Very sad to hear of the passing of Bob Booth, aka Papa Necon, this weekend. He was an author, an editor and the founder of my favorite horror writers’ convention. He had been battling cancer all this year, but he got special dispensation to go to Necon in July and was even granted permission to have a drink a day.
I can’t say that I knew him well, but we were both “morning people,” at least at Necon, so I often met up with him out in the courtyard at the RWI campus long before most other “campers” were up. We talked about this and that during these quiet moments. One year he told me about his work laying out The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger for Donald M. Grant.
This year I only got to sit with him for a few minutes during a break in the action as he talked about some of the issues he was having, but I’m glad I changed my mind at the last minute and went. He was well-loved by his family and by his Necon family.
Have you ever fallen out of love with a short story while you were working on it? That happened to me recently. I had a story that was going along pretty well. I had most of it in my head. I knew where it was going, and what the final line was. But I got to a certain point and couldn’t even bring myself to open the document and look at it any more. This went on for days.
The main problem was that it had gotten way too convoluted. I wanted this to be a punchy story. In and out in 3000 words or less. All of a sudden I was faced with writing a scene that I knew was going to be at least 1000 words on its own. The story was tying itself into a Gordian knot and I didn’t like it any more. It felt plotted and stiff.
I ignored it for several days last week and again on Saturday. I found other things to do. Yesterday, however, I decided to at least read it through and figure out if it was salvageable. I started rewriting from the get go. A lot of the original material either went out the window, was trimmed considerably, or reorganized. Then I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I found a way to combine two scenes, simplifying the plot immensely. I made it to the end, and the first draft came in at 3000 words.
I went through it twice this morning and made some changes, but I’m much happier with it than I’d been recently. Another editing pass or two and I’m going to send it out into the world.
I finished The Double by George Pelecanos, which starts out as a Travis McGee novel before morphing into a Pelecanos, full of his trademark attention to such details as what everyone wears, what music they listen to, the names of every street and landmark they pass, and a violent finale. I was a bit bothered by something stupid Spero Lucas did late in the book that had violent (and, to my mind, foreseeable) repercussions, but it was a swift tale well told.
I started The Hunter and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett. The stories in this collection are either previously unpublished or uncollected, and most of them represent a significant difference from the better-known tales. One of them is very strange indeed, about a young detective (11 days on the job) summoned to a house where inexplicable stuff is happening and he sort of fumbles his way toward a resolution of sorts. I guess it’s supposed to be a parody of the detective genre. I like the one about the jewelry heist.
We watched the final episode of Season 2 of Longmire this weekend. In the final minutes we learned that much of what we thought we knew about the death of the guy who killed Longmire’s wife was wrong. Even better, the characters learned that their various assumptions about what happened were wrong, too. Longmire thought Henry killed the guy and Henry thought another guy killed him, but it wasn’t any of the above. I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know if any of this plays out in them, but it was a good cliff-hanger way to end the season.
I haven’t been saying much about Under the Dome, but we’re still watching and I’ll probably do a season-end summary for FEARnet or somewhere. My wife hated Natalie Zea’s character with a passion and was very pleased by her fate.
My wife is not going to be happy about this week’s episode of Dexter. She likes Vogel (and Charlotte Rampling) a lot. Unlike with Breaking Bad, things aren’t ramping up to a fever pitch yet. The addition of a storm is an interesting touch, but it looks like it’s all going to come down to a race for the gate at the airport instead of a bloodbath. I don’t know why they don’t take a boat to Cuba or some other place manageable and go on from there. I’m glad Quinn and Deb are getting back together. That gives Deb some continuity after whatever happens next.
Telephone calls like the one Hank and Marie had near the end of Breaking Bad last night are usually bad omens. I can’t see how Hank and Gomez are going to make it out of the desert alive. Did neither of them have a badge to show? Not that it would have likely done them much good. I really liked the way that all came together. Walt trying to draw Jesse out, not realizing that Hank had his cell phone, and then Jesse turning around and getting Walt’s goat big time. Hitting him where he lived. The money was what it was all about, after all. Knowing that he’s going to die (and that seems clearer than ever now), he couldn’t bear losing the one thing that had gotten this ball rolling in the first place. He blurted out all kinds of incriminating statements. I hope that was recorded somewhere if Hank and Gomez go down in flames. And what about Jesse? Can he slink off while the bullets are flying? And if he does, then what? The con job they played on Saul’s guy was brilliant, too. “Hank, why are there brains in the garbage can?” Poor Saul, trying to de-drug his car. He didn’t even get a friends-and-family discount.
