One of the first things I do each year is create a new Microsoft Money ledger to record my writing income and expenses. Some years start off with expenses, and it can be some time before the first income comes in. However, this year got off to a good start when I received the check from my agent for the recent second edition of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion.
I started work this morning on another major project, but this one is “on spec,” as we haven’t yet found a publisher. It’s a fun project, and we have some options available to us for when I complete it. It’s in a somewhat different vein than my other big projects, so I’m still working on finding the right voice. I’m also rolling around a short story idea, but I have some time to get a handle on it. I have the setup and the four main players, but I don’t know enough about where the story will go to start yet.
I finished Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell and started The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I’ve been hearing lots of good things about it, but I haven’t read any reviews, nor did I read the publishers copy so I’m enjoying being surprised by the book as I go along. Her writing is so strong and the opening section is so visceral that I was swept along on a tidal wave. I think I’m going to be glad that the book is nearly 800 pages long.
Glad to see Justified back for a new season. The Crowe clan could prove interesting, coupled with Boyd and Ava’s issues and good old Wynn Duffy signed on as a full time character. And a touch of Winona every now and then, too. Great stuff.
We toured the Sahara with Michael Palin and now we’re en route from the North Pole to the South Pole with him. He got out of the USSR two days before the coup that ousted Gorbachev in 1991, and it won’t be his only flirtation with political unrest as he follows the 30th parallel through Africa. Sudan seems to have been in as bad a state back then as it is now, for example. I wonder what his wife thinks when he goes on these long adventures, which range from between 80 days to the better part of a year. Nine months in the Sahara was boiled down to about 200 minutes of show time, so we wonder, too, what interesting outtakes there might have been.
I finished rewatching Breaking Bad this weekend. Seeing it all again in such a compressed timeframe was an interesting experience. Spread out over so many years, I tended to forget little things, like the guy involved in the fateful visit to Ted was also the guy who drove the dump truck in the train robbery. Artistic details that I hadn’t appreciated before showed up, too, like the fact that the closing shot in the episode “Crawl Space” is almost identical to the final shot in “Felina.” Knowing how things are going to play out adds an extra layer of appreciation, too. Well worth exercise.
I also watched the second season of the Israeli series Hatufim, translated as Prisoners of War, which is free on Hulu. This is the show that inspired Homeland, though it is a very different creature. In the first season, a couple of Israeli PoWs who have been held in Lebanon for 17 years are released. There were three of them in captivity together, but the third one is reported dead. The show focuses on Uri and Nimrode’s reintegration into their former lives. Five years was a lot on Homeland, but imagine trying to fit back into society after 17 years with no contact with anyone. Some people have waited faithfully for their return and others have moved on, only to be yanked back again.
There is a layer of plot concerning security worries that these two released men have been turned or have secrets. As it happens, they do have secrets, but not what anyone expects and, as it turns out, what they think is true is not. The second season is split between Jerusalem and the ongoing travails of Uri, Nimrode and the people related to them or affected by their return, and Lebanon, where the fate of the third PoW is explored. There’s a cute IDF (Israel Defense Force) agent and her no-nonsense boss, too. I found the exploration of the different Middle East cultures interesting. At 14 episodes, the second series is about 2 hours too long, but the final four episodes are gripping as a plan called Operation Judea is finally put into motion. Well worth checking out.
