I added another thousand words to the novella this morning, reaching 7000, but I think I’ve hit the breaking-off point. The old storyline isn’t going to serve me for this version so I’m ditching the rest of it and going off in a new direction. In fact, I think I’m going to backtrack a little and change an outcome, too. Instead of a murder, I’m going to have a disappearance that gives the story some more momentum. There will be other murders, but if one potential victim is still alive, that raises the stakes considerably. Of course, all this occurred to me in the shower after I was done for the morning so I’ll have to deal with it tomorrow. I also have to come up with a new culprit now.
I received an anniversary congratulations from Continental Airlines today. I’ve been a member of their OnePass program for 21 years. Wow. That makes me feel old.
Programming for WHC 2011 was released today. The convention starts in about two weeks. I’ll be driving over on the Wednesday since I’m on the committee and am the Guest of Honor liaison. I have two programming tasks:
- 3:00 PM Friday, April 29 – Phoenix Central: Guest of Honor Q&A – Joe Hill (interviewed by Bev Vincent)
- 1:00 PM Saturday, April 30 – Phoenix Central: Horror Without Stephen King. Jack Ketchum, Lawrence Person (M), Del Howison, William Nolan, Rocky Wood, Bev Vincent. Stephen King is the undisputed grandmaster of modern horror. But what if he had never lived, or went right to publishing literary fiction without ever writing a single scary story. What would the field look like today without the man from Maine? Would there even be a horror genre as we know it?
Lots of other panels and events I hope to attend, assuming my responsibilities allow.
New claim to fame: Jeff Probst responded to one of my tweet questions during last night’s episode of Survivor. He’s been revealing some interesting behind-the-scenes information about how the show is organized, the things they do and don’t do (for example, he confirmed a few weeks ago that he arranges the votes in the order that gives the most suspense). I asked how they organized the contestants at tribal council, since there are often some interesting juxtapositions. He wrote: “yes we tell them where to sit, so we make sure the tall people are in back. that’s the only time we do it.”
I love Rob’s idea of the buddy system to keep the other tribe from picking someone off when they’re a lone. Clever stuff. I wasn’t entirely sure of his logic in forcing his allies to not eat the fish. It’s never a good idea to start thinking you’re running the show. It was a dangerous move, I thought, and you’d think he’d want his team-mates to be strong. Philip got his meal (I loved the “burgers elapsed” caption that followed the “time elapsed” during the challenge). Sure, he might have been leery of whether the fish were still good or not, but to arbitrarily decide that no one on his side could eat. Yikes. It seems like he got away with it, too, as we weren’t shown any grumbling about the decision. And surely if the producers were worried that a bunch of players would die of food poisoning they’d intervene. A lot of things happen that we don’t see. For instance, David was examined by the medics after the challenge. His leg was blue, apparently. It was a strange choice, to hang by one leg like some sort of bat. He’s a very smart player, but that decision was odd. I wonder what Redemption Island is going to be like next week. A three person contest?
This week’s Criminal Minds was one of the best in recent memory. It was a riff on horror movies presaged by several members of BAU going to see a slasher flick. One scene at about the midpoint was a restaging of Drew Barrymore’s scene in one of the Scream movies. The lighting, the young woman on the phone, the camera angle outside a big window. There were probably other riffs like that that I didn’t catch. The big confrontation at the end was very well done and Seaver was given a chance to shine. She got her briefing from Hotch on the way into the house, she did exactly what she was told to do, and did it confidently, and despite the fact that there was shooting involved and a man was killed beside her, she was calm and assured when she talked to the woman victim a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure about her at first, but she’s growing on me. I also really liked the way the shooting was staged. Rossi came in from the rear, Hotch assessed the situation and moved instinctively out of the line of fire, Seaver covered the hostage and the shooting went down without problem.
