Year: 2014

Before the Dark Knight: Gotham

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In all the movies, in all the cartoons, in all the comics, never has anyone done as perfect of job of capturing why Batman exists. Batman exists because Gotham exists, and Gotham is the Heart of Darkness. The city depicted in this TV show is so corrupt, so morally bankrupt, so beyond redemption, that the creators of this show are answering a question I never even realized I was asking: why would Batman put on the cowl in the first place? What made him who he becomes?

Monsanto Wants Your Soul (book reviews)

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Or, reviews of two dystopian novels: Karen Faris’s Grumbles the Novel, Part I: Take a Pill and Chuck Wendig’s Under the Empyrean Sky. (Note: I purchased both books, and was not asked to review them.) So a few weeks ago my business required me to do a fair bit of airplane travel. In a perfect world, that would mean five or six hours of solid writing, but coach airplane chairs are so small it’s almost impossible to do any real typing without smashing my elbow into the poor bastard sitting next to me. So instead I read a couple of books. In hindsight, I was amused to discover that I had unwittingly chosen books of a THEME, that theme being: GMOs are going to eat you. In both cases, literally. The first book I picked up was part 1 of Karen Faris’s Grumbles series. Now, I’m going to start with what I hated about this book: it’s not a complete novel, but ends just the story is starting to ramp up. Now, trilogies can be tricky …

Thoughts on Motivation

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I thought we might talk a little about motivation. You know that thing that actors are always asking? “What’s my motivation?” That. I was recently watching a movie (it will remain nameless but it rhymes with Gorilla) where the primary motivation for the majority of characters was “what will advance the plot to the next action scene?” The characters had no other plausible motivation. They made decisions that seemed to be based solely on what the director needed, not what was internally consistent for their own histories and personalities. Self-interest wasn’t invited to the party: they performed actions which made zero sense from their own personal narratives but which did lead to awesome giant monster scenes. Needless to say, I wasn’t very impressed. Actually, I was flabberghasted. Why am I talking about this as a writer? Because this happens with books too. Let’s discuss. There is a meta-level motivation for anything that happens in a book, and it’s usually (although not always) ‘to advance the story.’ Why did the villain kill the hero’s brother? (So …

Leaving Carcosa: Post-Mortem on True Detective

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This is coming in a bit late for those who have already finished watching the first series of True Detective (I wrote this the night after the season finale, but real life interfered with the posting,) but I figure the show will have a long tail as people watch it later, so here we are. So first, some background: I only started watching True Detective because I heard about the King in Yellow connection. For those unaware, the King in Yellow is the name of a collection of short stories written by Robert Chambers, published in 1895. He borrowed the city of Carcosa from writer Ambrose Bierce, but otherwise introduced the idea of the mysterious titular entity, a occult ‘Yellow Sign’ and a play that would drive its viewers insane. Only four stories in the collection directly concern the King in Yellow, but that was enough. Chamber’s work was lovingly appropriated by H.P. Lovecraft and merged with the greater Lovecraft milieu, becoming part of a rich body of horror mythology, the King in Yellow accepted …

Kumiho

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Kumiho was a short story I wrote about 10 years back, and semi-autobiographical. I chanced upon it when looking through some old files and decided to share it. _______________ Since my boyfriend lost his car last summer, I’ve been taking the bus a lot. You meet a weird lot riding the bus, especially in Los Angeles, where public transportation is the option of last resort. There are the people who hop on and immediately open up the cases of stolen watches, the homeless who haven’t bathed in weeks if not months and sometimes, the people like me who are just enduring the commute to work. These are generic descriptions, but there are some very specific characters I’ve encountered: one fellow who carries a white cane and pretends to be blinds so he can ride for free; an old sweet-looking grandmotherly woman who always wears the same tweed suit with lace gloves and is so terrified that there won’t be any room for her on the bus she always cuts in front of the line, even …

SFWA blows up…again.

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For the last year, pretty much coinciding with my determination to make this writing thing really happen, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has been embroiled with multiple strings of ugly controversies involving sexism, racism and the unfortunate growing pains of a changing marketplace and industry. Full disclosure: currently, I can’t join SFWA. I am an outsider, and I’ve never been a member of the organization. That does not mean, however, that I don’t look to the organization, and that I don’t expect them to represent my interests. I do. I find Writers Beware to be an invaluable resource, and I respect and admire the effort that SFWA has made to protect writers from exploitation. They do a whole lot for the community. I want them to succeed, flourish, and damn it, I want to be a proud members some day. But just like knowing that your uncle Joe is a great guy who didn’t flinch at co-signing your first car loan doesn’t mean you have to excuse the fact he still calls …

Reviews: Books on Writing

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Over the holidays and into the new year, I’ve been reading two books on the craft of writing itself: Dwight Swain’s Techniques for the Selling Writer and Stephen King’s On Writing. Dwight Swain’s book is pretty old, a bit hard to find, and honestly I’d never heard of it before I started to wonder why YWriter (my program of choice of late for book writing) had some of the special features it does for action and reaction scenes and the like. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of Dwight Swain’s book at first: it’s pretty clearly meant for pulp writing and some of the advice seems better suited to short stories than novels. While Swain himself is quick to point out he is simply describing tools which may be used or discarded at will, some of his most fervent advocates take his advice nearly to the point of religious gospel. Despite this, it’s a terrifically meaty book, filled with some of the best advice I’ve ever seen on pacing and creating tension. One could …

Make Believe

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The above link goes to a Ted talk a friend sent to me earlier. I had a very strong, visceral response to it, as did several other women who saw it. Let’s just say it’s a high-emotional impact piece, particularly if you’ve ever been powerless, introverted, or felt like you were a fraud. Go and watch it by all means, but one of the things that Amy Cuddy brings up is the idea that if you pretend at a thing, you can inadvertently believe your own lies — and that’s not a bad thing. Force yourself to smile, even if you’re feeling melancholy, and (lab studies indicate) your mood will improve. Pretend to be angry and become angry. The physical body and how we chose to use it can directly affect brain chemistry, which means the little choices we make in how we stand, sit, and present ourselves to others can directly affect how we actually feel about ourselves. Is that not the scariest and most wonderful idea ever? I’m not quite buying into the …