I think I have the short ( now shorter) story ready to submit in the morning. It ended up at 5300 words. I think I might add a few back in and give it one last read-through. Then it’s on to the next story. I have three that I want to write during October and then in November I’m going to get back to serious work on the novel. It’s NaNoWriMo, but I’m not going to enter that contest since I’m not writing a book, only extensively revising one.
I finished Moonlight Mile this weekend and posted my review to Onyx last night. Next up: The Reversal by Michael Connelly, which sounds a bit like a John Grisham. Mickey Haller is convinced to switch sides and become a special prosecutor in a 24-year-old murder case where the convicted party has just been set free on DNA evidence. His half brother, Harry Bosch, and his ex-wife make up his team in this politically charged trial.
We watched Just Wright this weekend, starring Queen Latifah and a guy who goes as simply Common. Latifah plays a physical therapist who is hired to get the NJ Nets star basketball player back for the playoffs after a knee injury. Her gold-digging god-sister (who lives with her) already had her sights set on the wealthy player. Terrible title for a movie, but it was light and fun. The guy who plays Richard Webber on Grey’s Anatomy was her supportive father who was always doing fix-up jobs around the house…poorly. The film had an odd structure, though. It seemed to be all about getting him back in the game, but that happened about 2/3 of the way through, which left me wondering what was going to happen for the last 30 minutes. Predictable drama ensued.
For a while, it was trendy to write about the legitimate profession of crime scene cleanup. Lately, the hot thing seems to be cleaners of the more clandestine type. Stephen King played one on Sons of Anarchy a couple of weeks ago, and another one was called in on last night’s Rubicon. The conspiracy show is getting down to business. Will finally verbalized my theory: that there’s a group of men who are profiting from insider trading based on the intelligence generated by the API. He went a step farther and implied that these men are also influencing global catastrophes, which is why some of the men have committed suicide. I decided last night that the actor playing Truxton Spangler is using Richard Nixon as his inspiration. He’s getting creepier and creepier. The way he shook hands with Will and essentially delivered a eulogy to him should have been a tip-off. And you’d think he’d wait for the body to be cold before appointing Grant as the heir apparent! I felt bad for Andy, though. I think she’s as innocent as she appears to be and thinks this is all fun and games (until someone gets their brains blown out). If she turns out to be in on the conspiracy I will be very surprised. Only two episodes left.
None of the teams on Amazing Race have annoyed me to the point that I wish they would get eliminated, but I was sad to see this team go. They have such an interesting story. A mother reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption two decades ago—just for the race. They live in different states and both have other families (mom has ten more kids!) so they won’t likely have much time together after this. Now they get to cool their heels in Elimination Station in Mexico for the rest of the race, which might actually give them more time to get to know each other. I think I’m still rooting for the home shopping network team. Brook is (to use her own words) a hoot and a half. Apparently she took a lot of heat over her (extensively edited) reaction to her partner’s unfortunate encounter with a watermelon.
Another common theme emerges: solitary men taking up swimming. Don Draper did it on Mad Men and now Dexter is swimming out his anxieties.
