Blurred Line

Sometimes, I feel like I should be writing screenplays. In fact, I think that the only reason I'm not writing screenplays is because there's not any viable market (unless you have filmmaker friends) if they don't sell to production companies. The reason I say this is because, since I started writing again, I've noticed that I'm writing a lot more dialogue than you'd read in a typical piece. I'm not really sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing yet, but the more I look at all the stuff I've written over the years, the more it seems like screenplays would be a more natural medium for my writing. Maybe I'm wrong in my assessment of what the market is like for writing screenplays. Anyone tried before?

Also, I generally avoid blog posts or articles about basic writing tips, but The Book Deal has one up right now that's so bang-on, I couldn't help but share it. Also, I completely echo Jessica's statements on giving form rejection letters. The only time I don't send out a form rejection is if something is quite good, but seems to be missing one little ingredient.

Lastly, be on the lookout for Fusion Fragment #8, which should go live the second week of February!

It's something you start to take for granted a little bit while you've got it, but if you've ever gone for an extended period of time without getting any ideas about what to write, you know that it sucks. I've gone months, nearly a year, without having any ideas randomly come into my head.

Some time ago, I wrote two short stories, "Between Eternities" and "Spam" that took place on the same night and involved a number of the same characters. It's been a long time now that I've been intending to write a third story that takes place after these two, but I kept getting blocked during the outlining stage. A couple nights ago, I sat down and forced myself to start writing it, outline or no. And I wrote. Not a lot, but enough to find a direction for a story that had had nothing resembling one for quite some time.

And the next day, during a torturously long drive home (we got about a foot of snow yesterday), I got hit by one of those random ideas. All I've got is a premise, title and the first few opening lines, but hot damn it's good to have something fresh to work on again. It's a novel called Lovesong which, of course, is about a contract killer.

Also, my long suffering cell phone broke this morning, so I went to get myself a new phone tonight. The girl working asked if I wanted to renew my contract for another three years, which since they've accidentally been charging me for absolutely nothing except my monthly fee, she was damn right I did. Plus, renewing for three years gave me the option of getting a free LG Shine. So, now I've got a hip stainless steel ones. And isn't a stainless steel the very epitome of manliness? Me and my beard give that a big thumbs up! It can even take pictures that I don't have to artificially lighten in Photoshop. Groovy!

On the Radioblog: Today I've added "Handshake the Gangster" by Hey Rosetta! I fell in love with these guys when I saw them open for Hawksley Workman back in November. They were, far and away, the best opening act I've ever seen. I finally managed to get my hands on one of the band's albums and, while it doesn't quite capture the magic they have in front of a live audience, it's still an extremely strong album. Like a lot of their songs, "Handshake the Gangster" keeps things quiet for the first minute or two, before building to a thrilling crescendo. If you like songs that have an "epic" quality to them, you really owe it to yourself to check these guys out.

Keyword of the Day: "Bleeding TV". Errrr...Videodrome, anyone?

Haven't been feeling too well today. I had some sort of stomach virus last night and didn't make it to work today, but I've been on the mend over the past couple hours. Anyhow, the mini-vacation on Friday and Saturday was terrific (that's the B&B in the picture), even if we didn't make it there on the first try. I somehow managed to get us turned around at a junction and we ended up driving all the way back to Ottawa. On attempt number two, we got lost further along, but came across our destination entirely by accident, so it worked out pretty well. The concert at the Black Sheep was excellent -- there's no venue quite like it in the city and I can see why it pops up on so many "Best Places to See Live Music in Canada" lists. Basia Bulat did a really nice set, finishing off with a ukulele song sans microphones or amplifiers. I always like those kinds of concerts best, when things are on more of an intimate level. Also, the opener, Leif Vollebekk, was so good that I picked up his album and will be sharing soon.

I also managed to finish up Richard Russo's The Whore's Child. Some absolutely terrific stories here. If you've read any of Russo's stuff before, you'll know that he's a master of the little, seemingly throwaway pieces of dialogue or exposition that really penetrate to the heart of the matter. Most of these stories are about middle aged men, usually writers, which gets a little repetitive, but that's about all I can think of to complain about. When someone works with the subject matter so expertly at Russo, it's hard to begrudge him something like that. Highly recommended.

Added a couple new blogs I've been reading lately to my list of links -- Book in the Oven and Alan Baxter's The Word. Check them out if you haven't read either yet. (And to the authors, if you're reading, this honour comes with a substantial cash bonus. The cheque's in the mail. Promise.)

Also, stolen from The World in the Satin Bag, who stole it from Pulp.net, a list of literature favourites and odds and ends.

Best Short Stories I've Ever Read -- I could go with any number of stories from Jonathan Lethem's Men and Cartoons collection or Timothy Findley's Dust to Dust. As luck would happen, I also read some of the best short stories I've ever read just tonight, in Richard Russo's The Whore's Child. Only a third of the way through the collection, so let's hope the quality holds up. As for speculative fiction (though a lot of Lethem's stories qualify as SF), it's nearly impossible to go wrong with anything Cory Doctorow or William Gibson have written. As much as I love Gibson as a novelist, in fact, I think the stories in Burning Chrome outshine pretty much everything else he's done. And let's not forget good old PKD...his stories are wildly uneven, but when he nails one, he really nails it.
Book I finished reading and wanted to re-read straight away - To be perfectly honest, I don't really re-read many books. I've read Neuromancer three times, but that's about it. If I were to pick up one book to re-read out of my collection at this very second, I think I'd go with Lolita.
Favourite books from my childhood - My Mom read my The Hobbit and the entirety of the Narnia series when I was a kid. And it's pretty tough to top that.
Best film version of a book - Tough to vote against the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although the film version of Jurassic Park totally kicks the book's ass. In lit fic, Atonement impressed me by being almost as good as the book, which ranks among my favourites.
Most overlooked/underrated novels - In SF, definitely Jack Womack's Ambient series. Not to mention Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, one of the best "serious" SF novels ever written, in my opinion. In lit fic, unless you're an academic specializing in Canadian Literature, chances are you've never read Adele Wiseman's damn near perfect novel, The Sacrifice.
Books that should be on the nation curriculum - Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation. If they're not already teaching this in high schools, they really should be.
Deceased author I'd most like to resurrect - Mary Shelley, purely for ironic purposes.
My favourite bookshop - There's a great one just down the street from my place called Perfect Books. It's one of those independent little bookstores where the staff plasters their handwritten book reviews all over the stacks.
Authors whose work should immediately be translated into English - I've been making my way through a lot of really good Asian literature over the past year or so, but it struck me recently that there haven't been any really big breakout books from Russia (at least to my knowledge) for some time now.
Favourite opening lines - Gibson's Neuromancer, of course: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Had an unfortunate inauguration watching experience today -- or rather, a lack of any inauguration watching experience. At work, we ordered pizza for lunch with the idea that everyone would kick back and watch Obama's speech (note: I live in Canada, not the States -- it's a pretty big deal here, too). Only one problem: I had a call scheduled, so I missed the whole damn thing. Oh well...at least I managed to grab some pizza.

On the plus side, I've got a vacation day scheduled this Friday, so I booked a nice B&B about 45 minutes out of town for the night and got some tickets to a concert at a place called The Black Sheep Inn, which is this little bar in the middle of nowhere that's reknowned for getting really good musicians to play there. So, as you might imagine, I'm really looking forward to the weekend and getting away from the hectic schedule for a little bit. Also, though it's work related, I did find out that I'm going to San Francisco at the start of next month. I've never been, and I'm massively excited to be escaping the cold here (current temperature: 1 degree Fahrenheit, the warmest its been in the last 10 days or so).

On the Radioblog: Today, I've got "Snakes and Ladders" by Basia Bulat (she's actually who I'm going to see on Friday night). Bulat's a Canadian talent, and her debut album Oh, My Darling received very good press here, though I'm not sure if that's translated into any success south of the border. "Snakes and Ladders" has become one of the most popular songs from that album, and with good reason. The opening piano and string section is just gorgeous, and Bulat has one of those magical voices that somehow manages to evoke strength and fragility at the same time. Recommended for anyone who likes folky singer-songwriter girls.

Went to Kinki last night, which is one of the "hip" restaurants in town. Unfortunately for me, it's largely a sushi restaurant, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only metropolitan twentysomethings in the world who just isn't down with sushi. I mean, I don't find it revolting or anything, but it's not a lot of food considering how much it costs, and it's just not that tasty.

Anyhow, what made the evening interesting is that the DJ there was playing some of the worst mash-ups I've ever heard in my life. At one point, there was even a mash-up of "We Will Rock You" and, I cringe to think of it again, "In Da Club". Agh.

I also finished reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. An unbelievably good book, by the way. The blurbs on the back include the words "towering" and "sprawling" a lot, which are definitely right on the mark. Big, big thumbs up from me. The plot line goes a little something like this: In 1939, Josef Kavalier escapes from his native Czechoslovakia to the home of his relatives in New
York City. He's got plans of making it big so he can save enough money from the fate befalling the Jews in Europe. His cousin, Sam Klayman, is a comic book fanatic and, with Joe drawing and Sam writing, they come up with The Escapist. The book follows them through the years before they met, the golden age of comics during WWII, and the post-war years. If you haven't read this one yet, it should definitely be on your list.

Keyword of the day: Have to go with "movie that shows white haired man pointing to a jack daniel's bottle on a shelf". I think that's The Santa Clause IV: St. Nick vs. The Bottle. Because his cheeks are red for a reason.

Too much work this week. My brain is completely fried. Motivation to write a half decent post is somewhere near zero.

Instead, I will be spending my night doing this.

There's a massive amount of stuff I've got to do at work this week, so I'm resigning myself to some pretty long days. Agh. Sometimes being an adult just isn't everything it's cracked up to be. In lieu of actual content, I link to an article in Slate (and yes, I love Slate to pieces) on The Letter of Last Resort. Apparently, if Britain ever gets wiped off the map by a nuclear attack, there's a letter contained aboard a nuclear sub which contains his (presumably) posthumous decision on retaliation. I smell a novel in there somewhere.

On the Radioblog: Today, I've got "Worrisome Heart", the title song from Melody Gardot's debut album. It's a quiet, beautiful jazz song with Gardot providing terrific vocals. The story behind her foray into music is pretty interesting, too; at 19, she was hit by a car and, during her recovery, her doctor suggested music to counteract some of the cognitive damage she'd received as a result of a head injury sustained in the accident. Her first recordings, as I understand it, were made before she was even able to walk again. The great story aside, she's become one of my favourite female vocalists. Have a listen.

Keyword of the day: Finally! Someone Googled "freakysexpics" and got this site. And let's face it, you don't really have a real Internet site until someone's Googled that and gotten you. Interestingly, the post that showed up in the search results was about a similar topic (Googling sex, that is, which is kind of the whole point of this Internet thing, isn't it?).

I was just browsing around in my LibraryThing profile and realized that I bought, received or otherwise acquired 54 books in 2008. And I'm definitely not going to read 54 books in 2009. I have a pretty good schedule of two a month, which I think is a pretty respectable pace, but I was faced with a vision of myself as an old man with giant rooms of unread books. Damn my insatiable thirst for books! Oh, and I've already bought 6 in 2009 (not counting, of course, the two that are in the mail). Speaking of the two books in the mail, if you're a spec fic fan, you might consider picking up a book or two from Apex Book Company. They're going through a rough period financially and, as of yesterday, need only to sell 64 books to get back into the black. That's a fair number of books to sell in a short period of time for an independent book company, so they've asked people to put out the word for them. From everything I've read, they're publishing some of the best small press SF out there, so help them out if you can. I picked up copies of Unwelcome Bodies and The Next Fix.

Anyhow, I'm thinking it might be time to set some reading goals for 2009. I currently own 93 books that I haven't read, and if my buying keeps up at its current pace, I'll have a lot more by the end of the year. I was reading about the 100 book challenge over at In the Darkness, Hiding, but that seems a little too ambitious for me. I'm thinking, then, that my goal should just be to read more than I buy (the latter of which is going to require a lot of restraint). So, here's where I stand right now:

Books read in 2009: 1
Books acquired in 2009: 6 (well...ok, 8)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go read.

It's always a good day when you're forced to spend a portion of it avoiding eviction (seriously, there was a hearing scheduled and everything). It's an even better day when said threat of eviction was brought about by your complete and udder idiocy. I had to pay the $150 filing fee they'd paid to their lawyer, but I've never been happier to pay $150. I still hate the company who owns my building with a fiery passion, though -- all of this could have been avoided with a single phone call. But, the crisis has been averted, so all is well.

Finished reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty the other day. It's the story of a young gay guy who spends the Thatcher era as a boarder at a Conservative MP's house. The plot itself isn't terribly interesting (drugs, sex and politics, mostly) but Hollinghurst really has a good feel for the real subtle parts of social interaction that so often go unexpressed. My praise for it isn't quite effusive as the back cover (it won the Booker and is described as a "nearly perfect novel"), but it's definitely a worthy read.

Big news in Canada here as we won the World Junior Hockey Championships for the fifth year in the row. The Juniors are kind of abberation here, as they're far, far bigger than the World Championships. Across the country it's become a bit of a holiday tradition (the first game of the tournament is always played on December 26th). And it always offers some of the most hockey anyone's likely to see all year. They were right here in Ottawa this year, as you might imagine, it was a pretty big party here yesterday. Congrats to the boys!

Got the new computer all set up, which was less of a chore than I'd expected. Seems like every time I've had to set up a new computer set up, it's taken the better part of a day to get data moved around and days longer to get connected to the internet. This computer's set up time: 4 hours. And most of that was spent moving things on and off of a USB stick (and I watched the excellent Why We Fight while waiting -- imagine Fahrenheit 9/11, except...you know, good). I'm enjoying it so far, although Vista's definitely a pain in the ass. I would've switched to Mac if only Windows hadn't so polluted my brain and made Mac's easier, more intuitive interface a strange and frightening thing to me (seriously, my roommate has a Mac and everything's so simple and obvious that it never even enters my mind as a solution -- I have to get him to do basically everything for me).

The old computer's going to my girlfriend (and not to the garbage heap; that's right, screw you, carbon footprint) because she's got an office in her apartment that's currently sans computer, not to mention a disturbingly intense desire to play The Sims.

Also happy to report that the book block for the new novel from Apodis is finished. The release date is inching ever closer...

Keyword of the day: Somehow, typing in "blog about me fortyish occupation" will lead you here. Sounds like a mid-life crisis to me. Or maybe just disappointed with the current job? Well, it could be worse. I give you Gawker's 10 worst tech entry-level jobs, Popular Science's 10 worst science jobs (when whale feces researcher is at #10, you know you're in for a hell of a list), or how about the 20 worst pre-rock star jobs...try to picture to David Lee Roth in a pair of scrubs.