Filming Day One

Well, I survived the first day of filming, and we got all of the shots on a fairly ambitious schedule in spite of a host of mishaps.

Would that I could tell you of the things I saw and did, but alas this is no anonymous blog in which I can speak freely of my day job.

Let me focus instead on the fact that inspiration for my real calling can sometimes flow through the conduit of my work.

In my current project, I've had a scene that's plagued me for a few days. It's one of those Da da da then x happens scenes. What the F is X going to be?

Well, I was talking to the makeup artist--

We were just chatting while the small army of crew members set up all of the things they set up, things like "apples" other huge devices that look like they were borrowed from the Death Star.

--And she started telling me about being on an airplane that was struck by lightning. It sent a blue-blazin' burst of St. Elmo's Fire down the center aisle.

It was terrifying at the time for her and her family, but of course in my mind I started thinking: "Cool, St. Elmo's Fire. That's what I needed."

Hopefully it will illuminate my scene in more ways than one.

And the moral of the story is always listen to the makeup artist.

Commercial Ventures

We're shooting commercials this week at my day job.

I don't know how they finnish major motion pictures. We're shooting two 30-second spots.

I say "we." Actually a small army will arrive tomorrow night to do the actual shooting. Maybe not an army. It's more like a regiment. If we did any dialog that would take a brigade because then we'd need sound guys, too.

I'm just doing the coordinating, and boy are my arms tired.

I've been scouting locations with the director, the line producer and the producer. There's a lot of walking involved in location scouting.

It's the pointing that starts getting the arms tired. How about this hallway? No, OK let's go a couple of hallways over. Hmm, OK, let's look at the sixth floor the light is better up there.

My arms continue to get tired because I move them a lot when I rant.

That occurrs when I'm on the phone with people asking if I can use a corner of their area for a shot. It's really hard to stage Apocalypse Now in the midst of a functioning business. It's roughly like it would have been if the producers of Apocalypse Now had stuck with their original plan to film in Viet Nam during the war.

Then there are the explanations. I have to go through those with supervisors when they ask: "How long are you going to be in my area?"

"About two hours."

"Two hours! How much film are you shooting?"

"Well it won't be but a few seconds. But we have to have time set up lights. And there's going to be some track."

"Track."

"For the dolly shot."

"Why do you need a dolly shot?"

"Because it will be really cool."

"OK, you want a corner of the room for two hours and you're going to lay track."

"Uh, yeah, and uh, you might want to let the patrons know that there's going to be a lot of white light in the area during that time."

"Why?"

"We're going to park a truck with a spotlight on it outside the window and shine it in."

"Why."

"The lighting guy thought it would look really cool."

"Anything else."

"I'm going to need to borrow your staff for a while. We've found actors can't really fake the expertise. Except we are going to use an actor for what we call the `hero' shot. Can we get one of your jersey's for him in a medium?"

You may or may not hear from me the next few days, depending on how bad my headaches get.

War of the Worlds Positive Feedback

Troy Thayne, producer of the full-cast audio drama I scripted, received an e-mail from a listener.

"...as for your production of (H.G. Wells)"War of the Worlds" bravo. bravo. bravo. excellent, top notch job. everything from the script selected to the actors and sound effects (which were extraordinary and appropriate) we enjoyed the play immensely. please do more productions. we'd listen to each one, without a doubt. thanks again."

Always nice to get messages like that forwarded.

Naming the beast

I was tapping into my buddy Wayne's urban survival skills the other day when an epiphany struck.

He has traversed Second City streets for ages with only the occasional mishap, which he may mention over on his blog.

Digression
He once got me so familiar with the Windy City people were stopping me for directions. I looked like I knew where I was going.

Their desire to tap into my knowledge of the vicinity evaporated when they heard my accent. I didn't have to say "I'm not from around here." Most people could figure out that I couldn't get them much further than Borders.

Back to the point sorta
Anyway, because he knows pedestrian cities, I asked him how a clever person might deal with a dangerous situation on a crowded street, albeit in a different city.

Living in a place without much public transportation, I stay mostly ensconced in my car when I go place to place. That has its own set of dangers. There's a personal injury lawyer on local TV who scares the hell out of me. I'd rather have the Wolf Man after me than that guy.

What's in a name?
So anyway, I described my set-up so that Wayne could put his brain to work on it.

And as I did, a working title presented itself.

I'd had a working title up to that point, but it was a functional one-word title so that I had something to name Word documents. It wasn't a word I liked for the project.

Suddenly to the front of my mind jumped a longer, poetic and perfect title. One I think I'll keep.

And the gaps in the outline started to suddenly fill themselves in. I knew things about the villain. I had answers that had puzzled me.

Perhaps it's true that you gain power over a demon once you learn its name. A working title certainly seems to be a major hurdle in sparking the magic of creativity.

In truth, I'd been researching and mulling over plot points for a while and things probably just began to converge. My title grew from some reading and a factoid I picked up, and that gelled when I needed a name to relay to Wayne.

But a name for the beast also made it seem more managable. It's funny the difference a few words can make when they're the words that go at the top of the first page.

Handy Tool - Demon Name Generator
Not exactly the kind of demon my project is, but check this out - Angel/demon Name Generator from Seventh Sanctum™ .

Ashley's Eyes II

Ashley, our cat who is blind in one eye, went for his annual checkup with his veterinary ophthalmologist last week, and we learned he now has glaucoma in that eye, apparently a common problem when a retina is damaged.

The prescription: the same eye drops a human would receive.

They made the diagnosis with a pressure check, much like my dad received. My dad suffered from a number of eye complications in his final years and I took him to quite a few specialists visits as did my cousin.

Now I'm doing it for my cat.

Ash's pressure in the blind eye was 27. When it gets into the 40s it apparently causes a good deal of discomfort and pain.

You determine the pain because the cat sleeps all the time. "I know," said the vet. "It's hard to tell with a cat since they sleep all the time anyway."

Ironically for my cats, "all the time" is when I'm awake. They get wide awake when I'm asleep, and they cease to get along with each other then also.

The drops will serve for a while. When discomfort gets severe removal of the eye will be required.

Ash's partial blindness does not seem to slow him down. He even watches some television. He's particularly fond of commodities tickers, but he finds general news crawls fascinating as well. Weather panic updates, not so much.

I've toyed with the notion of a short story, something supernatural that explores what his eyes might have seen, but the notion is still processing through clockwork cogs of my brain.

In the meantime, he likes to sit on my lap when I'm at the computer, perhaps watching the cursor to see what I'm saying about him.

Father Allison

I met a lot of interesting people when I was a reporter. It was one of the best parts of the job. I wrote a column not long before I left my newspaper job, noting that in many ways there is no finer job in the world when you're young and filled with piss and vinniger, as the old salts in our newsroom used to put it.

One of the coolest people I met was Father Allison. I actually learned about him from another reporter, guy who worked at one of the TV stations in town. We were competitve but it was a friendly competition.

Father Allison was easing into retirement, working as an assistant pastor, but he'd spent a number of his years in church service in California.

And there he served as a consultant on church matters for film and television. He had some great stories, and I used to go to lunch with him after our interview.

He'd advised Helen Hayes on a Western television show in which she played a nun. He was at first hesitant to give her instructions, but she insisted he help her get things right.

He worked a lot on the television version of "Going My Way" with Gene Kelly, and he donned a cowboy hat as an extra on "Wagon Train" or one Western or another. Union rules precluded him from doing much acting, though.

I loved to hear his stories and his jokes, and when he figured out I wanted to write he encouraged me with the advice to do something every day even if it was a small bit of progress.

He said once Oscar Wilde left a gathering to write. He returned a short time later and when asked what he'd done he responded: "I put in a comma. I took out a comma."

Some days that's all I do but I try to force something from my brain through my fingers and across the keyboard.

I lost touch with him after a while. I kept meaning to get back to talk to him, but eventually I heard he'd gone to a nursing home. I should have gone by to see him and heard a few more tales of Hollywood.

(Thanks to Charles for reminding me to plumb my memory once in a while.)

Testing Book Mooch

I'm an advocate of buying books new whenever possible. Writers don't make royalties off second-hand book sales after all.

That's not to say I don't frequent used book shops because I love them and I love finding forgotten treasures in hidden corners. And writers know they increase their readership in used bookstores, which ain't a bad thing.

The web of course opens up whole new avenues for finding lost treasures. Ebay has made just about any book printed since the beginning of time available to bidders. I've added to my Doc Savage books via ebay and online used bookstores.

Online book trading came to my attention via Library Thing. They link to a number of book swap sites and people talk about them on the Library Thing message boards.

I'm test driving Book Mooch because it seems user friendly, becuase I'm a biblioholic and I have some books I've read that I don't need to keep inventoried, and I also have duplicate copies of some titles.

The most important of those reasons is: I'm a biblioholic.

Apparently you list books you're willing to trade. Other users request books from the list and you mail them out book rate.

When you send a book you earn the right to request a book, and someone mails one to you.

My first request is in - so I'll be dropping by a mailbox today.

We'll see how it goes.

Naming Names

Wayne asked me once if I sought to apply character names with meanings, adding myth or mystery to enhance with a single word.

The answer was sometimes, but I've paid more attention to it ever since. Wayne is a genius after all.

I wish I could come up with a host of relevant Cassandras this morning, but Mr. Dark in Something Wicked This Way Comes leaps to mind and suffices. You know he's going to be a baaaaaad guy as soon as he presents his buisiness card.

I sometimes use baby name sites to research name meanings and to choose names for my fictional peeps.

And I ran across a rather handy one this a.m., alternativebabynames.com. It doesn't provide name definitions, but it's a clearing house for the offbeat and the exotic including Science fiction names and Goth and Vampire names. It strikes me that both of those are probably better put to use by fiction writers than parents.

If the kid happens to choose different interests and paths in life, a name like Mink or Nightshade might be a bit of a liability in, say, a Congressional campaign ad.

The Face of Inspiration

This is an illo from Jimmy Hildebrandt, nephew of Troy Thayne, producer of the "War of the Worlds" audio.

You really need to click for a larger view to fully appreciate the picture. This is one of two pieces he sent me so I'll post another soon.

Perhaps it will inspire some story ideas for someone.

Writing for No Reason

Most of Emily Dickinson's poems went unpublished in her lifetime. She wrote for a box, not publication.

I was thinking of that as I read an interesting post from C.S. Harris , based on a question posed on Kate's blog.

Would you write if you never made a(nother) dime writing?

Yeah. That's the short answer.

I'm doing it right now in fact. The blog pays in sometimes intangible ways, but I don't make much direct coin for it.

I've been meditating a while about where I am as a writer, as periodically do most of the people in my circle of blog awareness, including not just Kate and C.S. but also Charles and Cliff and Stewart and Wayne (here too for Wayne). We're all on different shoals in the same stream.

The shoal on which I'm standing at the moment is, I think, a luxurious place.

My day job keeps my head under a roof and covers my cat's ophthalmologist. Said job could evaporate, I'm sure, but for now I can trial and error my writing and send it out when and if I think it's worthwhile.

I worked a while on a novel called Zoe's Missing that I decided to put in the trunk because it wasn't in toto what I wanted it to be.

I paused to write the War of the Worlds script for which I did get paid, and it was a wonderful new writing experience, challenging and exciting. And of course commissions or contracts can be a fabulous drug or a horrible curse.

Now I'm outlining and sketching portions of a different novel, sending out short stories which I had not done in a while. Getting occasional rejections. Ouch, I'd kind of forgotten that sting.

Do I get to keep the writer shingle out while the nother dimes aren't rolling? Doesn't matter. I'm proud of what I've done, and I've enjoyed the journey so far.

I'll be writing something whether it sees the light of day or stays in a box. I'll be writing just because that's what I do and I'm not sure why and I don't care why any more.

I might not leave behind the a box as brilliant as Emily's when my website shifts from Sid is Alive to Sid is Dead but I shall have kept myself busy and entertained. That's enough.

Comics Resources

For those lured here by the siren song of the search engine and such keywords as comics, there's a great post today by Jason Thibault of Optimum Wound Comics on the company's My Space Blog.

He offers tons of links to information on comics writing, comics art and some sample comics scripts from great writers.

Which Science Fiction Writer Are You?

I haven't snagged one of these in a while. They're kind of fun.

I am: Olaf Stapledon Standing outside the science fiction "field", he wrote fictional explorations of the futures of whole species and galaxies.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Listen to War of the Worlds for Free!

The Old Time Radio-style version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds that I scripted is now being streamed via Shoutcast.

It's actually an online radio station, so if you listen you'll be hearing the most complete version, with comments from the announcer leading into and coming back from commercial breaks.

To access it go to www.shoutcast.com, search for "War of the Worlds" using the search field on the left side of the site under the graphic text: Shoutcast Shocase.

Click the Tune In button when the results come up, and your default media player should open.

It's a continuous stream so if you get there in the middle it will start over.

Or you can order an MP3 version via the link at right. :-)

Addendum
Apparently the feed's down at the moment - if you search and fail to find it wait awhile and try again.

Birth of the Marauder

I read comics and loved them as a kid and I was fortunate enough to make a pass through the comics universe as a writer, never DC or Marvel but I did have titles published by Malibu and Caliber, a couple of the major minors.

Looking back on Marauder, the third comic book miniseries I wrote, there are some things I'd do differently today, but as Cliff notes, hmmmm I'm sure he's never heard that before, as Cliff writes in his blog a story is written by who you are now not who you're going to be as a writer.

Anyway, today I'd try to delve deeper into characters, I believe.

The no spandex rule
Marauder is the closest I came to writing a super hero comic. It was originally slated for Caliber but an overabundance of properties there shifted it to Silverline, the lable created by Roland Mann, my comics editor and packager and also creator/author of the wowfully--I made that word up-- successful Cat and Mouse series for Malibu.

Roland didn't want to do another spandex-clad protagonist, so Kirk Connell aka the title character did not have a uniform. He had an equipment-laden suit because he was first a thief.

He was not just an everyday robber, though. He was part of an ancient thieves guild devoted to recovering things for their rightful owners, though their ranks were becoming progressively corrupt. I'd read books and stories with orders of assassins but never of theives with their own codes, systems and councils that stretched from the Middle Ages.

The dramatic jewel heist that kicked things off is an action scene of which I've always been proud.

The idea started when I was a kid. A local jewelry store brought in a huge uncut diamond, eighth argest in the world I think. They displayed it in a glass case with a rattlesnake. The snake was more hype than protection, I'm sure, because it just lay there in the case as snakes in captivity and cold air are wont to do.


That snake became a host of king cobras in Marauder, an obstacle Kirk and Lumley had to overcome to grab the objective jewel in the opening panel.

As they worked to procure it with finesse, the supervillain's minions crashed the power with excessive firepower, dispersing cobras and blasting Kirk's mentor as he dangled helplessly from a rapelling rope.

Kirk managed to snatch a snake and finish one of the attackers, but the worst of the bad guy's escaped, prompting him to break with the guild in order to pursue them.

Having been a member of a street gang called the Marauders before Lumley rescued him, Kirk took that name for his new base of operation, a small ship which allowed him to skirt around to different locales.

I wound up writing a spec screenplay based on the comic. It had a different, more science fiction oriented plot but I kept the snake scene as the opener. I think it would have been a blast on celluloid

Books I'm Embarassed To Say I Haven't Read Yet: The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein

T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies appears on many lists of top horror novels. (Cliff cited it as a candidate in discussion on Charles' post about great works.)

I've owned it for about 25 years, and it's remained in what I consider my active stacks--books waiting to be read on the shelves vs. the books in boxes. They just don't all fit. I'm Sid and I'm a biblioholic. (I confessed in a post once upon a time.)

Mostly books I've read but want to keep are stored, though some books I don't expect to read quickly get tucked away. My interests ebb and wane. Sometimes I vacation from one genre for awhile, then some interest-flint strikes steel and produces a spark that sends me to dig out titles or series.

Somewhere in all of those mixed metaphors, some titles languish even though they remain in my line-of-sight.

I read Klein's collection of novella's Dark Gods when it came out and was enraptured by his fresh-take on things Cthulhu and more.

I heard from many people how great The Ceremonies was and I've always kept it handy. Just haven't read it.

I know it's a wonderful exploration of character and horror, that it follows a scholar to rural terrain where strange things transpire as he delves into gothic literature. I know it's an expansion of the short masterpiece "The Events at Poroth Farm" and I know it's something I should have read long ago.

I just haven't. I've passed it up from time to time for lesser works, quicker reads, lighter page-turners. For some such behavior is not a problem, but I know better.

Fortunately, in straightening books and re-organizing as I've been doing lately--trying to alphabetize and make my office livable--books' spells work on me. The back-cover notes call, their spines whisper when I pass the shelves. They even taunt me with what a Rod McKuen poem once dubbed "un-read smugness."

So I'm working to rectify my sins. I'm almost 100 pages into The Ceremonies, a point of no-return.

After that, well there are others for another day.

Masters of Terror - Black and White Terror

As I've mentioned, paperback anthologies darkened my back-to-school autumns when I was in junior high. I was introduced to Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, August Derleth and of course H.P. Lovecraft in selections from the Teen-Age Book Club.

Marvel and Warren's black-and-white horror comics brought fear to my summers and furthered my education of the horror greats. The other night--serendipitously, I think, the same night Cliff was writing Horror Can Be Comic--I was digging through several boxes of comics to locate issue #1 of Masters of Terror from Marvel.

The mag introduced me to Theodore Sturgeon's "It" which came along before Stephen King's pronoun-titled tome. It also includes Robert Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper"-- in which a police detective partners with a psychologist to track down a modern-day ripper. It was new to me then, long before I discovered it had been adapted as an episode of "Thriller."

Robert E. Howard's work in the horror field was also featured. Masters presented Howard's "The Horror from the Mound," an adaptation that looks like it probably started out in one of their four-color comics. It features art by Frank Brunner
and pits a cowboy against a vampire.

"The Drifting Snow" by Derleth and "The Terrible Old Man" by Lovecraft.

It was an impulse buy, probably because there were no new issues of Vampire Tales or Vampirella, but it was a good choice, 76 pages of chills.

Cliff rememers more issues, but unfortunately #1 was all I ran across. Maybe I'll scope out the next on ebay.

Character: Delmited

When I'm writing fiction, I'm not a profiler as C.S. Harris has discussed on her blog. I don't sit down and do a 100-question Q&A with my characters, though I'm not totally a seat-of-the-pantser either.

The Q&A is recommended in a lot of writing texts and may be useful for some, but when I tried it the answers came out goofy and didn't really help me define a character's voice.

I was working on a private eye character at the time and he wound up babbling about his need to help people. Having him articulate it didn't really define his drive nor did it keep him from getting locked away in three trunk novels.

Today in a limited way I do use a technique I picked up in a conference conducted by agent Donald Maas. I think the method is also discussed in his book Writing The Breakout Novel.

In the conference, he suggested jotting down major point-of- view characters and making note of the words they'd use for certain items. Simple things like pencil. If a character is a tech-saavy but harried executive might he say stylus in all instances instead of pencil or pen?

I don't remember if the Donald suggested an Excel spreadsheet but since I don't use pen and ink much that's how I do it.

Column A gets a list of main characters. Columns B,C, D and so on get some words as column headings.

I then try and determine what different characters would call different items. Everybody doesn't say "sofa" as Maas noted in that conference.

When you're writing a multi-viewpoint third person novel it helps make each character's narrative viewpoint more representative of that character's personality. I find it handy, and it helps with dialog too. Especially the column on the character's profanity of choice. (See Stewart and Cliff for more on that topic.)

It's fun finding different oaths and minced oaths. I once had a character who'd picked up some British slang which he'd use when he was angry: "God rot them," he'd spew.

Good luck with your characters.

Writing for Rescue

If you have a story you can spare for a couple of months it can be used to benefit animals in need of rescue.

Read for Rescue is seeking stories that can be sold online for a brief time with proceeds to benefit several animal rescue projects.

Stories 2,500 - 15,000 words are being sought in these genres according to the guidelines:

• Romantic/erotic stories (happy ending, please) For right now we're only looking for m/f relationships
• Science fiction/fantasy/adventure/futuristic
• Paranormal
• Ethnic
• Literary
• Any cross of the above. First or third person POV.
  

For more visit the Welcome to Suburbia site.

Resistance is Futile

Wayne has uncovered what has been suspected for a while in the Blogosphere. There is a Cult of Sternberg, and Wayne reveals all in his Frankenstein 1959 blog, while holding a Steve McQueen action figure I wish I had.

Wayne has announced that he will remain alert and on guard, but it is clear that resistance is futile. I have reached the point of Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Miles Bennell at the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- you know, when he ran into traffic shouting: "You're next!" (Rent it! It's great!)

There are Sternberg minions around every corner. There are perhaps even Sternberg pods waiting to convert you while you sleep. You can't stay awake forever.

It's time to give up, accept it, and use the logo that true believers will be displaying until the great galactic mother ship returns from the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

Visit the House of Sternberg blog.

Zombie Orville

Am the only one a little creeped out by the zombie Orville Redenbacher in the new commercials?

I don't know that a reanimated Orville--even with an iPod--really makes me want popcorn. It's kind of like a TV ad written by a horror writer.

The man passed away in 1995. My vote is let him rest and find a living spokesperson to hawk the corn.

Addendum
I forgot to check You Tube for a version of the ad, but the Rain of Thought blog has a Google video version if you haven't seen just how strange the spot is, you can watch there. Jason, author of that blog seems to agree with my POV on the matter.

Fear and Colors

I had to get my oil changed yesterday morning since we were having a brief reprieve from rain and sleet, so I grabbed Ray Bradbury's Long After Midnight collection for the waiting room. Recently, Charles touched off some interesting discussion on the use of color to set tone and mood in fiction, noting Robert E. Howard made good use of the color black, while Stewart had some interesting comments on color in Something Wicked This Way Comes. I allowed how weather can serve in a similar fashion to set mood and tone.

While they replaced oil and wiper blades at the oil exchange, lo and behold I found myself reading a story that juggled all those elements.

The color white is used to make things eerie and ultimately redemptive in The Wish, a bit more upbeat variation of the Monkey's Paw set on a snowy Christmas Eve.

It begins with two writers in a huge, old, creaking house talking over life, death and miracles as they share wine and popcorn while the window is swept by "a whisper of snow."

The imagery continues with many wonderful poetic Bradbury touches:

• "It was a proper night for ghosts of whiteness to visit windows and wander off."
• "Is there a language of night and time and snow?"
• "A gust of snow rattled the window, clung like a shroud, unraveled away."
• "The graveyard resembled the scattered ruins of an ancient fort, blown up lifetimes ago, its monuments buried deep in some new Ice Age."

Tom, the narrator's Christmas Eve wish is to see his long-dead father again and the story unfolds from there, a story of the undead that's ghostly and touching, creating that magical Bradbury blend.

Variations of snow and white are mentioned repeatedly, like Howard's black--as Charles noted-- there without being noticed unless you're a bit primed for it.

I wish I'd discovered the tale for my pre-Christmas reading, but given the week we've had in Texas, it's nice for general winter reading as well.

A Writer's Faux Pas

I bet this doesn't happen as much any more. I haven't relied on Writer's Market in many a day. Partly because I haven't written short stories a great deal in many a day--though I'm starting to again a bit--but also because there are many other market listings with a thumb on the pulse of the fiction world.

Once upon a time, however, I'd pour over WM's listings searching out short story markets, and I know a few other people who did the same thing I did in the '80s.

It was well known in those days at least and probably still that many of the cool stories in Stephen King's Night Shift appeared first in men's magazines of the '70s, mostly in a title called Cavalier.

In the '80s when I was first cobbling together stories that at least seemed worthy of submitting, Writer's Market still listed Cavalier and other men's magazines as a market for horror fiction.

If you're a King reader you know his tales were all straightforward horror with occasional references to the Necronomicon, giant rats and man-eating laundry machines.

Eventually I finished a sorta kinda Lovecraftian piece that I thought wasn't too bad, and I typed up a cover letter and sent it off to Cavalier.

Before long I got a personal rejection note back from the fiction editor. "It's good, but I need strongly sex-oriented stories."

The world changed between the early '70s and the mid-'80s. One more nail went into the coffin of the short story market. (See Charles' excellent post which leads to his article on the topic.)

Sometime after "Sometimes They Come Back," men's magazines like Cavalier stopped publishing straightforward horror in favor of...well, ya' know.

I know many other writers with scary stories who did the same thing I did, though.

Eventually one buddy of mine modified a horror tale and placed it with one of those mags. He used to say: "You've heard of Playboy? Well it wasn't them."

The moral of the story, I suppose, is know the market before you submit to it even if you need a floppy hat, sunglasses and a raincoat to get a sample copy.

That reminds me of my adventures ordering books from Rhinoceros Books in preparation for writing a tale of erotic horror for one of their series, but that's another post.

Knife Wounds

I know three people with knife wounds at the moment. A girl I work with was making French fries and her right hand attacked her left. It was kind of like that Clive Barker story "The Body Politic," I think.

Wayne also got an unkind cut from an exacto knife, and Kate was prompted to ponder the color of blood with an artist's eye after a smilar slice.

Scars from the past
All that reminded me of the time I stabbed myself in the thumb. Christine and I recounted the story to my freedom-fry-deprived co-worker in empathy.

It was a Saturday night when we still had our apartment, sometime before the chain smoker moved in downstairs and prompted us to become home owners.

I was making an Italian chicken dish. I don't remember why I tried to open the drawer that was jammed but when I yanked it I got a knife - this little pairing knife with a thin blade went right into my thumb.

My actual recollection of the event gets a little fuzzy after that, I suppose due to the lack of blood supply to my brain. All of my blood was rushing out my thumb at that point.

It ain't easy bein' green
I wrapped a paper towel around it and staggered into the den, looking a little green, as Christine describes it. Green, I was, and glassy-eyed.

Then I used one of the words Cliff and Stewart have been talking about.

"I think I cut the (expletive deleted but it's bodily waste so I think you know which one it was) out of my finger," I said.

"Why don't you sit down?" she suggested.

Legend has it I sat down.

Then she walked into the kitchen, which she says looked like a homicide scene.

The next recollection I have of anything at all, we were at the local emergency room where we were processed by a clerk with indifference that achived remarkable degrees of coldness even for a jaded ER worker. After she took my information she sent us to the waiting room to watch TV while they dealt with people with larger wounds. It was a Saturday night after all.

There, somewhere just short of desanguination, the bleeding eventually stopped on its own.

The Fog
We went back home and in a bit of a fog I finished the Italian chicken and we went in the next day to a convenient care center for a tetanus shot. Since it was a stab it didn't require stitches, but it remained painful to turn faucets for a while after that.

It was really the worst injury-accident I've ever had short of the time I ate peppered shrimp at a social function and then rubbed my eyes.

To all those who've injured yourselves, I feel your pain.

The view from my office.

I stayed under the back door awning to avoid getting sleet and snow on my camera, so it's not the most artsy shot. But this was the view behind my office yesterday.

All the branches had that coated-with-ice look. It's continuing today and will take a while to melt, I believe.

Strange Deaths

I used to play around with a blog I called Hoofbeats of the Reaper that dealt with strange ways to die. Generally I pondered ways I might go, but I also included links when I ran across them to strange deaths around the world.

There have been a host of strange deaths the past few days:

Death while mole-killing - moles survive

Death by drinking water

Death by Australian eastern brown snake

Not a death but a rare case of a knife and saucepan fight

Rain Nor Sleet

Well the drive to work was interesting this morning as the day should be.

I had occasional bits of sleet bouncing off my windshield but it was mostly rain pounding my car.

I've been working on a scene set on a blustery day in Dublin, so if nothing else the weather should help me come up with a few realistic adjectives.

Happy Monday!

Something Wicked

A major chunk of the novel The Club Dumas didn't make it into the still excellent film The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp.

It deals with a group of obsessed fans of The Three Musketeers and its sequels, a strange, European literary underground of readers driven to celebrate the characters and intrigues of the classic Dumas works.

I thought of that enthusiasm for a classic when Stewart mentioned the culling of great works from library shelves in the interest of titles with higher circulation. It's a bookseller's approach with an effect not unlike the fire in the library at Alexandria.

Since I used to be a librarian of sorts, I was dismayed by that report. I always had the sense we were preserving knowledge in our battles against mold, dust and non-returns.

I've been re-reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes this week, perhaps one of the tales pulled from some shelves. Portions of it are set in a library, I suppose because Bradbury haunted libraries in his younger days, enjoying the titles A to Z.

Knowledge preserved proves beneficial in the fight against Mr. Dark and his evil carnival.

More and more, with everything from the culling of classics to the fragmentation of television and movie audiences, we are not sharing the same dreams en masse like the Dumas fans. We are not experiencing as much serendipitously as a culture any more if it's not Paris Hilton mania.

I don't know that I'm exactly alarmed by that, but I mull it over from time to time.

What will be the cost of that? The loss of the campfire and the shared myth? The collective dream.

What will come of us if we lose the richer language of shared metaphors? If we don't get the references to the dash of D'artagnan when it's referenced or the treachery of Milady de Winter?

What language will we speak then?

WOW on Christmas

I'm told the audio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds that I scripted was aired online on Christmas Day by the American Council of the Blind.

Their online radio feed offers a regular stream of old time radio drama and other programming.

I was kind of excited to learn we got the holiday slot. The producer, Troy Thayne, had hoped to have the production finished for Halloween, sort of in remembrance of the Orson Wells broadcast, but sound editing took a little longer than expected. (I should note ours is quite different from the 1930s version. It sets the tale in England in the 1890s, closer to the period of the novel.)

Working on an old time radio style drama--of which I am a fan--has been exciting all around, and it proved to be a truly international production.

The actors, led by the fabulously talented Martyn Tott, were all British, and the soundtrack was composed by Greek musical artist Yiannis Kranidiotis.

You can listen to a streaming sound clip via the banner at the right.

A little noir on my wall

Christine and I spent a good bit of time browsing Cody's Books in San Francisco when we were there in the fall.

She secretly purchased a calendar for me, a compilation of mostly French film noir posters.

I suppose it's appropriate that many are French since they gave us the term film noir. I suppose it's also a great San Francisco gift. If San Francisco isn't the city film noir calls home, it's at least a renter there.

The Maltese Falcon, Dark Passage and a host of others are set in the city by the bay.

I put it up in my office at my day job. Adds an extra splash of color across the room from the Doctor Who poster.

Looks like for the month of January, a green Orson Wells as Harry Lime will be peering over my shoulder as I work, and The Big Sleep, Psycho (not sure I agree with that one as film noir), Little Caesar and I Love Trouble are coming in the months ahead.

Too bad my office isn't across the street from a building with a neon sign.

(My calendar, in case you want one, is officially the Black Cinema Noire calendar from Tushita.com.)

Birds and Mice and Frozen Goldfish Bowls

I acquired some of my favorite short story collections via TAB, The Teen-Age Book Club, when I was in junior high.

From TAB, a few quarters would purchase various young adult novels, comic strip compilations and other material deemed suitable to sell to kids in school. Every couple of months the teacher would send off an order and in due time a box would arrive with everyone's choices.

Though it wasn't branded horror, Stories of Suspense, (1963) edited by Mary E. MacEwen, had much to chill, tingle and tantilize the imagination. I didn't know it then but it packaged stories by some of the finest purveyors of literary thrills.

The lead story "The Birds" by Daphne duMaurier had already scared me as a Hitchcock movie by the time I read it, but the slim volume also included a host of other fabulous tales.

"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keys - the short story that lead to the film Charly and a novel-length version. Though I later read the novel-length iteration, the shorter tale of Charlie Gordon is still the most poignant. The impact of Charlie's transition from mentally challenged to genius and back again is more concise and affecting in a few pages.

"Charles" by Shirley Jackson - a wry, clever entry by the brilliant mistress of the macabre, a juncture of her tales of the strange and her musings as a mother.

"Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets" by Jack Finney - one of two Finney tales in the collection. I didn't know who he was then. I was to discover The Body Snatchers later in a movie-tie-in edition with the Donald Sutherland version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was also to discover "Contents" was included in my mom's literature book as "An Untitled Story." It's indeed a story of suspense, unbearable suspense as a man whose wife has gone to the movies attempts to retrieve important business notes from his apartment's ledge. Only to have the finicky window trap him outside. We join him in his thoughts, wondering if he can hold on through the cartoon, short subject and the feature and ultimately through a re-evaluation of priorities.

"The Perfectionist" by Margaret St. Clair (aka Idris Seabright) - a wonderfully chilling, in more ways than one, journey into the strange world of a young man and his off-beat aunt who dabbles in painting. When she switches from still-life to living subjects she discovers it's challenging to get the detail right on things that move. Dammit!

The volume also includes works by John Collier, Roald Dahl and Lord Dunsany and while other books have come and gone from my collection I've always held onto this one.

If you see it at a used book store grab it. If not, look for the individual stories if you haven't read them. They're fab tales all.

It Looks Like Up From Here

Well, having returned from my descent into the underworld, I suppose I've brought back two pieces of information for the new year.

1. Stomach flu kicks you in the ass worse than you remember, and this wasn't even the worse case I've ever had.

2. Living through a dark night reminds you how good good can feel.

(All right three pieces of information)

3. Caffeine withdrawal is a bitch.

I hovered one day on that threshold where you start thinking, you know if that good night was willing, going gentle into it wouldn't be so bad.

Thursday I was feeling a little better and bland food started to pick me up again, then the queen mother of headaches pierced my brain like a spear. (When you self-diagnose on the web, the stomach flu literature says whateever the f you do stay the hell away from caffeine! it is ithe devil's brew.)

"I haven't had coffee in three days, the withdrawl should be finished," I muttered to Christine.

"Yeah, right," she laughed. She doesn't have the best bedside manner.

I went through a period roughly like Clint Eastwood's fever dream experiences in Unforgiven or Conan's near death experience in the first movie (you know wrapped in a blanket with ghostly spirits looming all around, am I remembering that scene right or is that just what happened to me?).

Then I woke up feeling marginally stable Friday morning.

And wow, risking a half-cup of coffee was like a dose of elixir. I felt like a chorus of "Let the Sunshine In."

I think Charles in his earlier comment below was right, maybe it's good to start the year with a downer. It certainly makes clear what "up" looks like and that you often take feeling OK for granted.

For a while, I may remember that.

Surviving the Norwalk Virus With Steve McQueen

I seem to have contracted the Norwalk virus or some variation, not a fun way to begin the new year.

I think this is the first time I've had a serious stomach virus since about 1989, so I'd really forgotten the power drain.

Strangely though I can remember starting to emerge from the last one - I'd received a complimentary copy of Mystery Scene magazine, and when I was able I went out and sat in the sun and read an article about the Hardman mystery series.

This time around I've been keeping my sanity with movies. The Sand Pebbles with Steve McQueen's a really good film, I guess a roadshow picture in its day and an Oscar winner. At around three hours long it's perfect for viewing when you can't move much more than your thumb on the remote control.

Also watched Under Siege 2 for the first time although I'd always heard it was good. It is.

I'm not reading right now or writing much because I don't want to inadverdently give myself aversion therapy to my current projects.

Hopefully in another day or so I'll be better.

My Favorite Fictional Characters - The Guilty Pleasures List

Some of my friends have been posting lists of favorite fictional characters. I thought I'd mention a few of my favorites who are fun but at least guilty pleasures of a sort.

1. Vampirella - originally a black-and-white Warren comic magazine sensation but also the star of some great paperback novels by Ron Goulart. She's a sexy vampire from the planet Draculon. She battles Cthulhu like monsters and pre-dates most of today's paranormal fantasy by many years.

2. Schlock Homes - a goofy Sherlocks Holmes take off by Robert L. Fish and frequently featured once upon a time in the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

3. Remo Williams, The Destroyer - pulp paperback parody hero - light hearted and clever in the hands of the original authors.

4. Ed Noon - creation of the Michael Avalone, fastest typewriter in the East, maligned in the pages of Gun in Cheek, but loads of fun whether spying for the president or solving hardboiled mysteries including his first, The Tall Dolores.

5. Edge - Cowboy tales penned by a Brit and probably later a host of house authors, the Edge series is over the top, violent and his adventures are often impossible to put down. Think Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name as a comic book written in prose. Tougher than hard boiled, meaner than Mickey Spillane and sometimes featuring weird in jokes. In one adventure Edge encounters three Pinkerton agents named things like Lou Archer, Phil Marlowe and Samuel Spade or something like that.

Happy 2007

May it be a wonderful year!

Seven and Three are Oh My God!

Seems like a heartbeat ago I was reading Peter Straub's Shadowlands which has a section toward the end called: "The End of the Century is in Sight."

And when that book came out it seemed like the end of the 20th century was a loooong way off.

Weren't we just sweating out Y2K and all that?

And looking forward to new Star Wars Films?

And recounting votes in Florida?

Man, after we turn the calendar page tonight, we'll be three years from the end of the first decade of this century.

My head's swimming, and I haven't had a new year's drink yet.

Need some cowbell!

OK, clearly I need to provide some educational materials here. I'm telling you, fellas, you're gonna want that cowbell!

Memes to Me - "Please, stop the monkeys!"

Addendum 2016: Linda J. Alexander, biographer of Steve Ihnat, dropped by this post recently to note that even in 2006 my memory was fuzzy. It was frequent '60's TV guest star Ihnat who played the brainwashed race car driver in Hunter and shouted the "stop the monkeys" line. I stand corrected, as I did the time I mixed up the release years on It's A Wonderful Life.

I didn't realize one of my favorite obscure movie lines is pretty much a meme.

"Stop the monkeys!" is one of those cool phrases that seems to fit any situation where you want to cry out against the insanity.

Five projects get turned in at once, all with the same deadline?

"Stop the monkeys."

Bad things happen one after another?

"Please, stop the monkeys!"

Someone says "All your base belongs to us" again.

"Stop the monkeys."

They remake Superman The Movie and call it a new movie: Superman Returns!

"Stop the monkeys! Stop the monkeys."

Despite its multiplicity of uses, I didn't realize it was in as wide a use as "Needs more cowbell," but that would seem to be the case. It says so on Wikipedia, at least, in the entry on the TV movie from which it's taken. I discovered that fact the other day in my relentless quest to gain knowledge and reduce boredom.

The movie, which yeah, I saw as a kid and remember, would be Hunter starring the late character actor John Vernon as a brainwashed race car driver who's driven mad by the suggestion that he's being assailed by flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.

So of course he says: "Please, stop the monkeys!"

I always found the flying monkeys roughly as terrifying as the Gargoyles from another CBS-TV Movie, so if I were being assailed by real or imaginary flying monkeys I'd want them to stop.

As we face the new year, it's always good to have a goal. Mine will be to help further perpetuate the use of phrase "Stop the monkeys" in 2007.

If you have a blog, please apply when appropriate, and by all means use it as a minced oath in polite company.

It's a little softer than some other John Vernon lines, such as the also frequently apopos but less socially acceptable: "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining," from The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Total Immersion

I've spent some long stretches working on a chapter to back up that first line I posted a few days ago another nice part of being off from my day job a few days and generaly off my feet.

It's a first line I've modified a bit based on suggestions here, by the way.

Referring to Dean Koontz on writing again, in one of his writing texts he's adamant about devoting uninterrupted hours to writing. Find time on a weekend if not during the week, he urges, to spend uninterrupted stretches with your fiction.

Other than having cats jump on my laptop I've done that the last few days, and it kind of reminded me how effective immersion in the world of your fiction can be.

The four walls of the setting become real, the characters literally start to breathe and truly you're in a different place within yourself or your thoughts.

As a reporter I covered someone discussing painting from the left side of the brain or the right, I forget which one's which in the creative vs. pragmatic scenario. She talked about getting to that place.

I know scientifically the left-right brain notion isn't proven, but I do find something does happen in the creative process where everything really kicks in.

I may have mentioned in this blog before how much I came to live in the small town that is the setting of my novel When Darkness Falls. I knew the streets, the shadows, the shops and what it was like to drive through town on a foggy evening.

When the book was finished I hated to leave.

It's to reach that point in a new piece of writing. It's not magic, but it feels that way.

Keeping off my feet with Pirates of the Caribbean

I'm still staying off my feet as much as possible, having twisted my ankle on Christmas Eve eve. (Actually it was more of a karate chop by the metal border on a flower bed, but it really becomes a long story.)

For me, it's not so bad being immobile. Yesterday I devoted a good deal of time to re-watching the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Some of my online friends have been discussing plotting lately. The admirable job done on those films becomes apparent when they're watched in proximity, negative reviews aside.

They're fun, fast-paced films, visually stunning, but there are many nuances I didn't really expect to find in summer blockbusters where lowest-common-denominator usually goes.

A lot of the subtle material was probably lost on kids in the multiplexes, but it sure makes the DVDs worth owning.

Of course I got "Dead Man's Chest" from Netflix and taped "Curse of the Black Pearl" off ABC for my mini-marathon but when the three-pack including the final film comes out I'm there, dude.

What I Got for Christmas

Didn't ask for big things this year. I decided to wait on that Sony e-book reader to see if it really catches on so I didn't get any major electronics.

It's for the best. If I got one I'd have to buy e-books for it.

I did get an iPod AV cable because I never could make the trick with a camcorder AV cable work--you're supposed to be able to cross the yellow, red and white connectors but I always got a scrambled mess.

Cheap but thrilling - now I can watch the Aquaman pilot on my living room TV.

Apparently I will be reading Hannibal Rising, too. It was on a list of potential gift books I gave Christine a while back.

I was a little more excited by The Shadow of Frankenstein, a paperback, part of a new series of Universal film tie-ins. It pits Henry Frankenstein-told you it was based on the movies--against Jack the Ripper.

What Christine is Getting for Christmas - Wodehouse

Christine has become a fan of P.G. Wodehouse and so she'll be getting several nice editions of his works this Christmas. Those are mixed in with other gifts, marginally disguised to thwart her ability to guess each gift item.

That means she'll know they're books, that they're Wodehouse books, but not which titles. I don't even know that without checking the order form now that they're wrapped.

I bought enough to keep her in Wodehouse reading much of the year since they're hard to come by at bookstore or library, despite their popularity.

Getting around to Wodehouse
They're filled with clever language, humor and plots that are complex enough to satisfy mystery readers though they're concerned more with manners than mayhem. If you haven't heard, they feature, mostly, the misadventures of British playboy Bertie Wooster, the narrator, and his manservant Jeeves, prototype for the American popular conception of butlers and footmen, though no longer the servant on Ask.com. :-(

We'd always meant to get around to Wodehouse. Years ago, probably when they were new, we used to see listings for the British series video in the Signals catalog, long a source of sweatshirts and tees in our house.

Hugh Laurie played Bertie on British TV and since Christine is a House, M.D. fan that prompted us to locate the titles on Netflix.

And the books followed, prompting her to not only read some but to read them out loud to me. (A favorite line invovles Bertie musing that a grouchy Scottish pooch wandered off "muttering something in Gaelic under his breath.")

I never have to read anything Christine is interested in. She either reads it to me or summarizes so completely I can save the time of sitting down with the actual prose. She summed up a recent New York Times profile of Kristin Chenoweth so completely I didn't have to read it or watch any more episodes of Studio 60, thinly-veiled Kristin Chenoweth biography.

This time next year
This time next year I'll be able to act versed in the works of Wodehouse. I'll be able to rattle off oneliners.

I predict the Wodehouse investment is a good choice of stocking stuffer.

Why am I bothering to tell everyone all this? Well maybe it will help with last-minute giving for some who can find Wodehouse in stores.

And I have to stay off my left foot. Monty--aka the king, the senior household tomcat, butler of our cats you might say-- got into the back yard yesterday and regular readers of this blog will know that usually means I get hurt. (He sniffed in a flowerbed then headed for the woods which connect to a busy roadway. I hopped off a retaining wall to head him off and, well I have to stay off my left foot.)

I could use a Jeeves.

Christmas Reading

I guess this is another of my personal holiday traditions. I like to read, and listen to, Christmas-themed fiction at holiday time, but you can only enjoy A Christmas Carol so many times.

I enjoy various versions from Patrick Stewart's one-man show to Jack Palance's Western interpretation in Ebenezer, but variety is nice as well.

I have some new-to-me items handy for downtime this weekend, when we're not cooking or shopping. I hope we don't have to do much of the latter.

The Twelve Frights of Christmas is an old anthology edited by Isaac Asimov with titles from H.G. Wells and Robert Bloch among others. I'm looking forward to a few holiday chills from that. I've had it a while, guess you could say I've been saving it.

Doctor Who
I also have a holiday-themed Doctor Who audio title from Big Finish, at least I think it is set at Christmas time. Should be a nice listen anyway. It's called The Chimes of Midnight and drops the eighth doctor, the one from the U.S. TV movie, into a British mansion in 1906 where he's faced with a mystery or two to solve. (And of course Doctor Who The Christmas Invasion re-airs Christmas Day on Sci Fi. If you're in the UK of course you get an all new Who special.)

Hopefully I'll enjoy the book and CD I've chosen as much as some of my previous holiday reads such as A Carol in the Dark, a really nice mystery from longtime editor Cathleen Jordan and The Christmas Crimes at Puzzle Manor from Simon Brett.

The Brett novel is an excellent holiday read about murders and puzzles at a snow-bound mansion. There are real puzzles you can solve built in.

Here's hoping everyone has some great holiday fun.

First Lines

I'm honing a new opening line. It's turning out a little long, but I'm not sure that's bad.

I'm toying with a story based on an actual experience I had in Dublin . As I walked through a blustery afternoon storm, and old man came toward me, chuckling strangely and looking at me knowingly as if he held some secret. That's about the extent of the real experience so I have quite a bit to make up.

Not sure if the story is going anywhere but I'm toying with an outline and an opening page at least and here's how it starts:

"The old man in the snap-brim cap walked out of the wind, his arms dangling, useless and limp as he angled across the sidewalk on a collision course with Desiree."

Desiree won't be the main character's name. That's a place holder for the moment. Guess we'll see where this goes

Download worthy

Charles Gramlich is talking Hannibal Rising over at Razored Zen. He had to read it for an article he's writing on Thomas Harris. People have been discussing it a while over on the Shocklines Forums, having purchased it right away. I was so excited to read Hannibal that I bought it in hardcover as soon as it was available. Not so Hannibal Rising. Just can't get excited about a new Lecter story even though I could at least spring a credit for it at Audible today as my subscription kicks in on the 20th. Sometimes it seems a sequel diminishes the original, stellar work. On the other hand, though I didn't like Forever Odd quite as well as Odd Thomas, I had no hesitation in springing for the audio of Brother Odd for the iPod to see what happens next to Odd Thomas and the ghost of Elvis. (Anyone remember the Weird Al song where he cites a tabloid headline: "The ghost of Elvis is living in my den!"?) Deciding on how to spend one credit is easier than how to spend the second though. With one there's always the second, no problem. With the second, well, that's it. All you're gonna get for a month. Should I go for Michael Crichton's new one? Or the non-fiction account of Irael's response to the 1972 Olympic massacre, Striking Back, last week's No. 1 history download at Audible. Or should I go for the holiday-themed thriller Slay Ride by Chris Grabenstein? Yep, deciding what's download worthy can be a challenge.

Meanwhile under the tree

We brought Christmas presents home from Christine's mom's and put them under the tree.

Daisy, aka the good cat, immediately began to poke around them as if to say: "I'm looking to see if there's one with my name on it." At least that's the quote Christine attributed to her and she's usually pretty good at interpreting her thoughts.

Failing to find "Miss Daisy" on any "To" cards, our queen took up residence atop a present we believe to be a new tea kettle from Christine's mom.

If Christine were on Heroes, her super power would be the ability to ascertain a gift package's contents long before Christmas Day. And to interpret the thoughts of a slightly bossy female cat.

I'm not sure why Daisy is so interested in a tea kettle, but it seems to be where we'll find her from now until Christmas Day. It had a really nice bow, too.

Another tune on my Christmas playlist

Yesterday, Christine and I were in our grocer's dairy section when Gene Autry's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" came on the in-store radio.

That took me back. The tune was already firmly a part of pop culture when I was kid, and the LP was one my dad always put on the stack. We had a Packard Bell stereo--the kind where the speakers were built into the cabinet that housed the turntable.

Shuffle play was achieved by placing a stack of vinyl albums on the turntable. When one finished another dropped down.

I snagged the cover art from the web, but the pic is of the album we had. It wore out long ago, probably from being stacked under other albums as they spun.

I don't know how old it was when I came along but I was dazzled by the pic of Rudolph when I was very small, and the images the song evoked were always a part of early sixties Christmases.

I always sat in our den in Louisiana and imagined a foggy North Pole Christmas Eve and the days leading up to Christmas were always the best days.

Veronica Mars on iTunes

I've long wondered considering its key demographic, why Veronica Mars wasn't on iTunes. At last it is and it's download worthy for sure.

For some reason my dish provider doesn't include The CW, nee the WB and UPN, in the local channels. I watched the final half of season one on DVD then Season 2 completely on DVD.

Looks like I won't have to wait that long for Veronica’s freshman year at Neptune U.

No, I ain't in Veronica's target market per se, but I am a private eye fan and Veronica Mars is one of the best private eye shows since Rockford. Seasons 1 and 2 have fabulous year-long mystery arcs solved along with her PI dad, Enrico Colantoni. That's reason 1 to watch.

How Veronica Mars is like Bullwinkle
Bullwinkle used to include asides and jokes for the folks that kids wouldn't get. Veronica and her pals are some of the most pop-culturally literate kids ever. Moreso than a lot of twentysomethings I know. No way would they know some of the song and movie references Veronica and her pals drop periodically. But they make for great dialog.

How Veronica Mars is like Agatha Christie
OK, every episode is not as clever as Dame Agatha's, but there are occasions when VM solves some capsule mysteries for her friends that are clue-laden and clever.

I haven't made it through the first mini-arc of season 3 on my iPod, but so far it's still intriguing if unfortunate that the long mysteries had to be abandoned in an attempt to build ratings.

Sadly as one of the best of the best on TV these days, Veronica may be one of the shows that asks too much of a commitment. I predict it will someday prosper in reruns and perhaps online though it may not be an Aquaman.

Download one episode and see if you can stop there!

My Christmas Playlist

Psychologists will tell you that as your life marches along, family members pass away and the Christmas Seasons in memory start becoming your own personal ancient history, it's important to establish new Christmas traditions.

One of my personal traditions is my Christmas playlist, which I wrote about here last year. I'm getting old. I repeat myself.

I started it back in 2000 when I was immersed in a big project at work. Having holiday tunes playing in my office kept things from getting gloomy.

Always a part of my Christmas playlist is John Altenburgh's Christmas at Buzz's Restaurant, which is now available on iTunes. I don't think it was last Christmas. The iTunes summary is accurate. It features Jazzy versions of many traditional songs as well as some fun originals.

The title track is a warm, sentimental perennial for me at Christmas. I don't know if there ever was a Buzz's in Keelerville, WI, but the lyrics evoke a feeling of nostalgia for Christmas pasts that seems real and connects me with my own long ago memories.

Here's my complete playlist for this year, assembled from my album collection, free downloads and digital purchases:

1. Silent Night - John Altenburgh - Christmas at Buzz's Restaurant
2. Nollaig Na Mban - Cormac Breatnach - Celtic Christmas
3. 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night - Simon and Garfunkle - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
4. Christmas Time Is Here - Vince Guaraldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas
5. Christmas at Buzz's Restaurant - John Altenburgh - Christmas at Buzz's Restaurant
6. In the Bleak Midwinter - Allison Crowe - Tidings
7. Better Days - The Goo Goo Dolls
8. King Holly, King Oak - Johnny Cunningham - Celtic Christmas
9. Jingle Bells - Diana Krall & The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra - Christmas Songs
10. Jingle Bells - James Taylor - James Taylor at Christmas (It was free last week and this version and the Diana Crall version offer wildly different interpretations of the tune.)
11. Christmas Story - John Altenburgh - Christmas at Buzz's Restaurant
12. All I Want for Christmas is You (So So Def Remix) Mariah Carey featuring JD & Lil' Bow Wow - All I Want for Christmas (You gotta mix things up)
13. Little Drummer Boy - Johnny Cash - The Christmas Album
14. Snow On High Ground - Nightnoise - Celtic Christmas
15. Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy- Bing Crosby & David Bowie - Bing Crosby - Christmas Classics (I know, I know, !?. It's from, I believe Crosby's last Christmas TV special, sentimental for me because I remember watching with my family back in the day. The 4 minute version includes the lead-in.)

If you have Christmas favorites, please share.

Cool Quote For Bloggers and Writers

Here's a cool Star Trek quote Christine found. (And there's a sentence that, if you know Christine, sounds like science fiction.)

"It takes courage to look inside yourself, and even more courage to write it for others to see." - Capt. Benjamin Sisko

It's found in a Star Trek/Myers Briggs assessment.

The Value of the Blog

Is there value to blogging for writers?

Charles Gramlich and Stewart Sternberg have been discussing that with degrees of levity mingled with serious contemplation.

Let me weigh in with a yes. I don't know if anyone's bought a copy of my War of the Worlds, or listened to a free sample due to the link at the right, hint hint. Or if it's driven anyone to dig up some of my older stuff, but blogging's kind of an Emily Dickinson thing.

I think I'd write here even if there weren't eight or nine people reading it every day.

It's a little less disciplined, but this is pretty much what I used to do when I was a newspaper reporter.

I mean generally I talked to people all day and wrote what they told me. I had to, you know, be concerned more with facts than opinion, I guess. Though I did write a column for a while that was sort of like a blog. It was just once a week or so and a few more people scratched their heads as I mulled over things like Procol Harum lyrics. (Wayne Sallee's posting about six degrees of separation. I think Karl Edward Wagner once wrote a story called "At First Just Ghostly" taking a line from "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Maybe that's serendipity and not six-degrees, though it's one degree removed from yesterday's post, keep scrolling.)

Getting the junk out
An account rep for an ad agency we work with on my day job once said some of their creatives had to "get the junk out" of their heads before the really good stuff came. Stream of consciousness blogging certainly allows that. It's as free form as it gets, and I think serves a purpose similar to "morning pages" advocated in The Artist's Way. Before blogs, journals for writers were a must.

A sense of community
Beyond the rambling, blogging also allows a coast-to-coast sense of community and communication.

If I had to connect dots on a map to the friends old and new I'm now in regular Web 2.0- communication with, it would zig from the South to the West Coast to the Midwest with a long though occasional zag over to the British Isles. Maybe I better not draw all those lines, it might summon Cthulhu. (Speaking of elder gods and in keeping with stream of consciousness, wouldn't this make a great gift?)

"Wow, I thought he'd never shut up."
In conclusion, I think there's value in blogging, just in doing it. 'Cause someone said writing equals ass in chair. It doesn't have to be a means to an end other than that, no, uh pun intended, though I'm thinking Stewart's new "Weird Addiction" writing challenge could get me started on a pretty good short story.