I've just been told that there's a lesbian couple who just had twin girls. No, I don't know these women, but I've been told that they've named their girls Brett and Allie.

This is just SOOO nifty!

Oh, hold on. I'm a big, bad butch.

Yeah, this is pretty cool.

I've been watching a lot of Agatha Christie lately, as previously mentioned, so it was inevitable that I'd eventually land on Tommy and Tuppence. Well, I probably could've skipped them if I wasn't watching ALL the Christie Netflix has, or if I was skipping some parts of her oeuvre, but I didn't and so we just watched some Partners in Crime and it made me think about my Shawn Donnelly, the lead character of It's All Smoke and Mirrors and some upcoming books.

With my original Shawn thoughts... or, I should say, my Shawn thoughts of a couple of years ago, I was thinking that death and murder didn't always have to be involved. After all, there are all sorts of other mysteries out there, as I keep saying here. In the first Tommy and Tuppence mystery we watched, someone was first missing, perhaps dead, then was being held against her will, and then, finally, found to be being held by her request.

So no death or murder, just an investigation for the fun of sleuthing. Although there was a murder at the end of the second Tommy and Tuppence episode we watched, the mystery again was concerned mostly with figuring something out—basic sleuthing once again.

This is, of course, interesting to me just because it's something I'm playing with for future mysteries and other stories.

BTW: the production values of the pieces on this DVD aren’t as high as the Jane Marple’s we’ve been watching. These were filmed for TV in 1980, so aren’t terribly refined, but they are cute if only for Tuppence’s hats. (T&T are 1920s–based mysteries).

Thinking about the times when stories were written and when they take place, I also have to mention the Marple we watched last night. It took a bit to realize what wasn’t quite right about it—it was updated. It was set in the present which, at the time it was filmed, was like 1980, whereas most Marples I’ve seen have taken place 1930s–1950s, I’d guess, if I were to guess at a very broad range. I think some of them have little flashbacks to WWII, so that would mean those episodes likely took place in the late 1940s maybe.

Ze, any input on Marple’s dates?

We were watching Dr. G Medical Examiner on Discovery Health and the cause of death was blood clots. The clots in this instance formed in the pelvic area.

There was an overall, off-camera narrator, and it all kept cutting over to Dr. G, the medical examiner of the title, as well as some other folks, including this other doctor who adds some notes on things. When Dr. G finally figured out the cause of death, blood clots, she talked about them and then this other doctor added some notes, mostly about how they were larger than clots that formed in the calves because these formed in the pelvis. This other doctor actually notes that these larger clots are, “Much more fatal,” than ones that form in the calves. Her words. Her exact words.

Stacia jumped in, when I pointed out that fatal, in the first place, sounds bad enough. Apparently Stacia once edited a book wherein there was a description of the heroine’s second fatal error and Stacia had to explain to the author that that really didn't work.

Apparently, a clot that big in the lungs, which has this really long medically name, is, to quote Dr. G, "Incompatible with human life." That's apparently one of her favorite phrases.

I shall now commit suicide. But don’t worry, it will be the least fatal type of such that I shall be participating in. I just cannot deal with multiple fatal errors and some things being more fatal with other. {headdesk}

Does anyone have any favorite redundancies you want to share? Any shrugging shoulders, nodding heads or blinking eyes out there? Anything better? Sometimes truth really is funnier than fiction.

Stacia and I have been watching True Blood, an HBO show based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse mystery series. We’re really enjoying it, and watching that and thinking about my Murder, She Wrote post and my mystery theory. It makes me think about that because of how, in the first season of True Blood, there was a season-long mystery about the serial killer who’d been going after women who had connections with vampires, who were either sleeping with vamps or just being really nice to vamps.

Anyway, they showed who the killer was in the last few minutes of the second-to-last episode of season one. And I do mean showed.  One police department faxed a picture to another police department and we, the viewers, saw the fax arrive (so we got a sidelong view of it then), and then they gave us a really clear view of it when they focused on it at the end of the episode (they really pack the ends of each episode—every night we watch I’m left saying, “Can we have another please?” They open a big surprise, or just set the scene for a great opening to the next episode so that you have to tune in again.)

In my Murder, She Wrote blog I mentioned that this guy who was directing a mystery play was upset that the show’s leading lady, Jessica Fletcher, figured out who the murderer in the play was before the big denouement, and I gave several reasons why this could’ve been a good thing.

In the True Blood instance, it’s obvious that they reveal the killer a little before the end of the season in order to build suspense for the final ep. Everytime anyone gets left alone with the murderer, the audience (well, the entire audience except for those who were in the kitchen getting a bowl of ice cream, or in the bathroom doing bathroom things) is like, “Oh noes! He shall be killing that person soon! Ahhh!” And the audience will also wonder when the rest of the people in the show will finally figure out who the bad guy is.

Can anyone add more reasons why one might want to have the big reveal a little bit before the end—before the big finale, that is, not just a little bit before the actual end of the book, since so many books have a cleanup chapter or two at the end to tie up this mystery and possibly set up for the next?

Can anyone give further examples of where this has been done well? And when this has been done poorly?

Can a movie be better than a book?

Yes, it’s an ancient query—can a movie ever do a book justice? Can a movie based on a book be equally entertaining as the book? Can such a movie be even better than the book it’s based on?

Arguing that point isn’t the purpose of this entry, though. So I won’t hit on it too much. This entry, though, might be a little piece that one might add to an argument about books versus movies based on them.

I’ve seen some evidence of late that a number of people are up in arms about the BBC series “Agatha Christie’s Marple,” which is in its fourth or fifth season on BBC. Each episode of the series is like a 90-minute movie with each installment titled after, and based on, an Agatha Christie Jane Marple mystery.

Well, almost all are based on a Marple mystery. I think one might not be.

Through the years, there have been a lot of Christie adaptations, with more and more being done and redone since her deatd. I’d be surprised if many of her books haven’t been made into movies, actually. “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” a series similar to Agatha Christie’s Marple, but based on her Poirot books, has been running on BBC for more than 20 years, with more than 60 installments being made.

Anyway, I think the new Marple reinterpretations are really great. Usually movies can’t do books justice, but these do AND don’t. No, they’re not true to the original books. These are a lot queerer, to begin with. Pretty much, every one of these that I’ve seen so far has had a gay presence, with one or more gay characters in each one. We even watched a Hercule Poirot movie, from the Poirot series, and that, too, had a very gay presence to it.

The 1980’s Marple series, which starred Joan Hickson, were very true to the books, IMHO. Hickson’s Marple was a bit shrewish to me. She was very dry, particular, and every bit the spinster aunt you never wanted to visit as a child.

The new Marple, well, the first of the new Marples, Geraldine McEwan, was absolutely brilliant. McEwan played Marple as a sweet, clever and more than slightly mischievous, if somewhat nosy, maiden aunt one would’ve loved visiting as a child.

She neatly brings others in on her investigations, so no one looks bad, even as she takes lead on the case. Where police detectives and constables grudgingly put up with Hickson’s Marple, they actually enjoy working with McEwan’s Marple, sometimes starting out rather grudgingly, but eventually giving in—sometimes faster than others.

(I have to say, I hate that there’s a new Marple. I don’t believe she can hold a candle to McEwan, but I guess I’ll find out sooner or later.) I’ve read things that make me believe Christie intentionally made her Hercule Poirot as a rather unlikable character. I do wonder if she did some of that with Marple, too? Maybe one of my Brit readers can clarify it for me? (I’m guessing Ze might know about it all.)

The old Marple aimed to be true to the books. These new ones aim to please. They don’t allow the book to restrict them, but use the talents of the writers, directors and actors to the best of their abilities, working together to really make a good movie that people will enjoy.

I think in some ways, this is more true to a book than those movies, like the earlier Marple, that stick right with the book. After all, the novelist writes to the form they’re in: The novel. A movie or TV show isn’t a novel, so they usually can’t give the audience the inner thoughts of the characters, but they can use the camera to focus the audience’s eyes, to give visual clues as to what’s happened and what’s going to happen. Novels don’t have the budgetary constraints movies have, nor do they have the visual effect limitations movies have. This sort of list can go one and on, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. The important thing is to make use of the strengths of the medium one is in, and I think the new Marples made use of such very effectively. I know I’ve enjoyed the heck out of them (even when I just finished watching another version of the book soon before watching the latest interpretation).

Any thoughts? I know I sometimes give people notes in their stories about some things that are different in the mediums. One of my biggest notes that fall in this arena are the ones about using phrases like the tall blonde, the short brunette, and the heavyweight woman instead of a character’s name. There are TONS of reasons one should never do this (say the tall woman instead of Brett), including that readers don’t have the visual component TV and movies have that make it a lot easier to keep up with visual ID tags about height and hair color. Can anyone think of other differences? Other pros and cons?

Wow. My numbers on BigBadButch.com went up a bit last week—to 1,397 pageloads and 484 unique visitors. In one week. Wow. I guess I should start writing some of the really interesting blog posts that I've been jotting down notes for. Well, that AND write up some more hot stories for the Royal Academy of Bards, 'cause I'm thinking that traffic is coming from there.

I'm planning on putting up the short story, "Double Fantasy," there soon. It's a story that's only been published once, in a Naiad anthology years ago. It's a story of what happens when my butch serial mystery character Brett Higgins meets Barbara Johnson's femme serial mystery character Colleen Fitzgerald on an elevator and the elevator gets stuck.

I just need to key it in, since neither of us has the story electronically. Of course, if anyone has the anthology it appeared in—The Very Thought of You—and feels like keying it in and sending me the file, I wouldn't be at all upset.

I've noticed a lot of attention being given to fairy tales of late. As in, I've seen various calls for submission for queer fairy tale crossovers. What should they be called? Queer-based fairy tales? Fairy tale–based queer stories?

Anyway, I wanted to remind everyone that I've already put my feet into that puddle, hitting all sorts of fairy tales in my "A Butch in Fairy Tale Land," the novella I wrote for the Lambda Literary–award finalist, Once Upon a Dyke: New Exploits of Fairy Tale Lesbians. I hit so many tales, in fact, I'm almost tempted to run a drawing of some sort , offering a T-shirt to a person randomly selected from everyone who correctly identifies all the stories referenced in the novella. I won't, though, since I think I pointed them all out on my Web site (the Behind-the-Book portion of the Once Upon a Dyke page at http://www.bigbadbutch.com/OnceUponaDyke.html).

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, in Once Upon a Dyke, Karin Kallmaker, Barbara Johnson, Julia Watts and myself each picked a fairy tale to rewrite with a lesbian sensibility. Karin, Julia and Barbara each selected a single tale from all of those told by Disney. This means that they went for Cinderella, the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, instead of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel or the Boy Who Knew No Fear. I’d actually been reading the complete Grimm brothers and the collected works of Hans Christian Anderson, trying to find the tale I would recreate (after trying to find a vampirey type tale) when I realized that, if I went with any lesser or relatively unknown fairy tales, folks might not understand that I really was retelling a fairy tale. They might think I was making my own up or doing something else that didn’t really fit into the book, as far as they were concerned.

So I wrote a few beginnings and let my coauthors determine which tale I should finish. They chose A Butch in Fairy Tale Land, which retells a handful of stories while, as one reviewer argued, creating my own, new fairy tale character, The Butch. (The book really got quite a few really good reviews—so many that I think I can refer to the book as "critically acclaimed.")

This book was the second book in Bella’s new (at the  time) imprint, Bella After Dark (BAD) and, as such, it's pretty damn hot. When Karin, Barbara, Julia and I decided to work on this project... well, actually, it started with me asking Karin if she wanted to work on a book comprising four novellas on the same topic by four different authors. I told her that if she wanted to work on it, she could pick the theme. She agreed, and we both immediately decided to ask Julia Watts to join in. Barbara later joined us, asking if she could work on it after she heard about it. Julia and Karin decided we'd do fairy tales, but Julia said she only had one fairy tale in her. I'd thought the book would be a standalone, but it suddenly became a series. We decided on the sorts of things we'd do, the way the titles would sound, that we'd start with fairy tales, and what the first title would be. It was then that I insisted that we needed some sort of unifying theme for the titles, like maybe a colon at the end of the title with something after it. I can't remember what all happened with all of that, except that we decided on New Exploits of, but I can assure one and all that I was the colon woman.

If you’d like to find out more about the book, or about any of the other New Exploits books, you can check it out on my Web site at http://www.bigbadbutch.com/OnceUponaDyke.html.

 

 

 

evergladesqueen: I tried to reply to your message, but you made it impossible for me to do so. If you hit me with an email address or some other way of sending you the message I wrote, I'll send it on. I have some recommendations for you, including starting with a different book, and pointing you to my Web site for sample chapters and other materials (www.BigBadButch.com).

Cheers,
Reese

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching more TV lately than ever before in my life. It’s nice to just sit and turn your brain off when you’re not feeling well, and I’ve been feeling really awful lately.

Anyway, I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’ve decided to check out Murder, She Wrote (“Murder most foul!” Mei-Mei intones ominously) In the Murder She Wrote pilot there was something that didn’t make sense. The director of a play got all upset when Jessica Fletcher was able to ID the murderer in the play after watching just the first act.

It doesn’t make sense that he was upset because, although it is nifty to surprise folks and keep your secrets until the very end, having someone (just one, perhaps someone exceptionally keen) figure it out. Yes, after just the first act is maybe a bit early, enough so to perhaps think that it’s a bit too easy, but by having someone work it out you’re able to know that you’ve written fairly—that you’ve given the audience enough clues to figure things out, so it has nothing to do with the mysterious past of the stranger who says he’s from Kentucky (although no one mentions that he lived next door to the victim during all of their teen years until the denouement).

I think Stacia, Jane Fletcher and I discussed this sort of thing when Stacia and I stayed with Jane the first time we went to England—that you should give your readers enough clues so they can figure out the mystery if they’re paying attention, at least in those types of mysteries wherein the mystery is the point of the book, the classical mysteries, including cozies. If the book is all about the characters, the journey, the thriller, not so much. Also not so much any type of mystery that has mystery elements, such as romances, wherein the mystery usually is who’s gonna hook up with whom; the thriller, wherein, for instance, everyone is trying to figure out what the bad guys want, what they’ll do for it, and how to stop them—they’re all mysteries since they are focus on trying to figure out something; even Harry Potter usually comprises several mysteries—like about who the evil person who’s planning on doing something… well, evil… and about what, exactly, the evil villain is trying to do and will the girl he chooses (which girl will he choose?) agree to go to the dance with him?

Back to Murder, She Wrote. The pilot had the play director yell for the playwright when Jessica Fletcher, the lead of the show, told him who the murderer was. I guess it was written to lay the foundation for Jessica’s character, but I do think they might have done it in a more sensible way, because the scene they wrote didn’t make sense to me. I mean, on top of everything else, for all the director knew, the playwright might have written the play with the intention that the person (or people) with the keenest intellect and greatest powers of observation would suss it out before the big reveal at the end. Oh well.

Can anyone add in other types of mysteries in non-mystery books? Any other reasons it would be good for the audience of the play to figure out the murderer before they’re told it?

BTW: I know I’ve known the show existed for a long time, but I don’t recall ever watching an episode of it. Maybe a few minutes of it? I was surprised to see that it ran for 12 years. How did I miss it for that long? Then I realized that I was working 40 hours a week and going to high school full time when it started. I was probably at McDonald’s when it was on. Yup, every episode, at McDonald’s. You can miss a lot while you’re at McDonald’s.

For those of you who are new to reading my blog, just ignore the panda comments. It’s a thing.

Stacia recently walked me through hooking my LiveJournal up to my Facebook account so that any posts I put up here go on over there, too. Or that's what's supposed to happen. We only did it recently, so I'm not positive if it's working. This post is my plan to see if it does! (even though I posted yesterday, I just didn't check yesterday's post to see if it worked.)

Oh, and the reason for this is because I've been having trouble catching up -- and staying caught up -- with both systems. Facebook just has WAAAYYY too much action going on for me, especially if I'm trying to write a few really good posts here each week. I joined Facebook and MySpace to help with my marketing, which is intended to help my book sales. Of course, if all these systems keep me so busy I can't write my next book, then that's a bit of a catch-22, since I need to write books if I want to market them and sell more of them.

Obviously, lots of folks have such problems these days. I know I've read quite a few articles lately on how things like texting and Facebooking are really causing problems for folks, especially of the getting-other-things-done nature.

Lately, my spare time (there's not a lot in my life between day job and health), has gone to writing the next, and final, Brett (this isn't really spare time since the book is due very, very soon) and designing some new marketing materials, including some very nice postcards and bookmark things. As soon as the new materials come in, I'll have to figure out some ways to start getting them out there. If anyone's friends with the owners of an LGBT bookstore or other place that might want some postcards or bookmarks to put out, please hook me up with them! I'm all for mailing these things to any LGBT bookstores that might want them!

One of my next projects is to read more Dreamweaver books so I can put up a Web site for my regular identity-- see if I can drum up a bit of freelance editing or designing work. I also want to have something on my Web site so I can start collecting names and e-mail addresses of folks who want to know when books are coming out and that sort of thing.

Cheers all!
Reese

I think I mentioned that a coworker had her car broken into recently. She's always worked rather late hours (like 12-8 pm), but is now thinking about doing more of a 9-5 so as to be safer.

Anyway, that all made me remember that my pepper spray is past its expiration date, so I went online and found a place to buy pepper spray (and to doublecheck the laws here where I live now), and found a place with all of the above, AND a nice little scenario wherein the Web site owner explains how someone might protect themselves in a parking lot.

If you go here: http://www.misdefenseproducts.com/jam/uid/martian423_1 and go down the left-hand side to "The Purse Self Defense Kit," you can see it all. Just please use the main link I give up there if you're gonna buy anything. ;-)

Wow. This morning I decided to take a quick look at some of the stats I have from my free Web site counter thingie. I only put it into my site in late February, and only on a few pages at that point. I think I now have it on all my pages, and some of the things I'm finding are really quite fascinating (especially since I'm a bit of a stats geek).

For instance, people from at least 33 different countries have visited me. That's quite humbling.

I thought the list of things folks were searching for when they found my site was rather interesting. I was very happy to see lots of things that I want coming to me -- like about lesbian erotica, supernatural erotica and butch/femme. Also, there were fewer variations on my name than I thought I'd get, and quite a few folks looking for me by the titles of my books.

Anyway, here are some things people were searching for when they found me (most people were searching for me, but some of these are rather funny, some rather disturbing):

Beautiful Dyke Lesbians with Young Girls

wettest spot in the world

underwear+bra+butch lesbian

gang lasbians

big bad lesbains

dark erotic stories

divided we fall states poster

make me wet test girls hot lesbians

first lesbian experience questionnaire

i want a lesbian butch to fuck me

lesbian princess fairy tales

do dyke lesbians get pregnant

"""erotic stories"" vampire lesbian"

transgender hips are aching

how to write a paragraph about the findings of a questionnaire

wettest parts of the world mexico

ifing und thund

Divided We Fall sex scene

"""how to seduce an obnoxious dyke"""

www.wettest lesbians

erotica story sample

vampire stories online erotic lesbian

erotic lesbian scene

tall butch lesbians

tall lesbians

miss-tiffany feet

worlds wettest girls

lesbians erotic slow dance together stories

lesbian scene with fairy

hand stuck vase

lesbian princess fairy

magical abilities of lesbians and gays

wettest lakes of the world

girl bus footsie hand leg

why do butch like femme

 

 

Marketing. Marketing to get readers to check out one's books, one's Web site, to get readers to take some sort of positive action—preferably of buying a book or dozen from one, but even to go to a Web site to find out more (and I think my Web site does deliver in letting readers see what they're buying before they buy). I wonder how y'all found out about lesbian books, what helped you find your favourite authors, what you like about them, how you got here (to my LiveJournal), if you’ve read any of my books and why or why not, what would help encourage you to read more of my stuff, or to try out a new writer (or try me out, if you haven’t read me yet), and anything else along that line that you’d like to share would be most appreciated.

Marketing is rather new to some of us old-time writers.

I remember when I signed my first Naiad contracts. Back then, about all the marketing us writers were expected to do was to let Naiad know when we were traveling somewhere, so they’d set up readings or such for us there. Once, when there wasn’t enough time to setup a book reading, Barbara Grier told me to stop by a women’s bookstore in Eugene, Oregon, near where I was working in Corvallis, Oregon. Barbara told me to charm the owner, Idgie, into changing her mind about me and Brett because Idgie didn’t really think too much of us. Apparently, I succeeded in my venture, or that’s what Barbara told me later, and I really don’t think Barbara would say something like that if it wasn’t true.

Of course, here I am, taking it for granted that you all know who Barbara Grier and Donna McBride are—if you do, please feel free to share any favorite stories about them. For those who don’t know, they’re the founders of Naiad Press, which, when it closed its doors in the late 90s/early 00s, was the world’s oldest and largest lesbian press. Barbara and Donna went where no one had gone before and created something that changed the lives of many lesbians. I’ll write more on them later. They are truly amazing women.

Anyway, that’s all changed now—Barbara sometimes said that an author’s fifth book was a turning point in her career and she’d start selling a lot more copies after that, because people would really know her name by then—but I think that’s changed, in part, because of the Internet, fanfic, and how there are a lot more options for consumers and I just might put up a survey about that, and other related things.

Anyway, the entire way things work in this arena have changed mightily and we writers have to market ourselves a lot more these days. With this in mind, I’ve been designing some marketing materials of late. On the bright side, I’m pretty well equipped to do it myself, so all I have to do is pay for printing, since I can do all the designing myself. That makes things a little more affordable for me.

And I seem to have this bad habit of not putting entries up here regularly. Instead I just post monster entries occasionally. I guess I should try to stop doing that.

For now, I'll just put the rest behind a cut.

( Read more... )
I guess I should just worry if I start using words like newfangled.

I hope y’all have tomorrow off from work and have a fabulous time!
Reese

I’ve watched some things of late that made me happy that I know some British. Yeah, sure, you say, it’s all the same. British, English, what’s the difference?

In one show Kate Winslet referred to her fanny. That one isn’t too dreadful. For Americans the fanny is the butt, whereas in Britain you really oughtn’t call a small bag that ties around your waist to rest on your butt a fanny pack since that’s almost like giving someone the Victory V with your knuckles facing out: Not something you really do. (In Britain only women have fannies. They’re pretty much the front side of one’s arse.)

The other linguistic thing was the detective who said to another detective, “Go and knock him up.” I don’t know if he knocked her up, and its variations are still used in the U.S. too much these days, but while it means getting someone pregnant here, over there it’s waking someone up.

I did a major rewrite of the first Shawn years ago when I was dating an Irish woman. It was, in fact, because of her that I made Shawn so very Irish. (I’d already given her the name Shawn Donnelly and, when I yelled over, Ethel confirmed that it was a very Irish name, so I went with it, because it felt right and seemed like the very thing the book needed to be more than simply good.) Anyway, I was lucky during the rewrite because Ethel was there, using all these Irish phrases. Then her folks came for a visit and I was sitting pretty. (They live in County Offaly. Ethel was in the States at university.)

When I worked on Shawn for Bella, I no longer had Ethel to help me. I got some Irish phrase lists online, but you just can’t trust the Internet for some things and I decided this was one of them—they were all so overwhelmingly centered on sex and booze. I was willing to bet that a lot of the words came in because someone overheard one person use one word or phrase once and decided, from that single usage, that it was something all Irish people used all the time.

Anyway, that led me to search for a real Irishwoman to help me out. Sometimes you have to pull in real people to get things right. After all, research isn’t just for places, props and plots. Easiest isn’t always best and the extra care and detail can really make a project sparkle like a flawless diamond. Just hope it isn’t a cursed diamond that shines on your project.

It's amazing that we all manage to communicate at all—what with all the different languages with all their regional dialects. Do you ever worry that you'll wake up one morning and won't be able to understand a word anyone else says and all the headlines, magazines, and books, stories, everything—it'll all be off, different! Allj


Oh, and the backward V for Victory (backward peace sign) pretty much means f**k off. I accidentally gave someone that gesture. I just thought I was asking for two tickets to the Tower of London. Ooops.

It looks like FOX is renewing Dollhouse! YAY!!!!
www.thrfeed.com/2009/05/dollhouse-second-season.html

Oh, and for anyone who has not yet gotten your own copy of Call of the Dark: Erotic Lesbian Tales of the Supernatural, it's on sale right now for just $6.95! Find it here: www.bellabooks.com/mm5/merchant.mvc

I need to keep paper and a nice pen near where I sleep.

I'd guess at least some folks reading this can figure out why I say this, and that is that I need to be able to write down any ideas that come to me in the middle of the night. Throughout my life I've done several different variations on this, including keeping a tape recorder near my bed and keeping a notebook and pen by my bed. Oftentimes I tell myself that I'll remember whatever idea I had, but of course I never can. I actually discussed this with my boss last week—and we both admitted that we've lost some truly awesome ideas because we didn't write them down. Unfortunately, of course, if you turn on the light to write it down, you wake yourself up even more. And then if you have several ideas in a row—so you sit up, turn on the light, write down your idea (or find paper and pen, then write down the idea), turn off the light and lie back down, close your eyes... get another idea, sit up, turn on the light... repeat until insane. Perhaps insane from sleep deprivation.

Anyway, of late one of my problems is that I'll have the paper but then my writing utensil choices are Sharpies and pens that I just don't like. I have a bunch of wonderful pens around here, so there's really no reason for me to have to get up to look for a pen I want to write with. And don't doubt the importance of a nice writing utensil, it makes ALL the difference. Especially as one gets older and has used really nice pens and pencils.

I also try to keep a little notebook in my car for writing down notes there. I've had a few cassette recorders die because they kinda melted in the sun, and/or the batteries got a little acidy, but I have, also, taken many hours of notes on recorders. Even if I don't ever listen to them (I don't like the sound of my voice), just saying things helps get it stuck in my brain. At least long enough to be able to write it down at my next stop. I need to get a digital voice recorder sometime soon, since I think that might get me around some of the cassette tape recorder in my car issues. And it is all entirely based on not wanting to lose the ideas that come to me while I'm driving. Of course, now I'm listening to lectures in the car, but I do sometimes stop listening to the lecture and think about problems with stuff I'm writing, but I still need to ensure I can track the ideas that come to me in the car.

Back to the apartment. A while ago I bought a couple of rather large pen cups—one on the coffee table, one on the desk. They're big enough that the really butch scissors don't tip them over. Anyway, I have other pen cups deployed around the apartment as well. And I weeded a lot of pens out when I deployed these, but I should do some more weeding because some of the pens have just plain annoyed me because I just don't like them.

I also have to decide just which notebook to use for bedside writing and see if what I have in the car is all I need for there.

Anyway, over the past few years I've worked at getting better about keeping track of ideas, working with them, and all of that—and there's been some nice notebooks, the white board, the cork board and all of that. And now you've seen some more of this sort of thing. (Of course I had to give Stacia domain over one small half white/half cork board so that she can keep track of all the books she's working on while she's here. I think I've made a monster! ;-)

When I worked at Creative Solutions I used to have a different pile for each project I was working on. Thank goodness I had a fairly large desk. Well, actually I had like three. I also kept track of projects on a legal-sized pad of paper. I listed things on that, and had some additional places where I kept piles of project stuff. The piles on the desk were the hot topics. Projects from the kinda hidden places moved to be piles when space opened up. Tripping over things really helps make sure you remember everything that's happening.

For a while, while I lived here, I had piles on my dining room table—for things I was writing, editing, typesetting, designing... Now things are a bit simpler, so I can focus more on keeping track of my writing ideas and try to make the most of them.

Plus, I just like office supplies and nice notebooks and journals and pens. That's just me.

 I’ve been watching some old DVDs of late while writing. I tend to do so—watch the same DVDs over and over again as I write. I think I do this because my mother used to blare her talk radio throughout the house when I was growing up. When I was studying in my room in the basement I had to turn my tunage up really loud so it would drown out her crap. Anyway… as I was writing recently, I was marathoning Veronica Mars, some of which was—for whatever reason—bringing back some weird memories. Like going to the military ball. (I think Stacia will beat me upside the head with one of my swords if I ever again mention how much I hated women’s class A uniforms AND how unfair they were. Guys had all sorts of pockets whereas I was lucky to find a place to stow my Chapstick—and that was including pants or skirt, shirt and jacket. All that clothing and only a change pocket to call its own. Also, apparently women in the military didn’t have shoulders. Someone assigned me to a size 8 uniform—entirely size 8. A day or two before the ball I went into the supply room, put on the uniform and showed the major who was in charge. He asked for the name of the person who did that to me. I ended up with size 8 trousers and skirt, size 12 shirts, size 14 blazer and size 16 trench coat.)


And the cult episode of Veronica reminded me more than a little of my days hanging around with an anarchist collective. Sometimes anarchist theatre collective. What really got me was when they housed something kinda like an anarchist conference, which is a rather large oxymoron if you ask me.

Meanwhile, Brett’s got a little bit of a head problem going on…

This is one of my really randommey posts, and the rest of it's going to go all over... I'll try really hard to get on with talking about writing sometime soon. I am writing quite a bit lately, so that might explain why my brains in such a random mode.

( Read more... )

I just watched the movie That Darn Cat for the first time in decades and it really reminded me of how much of a crush I had on Hayley Mills when I was a wee one.

I got the series Band of Brothers a few months ago and have taken to falling asleep with it playing. Yeah, weird, I know, but that's me. Anyway, there's this one bit where Easy Company (the series is about an U.S. army paratroop company (Easy Company) during WWII) moves into this area outside a town in some European country (might be Holland, I can't remember) and it's quite clear that the Germans, who currently occupy the town, have been using artillery to blast the crap out of the woods. Anyway, they've got some of these soldiers noting that the Germans have them targeted. They can tell this because the trees are so shattered and splintered. Someone asks if they shouldn't fall back a bit and setup camp somewhere a little safer. Another soldier says that their job is to hold the line right there, and so they'll hold the line right there.

I just can't imagine it, I just really can't. I mean, setting up somewhere that very dangerous? And staying? Unbelievable. I understand the whys and all of that, but it still seems kinda insane to stay right there when the Germans ain't walking out or anything, you're just sitting there while they bomb you and this goes on for days or weeks and they just keep picking you off and blowing guys up, blowing off their legs and feet and arms...

It also really made me understanding the yelling of “Incoming!” for the first time in my life. I mean almost everyone uses it at some point—either to actually warn someone about something or as some sort of joke—but this really demonstrated the reality of how it got started.

Meanwhile, today at the hospital I asked one of the nurses what one would see if you lopped someone’s head off and looked inside the neck—y’know, if you turned the head upside down and looked into the neck toward the head. She was quite helpful and my asking it had absolutely no impact on her.

Finally, a coworker’s car was broken into recently, in the lot at work sometime between about 7 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. When she emailed our department about it, to let us know she wasn’t coming in that day and all that, we all, obviously, offered our condolences about the damage and cost and aggravation, and our relief that she escaped unscathed physically. I later sent her some notes, including one that’d been sent out ages ago saying that if anyone was ever working late and needed an escort to their car, they could call up the security folks who patrol our office park; and another suggesting she get in touch with the management of the office park in case they had cameras on the premises. I don’t know if she’d thought of that herself, getting in touch with them, but I know she had a meeting with them today.

Furthermore, she’d wondered why anyone had come all the way out there to our building in the pouring rain we had AND she noted the inside of her car smelled a bit. I pointed out that it could’ve been someone who’d been walking outside nearby and broke in for shelter. She’d thought that was a good thought. I also pointed out that if she was suspicious of security, their fingerprints were likely on file and if she hadn’t handled the knife from her trunk, which had likely been used during the crime, very much, they might be able to get prints off it and compare them to the security folks or… well, if the police were involved they might run the prints further, too.

During my drive home it occurred to me that I should ask her what all she’d been thinking before I added my thoughts because it might give me insight into what normal people do at such times. Such information might be useful to a crime writer, y’know?

What about y’all? What steps would you take in a similar situation?

David Ogden Stiers, from MASH fame (he's also been on the Dead Zone and other things), has finally come out!

Read about it here:http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0773478/