Wading my way through the 3 books still. Blackwood Farm hasn't gotten any better. Hell, the guy still isn't a vampire and I'm most of the way through. Arghhh. I won't read Rice if my damn library wasn't for illiterate morons. "We have lots of horror," she says as she point to the Saul, Rice, Stine, etc. I listen to them on tape as I drive around. It's better than the stereo. I think I'm going to make the trip to Detroit Public Library to get some better books on tape. Lincoln Park has the worst library I have ever seen. This is saying something as I grew up in a hick town in northern Michigan. An people down here think we're backwards. At least can read.
The First 5 Pages has some interesting stuff on character. The section is short but it really got me thinking. I've already been working on the names issue. I know they are white-bread names. I've also said before that Jack needs a revamp to make his character more interesting and compeling to the reader.
Critiquing is going slow. I finished the screenplay I was critiquing for a werewolf.com guy. It wasn't very good in most aspects. I have no idea how he thinks he is going to get a 3 million dollar budget for it. It's good to have dreams, but you have to be a little more realistic.
I cut down on my critique groups. I realized I was overextending myself. The local one wasn't right for me. They were Christian romance writers. I thought that would be good to get an outside eye to my stories that wouldn't normally read horror. I realized it really wasn't that good. I'm am not that good to be the most knowledgable person in a writers group. I need as good as I give when it comes to critiques. I also quit one of the horror critique groups that didn't seem as helpful as the Shocklines one. The Shocklines group is good. It has a good mix of pros, semi-pros and amateurs. Some critiques are scant, but we are working to helkp those people become better critiquers. This groups also doesn't take too much work, and the writers get cycled through pretty regularly so you aren't doing too many critiques compared to what you get back. Many recommended that I submit my story to the next Borderlands. It opens this spring, I'll send it there first.
Speaking of submitting. I finally got my reject from Civil War Times. 19 months. The wording of the letter makes it sound like they had a tough time deciding they didn't want it, but still no sale. It is a very good piece. It'll find a home in Blue & Gray or another Civil War mag.
Today is the start of Winter break for Taylor schools, so I get some time to write. I also need to get some business stuff done too. I don't have nay stories/articles out right now (except for a little thing for FOUND, and that doesn't really count). I need to place my literary stuff. That seems to be much harder to find a good fit. I know the horror mags. I don't know the flavors of the literature mags.
I actually like and admire a lot of Rice's work and how she played with the convention of the vampire as other and moved to the inter life of the vampire. Some pieces of some of her work are exqusite, in the early part of Lestat when she paints the older lady with a mundane but harmless life who Lestat killed I was overwhelmed with how she made amorality a sympathetic trait. That said Blackwood Farm was mind-numblingly awful, as though she tossed in all the scrapped scenes and randomn research notes from avery damn thing she started to write over the course of her career.
I think that Blackwood Farm is a perfect example of what happens when a writer becomes too economically successful to accept editing -- even the narritive is flawed (something Rice usually handles adeptly.) And while her romantic world generally contains a few deux et machina moments, Blackwood Farm moved from neatly fitting together things by stretching into the supernatural to a series of "Yeah, right" and "Who gives a fuck" moments.
Even Lestat, one of her most complex and engaging characters is a parody of himself in the book.
It reminds me a bit of Beach Music by Conroy (although Beach Music is a much much better work) In Beach Music Conroy spoiled a wonderful novel by tossing in umpteen pages of pointless foodie ramblings and travelogue sequences about Italy and a meaningless sea turtle subplot that was supposed to have a metaphorical subtext but instead functioned as a sporofic break from the storyline. Pat's problem? No one will tell him to cut the shit. He's too successful
I suspect Rice's problem on Blackwood Farm was that her husband had just died, she had major surgery that caused a massive life change, and she had a deadline. Shame we had to suffer for it.
The bits about curling up to sleep with old women were so far from edgy or titilating that they made me want to put down the book and watch home shopping sell cookware.
Posted by: dgk goldberg at February 25, 2004 03:19 PMI have to agree all on points Kelly. If her previous books didn't show promise, I wouldn't care if subsequent books flopped. I loved Interview, and then went out and read the next three within a week. When I got to Tale of the Body Thief, I was really wondering what happened. Perhaps because I read them in such a short span of time, I really saw the unwinding of control that Rice held over her fiction. I liked Tale _ as a Phillip K. Dick meets Anne Rice, but I didn't enjoy it as much. The other spinoffs didn't entice me as much either. I've read the Marius ones, and a few others. I was not overly impressed. And then there's Taltos. That seemed like a poor parody of Rice's writing when I read it. It was like a vampire novel, without the stuff that made the vampires cool.
Posted by: AaronBennett at February 26, 2004 12:07 PM