The Men Who Stare at Goats

This one and “Whip It” make me think that I was traumatized by all the overblown, overhyped, and downright terrible big-budget action movies I saw over the summer.  Anything relatively quiet and character-oriented seems like such a revelation.  I need to see more movies like this for awhile.

I liked “The Men Who Stare at Goats” quite a lot.  It was mostly funny and engaging, with just a sprinkling of seriousness and subtext to keep it from being entirely shallow.  I have a feeling the more contact you’ve had with the military, the funnier it gets.  Having a fabulous, amazing cast helps as well.  Jeff Bridges especially.  He plays the same guy, both twenty years younger and twenty years older than his actual age, and he’s so convincing.

I will say that the metafictional poke in the ribs was a bit much.  I’m convinced Ewan McGregor was cast specifically so that every time George Clooney’s character ranted at him about how they’re all Jedi Masters, and about his Jedi training, and McGregor’s character went, “Huh?” the audience would laugh.  But after the first time it was just distracting.

the playlists

Creating the playlists always shocks and delights me.

As I’m writing this, I’m listening through the playlist for Kitty #8 (still no solid title, alas) for the very first time.  I still have a song or two I want to add, but I couldn’t resist playing through what I have.  And I’m amazed.  It’s awesome, and so incredibly appropriate for the book I’m in shock.  It’s like I planned it or something.

See, when I’m picking songs, it always feels like I’m doing it on a whim.  I’ll have all my music on shuffle, or I’ll be in the car listening to the radio, and some random song comes on that makes me sit up and go “Yeah!  That!”  It usually isn’t the lyrics that get me.  Instead, it’s something about the tune or rhythm or mood of the piece that fits some aspect of the story I’m working on.  I’ll make a note, often in the middle of the text as I’m writing.  I have to go through later and pull them all out.

Then I put the songs in some kind of order.  The first and last songs usually jump out at me, and I try to put something strong and mood-changing in the middle. (You’ll notice how often something industrial/techno/goth ends up in the middle.)  I try to put the songs into some kind of story arc — building tension, then resolving.

Then I start paying attention to the lyrics.  That’s when I realize my subconscious is way smarter than I am, and the songs that felt like whims jumped out at me for a reason.  I’m not a lyrics person — I have to listen to a song dozens of times before I learn the words, if I don’t ever see them written down.  So I often pick songs without knowing what all the lyrics are.  But then I listen, and something like this happens:  The Clash’s “Train in Vain,” which marks the climactic moment of Kitty and The Midnight Hour, includes the line, “All alone I keep the wolves at bay.”  Too perfect.  ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” has a line, “Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race.”  Is that about Kitty or what?  Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” is on the seventh playlist and the first line is, “Let me run with you tonight, I’ll take you on a moonlight ride.”  If that’s not a song that’s unintentionally about werewolves, I don’t know what is.

I actually try to avoid the obvious songs:  Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” is verboten, as is Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the Shangri La’s “Leader of the Pack.”  But somehow, I keep picking songs that refer to wolves, moonlight, nighttime, reaching the dawn, survival, and so on.  The songs don’t always work out so nicely, but they do often enough that playing a new list through is always an adventure.

Sneak peak:  Playlist #8 includes one of the most blatantly werewolfish songs I’ve ever put on a playlist.  I heard it a few months ago, in the car, and thought “Oh hell yeah.”  (I’m going to try embedding…)  If you’ve never heard this song, I highly recommend listening all the way through.

V and Fire

Yes, I watched the first episode of the V remake.  I kind of wish I’d seen it without seeing the old one, because I think I brought too many expectations to it.  Also, I think the pacing was off.  It was like they were trying to cram half the miniseries into forty-five minutes.  They knew they had to show us a lizard face in the first episode.  The original miniseries had a rather leisurely revelation of events:  Yay, Visitors are our friends!  What do you mean scientists are disappearing?  Um, aren’t these new rules kind of fascist?  Let’s find out what’s really going on by sneaking into the ship.  OMG she ate live hamster!  OMG they’re lizard people!  They’re taking over the planet and are going to eat us all!  Let’s form a resistance!  Ack, lizard baby!  (Love the lizard baby.  I want more lizard babies.)  That all took about 4 hours of movie time.

Versus the new show which had a guy standing there saying, “Oh, by the way the Visitors are lizard people with cloned human skin and they’re going to destroy the planet.  Let’s form a resistance!”  That was 45 minutes in.  I feel like I missed something.  Like, oh, a story…

There’s also a problem I’ve always had with the story:  Just because an alien eats live hamsters and has a lizard skin doesn’t automatically make them evil.  Right?  And, um, really.  If aliens come to earth and offer to give everyone free healthcare, would you really respond by saying, “You mean…universal healthcare?” as if it’s a horrible, atrocious, Democrat plot?

But my biggest excitement yesterday:  the post office was holding my new Robin McKinley book hostage!  Noooooooo!  The new book is actually a collection of short stories she’s written with Peter Dickinson, the second in a series of collections based on the four elements.  Water came out in 2002, and it had “A Pool in the Desert,” my favorite McKinley short story/novella of all time — it’s a vaguely metafictional treatment of McKinley’s own fantasy world of Damar, and it’s incredible.  So I’ve been waiting for Fire for quite some time.  Reportedly, McKinley kept starting stories for it that turned into novels.  So in the meantime we got Sunshine, Dragonhaven, and Chalice.  But now I finally have my new McKinley short stories.  I will savor them.

lots

As in, as usual, my brain is full this morning.  But at least, thanks to the end of daylight savings, I can now wake up at a reasonable hour.  I’m light activated, you see.

Once again, I am not participating in NaNoWriMo.  Good luck to those of you who are.  However, I am writing a short story for the hell of it.  This came after a conversation at Mile Hi Con in which I discussed the fact that every single thing I’ve written this year has been on-assignment and on-deadline.  This is a first, and it’s also very strange, and not very conducive to letting the imagination run wild or just playing around/experimenting.  So I decided I would write something for the hell of it before the end of the year.

I contributed to a discussion of authors’ scary stories from when they were kids.  I used my Star Trek example.

My iTunes has experienced a massive influx of new music over the last couple of weeks, which has been really awesome and cool and is part of what has gotten my brain wheels spinning on a new story, which is also awesome and cool.  Dressy Bessy, Abney Park, Black Sea Hotel, Rasputina, and a couple of my old compilation albums that I finally got converted from cassette — so, favorite songs that I haven’t heard in years.

My brother Rob is a professional set designer/builder.  He’s the technical director at Linfield College in Oregon.  His current saga is building a giant turntable that will maneuver an entire structure for Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.  I just wanted to show it off because I think it’s really really cool.

just a few notes

Happy Halloween!

I’ve added another signing, this one in Colorado Springs at Beth Anne’s Book Corner.  January 30 at 1 pm.

The Odyssey Writing Workshop (which I attended in 1998 and taught at this year), is starting to offer online classes.  If you can’t take off six weeks in the summer, this may be just the thing.

Boy, did we have snow this week!  Twenty inches here in Boulder, over Wednesday and Thursday.  Big, wet, thick, fluffy snow.  Of course, this being Colorado, it’s now 50 degrees out and the snow’s all gone.

I think I’ve finished draft zero of Kitty 8.  Now, onto revisions.  Lots and lots of revisions.

going steampunk

Yes, I am jumping on the bandwagon.

I wore this outfit to a party weekend before last.  It was a pretty savvy SF geek/SCA crowd, so the one thing I wasn’t expecting was having to explain what steampunk was (since it does seem to have become a bandwagon over the last year or so).  I got questions like, “Are you supposed to be something specific?  Like Indiana Jones or something?”  I’d say, “No, I’m just steampunk.”  And then I’d get, “What’s that?”

Well.  It’s harder to explain than you’d think.  “An aesthetic combining Victorian sensibilities with science fiction,” is about the simplest I could get, and also not very satisfying.  Steampunk is an aesthetic, but it also has an ideological component, regarding inclusiveness, DIY, and a recycle/reuse ideal.  That’s one of the things I really like about it — I didn’t buy a single thing for my outfit.  (Well, I bought the leather vest at NY Comic Con back in February as a present to myself.  Then I built the costume around it.  But I didn’t buy the vest for the costume, if that makes sense.)  And I’m figuring out that I already have stuff for about three more steampunkish costumes:  I dug out my riding jacket that I wore at horse shows back in the day — it still fits, and it’s got that snappy tailored thing that would fit right in, especially with a cravat, prairie skirt, and goth boots.  How about the khaki BDU’s I got for my GI Joe costume in the spring, but with a leather jacket and goggles?  I haven’t even mentioned my corsets yet.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.  So I had to explain steampunk to people, which was unexpected.  But a funny thing happened.  Because about ten other people dressed steampunk as well.  Now, there were about 100 people at the party.  Each of us wandering individually kept getting asked what we were supposed to be, and having to explain steampunk.  But then we all got together for a steampunk group picture.

And it suddenly became clear to everyone, because we all so obviously came from the same world.  You put us all together — with our corsets, crinolines, waistcoats, top hats, leather pouches, ray guns, and of course goggles — and suddenly we were a story.

Unfortunately, the group picture I got is too dark to post.  But it was a splendid thing.  Here is my costume:

More costumes are on the way, I’m sure.  I’ve got so many IDEAS.  I also need to thank Simon (aka Jeff) for introducing me to Abney Park, another fine example of steampunk’s ability to tell stories through sheer power of aesthetic.  This could become an obsession.

FAQ: How many Kitty books will there be?

I just signed a contract for four more Kitty books.  Those will be novels # 8, 9 and 10 in the series, and the long-discussed Kitty short story collection (including the Cormac and Ben story “Looking After Family,” and the Cormac novella that shows what’s been happening to him over the last few books).

Beyond that, I’m not exactly sure how many books there will be.  When I started the series, I thought I’d write five books, tops.  But I keep getting ideas that don’t fit in the book I’m writing, so I put them off for the next book.  So far, I’ve been reliably developing ideas for two or more books past the one I’m currently working on.  As long as that keeps happening, I’ll keep writing the series.

However, I do have an end point in mind.  I know what the last book in the series looks like, and I really want to write that one some day, a) because it’s so cool, I’ve got some awesome stuff lined up, really; and b) I think most series really do have natural lifespans and I want the series to end while it’s still fun to write — and read.

In the meantime, though, I’m wrapping up the first draft of the eighth book this week.  I’ll be ready to start outlining the ninth book shortly after that, and I’ve started the “crock pot” on book 10 bubbling.  After that, we’ll have to see what I can come up with.

yay, convention!

I’m back from MileHi Con, where adventures included drinking, napping, celebrating, inventing the further adventures of Balloon Boy (I’m writing the X-Files/Balloon Boy crossover fanfic in my head as we speak), listening to Connie Willis talk politics, donning costumes and admiring the costumes of others, figuring out how to save the world, and then more drinking and napping.  Yay!

Mile Hi Con! And Stuff!

This weekend is Mile Hi Con in Denver!  I will be there!  Possibly with bells on!  All the traditional activities — Networking with Authors in the Bar (this is the con where this is an actual program item), Carrie and the Midnight Hour, signing, readings, panels — are on the schedule, which is on the website.  I’m looking forward to the break and hanging with my peeps.

Book Chick City is has an interview with me up, including a short discussion of Kitty’s House of Horrors, and a book giveaway.  Check it out!

And here is the song that’s been stuck in my head for the last couple of days.

quick post

• Had the big Halloween party over the weekend and costume pics should be on the way.
• Watched most of “Wolvesbayne” on the Sci Fi channel, and it actually kind of rocked a little bit.  It had a contemporary urban fantasy feel, decent characters.  Lots of cliches but they were put together well.
• I’m rapidly losing patience with “Lie to Me.”  Sloppy characterization, sloppy writing.  I’d have already stopped watching if it wasn’t for Tim Roth.
• “Castle,” on the other hand, just keeps getting better.
• I was reading about someone driving around the town where they grew up and all the places they remembered, and realized that’s an experience that as a military brat I’ll never have.  I mean, I still drive past where I went to high school.  But elementary school?  The city pool we went to every summer in Grand Forks?  The public library in Severna Park where I discovered Robin McKinley?  Not so much.
• This week I wrote about how to use the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system in your writing.  Because I am a geek.