Archive for August, 2008

Opinion Peice: Enough With the Remakes Already!

Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Pink Ray Gun, Supernatural Comments Off on Opinion Peice: Enough With the Remakes Already!

Given that Ackles and Padalecki are both starring in remakes of slasher films, I had some opinions rattling around in my head. Instead of allowing them to keep me up late at night, I decided to write them down, and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere they are!

An excerpt:

“First, what’s up with the 3-D? Hollywood is in LOVE with 3-D these days and that might be because they are on crack, but it didn’t work the first time, it barely works at Disneyland now, so why do they keep trying? It’s had its heyday, it’s come and gone a dozen times, and it has never worked. I just wish the lovers of 3-D would just give it UP and move on. I think that Hollywood gets a little bored and somehow imagines that because 3-D is so fun for them to work with, that all the rest of us will enjoy it too. They’re like pushers or something. But the bottom line is, if the story sucks, 3-D is not going to help you, and if it’s a great story, why the hell do you need 3-D? Like my archery teacher at summer camp said, “Pretty arrows do not a bulls eye make.””

Pictures…

 Ackles 1

Ackles 1

Padalecki 1

Padalecki 1

Ackles 2

Ackles 2

 Padalecki 2

 Padalecki 2

Ackles 3

Ackles 3

Padalecki 3

Padalecki 3

Ackles 4

Ackles 4

Padalecki 4

Padalecki 4

Ackles 5

Ackles 5

Padalecki 5

Padalecki 5

Ackles as Dean

Ackles as Dean

Padalecki as Sam

Padalecki as Sam

Novel Notes: The Outline

Life and Everything, Novel Notes Comments Off on Novel Notes: The Outline

Last Saturday was the day. I promised myself all week that Saturday was the day…and it was. I’d managed to keep the WHOLE of Saturday free and got some new college-lined paper, made sure I had my special pen (a $25 Watermen fountain pen), my clipboard, a printout of the pages I’ve produced thus far, my almost intelligible notes, and away I went to Amante’s. In the rain.

 

Yeah, it was raining, taking Colorado ’s 90 degree mid-August temperatures down to the mid-fifties, dropping snow on the mountains, and making a sweatshirt and socks a good idea. It’s warming up again now, as it does, but for several days it was cold enough for the heat to kick on. (I like to write my notes and outlines by hand because I’m old fashioned that way. Plus, I find the process to be slower and allows me to proceed in a more thoughtful manner, which I feel produces better results. When I get on the computer, yeah, I can type like the wind, but it’s only if I’ve done the prep work beforehand.)

 

I ordered a latte, which for those of you who don’t know, is ½ espresso and ½ steamed milk. I eventually had two of the damned things and haven’t slept since. (It’s now Friday.) Next time, yeah, get the latte, but only order one, at least that’s what I tell myself now. But, with coffee, all things are possible, so this is what I got done:

 

I made a complete list of all locations and characters, which isn’t busy work when you consider that this is Victorian London, and there are a maze of streets to keep track of.

 

I separated the list of characters from the list of locations. I plan to make a map at some point of the locations, their relationship to each other, the time it would take to walk from one point to another. I already know what each spot looks like, so I’m good there.

 

I wrote out what I needed to know about each character, and then made a second list with dead characters on one list and living characters on another. Then I grouped them, because not all of them abide in the same location.

 

I discovered that I had given multiple names to the same minor characters. While I’m sure I’m the ONLY writer who has ever done this, at least I spotted it and it’s an easy fix. 

 

I figured out, and wrote down, at which point J and O become friends, when they start working together instead of against each other. J decides it first, and then O. That also helped me get a grip on the characters, who were getting out of hand. I still need to work on the attributes of the two main characters, everyone else I pretty much have down.

 

Then, as I got to my second latte, I wrote out the outline by writing a list of plot points. Then I expanded on this by creating a second list, adding in those relevant actions or points where characters were introduced. Then, finally, I created my final outline. I gave each scene a space of half a page, and while this might work out to be a chapter per scene, I think some of the scenes got rather long and might be several chapters because, really, they are more than one scene.

 

Next Steps:

 

I have determined, finally, that this will be a single POV story, because while I enjoy J’s observations, I wasn’t really digging trying to write about his backstory. (His backstory includes shearing sheep, you see, and I did NOT want to go there.) I love him, I adore him, but this is not his story. He’ll get his say, though, and he’s got plenty of opinions; there’ll be no dearth of J. Anyway, since I’ve determined this, one of my next steps is to extricate scenes written from J’s POV and either rewrite them,  work them into J’s dialog, or integrate them into O’s scenes. Well, since this is O’s story, they are ALL O’s scenes, but you see what I mean.

 

I need to make a map of my locations.

 

I need to find and change the characters who have multiple names.

 

I need to work on my notes, which are messy at best. I tend to write down questions I have about the story, and then, forgetting I’ve written that down, write it down again on a different piece of paper. Hence, I have pages and pages of the same information in different formats. I need to condense this information.

 

Conclusions:

 

Funny thing is, I did all this work, which took eight hours, without hardly looking at my printout of the novel itself. I had gone through it originally to make my character/location list at first, but then, after that, it was all in my head, which I found to be quite strange. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have to look at it again, which I do, but I realized that I’d been walking around with the entire outline in my damn head for a while now, and it just took a little gumption, a nice rainy day, and two lattes to bring it out into the open. Plus, at 100,000 words the thing is officially a novel, and, much to my surprise, the draft is 75% written. Yeah, there’s stuff to add, but a lot of the structure is there, and if you’ve got something to hang your story on, you’re most of the way home. This was most gratifying to find out. I anticipate that with everything in place I should be able to finish the draft by December 31st. The draft, mind you. After that, there’s rewrites and I need to find an agent….oh boy!

Born Under a Bad Sign: A Supernatural Episode Review

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You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Born Under a Bad Sign” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!

An excerpt:

“Then he says to Jo, “I could be more to you, Jo.” (The tone of his voice, at this point, makes me uneasy and I wonder, what’s up with Sam?) And then he grabs her hand. He’s got his wrist cocked at an angle, with his sleeves rolled up on his manly forearm, and I have to tell you that he’s so powerful and bulked up, it’s pure, unadulterated wrist porn. It’s hard to explain why such a little moment could be so damn intoxicating, but it is. What’s even better is when Jo asks him to let go of her, he flips her hand away like so much dead meat, and the strength with which he does this contains the scary implication that he could have held on to her, if he’d wanted to, and it is only by some mercurial inner whim that he’s letting her go now. It’s a whole new Sam. Why, it’s Dark Sam!”

Lost

Lost

Looking for clues

Looking for clues

Afraid of going darkside

Afraid of going darkside

Always protective

Always protective

Please shoot me

Please shoot me

I got your triple threat right here

I got your triple threat right here

Wants to be good to Jo

Wants to be good to Jo

Shooting at demons

Shooting at demons

My brother belongs to me

My brother belongs to me

Exorcise resistant

Exorcise resistant

Fanfiction: Corduroy Starsky

My Fanfiction, Starsky and Hutch 2 Comments »

Many years ago, I wrote a fanfic called “Velveteen Hutch,” which I talked about in this post, and which you can read here on Flamingo’s archive. The story was, so they tell me, well-received, and the original publisher of that fanfic, Linda Cabrillo, wanted a companion piece even before the ink was dry on the first piece. That was some 15 years ago, and since then, I’ve had it in the back of my head that I would oblige her, which I have now done with a fanfic called “Corduroy Starsky,” the ordering information for which is available here.

The distance between the two fanfics can be explained by other fandoms taking over, as I went deeply into Blakes 7, The Professionals (songvids), and Dark Shadows (many, many stories). Then Real Life had its full share as I got a pair of Master’s degrees, bought a condo, sold that, bought a house built in 1902, refurbished that and sold it, and then bought another condo, which is a lot of moving! By the time I got back to the companion piece, I had lost touch with Starsky and Hutch, and felt rather adrift that I couldn’t just call up the passion I once had for them, let alone remember the canonical details that bring every fanfic to life.

With my publisher’s handholding, I managed to write something that we both felt was not only a good companion to the first, but that also captured Starsky’s devotion to Hutch.  I wrote it from Starsky’s point of view, which had a very different feel from Hutch’s because, naturally, Starsky has a different outlook on life than Hutch does. I always felt he was the more serious of the two, on the inside, while playing the clown to hide this. His recall of events is much more linear than Hutch’s, plus, he became very focused on not only when events happened, but what they meant. This was a strong contrast to Hutch’s stream of consciousness memory of the same timeframe, that is, from the time they met to the events that happened after Gunther and Lionel. I still feel that I didn’t do the boys justice, but what is there that is good I owe to several sources.

First, there are the DVDs of the original show, uncut and commercial free. This includes Season 4, amazingly enough, and the credit for that must go to Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, David Soul, and Paul Michael Glaser for making the Starsky and Hutch movie that was SO much fun and brought this wonderful fandom back to living and breathing color, and allowed the fourth season to be produced, which, as I hear, was not a sure thing. Watching the eps brought it all back to me, how cool this show is, how fun the boys are to see in action. And so crisp, so clean! Such a nice upgrade from my old VHS tapes.

Next, I owe a debt of gratitude to my silent resource Pepper Ckua and her brilliant Compendium that contains every factoid EVER conceived, written, imagined, shown, told, or filmed about Starsky and Hutch in Bay City. You would not BELIEVE it unless you see it, how complete and in depth this website is, how ginormous and richly detailed.

And then, of course, there’s Keri, my publisher, who has untapped amounts of enthusiasm for this project, and was wonderful to work with in a way that I remember fanfic publication being. Now, if she’d only hang her fanart…

Houses of the Holy: A Supernatural Episode Review

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You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Houses of the Holy” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!

An excerpt:

“The boys check out the crypt and this time it’s Sam who sees the MOW, the white light that shakes the ground and hands out directions of who to kill and how and when. But what’s even better, what is the BEST, really, is what white light does to Sam’s face. Why, it lights it up, that’s what, and I get an eyeful, and absolutely glorious eyeful of Sam, from the inky locks across his forehead, to his bright, wide eyes, and that cotton candy mouth, all lit up in living color, every graceful line, everything. Everything. It’s like a gift from above, and I begin to wonder what I must have done to have earned this unexpected gift. Only you shouldn’t, you know, question gifts like these, but rather, should accept them with grace and humility and many, many prayers of thanks. Oh Lord, we pray, thank you for Show’s Lighting Team, who know just where to stand and where to aim their Halogens at Sam’s beautiful face to make it more gorgeous than it already is. If that’s possible. Amen.”

Born with a bedside manner

Born with a bedside manner

Afternoon delight

Afternoon delight

 Dithering about angels

Dithering about angels

Still doesn’t believe

Still doesn’t believe

Visited by a vision

 Visited by a vision

Holy brotherly clutching!

Holy brotherly clutching!

Not seeing angels

Not seeing angels

Listening with heart

Listening with heart

Awash with grief

Awash with grief

Liquor instead of holy spirits

Liquor instead of holy spirits

Nightshifter: A Supernatural Episode Review

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You can read my review of the Supernatural episode “Nightshifter” at pinkraygun.com. Thank you!

An excerpt:

“Hendrickson knows, man, he knows about how The Dad dragged those kids from pillar to post, raising them up in cheap motels and backwoods cabins, and just as I’m leaning forward for MORE delicious factoids like these, Hendrickson switches into opinion mode because he can’t figure out whether The Dad was a survivalist nut job, a Unabomber, or what. He rattles on to be insulting but simply doesn’t know and is just trying to get Dean’s goat. (Which he had, as they say, at hello.)  And Dean says, “You don’t know crap about my dad. He was a hero.” I love, love, love Dean in this scene, it might be my favorite scene in the whole ep  (besides Sam’s mandroid line), on account of Dean’s shoulders go back and his chin comes up and there’s a whole lot of love and pride running through him. Plus, yeah, I loved the factoids about where the boys lived when they were growing up. Show needs to give fangirls like me MORE like this, and right away, if not sooner. Otherwise I’ll just make stuff up and it’ll be a whole lot darker than what Show had planned.”

Pictures…

On the phone with Hendrickson

On the phone with Hendrickson

Sexy with flashlight

Sexy with flashlight

 Playing the part

Playing the part

Wanting to keep Ron safe

Wanting to keep Ron safe

You brought a knife Dean?

You brought a knife Dean?

Couldn’t come in naked

Couldn’t come in naked

 Dither in the dark

Dither in the dark

Sam is so screwed

Sam is so screwed

Dean is so screwed

Dean is so screwed

Episode Review: Hunted

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A bunch of people have asked why the episode review for “Hunted” has not been posted, did I skip it, was I doing the reviews out of order. I have answered those e-mails, but for anyone else who was wondering and wanted to know, here it is. I have written the review, and it’s sitting in the vault. Pink Raygun did an interview with Rachel Talalay, who directed this episode, as well as a number of other shows. When that interview is posted, then, as a courtesy, the review of the ep she directed for Supernatural will posted as well, and the two will be linked together. Hope this helps and thanks for your patience.

Novel Notes: What did I give up for wings?

Life and Everything, Novel Notes Comments Off on Novel Notes: What did I give up for wings?

So I’m having a rough week, considering my temp job, in which I do secretarial type stuff for a smudgy little man who cozies up to his superiors while stopping to take time to throw everyone who works for him under the bus when the opportunity arrives. It’s like waiting for not one shoe to drop, but a whole boxful. (Or for them to get thrown at you as you slip screaming under the black wheels of the RTD #205.)

They’ve got “summer hours” where I work, which means that anyone who’s someone can leave at 11 am on Friday. I mean, why come in to work at all? Mostly you hear people talking about how they’ve got 2 hours to go, or 1 hour to go, counting down the time till Freedom arrives. The way I see it, if that’s the way they’re looking at it, then they have the wrong job.

Anyway, to the point of this little diatribe. Unsupervised, at promptly 11:45, I whisked myself away to my favorite coffee shop, Amante, on North Broadway, where I ordered a new (for me) drink, a Granita, to smother my woes with some iced half and half, coffee, sugar, and whipped cream. It was pretty good, and I had a nice outdoor seat in the shade, and a view of the foothills where there were a number of paragliders easing over the rocks and trees, riding on the same breeze that tossed my umbrella.

But woe is me. I’ve got a shit job and no prospects of a new one, no matter how many places I apply to or interview for. Interviews especially come dear because I have to take part of the day or the whole day, and that costs me because temp people don’t get vacation, holidays, or sick pay, so when I’m not at work, I’m not earning a dime. Doesn’t that suck? It does. Especially considering the cush job I USED to have before layoffs last August. I had cush work, work where I knew exactly what I was doing and how to do it well, a GREAT boss, four weeks of vacation (I KNOW, right?), and tons of benefits. And it’s not that I had any choice in them laying me off (we had 40% cuts in staff), but I wanted it, so I’m responsible for it – wanting it, putting it out to the Universe and learning to live with the consequences.

Which brings me back to my coffee today, that I sipped through a straw under my umbrella, my notebook in front of me, twirling my favorite pen in my hands (It’s a Dr. Pilot Grip, purple with blue ink), with nobody in particular expecting me back at work any time soon. In spite of this, I was miserable, sitting there, couldn’t think of a thing to write, couldn’t come up with any interesting takes on the next Supernatural review, couldn’t bestir any energy to work on fanfic, and especially couldn’t manage to find the time, the all important time, to work on the novel. It’s like I’m all tapped out, and part of that is because I feel I should be done with a lot of that (esp the novel) long ere this.

As I watched the paragliders I bemoaned my fate, wondering what the hell I had given up for wings. (See above list of the great things about cush job.) What did I give up for wings, what did I give up for wings? Oh, it was a beautiful day, truly, with that blue, blue sky of August cutting over the mountains, little puffy clouds that might turn into a thunderstorm later, people passing by on bikes and with strollers, a little gaggle of two mothers and three children with gelatos sitting nearby, just as pleasant as you please, and all I could think about was what I had lost.

But, as you may or may not know, with coffee, all things are possible, and I had a sudden little somersault feeling in my brain (which is always rather uncomfortable when it happens), where I realized that in spite of my current sense that I was in exactly the wrong place and job, that I did, indeed have wings. That it wasn’t about what I had given up, but the fact that I had WINGS.

First off, although I do not have that cush job (See above list of the great things about cush job.), I also do not have the limitations of it, I do not have the metaphorical leash tying me to that particular cubicle, and the promise of retirement in so many years, of being a certain type of person/worker in order to get those four weeks and those nice benefits. Instead, I can have anything. Anything at all. I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. “Wings” is a metaphor for the boundless possibilities of life and everything good that comes with it, so instead of giving everything up for nothing, I’ve given up just a little tiny bit of a world in exchange for a much bigger one.

It terrifies me, my life, with the open-ended scope of it. Instead of a schedule of vacation and deadlines and a specific decided-upon environment, the world, as they say, is my oyster. I’m the kind of person who feels rather comfortable with schedules and deadlines and end dates and being within a certain kind of framework. To not have any of that…what am I supposed to do now? Anything. Anywhere. I guess I should be brave and realize that the question “What did I give up for wings?” now becomes “Now that I have wings, where shall I fly?”

Anyone got a map?