Monday, May 29, 2006

Someone owes Joss Whedon

So, I saw X-Men 3 this weekend. How was it? Eh. I huge let down from X-Men 2. Plus, what's with the ripping off of Joss Whedon? This is not just the entire plot from his X-Men comic, about the cure and the Beast being the tempted one, which they are perfectly entitled to do. As Neil has said about writing for DC, it's their sandbox and their toys, you just get to play with them for a bit.

But what's with Dark Phoenix getting all veiny when she's evil? It was so familiar. Where have I seen that before? Let me think..... Oh yeah!



Evil Willow! (and by the way, Evil Willow has a lot of webpages. Apparently some folks think she's really hot. I could see vamp Willow in the dominatrix leather, but veiny Willow? Takes all kinds, I guess).

At any rate, the resemblence was so uncanny I was expecting Wolverine to bring her back from the brink by reminding her of the yellow crayon. (My 8-year-old doesn't understand why he didn't just pick up another syringe and stab her with it - they stuck four in Magneto, after all. For that matter, why not just drag Leech over there? Did no one discuss the options?) (And don't give me any heat-of-the-moment crap, Storm and Wolverine knew what was going to happen before they even left the school).


So to say the film had some plot holes would be a bit of an understatement. I suppose we should be happy for the two cool X-Men movies we got (two more than I was expecting), and hope the best for the upcoming Wolverine movie.

And I kinda hope Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen work together again. They rock (in a Shakespearean, real thespian kinda way).

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Quest for a dry basement: post the third (in which we hit a small snag)

So, on Tuesday past the dumpsters were delivered to our driveway: one for all the wood from the deck and the other for the rest of the assorted junk in the backyard and garage whose time had come. Quin left for the park that evening telling me all the things he was going to get started on later that evening.

He came back from the park looking a little gray. And sheepish, frankly. He'd been playing football with the other dads at the park and (forgetting that he's neither young nor particularly athletic any more) decided to do a "tuck and roll". One little pop sound later:


Guess which tear is his? Go on, guess. Did you say Grade 3? Bingo! He popped two ligaments and his arm is useless. Now when he takes the boys to the park, I have to stop working and help everyone with their shoes because he can't do anything with his left arm. He can't even sleep laying down yet (and they gave him Vicodin for nighttimes).

Luckily he has a brother who's a starving college student (well, more than, actually. Come September there will be 3). So he came over today to help Quin fill the dumpsters in exchange for food and cash. He'll have a recurring gig this summer, coming over on Saturdays to do all the things that Quin started but didn't finish. It's going to take up to 3 months for his shoulder to heal.

The good news is the concrete guy gets started on Wednesday tearing out the old patio (steps too!) and putting in the new one. I'll post pics when he's done.



Friday, May 26, 2006

The plot thickens

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. -Mark Twain.

So, as it turns out there is more than one potential villain in our little piece. Now, there is no doubt that Barbara Bauer sucks. She called up the ISP for Absolute Write (in the process of being reborn on a new server - go AW!) and demanded they take down the site because it contained her e-mail address and people there were spamming her. Her e-mail address also appears on her webpage, and she is totally googleable, so how she knows where her spam is coming from is anybody's guess. Also, bilking hopeful (yet sadly uninformed) new writers out of thousands of dollars is OK, but spam is totally evil! (Well, it is, actually, but so is that other thing).

(My favorite Barbara Bauer story is when she demanded $1 billion dollars from Writer's Weekly for defamation. I wonder, did she hold her pinky to the corner of her mouth when she said that?)

So. Lunatic woman makes a lunatic demand. Why did the ISP do it?

As it turns out, this is a husband and wife team who've been working on their own forum for writers and hey! What a coincidence! It turns up the very next day after Absolute Write is taken down. (I'm not giving the URL here, suffice it to say there's no one there but Stephanie and James, who are the husband and wife team, and a few Backspacers asking pointed questions that don't seem to be getting answered. Odd, that).

James gives his side of the story here. It seems our choices are between thinking they are mean-spirited and thinking they are just really stupid. The comment trail at Making Light is filled with techie-types explaining why nothing James says makes sense to people who know anything about running an ISP. Me? Well, the screed starts out with James asking us to excuse his spelling and "grammer". Perhaps if he hadn't pissed off every writer in existence he could have gotten someone to proofread it for him.

He also says we should go ahead and keep posting about him because he's taking down all our names and he's totally going to sic his lawyer on us. I know I'm shaking in my boots.

On somewhat related notes:

Miss Snark rocks.

The really stupid thing about attacking writers is that they are smart and creative.They don't call talk shows and whine...they build websites (or post really really sardonic yet useful comments on Making Light) - Miss Snark

Neil Gaiman contributes (and his blog gets a few readers, doesn't it?)

And also joining the fray are Andrew Wheeler, Jackie Kessler, Kristin Nelson (like Miss Snark, she's a real agent), Heather Brewer, EJ Knapp, Marie Lu, and my brother RoninHighlander. And those are just from the blogs I read regularly. (and now the whole "I never have time to read the newspaper" thing is making a lot more sense...).

The plot thickens

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. -Mark Twain.

So, as it turns out there is more than one potential villain in our little piece. Now, there is no doubt that Barbara Bauer sucks. She called up the ISP for Absolute Write (in the process of being reborn on a new server - go AW!) and demanded they take down the site because it contained her e-mail address and people there were spamming her. Her e-mail address also appears on her webpage, and she is totally googleable, so how show knows where her spam is coming from is anybody's guess. Also, bilking hopeful (yet sadly uninformed) new writers out of thousands of dollars is OK, but spam is totally evil! (Well, it is, actually, but so is that other thing).

(My favorite Barbara Bauer story is when she demanded $1 billion dollars from Writer's Weekly for defamation. I wonder, did she hold her pinky to the corner of her mouth when she said that?)

So. Lunatic woman makes a lunatic demand. Why did the ISP do it?

As it turns out, this is a husband and wife team who've been working on their own forum for writers and hey! What a coincidence! It turns up the very next day after Absolute Write is taken down. (I'm not giving the URL here, suffice it to say there's no one there but Stephanie and James, who are the husband and wife team, and a few Backspacers asking pointed questions that don't seem to be getting answered. Odd, that).

James gives his side of the story here. It seems our choices are thinking they are mean-spirited or stupid. The comment trail at Making Light is filled with techie-types explaining why nothing James says makes sense to people who know anything about running an ISP. Me? Well, the screed starts out with James asking us to excuse his spelling and "grammer". Perhaps if he hadn't pissed off every writer in existence he could have gotten someone to proofread it for him.

He also says we should go ahead and keep posting about him because he's taking down all our names and he's totally going to sic his lawyer on us. I know I'm shaking in my boots.

On somewhat related notes:

Miss Snark rocks.

The really stupid thing about attacking writers is that they are smart and creative.They don't call talk shows and whine...they build websites (or post really really sardonic yet useful comments on Making Light) - Miss Snark

Neil Gaiman contributes (his blog gets a few readers, doesn't it?)

And also joining the fray are Andrew Wheeler, Jackie Kessler, Kristin Nelson (like Miss Snark, she's a real agent), Heather Brewer, EJ Knapp, Marie Lu, and my brother RoninHighlander. And those are just from the blogs I read. (and now the whole "never have time to read the paper" thing is making a lot more sense...).

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Barbara Bauer, you just picked the wrong fight

For my non-writer friends, let me bring you up to speed. When you write a novel and you want to sell it, you can't just send it straight to the publisher (well, you can, but that don't mean they're gonna read it). You have to get yourself an agent. There are millions of people trying to be writers. The number who ever get published is much smaller. That the sort of situation that just screams "grift me baby!". By which I mean there are a lot of scammers who pretend to be agents in order to bilk naive young writers out of their money by insisting they need to pay "office fees" or for "editorial services" or the like (hint: your agent gets a percentage of what you earn when he or she sells your book, and they don't see a penny before that happens).

Writers Beware is a group (started by two sci-fi writers as it happens) that has worked for years now compiling reports of bogus agents and getting the word out. If you're looking to query your novel with agents, it behooves you to check out their website first (and Preditors and Editors). A few weeks back, Writers Beware put out a list of the twenty worst offenders (most are scam artists, others are just overwhelmingly incompetent - what good is an agent that can't sell your book?).

Here's the list:

The Abacus Group Literary Agency
Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to "book doctor" Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
Benedict & Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
Sherwood Broome, Inc.
Desert Rose Literary Agency
Arthur Fleming Associates
Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
Brock Gannon Literary Agency
Harris Literary Agency
The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
Children's Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency
New York Literary Agency
Poets Literary Agency
The Screenplay Agency
Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)
Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
Martin-McLean Literary Associates
Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
B.K. Nelson, Inc.
The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
Michelle Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)
Southeast Literary Agency
Mark Sullivan Associates
West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

Writers Beware aren't stupid; they expected the people on this list to stir up trouble. So they asked that every dessiminate the list all over the internet. Post it everywhere! (Go ahead! Copy/paste this to your own blogs and web pages). They can't shut us all down!

Barbara Bauer has already tried to cease-and-desist websites who post this list with her name on it. Yesterday she finally came across one that caved: Absolute Write. Not the people running the website, mind you, but the ISP that hosts it.

You want some trouble? Shut down the message boards where writers go to chat. How are we going to procrastinate with writing if we can't chat? Actually, these boards have been around for a long, long time. I've lurked there myself, never posted. Way too immense for my tastes. But in this situation, "immense" also means "full of valuable information". The data's not gone, but it's not reachable to the rest of us by the magic of the internet.

That should change soon. The writers are pissed. Many options are being bandied about on how to resurrect the site using an ISP with a back bone (and more legal know-how, not so easily punked by a con-woman).

Do you know what googlebombing is? It's when we all get together and say the same thing on our blogs and websites, so when someone googles, say, Barbara Bauer, all they get is her name on this list of scam artists. Care to join me? All you have to do is mention her by name, and link her name to http://www.sfwa.org/beware/twentyworst.html. Show her what happens when you try to come between writers and their boards!

(Oh yeah, and freedom of speech. Woo-hoo!)

Monday, May 22, 2006

Quest for a dry basement: post the second

The concrete man was supposed to come over on Friday evening to go over with Quin what we want done, but it rained so he cancelled. Ironic.

In the mean time, Quin has taken all the long nails and is working on taking out the stairs himself:

I've been told that I have to walk around the house to water the plants now. I said, "Yes, dear," but secretly I'm still jumping out the sliding glass door. I have to get these chores done during school time, and if I went out the front door I guarantee all school activity would halt. By jumping out the back door, I am in visual contact of the table where they're working at all times.

Quin also trimmed back the shrubs and trees around the patio so they wouldn't get in the way when the concrete man starts ripping things apart:



It's weird; we can see the whole yard now. I would have taken a "before" picture but he didn't forewarn me that he would be doing this. But those of you familiar with our house can see, it's a big change.

I tried to get a picture that showed the crack in the pavement. The patio is really two separate slabs, and we're only replacing the one under the stairs with more concrete. This pic is really too dark to see it; the new patio will end where the basketball hoop is now:


Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Quest for a dry basement: post the first

The rain has finally stopped (and it sounds like we didn't even get the worst of it: New England, you have my sympathies). Now the real work begins. My husband has a plan that will make water drain away from our house instead of into it. Something about a trench and some clay... it would take an engineer to explain it. Suffice it to say step one was dismantling our deck, which was built on top of the concrete patio (removal of which will be step two, but will require the aid of a professional).

I'm not a deck fan myself. I don't like to be up high. I like a patio, close to the ground, preferably under some trees. So losing the deck wasn't a heartbreak for me. Plus, it was getting kind of punky anyway; and the boards on the steps would tip when you walked on them - not a feature I look for in stairs.

So the deck is gone, and my back door now looks like this:



The space between the sliding glass door and the top of the concrete steps is somewhere between a big step and a little jump. Add to that fact that they're not on a level, that you have to step down to get to the concrete. See those metal brackets? They are all covered in rusted nails, all spiny and sinister-looking. And the steps have long twists of metal coming out where the fellow who put on the addition blasted out the space. See those pots in the background? Those are my tomato and pepper plants, the ones that need to be watered daily. Plus the patio is one of my favorite writing places, when none of the neighbors are leaf-blowing, melting styrofoam in their Coleman grills, or murdering their children (to be fair, I'm sure it only sounds like they're murdering their children).

Note: When trying to make a big step down do not hold onto the sliding glass door for support. It tends to move.

All this is just so when I don't blog for a while, you'll know I'm in the hospital with puncture wounds and tetanus. Oh sure, I could go out the front door and walk around the house, but it's such a long way...

Friday, May 12, 2006

Why I shouldn't watch Sesame Street

Big Bird: Telly, don't you want to boing?
Telly: No.
Maria: But Telly, you love boinging!
Telly: Not anymore. I fell off.
Big Bird: You fell off? But you're the best boinger on Sesame Street!

And of course there was a song, Boinging is For Me: "Boing fast, boing slow; boinging is the way to go..."

I swear, the writers of the show are only pretending this is all about a pogo stick.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

*sigh*


I'm guessing by Monday I'll have ducks swimming in my backyard. On a somewhat related note, I should learn not to complain outloud over commas in books I'm reading. My husband sent me this e-mail this morning:

Kate

I opened, Aidan's windows,. Just, giving you a heads, up, because rain is likely.

Thank, you

Quin

Ha ha. Very funny. I better take out my swimsuit; I'll probably need it to work in the basement this weekend.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Vicarious thrills

I haven't blogged about basketball in a while (as if you missed it!). My home team, the Timberwolves, made the decision not to play Kevin Garnett or Ricky Davis for any games in the last two weeks of the season. Alledgedly, they had injuries. Not that this fooled anyone; by the terms of our trade to the LA Clippers, we would get a first round draft pick only if we ended up one of the ten worst teams in the league.

Yeah, that's a fun prize to watch your team chase. NOT!

The funny thing was, they still screwed up and won the first few games. But in the end we were the seventh worst team and so we get our draft pick. As if one player is going to matter. I feel bad for Kevin; I don't think he's ever going to take this team all the way.

But I have been keeping up with the playoffs. I took great pleasure in the Phoenix Suns beating Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. This is partially about me hating Kobe, but it's also a bit about liking Steve Nash. He always seems to be having fun when he plays; he's a joy to watch. Plus he's good. And that's not just me, he got MVP this year. He was MVP last year too, so hats off to Steve Nash! And a big thank you for spanking Kobe Bryant!

So now it's the Phoenix Suns against the LA Clippers. I'm torn on this one; I'd be happy for either team to win. I'm pleased that Sam Cassel has been doing so well with his new team. I think it was a mistake we ever traded him, and not just because of his skills as a point guard. We have so many young guys on the Wolves now, we could really use the leadership Sam has been showing with the Clippers.

(And I should really let the Kobe thing go. My boys got little Lego minifigures of NBA basketball players at their Lego Club a month ago - 3 to a box. Oliver got the box with Kobe in it and wanted to give it back, and he was rather loud in his protests against the Kobe. But I convinced him to keep it. It also had Steve Nash.)

Monday, May 08, 2006

A link for writers

This is a must read:

http://www.evileditor.blogspot.com./

I'm not sure who this guy works for, but he is hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard in a good long while. It's a bit like Miss Snark's Crapometer: he posts novel queries that people send him and makes... suggestions for improvements. I suppose a large part of the humor for me is a byproduct of being very nervous about making that query plunge when the novel is done (which is a ways off, but I like to get started early on the whole worry thing). But this quote really sent me off the deep end (Evil Editor's words are always the ones in the blue brackets):

Resolution is my 86,0000-word novel [If that's too many zeros, fine. If that's a misplaced comma, we need to talk.]

Of course it's possible this is only funny if you're a writer...

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Two good fantasy novels!

So I'm back from my vacation, which was happily rattlesnake-free. I read three books - three books in a week! I can't remember the last time I did that. That's not true, actually, it was last July. I read the first five Harry Potter books while waiting for book six, which I ripped out of the FedEx man's hands and devoured in a day. So that was six books in two weeks, but it was mostly rereading which always goes faster for me.

At any rate, two of the three books I read were first novels from fantasy writers. Finally I found some good ones - and two in one week! The first was Doppleganger by Marie Brennan. Please, do not just this book by its cover:




Woman with tight leather, cleavage-baring outfit - I'm not a fan. Especially since the woman in the book wears clothing made from something called windsilk that covers every inch, including the face. Think ninja. But cover art gripes aside, I enjoyed this novel. It played on the theme of the price of magic, which is one I always get into. The plot unfolded in a very satisfying way, revealing the mechanics of the relationship between the witch Miryo and her Doppleganger Mirage (the warrior woman) bit by bit. Everytime I thought I'd found an unintentional loophole, it was neatly resolved. There is already a sequel in the works, and I could see this going series, but it doesn't leave anything unresolved at the end, only the sense of possibilities for more. Most admiringly, although there was clearly quite a bit of world-building going on, the book doesn't attempt to tell you everything about this place. The emphasis is on this story and these characters, no long essays on their political structures or what have you.

And none of my gripes from before pop up at all. In fact the literacy thing is an issue raised in the novel (albeit briefly).

The second book I read was a contemporary fantasy, which isn't what I write, but then again neither is high fantasy in fictional worlds. It's called The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt.

(Blogger is pissing me off. It says my image was uploaded, and yet it isn't here. So even though it has a better cover than Doppleganger I can't show it to you. You can take my word for it or see for yourself at Amazon.com here).

The plot is nothing new - a girl opens a door to another place (Dreamtime/land of fairy/medicine lands all rolled up into one), but doors to other worlds is an old favorite of mine; I don't think I can read to many stories on that conceit. And if the girl in question is one who writes and draws her own comic books... dude, I'm so there. Plus, this one has the addition of a cast of very engaging characters. They are all art students or former art students, and most have their own unique shadings of mental illness, but they all feel very real. My favorite was Denis, the obsessive-compulsive fan of modern art, who preferred intellectual approaches to art over emotional ones (the exact opposite of me, actually). Denis is an asshole, sure, but he's a very engaging asshole.

The third book I read was not fantasy or even fiction. It was The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings by Amy Tan. It actually came out before Saving Fish from Drowning, I'm not sure how I missed knowing it was out there (it certainly seems like Amazon.com emails me every time there is a new release remotely like a previous purchase). It's a collection of essays, many about her mother, all about writing in one way or another. It was a very interesting read, and I would particularly recommend it to other writers. It's not about the craft per se, not the way Stephen King's On Writing is, but the musings of a successful writer are always worth a read, in my opinion.

While reading Saving Fish from Drowning, I was wondering what drew me to her work. After all, I don't have mother issues, but I don't think it's Schadefreude that's drawing me to these stories about mothers and daughters. I think it's because Amy Tan seems to share my underlying world view, a sort of yin and yang between rational science and irrational magical thinking. Her books all have that interplay between them, where it's possible to simultaneously believe that there is no such thing as ghosts because there is no scientific proof and all those sounds coming from the atiic have very mundane explanations, and at the same time believe that there actually is a ghost up there. To believe that there is no such thing as fate while you stock up on good luck charms.

It sounds paradoxical, but that's just the way my brain works.