I wrote a little peice about going to the comic book store to buy a copy of The Watchmen graphic novel for Pink Raygun. You can read it here.
You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Playthings” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!
An excerpt:
“But really, and perhaps you’ll agree, that the finest thing about this scene is the shirt Sam is wearing. It’s a thin, grey one that looks like cashmere, which everyone knows it couldn’t be, seeing as the boys get their clothes from the Salvation Army. Then again, maybe it could be; I once got a cashmere sweater there for a dollar. At any rate, it clings to every single curve of Sam’s arms and chest. Or rather, to give credit where it is due, it clings to Padalecki’s arms and chest. I’ve not got the math smarts to graph a chart that will demonstrate just how often and how hard the boy’s been working out, but it’s plain to see that he has been. Vigorously, and, dare I say it, religiously, because if working out and muscles were prayers, then this boy would be SAVED. The long, once boyishly lean torso and arms, the once tender and young sweetness of his neck, all of it has now turned into rippled iron, covered by silky skin, turning his frame to a divine work, so that when he shifts, or turns, or flips a cell phone closed with a resounding click, and it’s grace personified. He’s always had the height and the charm, now he’s got control and confidence. All wrapped in unassuming wool. (And his hair, lest we forget, spires down like inky ribbons across his intelligent forehead. It’s enough to make a fangirl swoon.)”
So I’m at work, right. It’s a so so job where I’m more secretary than anything, and god bless secretaries and all the work they do, but I can’t stand it. Moreover, I’m horrible at it, because I don’t like the feeling of being at the boss’s beck and call. I’m a tech writer damnit, and I am used to being considered professional and mature enough to determine my own daily schedule. At any rate, that’s not as important as the talk I had with a coworker, a wonderful and talented woman who is also underpaid and underutilized.
During the conversation, I was telling her about my SPN articles, and how much I enjoyed them, how much I enjoyed talking with fans about them. Then she goes, what about that novel? I said what? (On account of I never remembered telling her.) And she said, two weeks ago you were talking about redoing the outline for that, what happened to the outline, did you work on it? Well, I lied and said that yes I had even though, no I hadn’t, because while I really appreciated her interest and her asking, I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d actually not working on it at all – that I’d taken a Saturday afternoon to read through it, but lazily did no acutal work. (I was at my favorite coffee shop, Amantes, on north Broadway.)
Then, I’m getting my hair cut yesterday by a lovely woman named Christine, who recently realized that she can’t cut hair forever and has started radiology school and is going to be an X-ray technichian. I’m more pleased for her than I can say, as long as she continues to cut my hair every six weeks, because frankly, she can cut it any way she wants and I never ever have to blow dry it to make it look nice. So, while sucking on my frappichino, I’m talking to her a million miles a minute about my plans and schemes (because, as you know, with coffee, all things are possible), and she goes, well, what about that novel? And I did remember telling her, and started talking about the outline I wanted to work on, so she goes, you’re going to do that outline then? And I said yes, I will. And she goes, so don’t worry about it then because you said you’d do it and you will – but I want to see it the next time you come in here. Okay.
So then today, Sunday, I call my sister Caren like I do because on Sundays I work on my reviews, and she’s my beta. She reads them and gives me her reaction, assures me that they don’t suck, and begs me to make them funnier next time, because she dearly loves to laugh. And then she goes, so how’s the novel? (I’d already lied to her about the outline because while I’d read through the many, many words of crap, I couldn’t bring myself to do any actual work on it.)
It’s about this time that I about broke a gasket, and snapped that everybody needed to leave me alone now, because otherwise I would feel obligated to THEM to write the thing, and not following my own heart. She asked me what happened, and I told her about ALL these people (including my friend Danuta, who likes to call up from time to time to remind me that I could be working on my novel) asking about the damn thing. And she said, “Well, mabye the universe is trying to tell you something,” and I said, “Well maybe it should realize that I’m getting it loud and CLEAR!”
It makes me tired to think about, because the problem is not that I don’t know how the plot’s going to go, because I do, down to the last scene. I might be a little afraid of my subject matter, but that keeps the writing exciting, so that’s okay. The problem is, and this is what I keep telling THEM as well as myself, is that the characters have taken over. I’m not sure why they’re acting the way they are, or how they are supposed to relate to each other, and once I got them started on their journey, they went AWOL on me.
That part is true, but the fact of the matter is that I’m overwhelmed. Just completely OUT of my depth about the entire thing. I’m not sure of my audience, I don’t understand the characters and what they want, I don’t have a handle on the material. It’s like one of those papers you used to do in college the night before the damn thing is due, remember those? You stayed up till 3 am typing your heart out, exhausted and not caring anymore. That’s how this novel feels.
I got a good chunk of it done before I got this temp job in March, and the writing isn’t bad, it’s just that the scenes go all over the place. They’re not heading in the same direction, and the bad guy, I’ll just tell you his name, Mr. McCready, is too bad, too soon. He shows his hand early, which is fine, but things get out of hand because I can’t decide how mean he should really get.
So my plan is this. I’m going to (yes) take the printout that I have to work and make a list of what I need to do. This isn’t makework or distraction, the list has helped me before, and it will do so again. Then I’m going to do a little sketch on each of my main characters, list the minor ones, and then I’m going to take a look at my rising and falling drama. THEN I’m going to rewrite the outline from the begining, so that I’ll have something to show Christine and everyone in six weeks. After that, it’s a peice of cake, right? RIGHT?
I decided recently to post some of my zine stories that I wrote when I was deeply, deeply into Dark Shadows. I wrote many stories, all of them to do with the character of Willie Loomis, who I found (and find) to be fascinating. He was the servant of the vampire Barnabas Collins, and while there’s a good many people out there who think Barn is the hero and the good guy, I thought Willie was the best. He had the heart of a lion and wasn’t afraid to step up to Barnabas and tell him he was an idiot. So, to start with, here are two links to my LJ where the following stories are posted:
Title: Lilacs in Bloom
Author: Sylvia Bond
Genre/Rating: Het/PG-17
Verse: Lilacs Verse
Pairing: Willie/Victoria
Word Count: 10,257
Summary: On a fine spring day, Willie takes time out of his busy day to tend to a lilac tree. By chance, he is able to give the fresh petals to Victoria Winters who is, at the time, being vigorously courted by Willie’s boss, Barnabas Collins. Barn finds out and the bad things happen. The sequel is Stopping by Woods.
A/N: I once thought that Willie and Maggie were the OTP in Dark Shadows fandom. That was, until I wrote this story.
and
Title: Stopping by Woods
Author: Sylvia Bond
Genre/Rating: Het/PG-17
Pairing: Willie/Victoria
Verse: Lilacs
Word Count: 27,326
Summary: In this sequel to Lilacs in Bloom, Victoria contemplates Barnabas’ courtship of her and is shocked when he tells her that Willie is carrying a torch for her. He warns her to be careful, at which point she becomes rather more aware of Willie than she should. And then bad things happen.
A/N: It is my secret dream that one day Willie and Victoria will run off together, leaving Collinwood far, far behind them.
You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Croatoan” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!
An excerpt:
“Second, I’m pleased on account of The Dad’s theory about Croatoan. Legend has it that the colony of Roanoke disappeared, and either they got absorbed or killed by nearby Indian tribes. Perhaps they wandered aimlessly off in search of the nearest Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, whatever. There’s an overarching 400 years or more of history to attest to the fact that the colony vanished in mysterious but was most assuredly a normal, earthly manner. The Dad, however, tosses all of this out the window and without a single nod to any generally accepted “lore” that had been unearthed, ascribes the entire disaster to the YED messing around with his pet virus. You have to love a man with enough chutzpah to overthrow current carbon dating methods, satellite imagery, anthropological digs, DNA testing, preserved letters and ephemera, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, TLC, National Geographic Magazine, AND The Smithsonian – all to theorize that the devil did it.”
Yeah, I never was a huge Heath Ledger fan, I mean, I thought he was good and all, but that’s it.
I saw him in A Knights Tale, and The Patriot, and of course in Brokeback Mountain – he was good. I could see that he had a brilliant career ahead of him, but it was a casual notice at best, because my mind was elsewhere and I had other things to do. It feels all callous and cold now, now that I think about it. And now, especially having just seen The Dark Knight. Oh LORD. LORD. LORD. LORD.
He was fantastic. That doesn’t even begin to describe it. He played the Joker like the character was newly sprung from the pit of chaos, you didn’t know where, you didn’t know when, you just KNEW. And his eyes, oh my god, his eyes. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t cover my eyes, couldn’t NOT watch. His eyes, his eyes, staring out from that mask pinning you to your seat, like black holes that were somehow alive, so alive, he threw SPARKS from them. He was INSIDE that character, so deep inside that his voice sounded like it smelled evil, if that makes any sense. I was amazed and blown away – the whole movie was good, I enjoyed it very well, but watching Heath do his thing was like watching something so horrible it was brilliant. He had it DOWN, and as I walked out of the theater, I said to my friend, (and me not being terribly religious or anything) “Angels are weeping because we’ll never see anything like that again. We’ll never see that man be brilliant again.”
I don’t know if there’s a point or a moral or anything here, whether there’s anything to learn or to say…just that he flickered so brightly there and I never noticed until it was too late.
You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Crossroads Blues†at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!
An excerpt:
“It must have been coming on sunset when they filmed, with the light slanting through the trees from the west. Both boys are lit up like Christmas morning. Dean circles around Sam, who watches as his brother digs and then joins in the dither about graveyard dust and black cat bones. You can count the freckles across the bridge of Dean’s nose, and you could spin a rope from the thickness of Sam’s eyelashes. You can see the green glitter glint of Dean’s eyes, and the hard planes of Sam’s jaw. They’re stunning and beautiful and almost unearthly here. It’s amazing that Show doesn’t figure out how glorious this looks and film ALL of their scenes at this time of day. I’m sure that the fact that they don’t is a punishment for some past sin of mine, or maybe it’s that Show knows that if it gives me too many daylight scenes like this, I’ll just become jaded and spoiled.”
 
While the Pink Raygun team relocates from Tucson to Philly, the site is on a hiatus. Thusly, my review will be posted later this week.
Here’s some pictures to tide you over till then:
In an additional note, in all their wisdom, the people at the Emmys
decided that our very own Jensen Ackles wasn’t worth a nod to make it on the short list. And there is a short list now, it consists of actors doing their thing to applause and acclaim, but it does not include one of the better actors of our day. Yeah, I adore James Spader and Hugh Laurie and Denis Leary with all my heart. They’re good. They’re very good. But they’re not Jensen Ackles good. The things he can do with his face and his body to telegraph unspoken dialog are mezmerizing. I think the error lies in the Emmy’s inability to see past the facade of a horror TV show, though I see that Mary McDonnell from Battlestar Galactica made it to the short list so at least SOMEONE is watching quality TV.
My protest will be to NOT watch the Emmys this year. Not that I ever do, but you know, in my small way, I’ll make my mark.
You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “The Usual Suspects” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!
An excerpt:
“Anyway, the interrogation focuses on Dean, whom they tape while Dean confesses. What’s funny here is watching Dean tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but so help me God, he’d be sexy even if he wasn’t saying a word. The lighting guys are at it again, doing their bright and shiny best in all of Dean’s (and Ackle’s) scenes in the squad room. The set guys have put a table that reflects light up, and thusly we get, yeah, all those freckles, and the sparkles in Dean’s eyes, and the lovely swell of that raspberry mouth thrown into high relief. I wouldn’t say that what Dean was wearing stands out in my memory, but with a face like that, who cares what he’s wearing?”
Leaving the scene of the crime
