I watched a really interesting video from the library. It was called "Nightmares," it was apparently done by A&E. It tells the truth behind the writing of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The little series focused on the Victorian horrors and how they affected our modern world. I thought it would be much broader in scope, but it turned out better than I had expected. It was highly informative, very well-researched. It was very interesting from a writer's perspective. Only Doyle's work didn't come from nightmares. It debunked many of the stories that the authors themselves have put out about the writing of the stories. If I can, I plan on showing this series when I teach these novels. I learned more in these half-hour segments than I did in my Lit classes when we studied them. I heartily recommend them to anyone interested in the books, or in the minds that create horror. The production qualities were very good. They made the topic lively and interesting. A&E really outdid themselves on this one.
Thor ended pretty predictably. Thor saves the day. There were setbacks, but they were overcome. Thor was sent to the pound for biting Uncle Ted, but Teddy frees him. That means Thor can make it home for the final showdown. Did I mention the annoyingness of names? Normally naming two characters the same name is a definite no-no. It could have worked here, and does most of the time. The problem comes from Teddy wanting to be called Ted now that he's older. That makes a few spots a little tough as you have Uncle Ted, and "pup" Ted. Thankfully, there are only a few such places. It was a little odd to have Dad's name as Tom. The two adult males having names that are one long syllable, starting with a "T", and being very whitebread; is something that can cause a tiny bit of trouble. It also doesn't help that Dad is called Dad from Thor's POV, but Tom from the others. This can cause a mental pull-away in the headhoppings, but those shouldn't be there anyway so... Thor thinks he is kicked out of his pack because he killed Uncle Ted. Dad finally brings him around and all is well. Smith gets in some good licks with Thor's musings on the Natural Law and Dad's Law. These are the sections where Thor's voice is good. The headhopping parts continued to be annoying right up to the end. It showed promise. This would have been an excellent book in the hands of a better writer.
I started October Country on tape. I like Bradbury's more horrific stuff. He and Harlan Ellison do a good job of crafting intelligent horror shorts. Both are known more as Sci-Fi writers. I've enjoyed the stories so far. A welcome change from Rice and abridged Saul tapes. I also got some Anishanabee legends and John Updike stories.
I started on Howling Mad by Peter David. It is a framed story told like Interview with the Vampire. Because it's set up like that, the POV works with it. You can have headhopping, and it actually adds to the story. This works because the head that is hopping back and forth has the same brain inside. The man telling the story has the unique POV of a human who was a wolf. He can explain things he didn't understand as a wolf. When the story breaks into the story of the flashback, he can still cut in with comments that he thought later as a human without it pulling the reader out as much. This frame also allows more telling than is normally allowed. This allows the novel to progress at a fair clip without feeling like we're missing much. Those deep sections where we are right there as it's happening are as rich as any other novel. We just get to skip the boring parts. A good page to take from Elmore Leonard. It's not horror, more a fantasy that happens to deal with werewolves. It is much like Lives of Monster Dogs meets "An American Werewolf in London." So far it is a very enjoyable read.
There are some big problems with POV in this book. Some are just mistakes. How would a dog know that a TV is a tube, that a rawhide bone feels like fiberglass, that he's running like a cruise-missile? These are similes and metaphors that are almost unseen in a person's vernacular, but would be unknown in a dog's. Even more annoying are the asides that the author tells you there is no way Thor would know. That really pulls me out of the reading. If you are deep into Thor's POV, you can't tell the reader what Dad is thinking. This is standard stuff for people who can't tell the difference in the types of 3rd person narration. Not all 3rd person is cut from the same cloth. It is an interesting read, and Smith gets in some really good moments with Thor. Some of the problems stem from his letting his guard down and slipping in things that Thor would never think. I can deal with that. The outright pulling into another POV is a little harder to stomach. It breaks illusion that books like: Bunnicula, Call of the Wild, White Fang, Watership Down, The Rats of Nimm, etc do so well. The POV is what makes Cycle of the Werewolf a good read, but ruins "Silver Bullet" (the movie which sprang from its literary loins). That exact thing happened with "Bad Moon," the movie version of this novel. That movie is the reason I held off so long on reading this book. The book is still an enjoyable read, despite some flaws. The movie was not enjoyable at all. It is good to see what works and what doesn't. I'll pay more attention to the animal scenes in my own book to make sure I don't fall into the same trap that Smith does.
The ending was rather disappointing. The plot moved along in its same jerky pattern. This made the final fight with the bearwalker rather odd. How would a person know to grab the medicine pouch off the bearwalker's neck if they hadn't been told? Why would any person jump on a black bear and try to throttle it if they didn't know how to kill a bearwalker? I think the scene of explanation should have come before. That way Richard would have known what he had to do. It just seemed odd, like everything just fell into place. The lead up to the scene didn't really fit either. Richard went through his vision quest. He didn't see the way to defeat the bearwalker. After the vision quest, he knew his life was elsewhere. He was happy and ready to leave his life as an Indian behind. How does that lead into the ending? The framing device of the shaman's burial did not do much for the story. I provided a way to explain Richard's new take on life, but that wasn't what the story should have been about. Who cares about this guy's new happiness with life? An evil force killed his wife, child, unborn child, parents, etc. I think the ending of the story should be more interested in vanquishing this force. The event of the vanquishing should be an intense scene. As it was written, we didn't even know that's what happened until the medicine man explained it after the fact. It falls flat and leaves the reader with an empty feeling. The framing also presents an interesting problem of what happened when. If this whole story is flashback, how come it doesn't have that feel? I think the entire frame could be removed and have made the story much stronger.
The book was not a total waste though. It was very well researched. I bookmarked a few pages to reference. It seemed much more 1st hand than the research that was doen for Climer's Bearwalker book. I got a real sense of how the legends work into the mythos of the bearwalk. I'm glad I read the book for this reason. It was the first book that actually presented the legend in a manner in keeping with the actual traditions. I was glad for that.
I think I'm going to start Thor next. It is a werewolf story told through the point of view of a German Shepard. I want to be able to get the animal parts of my novel down. I enjoy those parts that are through the point of view of the wolf spirit. I want to see how Wayne Smith did it. I also have Howling Mad by Peter David after that. That novel tells the tale of a wolf that was bitten by a werewolf and is forced to live as a human in New York.
I am reading _Bearwalk_ by Lynne Sallot and Tom Peltier. They did a good job of researching the legends and culture for this book. If the book as a whole were written better, I imagine it would ring very true. I would feel like I was right there.
The book is full of amateurism writing. Their daughter dies and we have no real feeling about it. We were so detached from the character that it wasn't really even a character. This is a stark contrast to what King did in Pet Semetary. The dialogue is wooden at many points. People say things they wouldn't really say to further the plot. We also get awkward bits of telling mixed with showing. The bits the writers chose to show don't seem very planned. We3 don't really want to know the exact type of cup they poured the tea into, unless it's important to the story. We don't need to know that he took a piss in the bushes before he went to bed. The time jumps aren't done very well. It seems as if the story is always trying to catch up. By the time you have caught the reader up to what has happened in the median between the scenes, you are already halfway into the current scene, with nothing happening. It doesn't make for fast-paced reading. The telling gets more obtrusive in the descriptions. The writers do that thing that marks an amateur straight off, they stop all action while you get a paragraph description of the person/place/thing. I see how jarring this can be. It pulls me out of the book. It also doesn't help that these descriptions aren't when we first meet the person/thing. They are normally a few pages in, so by that point we have given up wondering what the hell the person/thing looks like. This withholding of information does not create suspense, it creates annoyance.
I liked the Indian raised in white society as the protagonist. His best friend in AIM set a nice doppelganger. It has become a little overused since the book was written, but it still works. This book was written in '77. It was the height of the American Indian Movement. Wounded Knee, Alcatraz Island, absolving of treaties, the general Civil Rights movement. With this backdrop, the protag who must find his roots fits very well. This could have been made very striking. He has married a woman from the same tribe who he met by chance in Chicago. He's a lawyer who must come back to save the reservation. The elements are there. They are handled most inexpertly. The characters become the stereotypes, and say the stereotypical things. This book could have been made better by a careful editing. This rings even more true today as the editing staffs at most houses have dwindled to a skeleton of what it was in the late 70's-early 80's. The burden more and more falls on the writer to deliver a great publishable work.
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.
Bernard Cornwell's new mystery, Gallows Thief, is an enjoyable read. That isn't something I can say about most mysteries. I know mysteries often have murders, but I really don't enjoy them on the whole. This one was just a great book. I loved the snipets of lower class London, contrasted with the upper echelons. Rider Snadman is an engaging character. He is a top-notch cricket player, who was like Shoeless Joe Jackson of his sport. He quit his team after he found out the flubbed a game. This shows his very strong moral backbone. It also allows him into places he wouldn't otherwise be admitted because of his mild celebrity status. He is also an ex-Army Captain from a foot division who served at Waterloo. He brings a realism to that battle. It holds with historical fact, and shows how incredibly brave Rider is, while not showing the war with rosey coloured glasses. Rider also has station, but no money as his father racked up many debts, which Rider is determined to pay to save his family name. He is also in love with a girl who's father thinks Rider is beneath. Rider is a completly believable, complex character. That was one of the things that really drew me into the book.
Rider is sent to find out the truth of a murder that a young painter is going to hang for. Of course, an aristocrat actually did it and tried to pin it on him. There is a men's club that further muddys the problem. This normal obfuscation of the truth to make the book interesting, actually worked in this book. Most murder mysteries seem very contrived on this point. Rider does a very good job on this point, even though he is not qualified as an investigator at all. That fact adds another dimension to the equation. The government just wanted to verdict confirmed to appease the Queen, but Rider is a man who has to do any job right. The ending is of course a nail-biter, but doen't seem overly contrived. I liked the postscript. He will gain his money from a venture to sell cigarettes from Spain. This rings truer for me than some contrived thing with the case would have. I could see a sequel for this book.
I'm also listening to Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm on tape. Normally I hate the abridged version, but my library is barely literate. Rice really needs an editor. I liked Blood and Gold on tape. Anne Rice is normally the only author I like listening to the abridged version of. She gets an edit for this version, if only for clarity and length. This time, her "style" stills shines glaringly through. All the things that make writign bad are seen here. A guy walks into the room, action stops while we get a long description of what he looks like, his history and his heritage. People explain plots of past books, or fill in plot holes, in devices that read as overly manufactured. I'm reading The First 5 Pages as I listen (not literally at the same time of course). I see every example of bad writing shown off in this book. The tape is also a tad annoying as the reader his chosen to give Lestat a slightly German accent. Umm, Rice goes through lengths in previous books to explain what his accent would be, and it ain't German. It should be French Pronviencial accent, with English learned from noir mysteries. Rice's device wherein all of her books are part of her fictional world is getting annoying at this point. It helps the characters sum up plot, and allows them to know things that they shouldn't know; but it is a contrivance that beats you over the head like a billboard ad for her other books. As I read in X... I could understand the first two, but the subsequent novels get to be too much. At this point, wouldn't the whole world know about vampires and the Talamaska? She also brings in her Mayfair witches and other books that don't really need to be brought in. I think this also restricts Rice in her plots. Lestat has become an utterly annoying whiny bitch. I think after Tale of the Body Thief he should have just died and let the other vampires take over the vampire chronicles. I don't care about Lestat anymore.
Rice has an overblown sense of how good she is. I see some of the same characteristics in Poppy. I also see sales slackening in both. Neither of these writers are going to do horror anymore, by their own admission. Perhaps because their readers are being turned away. I fear that their work will delve more and more into the mainstream, where their foibles will be much more noticable as readers won't give them the leaway for plot, if they don't like the plot. We don't need another Taltos. Poppy's wierd gay fiction seems to be losing her readers. Other writers have done this topic better and the shock value has gone away. This is why a writer must constantly be at work at their craft and not become complacent because people are still buying their books. If you get bad enough, or even just stagnate, readers will find someone else. There are plenty of new writers coming up. The backlash from the Walmart business model that only promotes those big names, even if it is a flop, is starting to wear on readers. I see the horror genre at the verge of another rise. I don't know how long it will take, or what heights it will reach, but I'll be here for it, and probably after it has gone; and again when it cycles back again :)
I continue to wade through Peaceable Kingdom. I love shorts as I can do them in small doses. Ketchum's shorts have much less gore, a more quiet horror. Perhaps that chill is hard to sustain for a whole novel. The gore gives some payout and the build does not get boring. I love both his novels and his shorts. He is just a masterful writer. He has the ability to send the chill down my spine for those suspense-filled reads that build like microwave popcorn. He also has the ability to do the gross-out. When you combone the two, you get a combo that sticks with you long after you've put the book down.
The Rising kept up the pace. It was a very enjoyable read. It was almost too intense from the start. I felt breathless while reading it. The parallels to Ketchum are eerie. The character of Frankie was very good. I liked how we get inside her head and see her change. I thought the diction was pretty good at first, although it did slip a few times. Overall I think Keene captured her very well. I think Keene did a good job of maintaining a terse tone throughout. He did a good job of introducing challenges to each character's wishes. Each section shows conflict. The endings to each chapter leave the reader searching for more. The end result is, the reader feels propelled through the book. You're not so much reading as getting carried along.
I couldn't help seeing parallels to 28 Days Later (as well as many other zombie movies). While many of the elements were not fresh, they were dealt with very deftly. I liked how the showdown at the compound played out. I wanted the military guys to bite it, at least the assholes. It wasn't just a slaughter, but they didn't just come in and kill all the zombies. It seemed more like reality. That leads into the end--reality. I seriously thought I had been gypped out of the last chapter on first reading. Now I realize how striking that ending is. You don't really know the fate of Danny. You get a good inkling, but nothing is certain. You get the feeling that the end is hopeless, but Keene doesn't show it to you. I think that is more striking. Any ending he would have written would have been bad. If they would have survived and made it into the mountains, it would have seemed trite. You would have been able to see it coming from a mile away. It would have let the reader off the hook. Keene leaves the reader up there on that hook, bleeding and squirming. If he would have shown an end to all the humans you had followed, the end would have been to great of a letdown. People would have hated the book. You don't follow these people all this way to see them all die. You can see them fail, but utter failure and death might have been too much.
I just started The First 5 Pages. It is a pretty good book so far. Much of it is review, but the exercises and examples are good. They really impress why you shouldn't do X thing in your writing. I like books like this written from an agent or editor. They help from the market standpoint. In most cases, good fiction is saleable fiction. With that driving force, writers are more inclined to fix their writing. I've actually had people argue for bad writing as "that's just their style." Bad writing is bad writing. If that's your style, don't expect me to read it. If you take that attitude, how are you ever going to improve?
I really liked how blunt he was about adjectives and adverbs. I've read it in about every writing book, but Lukeman really drives it home, and explains succinctly why you need to avoid those overuses. I also loved his discussion about the sound of your prose. I have not written poetry much lately. I think my prose has suffered. Worrying about every word forced me to look at the language more. I think I'm going to try and write a short poem every day to keep myself in that habit. I also might take down the ton of poetry books I have and revisit those old favorites with a an eye for the language. I love the mood of the cemetery poets, Benet, Poe, etc. His comments on comparisons are very apt. Stephen King remarked about a man waiting for something like a man waits for a turkey sandwich. What does that even mean? I love Anias Nin for those off the wall comparisons that work so well you can't imagine it any other way.
I took a taste of Ketchum Peaceable Kingdom. Man does he have his chops. He can scare the hell out of a reader in a few pages. Have it twist unexpectedly from genre norms: just enough to keep it fresh, but not enough that would warrant too much explanation. I see why he recommended that I write more shorts. The command of language and effect are all seen there.
I had my normal Friday movie night. I saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I liked it but it showed a few too many signs of big-budget deterioration. It did manage to keep most of that Pulp Western feel to it. Rodriguez continues to grow as a writer and director. I think he should have left the score to Los Lobos again. It didn't have that sexy Latin feel to it that Desperado had. I was also put off by Enrique Eglesias. He seemed to have been added only to appeal to the younger kids. He also doesn't appear to speak or understand Spanish. I thought that was kind of odd as the other Mexican characters speak Spanish when talking to each other. After talking to Erica afterward, I realized that they should have dubbed more. The language seemed natural to me, but I know many Spanglish speakers.
I also watched Dagon. I love Lovecraft, but many times his ideas don't translate well to the screen. I liked this take from the story. It brought in aspects from other Lovecraft stories that were little treats for the fans. Again, much of the dialogue was in Spanish without subtitles. This was Castilian Spanish, and the feelings were expressed pretty well. I didn’t have to translate anything like I did in _Mexico. It walked the line of camp, without getting too bad. This is a great B-movie offering. It managed to work in the Lovecraft mythos without looking too hokey.
Next up was Whale Rider. This was a great movie about a Maori girl. She is the "chosen one" who will lead her tribe, but her grandfather has a hard time seeing this because she is not male. It is a good heartfelt story that doesn't get bogged down in chick-flick stupidity. I loved the Haka and other war chants. They didn't subtitle them, which is probably good. I love the fact that such an intense war chant is really talking about a hairy guy and the sun rising in the east. I can see how normal American viewers wouldn't get that though. It was refreshing to have a tale like this come from the Maori culture.
I also saw Grand Canyon on TVOntario. I really wish American stations had movie nights like that. They also include interviews between the movies that are very informative for writers and film buffs. This movie did a great job of showing how F-ed up life is. It also shows that through it all, there is hope for the future. The acting, writing, direction, cinematography were all superb. This is just a great movie.
All righty. I think I need to stop procrastinating and write my own story. The deadline cometh.
The Thrill of Fear did not end how I had hoped. It was great at the beginning, but really petered out as I reached the more modern stuff. This is the stuff I like. It didn't seem to get the exhaustive treatment that the earlier stuff did. One reason could be that there is just more of it. I do notice an extreme drop in quotations in the latter half of the book. I liked the talk of genre and how it formed. He touched on many things that I always loved and/or hated. The anthology boom did help the genre. Most of the writers we consider masters wrote shorts. I think the short form lends itself well to the genre. If the genre is meant to invoke fear; it is easier to hold that focus for short periods. I hadn't thought about the origin of the Christmas ghost story before. That was an interesting part that revealed things I knew but never really thought about before.
Then we get into the more modern era. This is where the book really fails. The movie section fro the golden age of Hollywood is cursory. It covers a lot of ground, but doesn't go in depth about much. That said, he talks much more about this earlier age than more modern movies The talk of the comic code was done better by Weinberg. The B-movies and radio was done better by King. There are a few horror filmographies that cover that aspect much better. I wasn't really expecting that from this book though. I knew it would come into play as film has influence fiction. I wasn't prepared for how little discussion there was on fiction in the later section in this book. How can he spend so much time on the earlier stuff and miss the whole horror boom? Perhaps because of the earlier works, this book doesn't have to delve as deep into that area. This is a great book for the formation of the genre. It will come in handy for lectures on that.
I loved the chronological format. It worked very well for an English major type book. It really showed how the genre progressed. The glaring omissions showed themselves more toward the end when he was talking about things that were very influenced by those things he forgot to mention earlier. They seem to spring from nowhere in this book.
The Rising starts out from the first sentence in the macabre world of zombies. There is no boring set up where we get what a normal world is like, we all know what a normal world is like. Bring on the grue! Keene does that. Page 17 sent a shiver down my spine. Damn it's been a long time since that happened. "We are more than infinity." Danny is in trouble now. That tingle that forces you to keep reading, the suspense you don't get in a "suspense" novel. This is why I read horror, this is why I read. This was the feeling I got the first time I read Ketchum. I'm only 50 pages in. Keene has gained a reader for life.
Repo Man is one F-ed up movie. I love cult movies like that. Writers who can take something mundane like auto repossession, and turn it into that are pretty damn creative. Perhaps there is a lot of free time on the job (the writer worked as a repo man). The ending seemed a little forced into absurdity. I think that could have been handled better. The riding around was great. I think I've had some of those exact conversations riding with some of my rugby friends.