But It's a Dry Heat

Author Archive

In Which I…Ooo! Something Shiny!

It’ll just take a minute.

Famous last words.  Uttered before I descend into a two-hour long journey into the darkest pits of time wasting.  A.K.A, the Internet.

The plan.  Hop online.  Update my blog. Get outta there. Get to work on W.I.P.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, it’s also littered with the sad detritus of best-laid plans.

I log onto my blog. (No small task because I have to dig through the mountain of paperwork on my desk to find the sticky note containing my password.) But I’m otherwise prepared, having already written the post. (At work.)

Copy-paste, and voila, I haz blog post. I scan it carefully for typos, find and correct several. Upload a cute pic to go with posting and hit “Publish.”

Re-read the post and find more typos. Correct and re-publish.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Several more times.

Scan rest of blog and notice typos–glaring, huge, blind man can see ’em from space, typos-on older posts.  Correct those typos.  In the process, note that new blog template has fucked up pics on an older post.  Fight with image settings for fifteen minutes.  Blister the air with curse words, delete and reload image.

All done.  Except, lookee! Another fucking typo on the latest post.  Correct.

Study the blog and wonder if I should add an easy link to Chapter One of The Music of Chaos. Wander off to find a java thingy to make a pop-up window.  Find a site with cute animal videos. Squee! Baby animals.

An hour later…it’s almost five o’clock. Husband will soon be home. Horse and hound are demanding dinner. I notice I’m still logged onto my blog and wonder why…java thingy, W.I.P. and The Great Plan now forgotten.

My mind needs a memory upgrade.

There’s No Nice Way to Say, “You Bore Me.”

Alternative title: How Critters Online Workshop Taught Me to Sympathize with Editors

So there it sits. Like a big ole zit on the nose of my (already crappy) day. The form rejection letter. Besides the sense of crushing defeat, there’s that whiny girl voice in my head, who opines, snottily, “You couldn’t even spare me a hint, a sentence, as to why my manuscript is Teh Big Fail?”

For the first emotion–defeat–the only cure is time. (Or alcohol.) But the second–irritation–is easily soothed by my experience at Critters Online Workshop.

I’ve been a member of Critters, off and on, for about five years. I’ve critiqued at least 700 manuscripts, including a half dozen novel length works. To maintain good standing at Critters, you critique approximately 3-4 manuscripts a month. Each week, you pick a story from the pile and have at it.

The experience provides an (more…)

Courage Is

A quick doodle that got out of hand.  Featuring Talis, a dark elf, and a character from my novel The Music of Chaos. (Click image for full view.)

This is totally non-canon since Talis is a pacifist. I was listening to the song “Courage” by Orianthi and this image came to mind. The Music of Chaos is set in modern day Albuquerque, NM and Talis’s usual apparel is blue jeans and a ratty T-shirt, not the D&D get-up he’s sporting here.

Talis is one of those characters who originates as a bit of background flavor and then devours page space like a rottweiler on a steak. He started out as a passing character in a single chapter.  Literary oblivion was the fate I’d chosen for him, since the chapter didn’t advance the story at all.  Then I made the mistake of giving him a drop of backstory.  The drop became a flood as I got more and more fascinated with him.

Before I knew it, he was Regan O’Connell’s (the protagonist) best friend. And then he started popping up in every short story I wrote.

One of these days, he’s getting his own novel.

With Apologies to Marc Chagall

I stumbled on this while backing up some old data.  It’s a chapter cover from the defunct webcomic, based “loosely” on my novel The Music of Chaos.  It took me about 90 pages to realized I’m not suited to graphical story telling. It was fun while it lasted.

This image was inspired by Chagall’s “The Fiddler,” the painting which, in turn, inspired the title for the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

(Click image for larger view.)

Knight and Day

If Knight and Day were a color, it would be beige. The bland color allocated to ceilings. I got a good look at mine, when, in a fit of boredom, while watching this snoozer, my head slumped onto the back of the couch.

Knight and Day is the ugly offspring of a rom-com and the Bourne Identity, with an unfortunate preponderance of the former. June (Cameron Diaz) is an the ordinary gal whose life collides with Roy (Tom Cruise). Literally collides, twice, because the accidentally-crashing-into-someone-at-the-airport gag never gets old, right?

Roy is a rogue CIA agent who has been wrongfully accused of something. Or has he? Misunderstandings, un-witty romantic banter, and action hi-jinks ensue.

If it’s action you like (and I do), Knight and Day delivers. And the plot really isn’t too bad either. The problem is its stars, who have less chemistry than sand in water. You know how you can tell when two actors really hate other (The Matrix Revolutions, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss)? In this case, Cruise and Diaz can’t even muster the energy to dislike each other.

June is the quintessential rom-com heroine: sort of ditzy, clumsy, and impulsive. Characteristics which, I guess, are suppose to endear her to a female audience. (Me, I really rather see a woman in control of the situation, but I’m a scary femi-nazi feminist.) Of course, Roy finds those characteristics utterly adorable. In June’s defense, toward the end of the movie, she does start to grow a real personality. What I liked in particular is that when she kills someone–in self defense–she doesn’t go all mopey-schmopey and guilt-ridden.

Cruise, admittedly not my favorite actor, can sometimes be tolerable (e.g., Minority Report). But here, he resorts to his usual shit-eating grin and ADD acting style. Really, Tom? Do you have to go there? It was cute in Top Gun. But that horse, it’s dead. Downright skeletal. Time to stop beating it and grow up.

Yeah. I get it. Cruise’s performance was in part a kind of parody of himself. But he’s also supposed to be the romantic lead. And crazy really isn’t the sort of trait an intelligent woman should look for in a mate. It doesn’t reflect well on the heroine to have her falling for the first glassy-eyed lunatic who drugs her and drags her across the world.

Not a film for those who like romance with brain. I give it a Meh-Minus.

Love with Scales

Nothing says romance like dragons….

Happy Valentines Day (click for full view)

Lady Godiva’s Horse

Click Image for Full View

Careful What You Ask For

Sometimes I think the Internet should come with training wheels.

Well, for starters, the reviewers were not professional. They were not objective in what they had to say. I found their comments to be subjective and sometimes downright malicious. Two such blogs that have set themselves up as reviewers of books are “[Blog Name Redacted]” and “[Blog Name Redacted]”. Now, I don’t expect everybody to like my books, but what really gets me is when amateur reviewers use words like “predictable” and “one dimensional”, but they don’t quantify this. They don’t back up their comments with facts.

The above being a blog posting by an author who, having asked for an opinion (review), is unhappy with said opinion.  It’s the writerly version of “Does this make my butt look big?”

It would seem that the unfortunate author is (somehow) unaware that the Author vs. Critic controversy has been flogged over and over on ye ole Interwebs.  The end result is always the same.  The critic comes out the victor with the author looking like a consummate asshat.

Bad reviews, like taxes and death, are inevitable.

My question to the aggrieved author would be this:  What if the blogger(s) had posted a glowing, but simplistic review where she described your book as “wonderful?”  Would you still have written a scathing indictment of her reviewing abilities, demanding that she back up her praise with facts?

I’m-a guessin’ the answer is, “No.”

It Was Just Asking for It

My in-laws are the kind of people who always get the best gifts for X-Mas.  They even get stocking stuffers right. They make it look effortless, all while I’m stumbling around stores the week before Christmas, pulling random crap off the “As Seen On TV” shelf.

This year, along with smoked almonds, gummies bears,  and assorted yummies, they gave my husband and I each a box of refridgerator* magnets.  He got “A Little Box of Obscenities” and I got “A Little Box of Good Cheer.”

This led to some discussion as to whether there had been a mix-up.  I’m a notorious potty mouth.  I don’t even bother with the usual “mind your elders” bullshit. I drop the f-bomb around my mother and in-laws all the time.  (In my defense, my mother, who likes to act the part of “lady,” is a fan of “Well, fuck it.”)

I am, however, a pessimist.  The glass isn’t just half full.  It’s losing volume, evaporation happenin’ now. A little good cheer could do me some good.

Good cheer and obscenities go together like chocolate and vanilla, so husband and I combined our super-twin powers and made this.

*No matter how many times I write the word, I always misspell “refridgerator.” D’oh! Fuck!

The Charmed Sphere by Catherine Asaro

With The Charmed Sphere, award winning SF author, Catherine Asaro makes her first attempt at writing a fantasy novel. Uh, literally, it would seem.

This may be a case of where high expectations doom a book. Given Asaro’s reputation, I would have expected something more; something that didn’t read like My First Fantasy Novel.

It starts off well enough, with Chime Headwind, a farmer’s daughter, hiding from a royal entourage. She knows she has mage power and doesn’t want to be recruited into the king’s service. (I still don’t know why she hides from her magic [abilities]. It is explained, but doesn’t make much sense.) She is soon discovered by the Shape-mage mistress of Suncroft. Chime unhappily agrees to accompany the royal party back to Suncroft, where she will hone her magic abilities and…marry the prince. (It is the custom of this country to match the most powerful female mage in the land with the prince.) Along the way to Suncroft she runs away, only to unwittingly encounter her groom-to-be, Muller Dawnfield. (Ugh, these names.) Neither knows who the other is, and this could have made for the beginnings of a cute and sexy story.

Instead, Muller’s royal guards show up, and the story soon moves to Chime’s struggles with mastering shape magic and courtly manners. Muller and Chime’s relationship turns rather tepid in the face of the trite and tedious approach to sex that goes with this kind of fantasy. Especially irritating is the inevitable slut-shaming heaped on Chime, when she and Muller eventually do the nasty, pre-marriage. (To Chime’s credit, she at least isn’t terribly ashamed.)

But the real problem lies with the simplistic characterization of good and evil and…simplistic characterization. The side of good is represented by Chime, Muller, Muller’s cousin Jarid, and Chime’s rival, Iris. All are beautiful and good. And pure. Whatever that means. The kingdom is bright and sunny and cheerful. Mages in this land never use their power for anything harmful. (Except to turn the army into super-soldiers who can more easily slaughter the enemy.)

The main antagonist, Anvil the Forged, is an evil mage who uses his powers to harm others. Get it? “Harm others,” so you know he must be evil. He’s in league with a power-hungry king from a cold and dark country. Because shoveling snow would make anyone E.V.I.L.

Oy. Even modern day Disney is cranking out more complex stories and characterization.

So is Charmed Sphere really bad? As in, “Nothing, not even waterboarding, could make me read another book by this author?” (I.e., like Nicholas Spark’s, The Choice.) No. In fact, I’m giving one of Asaro’s SF novels a try soon.

But it’s not good.

Fans of old time, Disney-esque plot lines, with pure-as-snow protagonists and antagonists who are evil–just because, will enjoy this book. Those who like their stories a good deal edgier, should look elsewhere.