I wrote a 3000-word short story beginning to end this weekend. I’ve been contemplating the story for weeks, and I even made a false start of a few pages on it a while back, but I finally figured out what the story was going to be like and from what perspective it needed to be told. It all came together in my waking moments on Sunday morning. I plotted out about 80% of it in my mind before I was fully awake. When I got to the computer a few hours later, it poured out of me pretty much as I had mentally constructed it. I despaired that I didn’t have a solid ending for it, but that came along naturally, too. It’s a wonky story, more of a satire or parody than anything else. Hopefully it will be received in that context by the editor to whom I sent it this morning after making a couple of more revision passes.
Next up, I hope to conjure a tale for the Mystery Writers of America anthology. I have an idea, but I’m open to the possibility that something else might come along before I start writing. The theme this time is vigilante justice.
Heavy rain here on Friday night, which I think is the same storm that’s bringing snow to the rest of the south today. I believe there was snow in the northern part of the state, but not so much as a flurry here as far as I know. C’est dommage.
I finished Our Kind of Traitor and started the eagerly anticipated The Silent Land by Graham Joyce. It’s not out in the US until late March, but I received an ARC through the Amazon Vine program, much to my delight. A couple is on a ski vacation in the French Alps when they are caught by a small avalanche. He grabs a tree and remains above ground. She’s buried head first in the snow. Together they rescue themselves, but when they return to their posh hotel, there’s no one else around. No one in the rest of town, either. At first they assume the town was evacuated due to the risk of more massive avalanches but as time goes by and their attempts to leave are mysteriously thwarted, they start to believe something different has happened. I’ve steadfastly refused to read any reviews of this book because I have no doubt Graham has something altogether different up his sleeves and I don’t want it spoiled. He’s one of my all-time favorite authors, and if you haven’t been reading his books, you should be.
We watched The American on Friday evening, a stylish thriller starring George Clooney as an assassin and manufacturer of made-to-order weapons. He’s being hunted by some angry Swedes and is hiding out in a small Italian town while carrying out his next task: to build a weapon for a sexy spy played by Thekla Reuten, who was in “The Economist” episode of Lost. He’s also carrying on with a local prostitute, who has fallen in love with him, and he’s determined that this will be his last job for whoever his boss really is. The net is closing around him, and any time he falls for a woman he gets into trouble. He had to shoot his last girlfriend because she was a witness to his dark side. It’s an interesting, artistic film. Most of it has no soundtrack whatsoever. No music, no dialog, just Clooney doing things, such as constructing a silencer out of parts picked up at a garage. Despite its title, a very European film.
On Saturday evening, we watched Salt, the spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie in a role that was originally written for a man. Okay, for Tom Cruise, but still. The story has some huge plot holes that I can’t figure out, the biggest of which is the open question concerning why Orlov blew her cover as a sleeper in front of her confederates. That makes no sense to me, though it did apparently set the rest of the film in motion. For some reason, she has to be on the outs with her bosses to do what she’s been programmed to do. Still, it’s a rousing action flick with Jolie doing all sorts of improbable and nigh-unto-impossible things, and not always looking terribly glamorous doing them. I figured out the trick with the spider early on, and I sussed out the probable spy using the logic of “famous actor syndrome,” although I briefly entertained the possibility that the president was involved in the plot. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s name probably doesn’t mean much to many people, but if you’re a fan of Firefly, he was the bad guy in the Serenity movie, the guy who liked to punch people in the nerve bundles and paralyze them while he gives them what he thinks of as a heroic death. Check your brain at the door and enjoy the romp — that’s the kind of movie this is.
Half-watched a couple of football games this weekend. Seattle are my new favorites. Worst record ever — wouldn’t it be a kick to see them win it all?
Catching up on a couple of TV shows from last week. CSI was odd. It looked like it was going to be one of those annual lab-rats episodes, but it wasn’t quite. Carrot Top was in it, but he played it absolutely straight instead of for laughs. The guy from Mad Men was an obvious suspect simply because he was the guy from Mad Men. And the three other guys got off lightly even though they’d committed GTA and kidnapped someone? Where was the logic in that?
Nice bit of misdirection with the bitch wife on The Mentalist. We notice Patrick noticing her when everyone else is singing the victim’s praises and realize that she didn’t like the victim, but Patrick doesn’t say anything. I have to wonder how often you can use the trick where you tell a group of suspects that a witness is going to reveal all and wait for the suspect to expose himself by attempting to silence the witness, though. My favorite line of the episode: “Police and fine women always think they got a right to be wherever they’re at — and you ain’t no fine woman.” I wonder what the repercussions of Cho’s lie on Rigsby’s behalf will be.
