human emphasis on labels and the use of names to establish identity, the lack of a name can indicate that someone is less than human. One of the rules of thumb for a writer to avoid drawing attention to spear-carriers and other bit players is to not give them a name. The lack of a name can distance and even disinterest a reader in a character. This issue does not stand out as readily when the nameless character is the narrator. In Frankenstein, this sets up a contrast between creature-as-animal and creature-as-narrator, between the parts of the story when the creature is less than human and the parts of the story where the creature is the center of his own universe. This contrast draws more attention to one of the story’s central questions, the humanity of the creature.

To be honest - back into blogger mode, rather than essay mode - I didn't really care for Frankenstein, but predominantly because I found the main character to be self-absorbed, selfish and arrogant. I felt sorry for the creature and wanted creator and creation to reconcile, an attitude which became hard to maintain as the story continued, but I didn't develop commensurate sympathy for the good doctor. So, of course, when one of the second essay options (two per lesson) was to discuss whether or not Frankenstein or his creation was more monstrous, I jumped at it ...

So Much For That ...

Update on the pirate story - written, edited, polished, submitted with head high ... and rejected in a shockingly short amount of time, though I do appreciate that the editors had somewhere else to recommend. Guess it wasn't meant to be. The story's moved on to other pastures; we'll see what happens from there.

A Glimpse of Pelindar

My last "tour" of this city for a while - yet another exercise, a desc of the cityscape at day and one at night ...

During the day, Pelindar navigated through the world like its citizens mobbed the streets; impatient, impulsive, swirling silks and exotic perfumes elbow to elbow with the unwashed and everyone too busy to protest the cattle-crush of the herd. The scent of the ocean seemed to take on physical form, a subtle spirit winding over terracotta roofs and insinuating itself on the sidelines of families.

Market Row was a jumble of dueling shops, their banners thrust forth like blades, a wreckage of carts and stalls fighting to find place where they could – and all of it at the top of the city’s salt-starched lungs. It was a place blind higher than the canopies, oblivious to the sprawling mansions of the High Quarter and the towers of the sorcerer-wardens. Even when the church bells sounded, they stared dumbly – and deafly – at the same garish displays, drawn into the flatness of frenetic trade.

One line of darkness cut through the Row, where three story buildings butted into each other and fell across any possible angle of light. Some people said Midnight Avenue was more than that, that even if you demolished every warehouse and multi-tiered salon of sundries, the endless night would endure, its own supernatural shroud over the businesses there. It was understood, in these enlightened times, that there was nothing inherently peculiar about the street itself, but there was no denying that the people who had chosen to put out their moodily-lit shingles there were more than a little … odd.

***

Pelindar, night – subtle, shadowy, all the colors blurred together into an indistinct shelter of grey. Sometimes the damp in the air stung, but it always seemed to hang heavier after sunset, dank and leisurely. Shadows strung out over homes; homes strung out over streets, gangly and sprawling; and streets strung out underneath people, wandering with drunken unpredictability wherever fancy took them.

Market Row lay like the treacherous rocks of a reef, dotted with bad bargains and tiny, painful points of light, places that did their best business after-hours or simply believed that never sleeping was preferrable to missing a customer. There were surprisingly few taverns – it wasn’t a business of trade. The sky opened above the Row in an errant cascade of brooding silhouette, its fine buildings reduced to dark lines and massive elephants perched over their private watering holes.

Midnight Avenue remained unchanged, not a whisper darker or even lighter than it had been. Sunset did not even register among the gnarled lanes. People moved through its timeless streets with more ease now as the rest of the world matched up with the interior – able to forget, if only briefly, the strangeness that usually permeated here. Yet the shops were the same, the proprietors of the same inclinations they had been before; perception merely changed it half the time, leaving a place made ordinary by acclaim.

Down to the sea, where the waters ran green and black, the hulking ships a quiescent blur as they waited for their next destination. Out across the waves, a moon larger than imagination, captured in fog.

The Divine Jury

Sold to Fantasist Enterprises - their Fantastical Visions V anthology! It's a contest and they haven't chosen their placements, but I just received an email informing me that they definitely want this story. This is actually the second work I've written set on Lleden Gair, but this is the first one that has sold. The idea behind The Divine Jury is one I came up with while ... uh ... serving jury duty ...

The divine jury is a celestial body that exists in the city of Kintarra, the sister-city of the gods. They serve a term rather than for a single case and are chosen at random from the population to judge on cases of divine/celestial importance, matters of hubris, divine intervention, etc (as well as offenses committed inside Kintarra). To keep the jury honest and to prevent them from taking bribes, the following system is applied: 1) eleven of the jury members are executed at the end of their term (why accept a kickback if you're not around to enjoy it?); 2) The twelfth, most honorable member of the jury is elevated to godhood.

To say much more would give away the plot, but my main character, Kiacina, is a Helen of Troy homage who encounters this system as the defendant ...

A Few More Calendar Clips

Again, from my page-a-day. The first one is just a great image. The second one ... hmmm ...

"Drive on! We'll sweep up the blood later!" -- Katherine Hepburn (instructing her driver to push through a crowd of fans)

"If you want to get revenge on a man, marry him!" -- Belinda Hadden and Amanda Christie

In other news, I never pictured myself as the kind of writer to insert high-falutin' quotes at the beginning of my stories, but First Contact demanded a bit of Shakespeare, and now Polestar, set in the same world with the same characters, has picked up the tradition ... and if I ever write a third one, I'll have to do it again, though I'm out of "star" quotes from Shakespeare I can remember off the top of my head.

For the idly curious, First Contact's quote is:

But then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. (From Much Ado About Nothing)

And Polestar's is:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark ... (From Sonnet 116)

Sage Advice

Seen on the TV today:

"Never open your mouth until you are absolutely certain your brain is going to work." -- Tommy Dewar

History Lesson

No, not *our* history, who do you think I am? The city of Pelindar (which was the setting in an earlier post of mine) appeared again in an exercise sometime ago entitled Landscape and Time (100), which asks the writer to create the human history of a specific piece of land. So verily:

The sandy crescent of coast on which the city of Pelindar rested was bleak but fertile, a steady year-round chill allowing for the growth of crops that neither froze nor burned under the withering sun. The seasons changed, but the wandering tides kept them in check. Winds built up rumbling along the shore, as if they, too, had found a safe harbor.

There had been civilization on the Grey Coast for millenia, almost as long as any other region, but it had not been "civilized" for all of that time. The first settlers were semi-nomadic farmers, an amalgam of intermingled families without distinction of tribe or hierarchy. Bound together by a limitless series of individual ties, they communicated through an almost instinctual network of family and companion.

The first Grey Coast villages were affairs of convenience, half-hearted, helter-skelter, leaving no trace when they dried up and blew away with the next strong wind. The people remained, incestuous, insular, regarded with flat affect those few explorers who landed on their soil and found that the Coast was too distant and too tenacious to tame. Within a few generations, these ciphers became legends, and not particularly important ones.

When the western lands left their dark ages, the Cenorians discovered the Grey Coast. They fenced in land that seemed to them to be unclaimed. Half the time, they were correct. The other half, they clashed with the locals over matters of right and trade - but by and large, Cenorian solutions were peaceful, the invaders having long since decided that the best means to enlightened society was example.

The first five cities - little more than fortified towns with a few extra towers - sprouted up at randomly chosen points along the Grey Coast. Gradually, the most strategic of the two locations grew to prominence: one in the north, gateway to the civilized world, and one in the far south at the site of modern Pelindar, where the first lighthouse outside of Indessa was founded on the outermost island.

The Cenorians were crushed under the wave of the Black Crusade, as many were. Four of its cities were raised; the other became a slaving pit. The observatory island survived, but became forbidden territory on pain of death - and because of its isolation, became the ideal bolthole for resistance.

An uprising started there, joint of Grey Coast natives and Cenorians. They freed the region, but the slave-city became anathema. No one spoke of it. No one visited it, though its towers could be seen from any hill of any size - and on the Grey Coast, there were many of these.

The Gull Alliance dominated for a while, then subsided, followed by a number of other business consortiums, then a Giserian tyrant. It was the eastern Tirefs who wrested it from the hands of his imperial infallibility and who both built Pelindar in thrice its earlier glory and threw open the doors of the observatory to learned contemplation and discovery. The Grey Coast has not been the new world for a long time; there are ever further horizons.

Three change of hands later, the Grey Coast is a free nation - for now. There are still native tribes in the hills, but their influence can most easily be seen in darkwood eyes, stretched slightly with green and yellow, and in double jointed hands made for fine and mysterious work. In an attitude, too: a sense that what the outside world decides, however shattering, can never alter the sand in the bays.

Wish me well!

Having discovered that Night Shade Books (an up-and-coming small press turned medium press turned publishing force) is releasing an anthology of pirate stories, I'm trying my hand at another nautical tale. The catch? ... Fast Ships, Black Sails is closing to submissions at the end of February. Which means I need to finish and edit this baby in a twinkling. Not only am I crazy enough to attempt this, I'm also eyeing another anthology with a similar close date, Magic and Mechanica. Send me bursts of decent inspiration, I need 'em. ;-)

Sassy Statements

Courtesy of my page-a-day calendar:

"I can't stand makeup commercials. 'Do you need a lipstick that keeps your lips kissable?' No, I need a lipstick that gets me equal pay for equal work. How about eye shadow that makes me stop thinking I'm too fat?" -- Maria Bamford

"When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I am slipping." -- Maria Callas

Like Clockwork

I just sold a sorta-short story (really, when it pushes nine thousand words ... can you call it short?) entitled "Sailing The Seventeen Seas" to Fantasist Enterprises' Sails & Sorcery anthology. The nice part is, S&S will be coming out early to pick up on the wave of interest from the last PotC movie, so I should have less than a year's wait before I see my baby in print.

"Sailing The Seventeen Seas" is set in the same world as my novel "Butterfly's Poison," though there is no direct reference to BP. It is probably set a decade or two later - I had a passing reference in the story to Synnove, the daughter of main character Treddian and only fifteen during the events of BP, as the unconventional ruler of Nevelia (a city), but I cut it in edits. In any case, why seventeen seas? Well, the world in which StSS (or should I call it S3?) is set has no real landmasses, only large islands and countless oceans, many of them called different names by different countries ...

StSS is the story of a merchant ship, a shapeshifter, an inventor, and a pair of fugitive passengers. Also like BP, the central character is an escaped Shardathi slave, but there the similarities cease. Vlisa Karhene is the first mate of the Narwhal and has the unenviable task of keeping her mad-scientist captain in line. The title of this post, of course, refers to the fact that the setting involves a higher tech level than most fantasy and a clockwork bird plays a key part in the proceedings. As for the rest, well ... that would be telling.

Freudian?

You never know when your slip of the tongue will become someone else's continuing in-joke ...

There's a kitchen supply place known as Sur La Table (Roughly, sir la tahb(le?) - I have less than no command of French). My mother was in line at her local kitchen store when the lady in front of her started talking about, "Laser Table." It has become a family watchword.

Then there's my childhood friend, who was discussing various foods she ate abroad and enthused about the, "Barbarian sausage" ... I still love this image. (Bavarian, for the still clueless.)

And Gold Star Chili still gets called "Still Car Goalie" from a bit of accidental muddling.

But you have to admit, forget Egghead Software - it's more fun to browse at Eggsoft Headware.

I feel justified in neenering about these because I still get teased about saying, "The default setting for water should be no lemon," and "I'm going to boot up the stove." I am a child of the computer age, after all.