I’m up to about 3000 words on the new story in progress, but I decided yesterday to recast it from third person to first person. Heavily influenced by reading Ross MacDonald. I went through The Ivory Grin this weekend and kept bookmarking pages that had quotable quotes for when I review it for Onyx—I could as well have bookmarked the whole thing because it is so quoteworthy. The plot is typical MacDonald, but it’s all in the delivery. Jaded, cynical viewpoint giving rise to vivid figures of speech and language. I gotta get my hands on some more of these books. The first two were free from the publisher, but now I’m hooked.
I also read the first half of Tom Piccirilli’s new novella Frayed last night. This is from Creeping Hemlock, the same fine folks who gave us the Corpse Blossoms anthology that has my tale “The Smell of Fear.” It’s about a blocked writer who receives an invitation to visit his friend (also a writer who, incidentally, tried to murder the protagonist at least once) for a “hootenanny” at the insane asylum where he’s an inmate. The story has a bit of a Lehane-Shutter Island feel to it, as there is some question about who’s running the place and who’s an inmate, and certain things happen to the main character that are invalidated later on (the gatekeeper waves him through without question, but the institution director later says that couldn’t have happened). There are intimations of something surreal and strange that happened on the Isle of Dogs (say it fast three times!), the only hint of supernatural so far. Fifty pages in and very much looking forward to reading the rest tonight.
We watched The Astronaut Farmer starring Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen, Bruce Willis and Bruce Dern on Saturday night. A fun family film. The kids are mega-cute, but not obnoxiously so—very credible in their behavior, which is nice to see.
I binged on Torchwood episodes over the weekend, too. “Cyberwoman,” “Small Worlds,” “Countrycide,” “Greeks Bearing Gifts,” “They Keep Killing Suzie,” and “Random Shoes,” leaving me with only four episodes left to the season. This is the gritty cousin to Doctor Who. Both earthbound and timebound, it deals with the new incarnation of Torchwood after the cybermen destroyed the previous British section of the organization. It’s a very small group, led by the enigmatic Captain Jack Harkness, known to viewers of the new Doctor Who series. One thing I like about the series is that, while Gwen is obviously fascinated by Captain Jack, she’s not enraptured or enamored. She has a boyfriend—though he’s given short shrift in more ways than one—and other relationships become more important to her. Also, the four members of Torchwood (besides Jack) are deeply flawed individuals who make bad choices with sometimes tragic consequences. Sometimes Torchwood even loses (though I thought the acting at the end of “Small Worlds” was about the worst I’ve seen. Their love lives are varied and ultimately doomed. They are world weary, and have signed on to Torchwood in part because it seems like they’ve given up on the world. Sure, there’s fascination with the covert organization’s purvue, but they know enough about reality now to become disenchanted with most things. The show has a good mix, too, with one episode that has no alien elements at all, and one of those “Love and Monsters” style episodes that focuses less on Torchwood than on someone familiar with the organization—an episode that works much better than L&M did and has a surprisingly touching ending. All in all a terrific series—and Tosh is looking hotter every week.
Big props to Danielle for literally hanging in there for an hour and a half to win HoH on Big Brother. I wonder who was responsible for the fly-past with the banner that virtually outed Eric as a liar. I thought Danielle was pretty astute to put the whole thing together as she did. Eric protested far too much (though that might have been an editing artifact), but I wouldn’t mind seeing him on the block if the plan comes together. Too bad America can’t induce him to vote for himself! I really like messing with the America’s Choice thing—I voted for him to try to form an alliance with Evel Dick!
