Exit Wounds

Quick reminder: if you’ll be in Houston on Saturday at 2 pm, I’ll be signing at Murder By the Book on Bissonet. Full details about the event can be found here.

I watched the season finale of Torchwood last night. Interesting turns of events. The pacing seemed off in the second half of the show, though. When Owen and Tosh were trying to solve their problems, we didn’t see what was going on with the rest of the group, and vice versa, for far too long. It made me wonder why, for example, Jack didn’t show up to help out. More back-and-forth might have heightened the tension, but would also have required significant script changes. Looking forward to the show’s return, though it’s clear that things will be very different for our Welsh friends.

It was interesting to watch Adam (Big Brother) go through nomination regret last night when the repercussions of his choices came home to him. I still want Sharon to win, and I think she’s safe for another week given her new partner on the couch. The game has reached the point where everyone realizes that any alliance with more than two people is going to get ugly very soon. I think every one is now part of at least three loose alliances. I need a scorecard.

NCIS reminded me of an old episode of Banacek. Does anyone else remember those episodes of Mystery Movie starring George Peppard? They were brilliant (in my memory at least). Impossible crimes—like the one where an entire flat car is stolen from a moving train and the one where a football player is tackled on the field in front of an audience and cameras and isn’t there when the scrum clears. When the computer monitors flickered on NCIS, I had a pretty good idea of what happened. It looks like they may be phasing Lauren Holly out of the show, given last night’s turn of events.

I finished Divisadero yesterday and am still reviewing my thoughts about the book before I start writing about it. I picked up Trauma by Patrick McGrath last night. Interesting first chapter. A lot of characterization in a few pages.

This morning I finished my Storytellers Unplugged essay for next week. I’m going to record this one as a podcast if I find time. Now that I have all these close-deadline projects finished, it’s time to get back to work on the novel.

I found out that my short story “Therapy,” the one that won the Hellnotes “Wee Small Hours” contest two years ago, will be published in one of the upcoming Dark Wisdom anthologies. It was originally accepted for their magazine, but that has ceased publication in favor of books.