Beleaguered

June 1

I updated and reorganized my Reviews page, where you can read the generally nice things people say about my work -- including new reviews by my esteemed editor Jonathan Strahan of my stories "Fable from a Cage" and "Captain Fantasy". The reviews are in order from most-recent-story to oldest-story, now, which makes as much sense as anything, I guess.

Friday I had a hard time writing, so I did some business-stuff, sent out some queries, wrote to some people. When you can't write, market. That night Heather gave me the order she wants the Flytrap stories to appear in, and I worked on putting the issue together. Whee! It's going to look marvelous. I got into a serious layout-making groove. If you can't write, do layout.

For those following along at home, I talked to the agent who's interested in my book, and as she's busily preparing for a trip, she hasn't had time to do a second read and make more detailed suggestions. She offered to get back to me next week, but I told her I'd be at Rio Hondo, so I should hear from her in the third week in June. I'm actually a bit relieved -- now I can concentrate on the Furies story without worrying about making revisions to Rangergirl just yet. And, of course, there's always the Frog novel, which is creeping along, interrupted by all this review-writing and short-storying... I'll get back into the swing of it after the workshop, though.

I've been reading a lot lately, not surprisingly. I like Trampoline very much. Maureen McHugh (who I'll meet at Rio Hondo!) provides the wonderful "Eight-Legged Story" -- she has a gift for writing about complex situations and refuting the solace of easy fictional solutions. "The King of Spain" by Dave Shaw is brilliant, and moving, and has a monkey. Richard Butner's "Ash City Stomp" is lovely and strange, with the added thrill of being set in North Carolina, so I have lots of little moments of recognition. Umm. Lots of comic-reading this weekend, as Heather and I went comic shopping Saturday. Read the newest Hellblazer collection, Freezes Over. Eh. The writer just isn't very sophisticated. His stories are predictable and not very well-paced. But then, I'm comparing him to Warren Ellis, which is maybe not fair... Speaking of, we got the newest Transmetropolitan collection, Dirge. The end of the series approacheth... Also picked up issue #5 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and, well, yum. Using Dr. Moreau as a way to work in the animals-wearing-clothes aspect of Victorian literature... absolutely brilliant. Can't wait to read the last issue, but, of course, I have to, because they come slowly. Saturday Heather and I also went to see The Matrix: Reloaded, and I liked it. I got what I expected to get out of it, had a nice experience, no complaints. I spent some time in the lobby looking at a movie poster for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, which troubles me so greatly. I have a tremendous attachment to the comic, and seeing what they've done to it... gah. It upsets me. Intellectually, I know that the movie has no bearing on the comics, it certainly won't diminish the value of the comics themselves... but it still troubles me. Probably because I was so excited, at first, when I heard they were making it into a movie. Then they made Quartermain the leader (even on the movie poster, he's right there front-and-center, when it should damn well be Mina Murray). Then they made Mina into a vampire. Some have suggested she's secretly a vampire, or has some vampire-like abilities, in the comic, too, but I've never believed it. The thing that makes Mina powerful in the comic -- the thing that makes her suitable for being the leader -- is the fact that she faced the most evil, dangerous creature in the world (Dracula, that is) and survived it, so she can subsequently deal with just about anything. That aspect of her personality is hinted at in the first volume of the series, and made explicit in volume two, when it's noted that Mina is the only person not terrified of Edward Hyde, because she's dealt with something worse than him. And now she's some chick who can turn into bats. Which I'd think was cool, if I didn't have this outrage... and don't get me started on the addition of Tom Sawyer to the cast. Shudder. The screenwriter needed a "sympathetic" character, when the whole point of League is that you have these deeply flawed, monstrous, damaged people who nevertheless do good, sometimes for selfish reasons, sometimes for redemptive ones. I'm less troubled by the addition of Dorian Grey -- at least he's mentioned in passing in the comics, and since he's immortal, there's no problem with the chronology. (Unlike Tom Sawyer -- I understand he's a young man in the movie, and if he was born in 1840 (it's hard to be precise because Twain isn't explicit about the dates, but that's probably close, give or take ten years), he should be almost 60 when the events of League take place. But then, you can't expect a movie to bother with little details like that. Alan Moore fudges the dates occasionally to make things fit, but he doesn't commit that kind of violence against the timeline.

Is it apparent that I'm cranky and, a little, obsessive? I just love the insane level of detail in the comics, the fact that even secondary characters are literary figures (occasionally reverse-engineered from later characters, like Campion Bond, who it seems likely is an ancestor of James), the wonderful effect of trying to make all those different literary universes fit together... and it's going to be transformed into a typical big dumb action movie, when it could've been so much more. Ah, well. As long as Alan Moore gets a lot of money. And maybe people who see the movie will pick up the comic. That's always the hope, I suppose.

So, ah, Saturday. Movie, comic books, then ice cream, mmm. And then home. We watched Igby Goes Down, which was vapid nonsense, poor-little-rich-boy garbage. I couldn't even finish it -- I wandered off to make dinner. Then I wandered upstairs and spent way too long surfing around online, reading about weird Victoriana...

Sunday I finally got some work done. I wrote a review of Kissing Carrion, Gemma Files's first collection -- smart, witty, marvelous horror. The review came surprisingly easily. I also typed in my longhand stuff on the Furies story, and wrote another 800 words or so on it. I think I overestimated how long it will be -- I might be able to do it in 5 or 6,000 words. We'll see. I have to finish it this week -- Rio Hondo approacheth!

Tonight we watched Next Stop Wonderland by the wonderful Brad Anderson, and it was pretty wonderful -- as a writer he's drawn to the whole "It's fate" thing, but he doesn't embrace it wholeheartedly, which is nice. Heather and I went grocery shopping. We drank chocolate stout in frosty pint glasses. Life has many fine qualities, you know?

So many interesting things online I should be linking to, but I'll settle for Jay Lake's interview at Ideomancer -- he says nice things about lots of nice people. He's the featured author on that site now. I'll be featured author there later this year. Pretty cool, hmm?

Words written since February 1, 2003: 57,800

Words written since last entry:
1,400

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