past travels #3

Glenwood Springs, Colorado:  Doc Holliday’s grave.  (Though there’s some debate about whether he’s actually there…):

In case you can’t read it clearly, the epitaph is “He died in bed.”

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you’re spending the day the way you want to be spending it, and having a great time.

past travels #2

Puerto Rico, in 2004:

past travels

From a 2003 trip to Washington D.C.:

observation

So.  Automated bathrooms.  We’re almost there.  Toilets that flush themselves, automatic faucets, soap dispensers, towel dispensers.  All very futuristic and sci fi.

But how is that I’ve never, ever seen a bathroom with all four of the above mentioned items at the same time?  I’ve seen automatic toilets and faucets, but the soap and towel dispensers are still manual.  I’ve seen manual faucets with automatic soap dispensers.  I’ve seen non-automatic toilets and faucets with automated towel dispensers.

I mean, if you don’t have all four devices in the same bathroom, what’s the point?

sit rep

Per yesterday’s post:  yes, I turned in Kitty #8, which is one of those that I’m having a hard time coming up with a title for, so I’m going to wait a bit to announce title candidates.  It has army werewolves in it, and I turned it in on Veterans Day, which is cool.  And that’s all I’m going to say about it.

I’ve also turned in the short story for Running with the Pack, a werewolf anthology edited by Ekaterina Sedia (and already up on Amazon!).  It features one of the supporting cast of the Kitty books, and I hope y’all like it.  (Feel free to guess who…)

I have one more short story revision to turn in, and then. . . I’m done.  For the year, that is.  I’ll have finished every single deadline for 2009, which is so incredibly amazing and happy-making that it’s hard to express.  I’ve had about a year and a half of hard slogging on deadlines, and I feel like I have a bit of space to catch my breath now.  I have 6 deadlines already lined up for 2010, and I’m going to try really, really hard to keep it at 6.  I’m learning to say no.  I’m getting better at it.

I’m giving myself a couple of weeks now to cut loose and stretch my muscles and my brain.  I’ve got a big trip coming up next week, so the timing for finishing deadlines is really good.  This is also to say that for the next two weeks or so, posting is going to be spotty.  I’m going to try to get a few lined up in advance, but things around here may get kind of quiet.  That quiet will be the sound of me recharging my batteries, so that I’ll be ready to leap into the fray once again.

Also, I’ll be able to celebrate the holidays very, very enthusiastically, which I’m looking forward to.  Oh, is it time for me to take a trip to the craft store?  I think it might be!  And the hardware store, so I can make something steampunk.

Right now, I’m listening to the Clockwork Cabaret.

well, how about that

I seem to have turned in the book about the army werewolves on Veteran’s Day.

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.