The promised chill in the air arrived yesterday afternoon. It made it up to the mid-sixties this afternoon, but it’s back down to the forties tonight. The Houston Chronicle has a sidebar title that says, “Just seems wrong: It’s warmer in Toronto than Houston.” We have an outdoor workday planned for tomorrow, so I don’t mind at all that the day is going to start off cool. Should keep the mosquitoes subdued, too.
I’ve finally gotten around to fulfilling my self-made promise to start working on a novel again. I have one complete chapter from a couple of years ago that I workshopped with a group of fellow writers at a session in San Antonio that generated positive feedback and lots of notes, but I haven’t looked at it since. However, I haven’t stopped thinking about it, either, and recently took a research trip to the setting and recorded an hour of video for reference.
I’ve decided to use Scrivener this time out, and after reviewing the tutorials I’m quite excited about the prospect. Scrivener allows you to write in scenes that you can manipulate like index cards, which is cool. However, it also allows you to attach all of your research into a single workspace instead of in random printouts or documents. I can link in my video, for example, and pull it up without leaving the program. If I find websites that have research info, I can just pop the URL into the research folder and there it persists. You can build out character profiles and notes and attach photographs of inspirations from the web or elsewhere. They don’t have to be orderly cards, either. You can create one of those haphazard corkboards that you often see on conspiracy shows where pictures and notes overlap. Simply importing the existing chapter this morning and assembling the workspace has me feeling very enthusiastic about getting down to work again.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone as bemused to be evicted on Survivor in a long time as Andrea was this week. She was blindsided, but she took it well. Seeing as how she was trying to orchestrate her own blindside, it seemed particularly fitting. The only truly strategic player left in the game is Cochrane, but he’s got a big target on his forehead. If he makes it to the end, he wins. If he doesn’t, though, it becomes anyone’s game and it means that the final two or three is going to be made up of people whose strategy was mostly to not have a strategy, and it seems odd that that will be rewarded. Erik has been playing well, but he doesn’t have a plan. Brenda is the only one of the remaining group other than Cochrane who I’ve actually heard discussing strategy, but even her not so much. Unless Eddie can start winning some immunity challenges, he’s doomed, too, I think.
I thought they were going to cast F. Murray Abraham as Moriarty on Elementary but he turned out to be merely another minion. I almost skipped the show based on the teaser trailers but I’m really enjoying it. I’m also thinking about checking out a new show starting in a few weeks called Motive. It’s a Canadian show that uses a similar format to Columbo. It stars Kristin Lehman from The Killing and Lauren Holly from NCIS.
Hannibal is fascinating, too. They’ve made some interesting casting choices: Laurence Fishburn as Crawford, for example. They turned Freddy Lounds into Freddie, a woman. Raul Esparza, the district attorney from Law & Order: SVU, is the smarmy and smug Dr. Chilton. This week, we got a look at the cell that Hannibal will ultimately occupy—the current resident is a delightful Eddie Izzard—and met a proto-Clarice played by Anna Chlumsky who was just a tad too smart for her own good. The show certainly doesn’t flinch when it comes to the violence, and I’m starting to enjoy Dr. Lecter’s little dinners, where he feeds the catch of the week to the protagonists. Gina Torres had an impressive episode or two, too, helping to ground the show in human interest.
