The weather last fall and earlier this spring was ideal for the wildflowers. Cool winter, lots of rain, so they are in full bloom. It’s always nice to see. We had a suprise hail storm last night, though. They predicted rain and a cold front, and then waffled about whether we would actually see any rain. Then there was an alert on TV last night at 8:30 warning about a severe thunderstorm for our county. (I was amused to see that the alert started in the last few seconds of a scene of TV show and was cut off by a commercial so we had to wait several minutes, until the show returned from break, to find out what they wanted to warn us about.) Then the rain started, a good gully washer, and at about 8:40 I heard things pelting off the roof and windows. The hail was about the size of a playing marble and it bounced about 2′ in the air when it landed on our back deck. More than any other kind of precipitation, hail seems to be thrown from the sky rather than simply falling.
We’ve had at least three good reviews of When the Night Comes Down so far. First there was the one at Monster Librarian. Today we were written up by Famous Monsters of Filmland and Dark Discoveries. FMoF liked my story “Purgatory Noir” and the DD previewer dug “Something in Store.” The reviewer writes, “it is everything I like in a short story wrapped into one: easy to read, whimsical, fantastical, dark, erotic, and just the perfect amount of vague. Vincent definitely knows how to keep you on edge, excited, eager, and wanting more.”
I’m not a big fan of the back door pilot. This happens when a series tests out a spinoff by co-opting its regular cast and shoe-horns in the new cast/setup. They did this with two episodes of NCIS, sending some of the cast to L.A. to work with the team out there. Last night they sent the Criminal Minds crew to San Francisco to work with the cast of a proposed spinoff. These episodes have to much to do. They have to tell a story and introduce a bunch of new characters. I understand the philosophy of trying to recruit your most loyal audience members, but these episodes feel contrived. Even the regular characters seem disjointed.
Law & Order: SVU was actually pretty interesting last night. A change of pace in that Elliot and Olivia were sidelined from the case (after telling a mother her son had been murdered only to discover during their meeting that it wasn’t true) so Tutuola and Munch got to dominate the episode. Neither one is a stellar actor, but it’s fun watching them banter. After Munch emerged from dumpster diving through a restaurant’s trash for evidence, Tutuola tells him, “Okay, your catching the bus home.” Ally Walker was the guest villainess, and she gave a strong performance as a therapist who crosses all sorts of lines. There were no public service announcement messages in the script, which is always a plus.
I finished Snow Hill by Mark Sanderson last night. It’s not as good a book as I hoped it would be, but it had its moments. The characters and dialog were a bit awkward at times. I liked the period descriptions better than the plot itself.
