Holiday Season Update! Happy Homestretch 2022!

Reminder that this is crossposted from my Patreon site!

I usually really like the holidays. The food, the music, the decorations that add a bit of magic to the ordinary. The parties, the gatherings, the presents. The last couple of years, it’s all felt a bit exhausting, for obvious reasons. I have this sense of clinging to the holidays as comfort in a storm. A thing I hit on awhile back that I’m constantly reminding myself and I want to think about this year: The holidays are a process. They’re a season. It’s not a mad race to this one day or one event that ends up being disappointing, given how much preparation goes into it. What works better is finding ways to enjoy all that preparation for its own sake. This is the time of year when I can, I hope, express gratitude and indulge in some awesomeness:  Mulled wine. The Muppet Christmas Carol. Driving around to look at the lights. Oh yeah, that’s the ticket.

It’s the end of the year, which also means assessing. How did I do this year? What did I do this year? Did I make the progress I wanted? What do I want to work on for next year? (One of the things I’m working on is not saying “need.” As in, “I need to do this, or that, etc.” I was saying things like “I really need to pull myself together.” I realized, I don’t even know what that means. Need comes with pressure and obligation. So how about I say want, instead? I would like to write a new novel. I’d appreciate it if I could find ways to keep my house cleaner. I’d like to find ways to be less anxious about travel. And so on. That language reminds me that these are good things to work for, not obligations.)

On that note, this month’s lesson is going to be about goal setting. When I was about twelve or thirteen, I learned a pretty simple goal-setting technique that served me very well for a long time. And next week I’ll share it with you. I suppose I could have waited until January, when everyone else is talking about goals and new year’s resolutions. But how about we get a head start on that, yeah?

The other thing that happens this time of year is SF&F writers posting about their publications for this year. Ostensibly to let people know what’s eligible to be nominated for awards, but also it’s just nice to see the concrete evidence of my work, all listed out. Writing can be ephemeral; a story is published and then it’s over. I like to remind myself that I actually have been working.

• If I had to pick one thing I’m really proud of this year it’s my novella, “Polly and (Not) Charles Conquer the Solar System,” on Clarkesworld.  I had so much fun with it, and I think it’s quietly subversive besides. I mean, the opposition party on Mars is called the Guthries? Did anyone notice that?
• Short story: “Dead Poets,” Someone In Time, May 2022, ed Jonathan Strahan (I’m really fond of this one, too.)
• Short story: “The Voyage of Brenya,” Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms, March 2022, ed John Joseph Adams
• Short story: “Grow,” Tor.com, July 2022, part of the Wild Cards series, the origin story of my British Ace Jiniri
• And my collection: The Cormac and Amelia Case Files. At least I think it’s a collection, of previously published novellas. A whole book’s worth, it turns out! 

Not as much as I’ve had out some years, but still a pretty good list of stories when you see them all lined up.

Review: Weird: the Al Yankovich Story, is glorious. I’m very biased because I’ve been a fan of Weird Al for most of my life. I love UHF, his movie about a couple of losers who are shockingly successful running a local-access TV station. It’s ridiculous and full of love, and everyone should see it. If for no other reason so you’ll finally understand why a certain class of Gen X nerd will shout out “We don’t need no stinking badgers!” at random. Also, it’s about crowdfunding before crowdfunding was a thing? So far ahead of its time! The thing I love about Weird is it feels like a spiritual successor to UHF. It’s a parody of many things, full of love, that feels like it exists in a slightly off-kilter world from our own but is still recognizable. It’s so good. I need to watch it again to get the stuff I missed the first time. Polka Party!

Birding: At the start of this month, I attended Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. One of my ongoing goals: I’m at the point where if I want to be a better birder I need to learn from experts. Birding festivals like these are chock full of experts who can help me learn the differences between Snow Geese and Ross’s Geese, get better at IDing vocalizations, and so on. I saw thousands of cranes and snow geese. But I think my favorite was seeing my lifer Gambel’s Quail – twenty of them swarming the feeder at the visitors center. So ridiculously cute!

Have a safe holiday season, whatever that means for you. Remember it’s all about process!

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June 2022 update!

Reminder that this is cross-posted from my Patreon Writing Symposium.

Summer! Summer is here! I’ve got trips planned! I’m doing things!

• This month’s Lesson will be: Character (and also Plot). July’s Lesson will probably be Plot (and also Character). Maybe the two central components of fiction. Endless ink has been spilled on them. Entire books. Spoiler: Turns out they’re the same thing. I’m going to talk about that, from both sides.
• What’s my current writing look like: If you’ll remember in our last episode, I set aside the novel I said I was going to finish in April. Instead, in May, I wrote a novella and a short story and got them both out the door. Wuf, that felt good. I think I needed to finish something and clear some brain space. Now, I have two novel drafts I’m going to be noodling around with: the one I said I was going to finish, and the one I wrote over the winter that I don’t know WTF I’m going to do with. Agent likes the first couple of chapters but the whole thing needs work. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to read over both manuscripts, outline what I have, and figure out what’s missing and what they need to make the stories feel complete. This is tough, grueling, tedious work that I’m not looking forward to. But both projects are close enough to finished that I know I’ll feel better getting them done.  This is the hard slog: not just writing, but writing work that other people will want to read. It’s that last bit that’s the challenge.
• I got a lifer bird last week: black-chinned hummingbirds! Two males, fighting like they were in West Side Story.
• Moon Knight. Well, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Oscar Isaac is lovely, of course. But by the end I kind of just didn’t care. Except my history/archeology buff friends and I were appalled at them putting packing tape on 3000 year old papyrus. Completely appalled. 
• I still haven’t been to see the new Dr. Strange movie. 
• But I finally caught up on a slew of animated films:  Encanto, Luca,  and Turning Red, which I feel not enough has been said about how it’s actually a kaiju story? That was my favorite part.
• And now, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I love it. I love how they’re capturing the aesthetic of the animated series in live action. I love seeing new planets and people. I love what I’ve been calling Executive Dysfunction Kenobi. He isn’t just in hiding—he’s frozen. He’s paralyzed. He fucked up and he knows it and he’s going to have to deal with it somehow. So, so good. I love this idea depicted both here and with Luke-in-exile in The Last Jedi that the Jedi of this era bought into their own myth so hard that they simply don’t know what to do with failure and freeze up. Run away. This is in contrast to Jedi like Ahsoka, Kanan Jarrus, and Ezra from the animated shows, who didn’t have the support of the order and learned to make do without it and find their own ways. (I know Luke is a young, post-Clone Wars Jedi. But his teachers were Ben and Yoda, who maybe gave him an unrealistic picture of what he was supposed to be.) And don’t even get me started on young Leia. She’s everything. 

Why yes, I am Star Wars’s target audience, apparently. 

Now let’s see what we can do about having a good month, for whatever values of good work for us. 

May Update!

May update!

• Reminder to check out my page on Patreon.
• This month’s lesson, going up next week: Outlining for Pantsers. Do you outline, do you not, should you, does it matter? Are you a plotter or a pantser, and why don’t we ever talk about people like me who land right in the middle? Well, this month I will.
• The image above is April’s “If I Want to Eat That Thing on the Great British Baking Show I Guess I’m Going to Have to Make it Myself:”  lime-mascarpone panna cotte. Shockingly simple, decadent, will make again, especially if I want to be FANCY.
• I try to plan out my writing, I really do. Remember how I was going to finish a novel last month? I did not. Instead, I put it aside and started work on a shorter piece that’s been in my idea file for a long time. Just trying to clear some brain space. Ultimately, I don’t suppose it much matters what I’m working on as long as I’m working on something. This is what happens when I’m not on deadline.
• Here’s an interview I did with Carol Malcolm, who runs the Urban Fantasy Track at DragonCon. Good stuff!
• May 14th is the Global Big Day. Birders all over the world head out to see how many different species they can spot in a single day. I love it because it’s goal oriented and motivating. I set my alarm and try to get out early, which I normally don’t do. I’m going to try to break 50 species this year. Let’s do it!
• It’s finally rained in my stretch of Colorado. Hurrah!
• Movie I saw:  Everything Everywhere All At Once is great for lots of reasons: a middle aged woman at the center of it, accounting as a plot point (my long-time readers know I have a soft spot for accounting in spec fic stories), and completely gonzo in ways I’ve never seen before. It also does a thing that’s really hard to do: it’s a good science fiction film and a good allegory at the same time. (Colossal is another film that does both at the same time pretty well. Snowpiercer and Another Earth are two films that try to do both and fail pretty soundly at both.) It’s a story about traveling across multiple alternate realities. It’s also about family, particularly the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, and the moment (which I’m approaching myself) of realizing that more of your life lies behind you than in front of you and what are you going to do about it? Really big themes, but also completely off the rails, incredibly well acted, and just well put together all the way around.

It’s May. Spring heading into summer. Let’s go out and have a good month, y’all.

April Update!

• Reminder to check out my page on Patreon.
• This month’s lesson will be on length. Writing long, writing short: do your short stories keep turning into novels, or do you have trouble expanding your ideas into longer work? How do I move back and forth between lengths? Let’s talk about it.
• Sale! Dark Divide, the first Cormac and Amelia adventure, is on sale in ebook this month only. Amazon, Nook, Apple. Check out it, spread the word!
• I saw an art exhibit last weekend, Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper, which is at the Longmont Museum here in Colorado until May. All paper and multimedia artworks. Really inspirational. Particularly the paper and fabric work of Yuko Kimura. Makes me want to play around with some things. I have lots of arts and craft supplies and I’m always looking for new ways of using them.
• Slowly heading back to the movies. Last month I saw Death on the Nile and Cyrano, a couple of old stories told with current stars. They both looked spectacular. In Death on the Nile, Branagh returns as Poirot, along with an amazing cast, and it’s all fine, but I miss David Suchet’s Poirot. His was iconic. It’s a little like how I’m happy enough watching other actors play Sherlock Holmes, but Jeremy Brett will always be my Holmes. In Cyrano, everyone is talking about Peter Dinklage, and rightly so. But I wish the film had been able to maintain its energy through the second half. It got long, and a little tiring. I think part of this might be inherent in the story – there’s a point when all the characters just start acting really stupid and it’s frustrating.
• And then my fridge died this week. It turns out it was almost thirty years old, so it was time. But boy it’s annoying.
• Back to work. I’m going to try to finish this novel draft by the end of April.

update!

A couple of announcements!

Reminder that I’ll be doing more posting over at my Patreon.

I’ve spoken before about the Odyssey Writing Workshop, which I attended back in 1998, and how it gave me a big boost to getting my career started. After two years of going virtual, Jeanne is changing up the format to take advantage of those virtual resources, and also to make Odyssey more accessible. Taking off six weeks to go to a workshop just isn’t possible for a lot of people. So… if you ever thought about applying for the Odyssey workshop, but weren’t able to take the time, check out the new format and scheduling and see if it might work for you. I’m excited to see where the workshop is headed.

And a movie review: I made it to the theater (weekday matinee FTW) to see Spider-Man: No Way Home and I absolutely loved it. Its high energy, fast pace and laser focus on its own mission are such a contrast to Eternals. What a relief.

SPOILER: And the massively subversive plot beat in the second act is so, so good. We’ve got an honest-to-god rogues gallery, all Spider-Man’s previous villains lined up (and how much sheer acting talent and experience is in that room in that moment), and they all realize they were taken out of their universes at the moment before they were killed — and Peter realizing that sending them back will guarantee they’ll be killed, and he can’t do that, and how about instead we get these guys the medical and mental health care they need to repair the damage that was to do them by accidents that weren’t actually their fault… Oh hell yes, that’s a story.

SPOILER OVER

I’m actually excited about the MCU again!

Patreon Link

Okay, here it is! It went live over the weekend, and now you can see what I’ve been working on:

I’m creating a Writing Symposium on Patreon

I’m already feeling some improvement in my motivation — I’ve set this up with a structure and deadlines that will encourage me to get work out. I suddenly realized that I haven’t had an external deadline — someone else telling me they need X work by X date — in a year. While I’m usually really good at setting deadlines for myself, I think that muscle has been getting tired. This is going to provide some accountability. Let the experiment begin!

I’m also starting to watch movies again. At home, anyway. Some thumbnail reviews:

Eternals. Oh, sweetie. Where to start. It’s beautiful and elegiac. And hits so many of my pet peeves in the first fifteen minutes that it was hard to keep going. 1) Opening scroll containing information that a character repeats in dialog a little bit later. (MCU, you know better than this.) 2) Huge, vast, expository lumps. In fact, the second expository lump is basically “Oh yeah, that whole first expository lump was all wrong, so here’s another one, delivered in exactly the same cosmically overbearing way the first one was.” and 3) Look, I just really really need people know that agriculture had been established in Mesopotamia well before 5000 BCE, along with domesticated animals, stone walls, and early urban social organization, so telling me that it’s 5000 BCE Mesopotamia and then showing people digging in the dirt with sticks and banging rocks together is just deeply offensive. I know I’m a little sensitive to this because I’ve been studying the Neolithic period kind of a lot for the last few years. But really, all they needed to do was say it was 10,000 BCE and I wouldn’t have had a problem. Or as much of a problem, anyway.

To be fair, I think there’s a good story in here about a family facing a moral conundrum and members coming down on both sides of it in a really tragic way. But we have to wade through a lot of awkward to get there.

The Tragedy of Macbeth. This is here to remind us that cinema can be art. The design on this is black and white, Modernist, spare, shockingly beautiful. Bergmanesque. Washington and McDormand are fantastic. They play the couple as really in love, and their mental breakdowns in the last half are understated, swift, and brutal. This is not my favorite Shakespeare movie, but it’s a really really good one.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

I didn’t make it to the theater for this one, which is a bummer. I’m still deeply out of the habit of going to movies. I’ve missed so many, including the latest Bond. I’ve now missed two MCU films on the big screen. Still not sure I’m going to make it to Eternals, but I think I want to try. Ugh, things still feel so weird.

I have a very obnoxious one-line review for Shang-Chi: In a reversal of the usual pattern, an Asian hero who is the rightful heir to a mystical legacy travels to the West to learn the ancient art of… sarcasm.

Anyway. This movie is just fine. It’s really pretty. Great cast. Fantastic fight scenes. Chock full of Chinese lore that brought to mind the research I did for Kitty’s Big Trouble. (I’ll pass along one of my biggest sources because I suspect it was also a source for this, which is the Classic of Mountain and Seas. The secret village seems very much like something that would have been described in that work.) Yet another dead mother. *shrug*

I’m a little confused about the Ten Rings as a terrorist organization now, and how what we’ve learned about it here connects up with what we know from the Iron Man films. Because I gotta say I was really super into the idea that the Mandarin was invented to stereotypically conform to western fears about foreign threats—specifically designed to be a deconstruction of Orientalism, which was freaking brilliant. I think I conflated the Mandarin with the Ten Rings, while it’s more accurate to say the powers behind the Mandarin appropriated the Ten Rings, which it turns out is a real terrorist organization that’s been around for a thousand years? *recalculating, recalculating*

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, Just a bit confusing. Ultimately, it works because Shang-Chi really bought in to its own story. But I also get the feeling that the MCU kind of doesn’t really know what to do next, and is going to end up retconning a lot of what came before. And on that note we come to Eternals, a group of super-powerful people that we just never heard of until now?

Meanwhile, between this and Snake-Eyes, I propose we are entering an 80’s Ninja Aesthetic Revival that is long overdue.

Dune (2021)

I’m annoyed at the number of people declaring this the best science fiction film of all time, because it’s not. Not even in my top ten, I don’t think. Mostly because it isn’t really science fiction – it’s epic fantasy that happens to take place is space. Like Star Wars. Paul is basically a Jedi, but that’s a discussion for another time.  

But it’s also just an okay film. It’s very, very pretty, and it gets the job done. But I didn’t feel a whole lot of anything about it when it was finished.

Here’s the problem with Dune, and I think it’s baked into the story:  we know what’s going to happen pretty much every step. The characters tell us what’s going to happen, almost continually. And then it happens, pretty much just like they said it would. House Atreides is taking possession of Arrakis. We’re told that this is a trap and they’re being set up to fail. And then they fail. We’re told, almost from the start, that Paul is probably the chosen one, and it’s confirmed almost continually that yes, he is the chosen one.  (I think one of the really endearing things about Luke in Star Wars is how often he fails. He screws up kind of a lot. But it’s the way he keeps trying and struggling that makes him a hero. We watch to see what he does next, because we’re not always sure what that’s going to be.)

Here, I’m never worried, I’m never surprised. And I can’t tell if it’s because I know the story too well or if it’s just that predictable. The characters are moving through pre-ordained motions with little apparent agency, and little emotional investment as a result.

This isn’t foreshadowing, it’s something else, and it sucks the tension right out. These productions then attempt to replace tension with awe:  long, lingering shots of landscape, of giant ships, alien sandworms, really luscious set pieces and imagery.

But if you’re a jaded skeptic of these kinds of stories like me, the awe might not work, and I’m left feeling, well, nothing. This film is emotionally empty. In exactly two moments, I felt an emotion start to take hold, and it was so startling it actually distracted me – wait, I’m feeling something? Two hours into the movie? Well, how about that.

The invasion and attack on the Atreides was really frustrating (okay, I guess that’s a third emotion I felt) because the outcome was a foregone conclusion and they set up a really shitty defense. Duke Leto wandering empty halls alone trying to figure out what’s wrong? Where are his personal guards? Don’t know, don’t care, evidently. The entire army leaving their back wide open? Shitty, shitty. No wonder they lost.

But that’s picking nits. We all know this has to happen for the rest of the story to unfold, and it does, exactly on schedule.

Another thing that’s driving me bonkers about the ecstatic gushing about the film all over social media is the declaration that this is somehow a better adaptation than the Lynch film, when probably 85% of the scenes in this movie can also be found in the Lynch film, some of them shot-for-shot and word-for-word. If you’re going to claim that this film is a good adaptation then you have admit the Lynch one is as well, at some level.

Really, though, this is only half the story, and I think I’ll need to wait to see what they do with the next one before I pass final judgment. Because dammit, yes, for all my lack of enthusiasm I’ll go see the next.

music biopic movie catchup weekend

For a lot of this year I’ve been doing that thing where I don’t want to watch new things, I want to watch old comfortable predictable things. But this weekend I blew through a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to watch for literally years. I’ve been avoiding them because I knew they would make me cry, and they did, but at least I can talk about them now.

Bill and Ted Face the Music

Okay, I know this isn’t a biopic. Well, it’s a fictional biopic. It’s still about music and musicians, anyway. Basically, this is a movie about how Gen X is hoping like hell that Gen Z saves our asses. This is a movie about how we very much believe they will.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Not totally satisfying. It’s quite disjointed, mostly made up of episodic vignettes about how Queen came up with their iconic songs, alongside Freddie Mercury’s trials and travails.  But the Live Aid recreation is just as phenomenal as everyone said it was. My favorite thing about that sequence is how much time the camera spends on the faces of the other band members, plainly showing their love for Freddie, but also their deep concern, and their wonder, which all contribute to this sense of something epic unfolding. I love ensembles, and this was a good scene for an ensemble.

Rocketman

The best of the bunch. It’s set up as an actual musical, which meant the film could be surreal as well as deeply emotional, and it felt like it had an arc. I adored how the background music riffed on “Yellow Brick Road” throughout, but when it came time to actually sing the lyrics, it was Bernie who sang the song, not Elton John.

Analysis

Both movies still kept to the rock star biopic formula:  extraordinary rock star plummets into drug and alcohol use and self loathing, alienating the people who really care about him while being manipulated by an evil mercenary lover, who must be repudiated before the star can reunite with his true self and friends. And/or he dies. (I’m so deeply glad I ended this series with Rocketman, where Elton is still alive and happy and successful. It’s ultimately an uplifting film, which these movies often aren’t.) What is it with rock stars and these stories that we’re so willing to watch over and over and over and over and over again? It’s some kind of twisted modern version of the Hero’s Journey. We love these movies because we love the people/characters they depict, but there’s a sameness to the story that I find frustrating.

Also: these two films are structured exactly the same.  Both films begin at the climactic moment. Just dipping in. Just a hint, a scene of the star marching to his destiny, full of his own aura. In Freddie’s case, to the Live Aid Concert, in Elton’s, to rehab. Then, the rewind. Going back to the start, so we can follow the path all the way out and then end up at the climactic moment in order, now with the context fully laid out.

This is so interesting to me. Different approaches in terms of presenting the content, but the structure is the same. I think Rocketman is more successful because it goes on to use rehab as a frame story in which to tell Elton’s history, which gives the movie a lot of cohesion.

Big Mood

Me spinning up Bohemian Rhapsody:  Ugh, I know I’m just going to sob my head off if they play “Somebody to Love.” (Film begins with that song) uuuuuuggghhhhhh.

Me spinning up Rocketman the following night:  Ugh, I know I’m just going sob my head off if they play “Yellow Brick Road.” (Film begins with instrumental riff of that song) GODDAMMIT

Snake Eyes

I did it, I went to another movie in the theater! This go-around, we timed it right and had the theater to ourselves–probably because no one else wants to see this one. Which is too bad, because it was great.

Please be advised that by “great” I don’t mean “this was a good movie,” because it’s kind of not. But I did enjoy it a lot, and while it followed G.I. Joe canon about as well as the previous two live-action movies did, which is to say, not at all, it still captured a lot of the tone and spirit of G.I. Joe — depending on which iteration of G.I. Joe you’re talking about, of course. (It’s all far too complicated, really.)

In this, the iteration is that stretch in the early ’90’s where the comics became obsessed with ninja and suddenly everything was all ninja and Cobra Commander’s son was a ninja and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are friends but then they’re not but then they are again and —

This is the stretch where I stopped reading the comics, BTW. I actually kind of hate ninjas.

So how does the movie pull it off? By replicating the aesthetic of all those crazy ninja movies from the 80’s. I’m not sure people now realize just how many ninja movies there were in the 80’s. There were a lot. A lot. And this film lovingly recreates a bunch of those tropes with modern visual sensibilities, including way too much shaky cam, but I’ve pretty much given up the shaky cam fight. Sigh.

My big worry going into this is it would try to pretend like it wasn’t a G.I. Joe movie at all. I shouldn’t have, because about halfway through, Scarlett and the Baroness show up, and so do snake head logos stenciled on crates of illegal guns, and it’s definitely a G.I. Joe movie as well as being a recreation of an 80’s ninja movie and seriously, what’s not to love? This film is what it is, knows what it is, and gets the job done.

And I now ship Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow so hard, and I challenge anyone who sees this not to do the same. The nice thing about having the theater to ourselves is I could basically shout “Just kiss him already!” at the screen several times without bothering anyone but my long-suffering friends. (So, I just looked up Henry Golding, the actor who plays Snake Eyes, because I’d never seen him in anything and it turns out he’s primarily done romcoms? This explains much.)

I also sort of ship Scarlett and the Baroness now too? So weird.

Other things to know: This film pretends like the previous two live-action G.I. Joe movies don’t exist, which is probably for the best, and I guess we’re just going to keep rebooting these until one of them hits, but I’m suspecting the fandom just isn’t big enough to make one of these hit. I’m thinking now live-action G.I. Joe should be a TV series that can develop multiple characters at once and play with storylines that aren’t McGuffin-driven.

This film passes the Bechdel Test. I know, right?!

Ninja Grandma. Just sayin’.