But It's a Dry Heat

Blood: The Last Vampire

As a rule, “live-action film inspired by anime” is synonymous with the kind of suck that can give you a full-body hickie.  Blood: The Last Vampire obediently follows that rule.

Saya (Gianna Jun) is a half-human, half-vampire vampire slayer who works for a covert agency known as The Council.  The Council being your run-of-the-mill secret society dedicated to making vampires extinct, a la the Council in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and others. (I can’t really diss the trope, as it’s one I employ in my stories.)  Like Buffy, Saya has a handler, Michael (Liam Cunningham).  But where [Buffy’s]Giles put in a bit of effort trying to school Buffy in the intricacies of supernatural lore, Michael’s primary job is to bring Saya little bottles of blood, wrapped discretely in brown paper bags and placed in her little, dorm-room style fridge.

There are indications that Read the rest of this entry »

Editing, Tweeting and Drawing

I have a whole pile of partially written blog posts sitting on my desktop.

But I’ve spent the past week and change working through the print galley for The Music of Chaos.  In the interest of actually getting something done, I’ve resist the urge to fiddle around on the web.  Well, sort of …. there’s my recent fascination with Twitter.

Ah, Facebook, how quickly I fell out of love.  Actually, I never really was in love; it was just a fling, bought out of boredom and “everybody else is doing it.”

I’m a lurker. Twitter, unlike Facebook, is a lurker’s paradise.  With Facebook, since everyone has their profile locked out of privacy concerns (self included), there’s no skulking around on the edges, watching someone’s interactions to determine if they’re worth knowing.

With Twitter you can follow almost anybody. And it’s full of obnoxiously funny people, the kind of folks who like to slay sacred cows and turn ’em into steaks.

Technically, I’m doing Twitter all wrong.  As a good little author type, I’m supposed to be following people in the publishing industry and sucking up to interacting with them.  Ass kissing. Networking.

Except, I’ve never been much good at networking. Not now; not back in the days of a grownup job. If I thought someone was interesting, I’d pursue friendship. If not, I didn’t bother.  Yeah.  I know.  “Who you know” is how things get done, but I bailed on a 8-to-5 career expressly because I couldn’t shovel the requisite bullshit.

Not about to start now.

In the meantime, here’s a doodle of Talis, my emo, dark elf  in The Music of Chaos and its sequel. I haven’t done much drawing lately and I’m afraid any progress I made in learning to draw people has been lost.  So I’m going to try and get a least one little drawing, even a scribble done, once a week.

Have a great weekend.

Why Leash Laws Are Awesome (Or Why Certain Dog Owners Are Idiots)

After yet another run-in with a member of that special, entitled breed–the dog owner who refuses to leash his dog–I thought I’d post a rant about why leash laws are nifty.

There’s a certain segment of the dog-owning populace who are totally incorrigible.  But this is directed at the small percentage of irresponsible dog owners who maybe, just maybe, haven’t giving their bad behavior much thought.

Rule Number One for Dog Owners: It is rude to allow your dog to approach and interact with a person or their dog without the person’s express permission.

Repeated for emphasis: It is rude to allow your dog to approach and interact with a person or their dog without the person’s express permission.  Period.  Note there are no exceptions for bank holidays and “friendly dogs.”  Unless you are 100-percent sure the other person wants your dog near them, put him on a leash.

And this is where the off-leash crowd pulls out the same Read the rest of this entry »

The Canvas Thief

"Don't be a dork, Benjamin." -Benjamin Black and Maya Stephenson

So I stopped procrastinating and put the contract for The Canvas Thief in the envelope.  It’s now crossing the continent, destination Canada.  Actually, the fact that Harlequin/Carina Press–yes, as in Romance novels–is in Canada is news to me.  Shows how much I know about what has (sort of) become my genre.  (There’s a long blog posting about my weird relationship with romance sitting on my hard drive. I keep fiddling with it, trying to explain my is-shoes with romance tropes in a way that doesn’t alienate every romance reader/writer out there.)

The Canvas Thief (which, I hope will get a new title because I suck at titles) is a hybrid of romance, urban fantasy and suspense. Set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, it’s the story of an artist who accidentally brings two of her graphic novel characters to life.  It’s set in the same “universe” as The Music of Chaos and Breas the vampire is a secondary character.

Since I set out to write romantic fantasy, not a romance, it doesn’t adhere to some romance novel requirements.  Like that the hero and heroine meet in the first chapter, if not first page.  In The Canvas Thief, they meet in Chapter Four.

That could, I guess, change during editing. I’m pretty malleable, editorially, but I’m rather adamant that this story not have the usual forced, first page/first chapter meeting of H/h seen in many romance novels.  It just doesn’t work. Not for this story.

The Tourist

A lovely day in Paris.  (Aren’t the days always lovely in cinematic Paris?  You’d think they never had winter.  Unlike poor Moscow, where it’s always winter.)

Anyway … Elise (Angelina Jolie) is sitting at a table in a sidewalk cafe. She is looking gorgeous in that way that even makes straight women think about changing teams. In a nearby office, Scotland Yard Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) and his team are watching Elise.  A young bike messenger approaches Elise and gives her a message.  Acheson orders his team to apprehend the unfortunate lad as soon as he delivers his message.

Why?  Because they think he may be Alexander Pearce, Elise’s lover.  Alexander is wanted because … Read the rest of this entry »

Son of a Witch

A caravan traveling through an isolated part of the Land of Oz comes across a corpse.  This isn’t the first they’ve seen on their journey, but the others have been “scraped,” the faces of the dead removed with surgical precision.

Except this body isn’t dead. Yet.  Though badly beaten, Liir Thropp, a young man who may or may not be the son of the infamous Elphaba Thropp, Wicked Witch of the West, is still alive.  The caravan delivers him to a convent where he is coaxed back to health by a mute young woman name Candle.

His recovery, seen through the eyes of Candle and the maunts (nuns) of the convent, is juxtaposed with Read the rest of this entry »

Skyline

Because the "best" place to be during an alien invasion is the roof.

Recap, not a review, because it is so eye-rapingly bad.

Starts off okay.  Glowy, alien plasma zooms down into L.A. and starts giving all the beautiful people the worst case of varicose veins ever.

Several hours earlier…
Generic blond, Elaine, and hubby, Jarrod, are on a plane to L.A.  Jarrod is kind of cute. Too bad his acting sucks balls. They’re going to L.A. because Jarrod has a sketchbook full of ugly graffiti that his producer friend really likes.  (Or something … Seriously, I have no idea.)

In L.A., they meet Jarrod’s friend Terry–Hey, it’s Turk, from Scrubs! He’s living large in a penthouse with his blond wife.  Elaine and Jarrod admire the “view,” which must be L.A. for “smog.”  Husband and I both observe that wife is a bitch and “We want her to get eaten first.”

Terry has a party. Elaine confesses to Jarrod that she is pregnant. Jarrod says, stupidly, “Late? For what?” Jerry screws his assistant in the bathroom. Oh, the angst.

My husband grumbles, “This is supposed to Read the rest of this entry »

The Spirit Thief

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron is terribly derivative.

And therein lies its charm.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a massive reading slump, slogging through my pile of library books, finding mild entertainment, but no real joy. But The Spirit Thief, with its unabashed “D&D gaming session put to paper” approach is an awful lot of fun.

The novel’s protagonist, by the author’s own admission, is a D&D character concept. Eli Monpress, the thief protagonist, is cut from the mold of many a TSR novel, as are his companions, Josef, the warrior, and Miranda, the wizard (spiritualist). The only non-archetype is Nico, the demonseed within Read the rest of this entry »

Of Aliens, Site Updates and Paper Books

The couple that’s in pain together …

So my beloved and I awoke this morning with the same kink our neck.  Neither one of us can turn our head to the left.

My husband, hearing that I had the same ailment, said, “I bet we were both kidnapped by aliens.”

“Kidnapped by aliens?” I said. “And all we got were stiff necks?  No sexual stuff?”

“No cheap thrills for us,” he said.

“I got kidnapped by aliens and all I got was a sore neck.”

And an excuse for lack of creativity on this blog.  I did, however, post Chapter Two of The Music of Chaos, and I made some minor changes to the site.  My plan is to post a few “*unpublishable” stories and some cut scenes from The Music of Chaos. I”ll get the new page(s) up sometime next week.

Speaking of The Music of Chaos, it looks a print version may be in the woyks. More details to come.

*Unpublishable meaning that they were fun to write, are fun to read, but don’t have much in the way of theme or anything that takes them beyond a backstory exercise.

Plastic Prince Marries Plastic Bride

That's right, dahl-ing, smile. But not too much. There; perfect.

The royal wedding and all things regarding the nuptials are a perfect substitute for Ambien.

Anyone who knows me, or who’s sniffed around this blog, shouldn’t be surprise by my utter disinterest in a multimillion dollar, faux, fairy tale wedding.

Yup. Faux.  As in “fake, fake …  fake, fake.” (Elaine Benes voice.)

But every girl dreams of meeting a Read the rest of this entry »