Hidden Figures (a movie review post)

I know that I just got through saying that I had found my pick for Best Picture winner this year and that I didn't think that would change. Well, I was wrong. I'm glad I specified that I hadn't seen all the likely nominees yet, and even I am surprised that I'm going with Hidden Figures over Arrival. That should tell you just how good Hidden Figures is because Arrival is in just about every way my kind of movie. What can I say? I like sci-fi in my movies.

Or, maybe, I just like science, fiction or not, and Hidden Figures, also, pushes the science button.

Hidden Figures feels to me like a necessary movie for our time. But it's also just a great movie. Great and necessary is a combination that is difficult to overlook.

We have this pervasive view that every important accomplishment not just in the United States but in the world and throughout history has been done by white men -- I mean, we even hold the view, somehow, that Jesus was a white dude; how fucked up is that? -- and that's just not true. It's not even mostly true. And, yet, here we are.

Would we have gone to the moon without the contributions of these three women? Probably. Would we have done it when we did? Almost certainly not. Would the Russians have gotten there first? Maybe.  And, no, it doesn't matter that they have never been. They cut their program back once we had taken a lead that they could not overcome but, if we had never taken that lead, they very well may have retained theirs. Katherine Johnson was instrumental in us taking the lead away from Russia.

But why should we care about one individual mathematician among so many? It's not like we know the names of all of the faceless white dudes in white shirts working for NASA at the time, right? However, if you had looked into that room of faceless white dudes in white shirts, you would have noticed one person who didn't seem to belong, and that is significant. One lone African American. One lone woman. The same person. That she was allowed into that room at all is significant because that means that she was extraordinary, and she deserves recognition.

All three of the women do.
So it was way past time for this movie.

Add to the great story a top-notch cast, and you have what is a wonderful movie. There were seriously great performances all around. That said, two in particular stand out to me:

The first is Janelle Monae (also appearing in Moonlight). She is feisty and fiery as Mary Jackson, and I actually wish there was more of her in the movie. It's a completely different kind of role than she had in Moonlight, too, so it's cool to see her range in these two movies. In fact, I didn't even recognize her as the same actress while I was watching the movie. It's really a stand out performance.

And I hate to highlight a white dude from a movie like this, but Costner's performance as Al Harrison was... well, I'm not going to say it was amazing, but it might be Costner's best role ever. Harrison is an interesting character (which is all I can say since I don't know anything about the actual person), the only one of the group that Katherine Johnson is assigned to who appears to not be racist. He's just oblivious. But when he does take notice of the racism happening around him, he does his best to smash it, sometimes literally. At one point, Costner delivers what seems to me would be an awkward line -- something like, "At NASA, we all pee the same color." -- but he does it with all seriousness and sincerity, and it's a great moment in the film.

Most of all, though, what sells me on this film as the Best Picture is that I would say everyone should see this movie. I wouldn't say that about Arrival, because I know a lot of people who, for many different reasons, wouldn't get the movie. Or enjoy it. It's like my view of Tolkien: I believe everyone should read The Hobbit, but The Lord of the Rings is certainly not for everyone.

So, yes, go see Hidden Figures. If it doesn't give you a fresh perspective on racial inequality in the United States, there is, beyond any doubt, something wrong with you.

[Again this week, the movie review will serve as my political post.]

"Is this a good place to stand?" (a Battle of Five Armies review)

It is not an illegitimate question to ask me why I saw this movie. I've not hid how much I disliked... no, loathed... the other two movies in this godforsaken trilogy that erupted from Peter Jackson's bowels (more on that in a moment), so why would I bother with this one? The answer is actually very simple: I don't earn the right to speak disparagingly about it without having seen it. It's much easier to give examples of why you don't like (hate) something than it is to defend your reasons for why you think you won't like something. There's no good response to, "But you haven't tried it."

As a related example:
My oldest son (both of my boys) detests the Hobbit movies. Not in his exact words, but he described it like this: Imagine the most beautiful bathroom in the world. Gorgeous. Marble and gold and perfumed. And it has a heated golden throne of a toilet. But, when you sit down to take a dump, it is still just a dump, and, specifically, The Battle of Five Armies is a slow motion movie of Peter Jackson on that beautiful, golden toilet in that gilded bathroom, taking a long, excruciating dump.

But he has this friend who is always attacking his position that, compared to the book, the movies are horrible. She loves the movies and thinks they are better than the book. The problem? She hasn't read the book. But she believes that since the movies have made so much money and that she likes them that that is proof enough that the book must really not be that good. And why bother with it, anyway, when she loves the movie so much? [Which goes back to what I said in my review of Desolation about kids not wanting to bother with the book because of the movie.] Her opinion, though, is ill informed and without authority.

So I went to see the movie so that I could have the freedom to talk about how stupid it all is.

And, this time, I'm not even going to mention the deviations from the book; I'm just going to talk about the blatant stupid of the movie. Which started immediately, I might add. There was so much stupid, in fact, that I lost count of the stupid before Smaug was even dead. Let's look at the big two:

1. Bard is left locked in prison as the dragon is attacking. Naturally, he's in a ragestorm trying to break his way out. But it's a good, solid prison, and he's having no luck. But he ends up with a rope that he's able to grapple a boat with. A very slow-moving boat because the boat is loaded down with gold and on the verge of sinking. And let me be clear: This is a boat being paddled by just a couple of dudes. Against all odds (and physics (maybe Peter Jackson has never been in a boat that was still tied to a dock)), rather than the boat stopping, the boat rips the wall out of the prison! Without even slowing down!

And just to continue the stupid of that scene, rather than go out the hole in the wall, Bard suddenly is able to punch a whole in the ceiling and go out that way instead.

2. During the battle, Bard's bow gets broken in half. How is he supposed to shoot the dragon out of the sky with a broken bow? Answer: Jam the two halves of the bow into a crumbling structure (because the dragon smashed it and set it on fire) and proceed to pull the string back as if nothing happened. Oh, except, now, the string is like three times as long and he uses his son to steady the arrow. Which leads me to believe that Jackson has probably never even touched a bow, because what Bard does is the equivalent of trying to shoot down an airplane (that's crawling at you) with one of those toy bows with the suction cup arrows. And, yes, I'm saying this as someone who was at one time into archery and has experience with bows.

The worst part about the movie, though, is that I couldn't wait for Thorin to die. I wanted him to just get it over with. Between all the slow motion talking and the drug hallucinations, I was just through with him. Jackson managed to undermine the entire point of The Hobbit through what he did with Thorin and the Arkenstone. There was no power in Thorin's apology to Bilbo, because there was no understanding on the part of Thorin, just recovery.

Oh, and to go back to mere stupid: Azog blasting through the ice as if he was rocket-powered. Seriously, someone send Peter Jackson back to school so that he can learn things like physics. And to teach him some appreciation of literature. Jackson's Hobbit is the worst piece if fan fiction filth I've ever seen or heard about.
And, yes, that's how I really feel.

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Five: The Source (an IWM post)

Imagine you're a kid. Your father is a landowner and a knight. Your older brother is obviously being groomed as the heir, which is normal and natural. He is, actually, a knight in his own right. You, however, are not being trained as a second, a backup, which would also be normal and natural. You're being trained to take care of horses and muck stalls and do the upkeep on your brother's gear, but that's about it. Sure, you'll get to be a squire, but you can tell there's some... difference; you're just not sure what it is. Clearly, your father loves you, and it's not a matter of favoritism; your brother is held just as accountable for wrongs as you are. But there is something... something that sets you apart. Or is that just wishful thinking?

This tournament comes up, and your brother is going to take part. He's even one of the favored knights. But something happens. The morning of the tournament, there's a problem with your brother's sword. He's livid. Stomping around. He demands that you find him a new one. And that's where everything changes...

* * *

Raise your hand if you know where this is going.

Raise your hand if you knew you were going to have to jump over to Indie Writers Monthly to read the rest of this. Now, go!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Four: The Darkest Hour (an IWM post)

Along our fantastic fantasy journey, so far, we've learned that we're special and could be the prophesied one, among other things. We've met a mentor and found some friends. We've also gone on a journey, probably in search of something. Hopefully, it's a been a learning experience, and we're fully prepared to meet the final challenge. It's a dark time for the rebellion, after all.

From the initial list I made (which you can see here), we need to cover three more points:

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And, like always, to find out what those three more points are, you will need to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly. This one is all about technology and dark lords. Go read!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Three: Who's Gonna Learn Ya? (an IWM post)

There's no teaser, today, for part three of my exploration into the origins of the modern fantasy arc. If you want to read it, you'll just have to go right over to Indie Writers Monthly and do that. And you totally should.
Today, we really get into what's Tolkien and what's not.

Go, now, and read THE POST!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Two: Orphans and the Gum Under the Seat (an IWM post)

It may seem that the easiest way to find the origins of fantasy literature would be to simply follow the trail of fantasy literature back in history until we get to the earliest examples of it, but that would cause some problems. For instance, when does fantasy cease to be fantasy and become legend or myth? Are we going to call Beowulf a fantasy story? Or the tales of the Greek and Egyptian gods? Or Gilgamesh? It gets kinda messy if we do that. And that's not really what we're looking for, anyway. No, we're trying to establish where our current model for fantasy writing comes from. Look back at the last post to see the list.

So, although we're not going to go looking for historical beginnings, we are going to start at the beginning. Or, at least, where all fantasy stories start: the orphan boy. Sure, sure, it's not always a boy; Disney has given us plenty of girls, after all; but, when we start talking about the genre of fantasy literature, it's nearly always a boy. Or, even, outside the strict confines of fantasy. Let's take a look at some of the most popular examples (and some that I just like):

Oh! Wait! That list is over on Indie Writers Monthly, but it's a good list, so you should go on over and read it. Go see if your favorite fantasy character made the cut!

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List (an IWM post)

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

* * *

And that elsewhere is Indie Writers Monthly. Sort of. I mean it will be where to look. Today, we're just talking about the elements of fantasy. And there's a list! Everyone loves lists, right? So hop right over and check it out!

Desolation of The Hobbit (a movie review post)

[Warning: This post may (will) contain offensive language and/or concepts, things I don't generally have on my blog. Thinking about it, I should just send this post over to the Beer Guys and let them do it in the way they do best, but, hey, it's my review, so... just be prepared.]

Disclaimer: As I've mentioned before, the main problem with what Jackson has done with The Hobbit stems from his dishonesty about his intentions. If he had said upfront, "I'm going to adapt the book to fit with my version of Middle Earth," there wouldn't be nearly the problem. However, what he said for years, right up to the release of the first movie, was "I am being completely faithful to the book." Either he's just a liar or he's delusional (and, at this point, I'm leaning toward delusional).

The terms "rape" and "childhood" are often used when anyone of my generation talks about the Star Wars prequels. I don't actually feel that way about them. My view has more to do with the fact that Lucas has the right to do whatever he wants to do with his own stuff. It's like if I want to paint my living room in orange and green stripes, you don't get to tell me I should change it. I'm the one that lives in it, and, if I like it, it's no concern of yours. You don't have to come over and see it if you don't want to. And, if my house is full of all the coolest things in the world, which makes you want to come over, you still don't get to complain about the color scheme. That's the price you have to pay to come over and play with my toys.
And, hey, my kids love Jar Jar, as do all of the "Star Wars kids" I know.

However, The Hobbit does not belong to Peter Jackson. What he's done with The Hobbit is like you coming to my house and re-painting my living room in puke green and neon pink. Except, actually, it's more like Peter Jackson bending Bilbo and Tolkien over, reaching up their asses simultaneously, grabbing their intestines, and ripping them out through their assholes. Then he uses the intestines to decorate the room. And, by the way, the stench he creates from that just doesn't go away.

Seriously, I have never seen more disrespect delivered to source material than what Jackson has done in The Desolation of Smaug. With the first movie, An Unexpected Journey, Jackson at least held to some semblance of the story from the book: a group of dwarves seeking to reclaim their homeland from a dragon. However, Jackson wastes no time at all in destroying all of that in the very first moments of Desolation. He does a dance on the bloodied corpse of Bilbo and Tolkien while waving their innards through the air and splattering the walls with their blood.

In The Hobbit, Gandalf is never fully behind the trip to the Lonely Mountain. He's willing to help the dwarves along so that they have a chance of surviving, but he views the whole thing as more of a fool's errand. And (and this is a big "and") he never intends to accompany them on the entire trip. He just happens to be going in the same direction, so to speak, so travels along with them to keep them out of trouble as best as he can while he's there. But Jackson makes the whole venture into a plot by Gandalf. It's not Thorin who decides he wants to retake his homeland; it's Gandalf. And it has nothing to do with "homeland;" it's about finding the Arkenstone and uniting the various dwarven kingdoms under one king so that he can raise an army.

WHAT?

Gandalf wants to raise an army? Why the heck does Gandalf want an army? The implication is that the army is needed to fight The Enemy, but, see, even in Jackson's timeline, no one knows about that yet. The ring has not been found, no one knows the Necromancer is Sauron, there is no great threat to the world. But Gandalf wants an army and sends Thorin into the mountain for the sole reason of retrieving the stone.

And, of course, everyone knows what's going on except Bilbo and the other dwarves. When the dwarves are captured by the elves, Thranduil knows without asking that Thorin is after the Arkenstone. When Bilbo sneaks down to check out Smaug, Smaug already knows that it's Thorin after the Arkenstone. The whole thing is stupid. STUPID. I cannot express how much this whole thing violates the premise and the theme of the book.

And, see, I can't even give a breakdown of where the movie deviates from the book, because it would just take too long. There is virtually nothing from the book in this second movie apart from some characters with the same names.

The worst of it is that when I saw the trailer for the movie and saw the whole barrel thing (which is beyond ludicrous the way Jackson has done it with his "magic" floating barrels (they're not magic) that never fill up with water and sink despite the number of times they go under water), I thought, "Well, that's going to be even more dumb than the domino trees in the first movie," but, really, I thought that would be the worst of it. Just more stupid stuff like that. And the Pale Orc, of course, because Jackson had already started his descent into total depravity; I just didn't realize how far into the sewer he was willing to go. And not just willingly, he's actively swimming in shit and loving it.

Yes, it all makes me mad to think about.

Like I said, there is not time to go through all of the things that makes this movie so horrid, but here are some of the worst:
1. The aforementioned mess with the Arkenstone.
2. Kili doesn't have a beard. A dwarf without a beard? Seriously, what the heck? [And, yes, I suppose he didn't have a beard in Journey, but Kili wasn't highlighted in that one, and, I guess, I just didn't notice, but the whole thing is wrong.]
3. Elf/dwarf romance? Again, seriously, what the heck?
4. The dwarves split up and some stay in Laketown. WHAT THE HECK?
5. There is a huge battle in the mountain between Smaug and the dwarves. WHAT THE DOUBLE HECK?

Did Peter Jackson even read the book? I mean, it's bad enough that Jackson used the spiders as an excuse to feature the elves (just like he did with Helm's Deep in The Two Towers) and Legolas doing spider surfing (what the heck is up with Jackson and elf surfing?), but he's ripped the heart out of The Hobbit, put it in a blender, and... I don't know what. I suppose he drank it. Actually, he reminds me of Gollum singing to that fish in the LotR movies. Singing to the fish and, then, beating it on the rocks. That's what he's done with The Hobbit. Followed by ripping into it with his teeth.

I'd really like to be able to tell how the movie is just as a movie, but I can't do that with this one. The Hobbit has been with me for something like 35 years, and I can't think of it from the position of "What would I think of this if I had never read the book?" What that makes me think of is how Jackson is actually destroying the book for a whole generation of readers. Can you imagine having seen these movies first and then trying to read the book? You'd be wondering where all these other characters are: Radagast, Legolas, Tauriel. Even Azog. This issue, I think, is even worse than the movies. That's saying a lot, because Desolation is like all of the worst things ever mixed into one "worst thing ever" package. And that just doesn't approach the long-term damage Jackson may be doing to kids that want to read the book.

So, yeah, I have no way to independently evaluate this as "just a movie." There is no "just a movie" in this to me. This is the kind of thing that lives in my nightmares as a writer. I mean, we all know that Hollywood can be terrible with intellectual properties and strip mine them just to get at the money. Or, maybe, these days, I should say they frack them for all they're worth. But what Jackson has done to The Hobbit goes so far beyond what typical Hollywood has ever done. And that's where I'll end, because, to go on, I'd have to start making value judgements about Jackson and what he thinks of himself, but I don't actually know the guy. I do not, however, have any "benefit of the doubt" left for him.

The Hobbit: A Review (Part 2)

Disclaimer: The fact that I'm reviewing this right now has nothing to do with the release of the movie.

Note: Those of you who have read my "Of Significance..." page may remember that The Hobbit is listed there, so this is (by far) not my first reading of the book.

Part 1 of this review is here.

It is of great interest to me that Tolkien is considered the "father of modern fantasy" when so much of modern fantasy has nothing to do with what or the way Tolkien wrote. While it's true that The Hobbit is a classic fantasy story, it is not classic in the sense that it uses all the normal conventions of fantasy. In fact, despite that many (most?) people would say that modern fantasy is largely based on Tolkien, you will find few to none of what we consider basic fantasy tropes in The Hobbit (or The Lord of the Rings).

One of the most common bits of fantasy literature is the young, male protagonist. Young often means teenager. Most often, probably. The last couple of decades have finally brought us a bevy of female protagonists, but, still, youth is the most common theme. Bilbo, however, is not young. He's not even what we would consider middle-aged. He's not quite "old," but he's definitely on his way. Definitely "established" and definitely set in his ways. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other piece of fantasy literature that's like that except The Lord of the Rings, because Frodo (and the other hobbits), also, is not young (something Peter Jackson conveniently forgot). [And it's not one of these things where hobbits are old but still young like elves can be, because hobbits are Tolkien's stand-ins for humans and age about the same way (when Bilbo is turning 111 in LotR, he is old, as in really old, as in ancient).] The closest other thing I can think of is Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, who is not old but is definitely not young.

The next piece is that this young protagonist is frequently (almost always) an orphan of some kind. Maybe, s/he has one of his/her parents, but the protagonist generally has lost at least one of them and almost always to some kind of violent circumstance. Maybe this is why the orphan princess is so common in Disney? Bilbo is definitely not an orphan. Which is not to say that his parents are alive, because they're  not, but, then, he's 50, and there is no indication that they died of anything other than old age. Or, maybe, boredom.

Then there is the requisite prophecy about the protagonist. The list of fantasy literature which feature a prophecy would probably exceed my usual word count, so I'll just remind everyone of Harry Potter and how he fits all three of these so far. Even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has a prophecy. The Hobbit contains no prophecy (neither does LotR). There is nothing "special" about Bilbo in that sense. He has not been chosen by fate to do what he does. This is a story about a hobbit that rises to the occasion. It's more like your boss at work needing a job done, choosing the person the boss thinks is most qualified, and that person choosing to do it.

And there is no "party" of adventurers. No, the dwarves don't count, because they're all interchangeable on the whole. And Gandalf abandons them half way through. So there's no wizard, no fighter, no ranger, no healer, none of that stuff we expect to find among the heroes band of followers. Just the burglar, and that's Bilbo.

Possibly the biggest break from convention is that Bilbo is not the valiant warrior that "saves the day" in the end. He does not slay the dragon, and he does not defeat the goblin army. He's not even conscious for most of that. Bilbo is a hero of another type, let's say a moral hero, which is so much more important and believable. Bilbo's bravest moment is when he walks down the tunnel to see the dragon. Not to fight the dragon, just to see him. I love that bit:

Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

And his most significant contribution to the end of the story is standing up against his friends when they are set on a wrong path. Neville Longbottom's stand against his friends and Dumbledore's rewarding of it very much reminded me of Bilbo handing the Arkenstone over to Bard.

Basically, despite what everyone says about "all fantasy" being based on Tolkien, almost no fantasy is based on Tolkien. What Tolkien did was original and, amazingly, remains original to this day. No one else has written a story like The Hobbit (and, although people have attempted stories like The Lord of the Rings, no one has succeeded), and I have to wonder if that's because the story becomes so much bigger in our minds after we read it. Bilbo becomes this larger than life hero that he's really not in the book, and that's, frankly, amazing. We remember him fighting the spiders and riddling with Gollum and the dragon, but we forget that it's Bard that kills the dragon and the Eagles that save the day in the Battle of Five Armies. It really is like what Gandalf tells him in the end:

You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.

We don't tend to have characters like that in our fantasy. Our protagonists are huge, essential characters who have the fate of the world hanging on their shoulders, and Bilbo is not that kind of hero.

He's just a guy that learns that he's capable of more than he believes he is, and I think that's an important lesson to learn. And I love that we see that change through the pages of The Hobbit. He goes from being a guy that runs away from just the idea of an adventure, of anything different, to the guy that gets them all caught by trolls, to the guy that everyone depends upon. There's no unlocking of the secret, magical talent that only he possesses; there is only Bilbo learning to use the "gifts" that everyone is given. There is only Bilbo deciding to go instead of stay and to do instead of not. It is Tolkien telling us that there is a bit of the Tookish inside of all of us... if only we can wake it up.

Frozen (but full of warm fuzzies)

Pixar's loss of John Lasseter's direct involvement in their day-to-day operations hasn't done them any favors (see my reviews of Monsters University and Brave); however, his influence on Disney as a whole looks to be unmistakable. Unmistakably good, at that. Whereas the last couple of Pixar movies have descended to fairly typical Disney fare, Frozen rises towards the kind of film we haven't seen from Pixar since Toy Story 3 (a movie that made me cry, and I don't cry at movies very often). It's not as good as TS3, but it's definitely the best Disney Animation movie in a good long while.

In an effort to avoid spoilers, I'll just say that the movie is delightful on so many levels. Olaf steals every scene he's in, and my kids loved him. Seriously, my daughter especially has not stopped talking about him, and both of the younger ones have been singing as much of his "puddle" song as they can remember. My daughter, who is less interested in movies than the boys, would have turned right around and seen it again. [And we'd (my daughter and I) planned to see Desolation of Smaug together (because the boys (and my wife) were too disappointed with the first one to want to go see the second one), but, when we walked out of the theater from Frozen, my daughter said, "I don't want to go see The Hobbit; I want to see Frozen again," which we're not actually going to do (because I'll just buy here the DVD), but, now, I have no one to see The Hobbit with (which I'm only going to see because I feel compelled to do so).]

The animation in the movie was, in a word, incredible, especially the ice and especially especially the ice bridge. The songs are good (and who knew Kristen Bell could sing? Okay, so, well, maybe lots of people, but I didn't know, so I was surprised to see that she had performed her own songs), and, as I've already implied, the song by Olaf was really catchy.

The best parts of the movie, however, can't be talked about without being spoilery: You've been warned.

The death of the parents at the beginning of the movie is pretty typical for Disney. I'm not quite sure why all of their young heroes have to be orphans of some type, but it's almost always the case. Possibly, for Frozen, it's there to help you feel as if you're in a typical Disney film (I kind of doubt it), but, whatever the reason, you know when the parents are leaving on their trip that they're not coming back. Of course, that's what sets up the problems for the rest of the movie. Elsa has no one to help her cope with her powers and grows up in isolation because of it.

One of the best moments is between Anna and Kristoff as he chastises her for attempting to marry someone (Hans) that she had just met that day. It's very amusing, because the immediate True Love thing is so endemic in Disney movies, so it's refreshing to see it handled like this in this movie. In fact, the catalyst of the whole thing is Elsa (now the Queen) refusing to allow the marriage between Anna and Hans because they had only just met. There's even a comment from Kristoff to Anna where he is saying "no" to her about something (no, I don't remember exactly what) because he doesn't trust her judgement. All of this is a nice break from that Disney cliche.

And then there's the whole thing with True Love's Kiss that they also turn on its head, and that was great to see, too. And I won't say more than that, because I don't want to give everything away. Let's just say that the movie ended with both Anna and Elsa growing as characters, something that Brave, unfortunately, lacked.

At any rate, it's a very enjoyable movie and one that I hope is signaling a new direction for Disney. Disney Princesses are great and all that, but it's good to have some that don't need to get rescued.

Also, Alan Tudyk was great. I didn't even realize that was him until I saw his name in the credits. He's a great voice actor and under-appreciated as an actor in general.

The Hobbit: A Review (Part 1)

Disclaimer: The fact that I'm reviewing this right now has nothing to do with the release of the movie.

Note: Those of you who have read my "Of Significance..." page may remember that The Hobbit is listed there, so this is (by far) not my first reading of the book.

As I've mentioned, I'm teaching a creative writing class at my kids' school. When it was discussed, back at the beginning of the school year, about assigning them a book to read to go along with the class, I immediately suggested The Hobbit. It was not on the "short list;" it was the list. I really can't think of a better book from which to teach writing form. Also, there is the part about introducing the kids to great literature.

My choice of The Hobbit as a book I think everyone should read has nothing to do with it being a great book. I do think it's a great book, but, mostly, I think it's a simple book. And, when I say "simple," I mean "straightforward." It is not a book with a complicated and convoluted plot. It doesn't have hidden meanings and subtleties. It is what it says it is, a fantastical adventure story. That's why I wanted to use it for the creative writing class assignment.

If you want to look at plot arc, you can. The story follows only one protagonist, and there aren't any twining branches or confusing twists. It's just "hero gets into trouble"/"hero gets out of trouble." It's easy to look at and map out and, most importantly, it's easy for them to understand.

If you want to look at character development, you can. Bilbo is not the same person at the end of the story as he is going in, and you can see the changes as they happen, and that's good for these young writers to see. Especially, it is good for them to see in a literary world where so few characters do any real changing these days other than becoming awesome fighters through some brief training montage. Actually, as I'm typing this, I think The Hobbit should be required reading for anyone hoping to be an author. These days, it's all about "voice," but I really don't care how good your voice is if your protagonist doesn't grow within the story. If the protagonist doesn't change, your story falls flat. [And, now, I'm thinking of a ton of books that I have been less than pleased with, and I think this is the reason: no character growth.]

If you want to look at how to deliver a message within a story, The Hobbit has that, too. Not hidden or veiled messages but messages told through the repercussions of the actions of the characters. I mean, you can't get more clear than when someone tells you to stay on the trail, you need to do it. And, no, that's not really what I'm talking about, but I don't want to get into the specifics until I actually get into the review. The book does, though, have strong messages about greed and war in particular.

The Hobbit, in many ways, is the perfect introduction to reading. It's a clear story that most of us can actually relate to in some way. It has humor and sorrow. It's fast and it's fun. It's simple enough for a child yet full of things only an adult can understand. It's the story that you would beg your grandfather to tell on a cold night in front of the fireplace, and Tolkien tells it that way. Right down to the hypothetical question, "What is a hobbit?" right in the middle of the narration. In short, the story is delightful. And scary. And exciting. And sad. It is full of life and what life is, and, yes, I think everyone should read it. Earlier is better than later, but, if you missed it when you were 10 or 12, there is always time to go back and make up for it.

Having said that, no, I don't think everyone will love it or, even, like it, but it's one of those things -- like chocolate or cheese -- that you just need to taste. Skipping it entirely is too much of a risk.

"If you decide not to make things..." (an IWSG post)

"If you decide not to make things, all you've done is deprive the world of all the stuff you could have brought to it."
--Neil Gaiman

This is a great quote by Neil and not something that I haven't said before, but I've never said it like that, and I love the way he put it: "...all you've done is deprive the world..." That's just fantastic.

Often, people will feel great conflict over creating. It can be debilitating.
"Is it good enough?"
"Am I good enough?"
"What if it's no good?"
"Am I just wasting my time?"
Oh, it goes on and on and on, and, if you visit enough blogs of pre-published writers or, even, some post-published writers, you will run into all of it and more.

I think, maybe, we're asking ourselves the wrong question. Oh, I get it. "Is it good enough?" is an important question if you're trying to get traditionally published and all of that, despite the evidence that plenty of stuff that isn't really "good enough" gets traditionally published all the time. Some of that stuff that isn't "good enough" even becomes incredibly popular. But that question, that question about being good enough, isn't so important in a digital age of self-publishing. If it was ever important at all.

I think the better question to be asking is, "Is it me enough?" Is it the story that you want to tell? Is it the story that only you can tell? Are you bringing to the world that thing that only you can bring to it?

Of course, that circles back around to "am I good enough?" and "what if no one likes me?" Questions, really, about self worth and esteem, and those can be... well, those can be hard to ignore. But we need to ignore them. We need to ignore them so that we can focus on that story that can only come from us.

So... some examples:

George Lucas made a short film while he was in college called "THX-1138" which is supposed to be brilliant. When he graduated, he wanted to make a movie called American Graffiti, but he couldn't get anyone to be interested in that. What he found was people that wanted him to make a full length feature out of THX. He said THX wasn't a full length kind of thing, but that's what they wanted, so that ended up being his first movie. It didn't do as well as everyone else thought it would. Once he was able to make Graffiti, which he did for almost no money because THX had flopped, it became the most successful film ever made up to that point and held that title for something like 30 years.

Lucas was under contract with Universal for two movies, and the next movie he wanted to make was this thing called Star Wars which Universal wouldn't back. They wanted a sequel to Graffiti. Lucas said that story was finished and didn't want to make a sequel. Eventually, he got 20th Century Fox to take Star Wars, and Universal got American Graffiti 2. How many of you knew there was a sequel?

Tolkien wrote this whole history of this place called Middle Earth, but he couldn't get anyone interested in what he called The Silmarillion. He ended up getting an unrelated novel, The Hobbit, published. The publisher wanted a sequel, but Tolkien didn't have a sequel in mind for it nor did he want to write one. They insisted. He did try, but what came out of that attempt was more Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings, which the publisher didn't want. They ended up taking it anyway, probably realizing they just weren't going to get what they wanted out of Tolkien. And, in the end, The Hobbit became part of Middle Earth.

Heck, even Twilight was something that came straight out of Stephanie Meyer, because, before that book, if you had asked anyone if they would have thought that sparkly vampires would be a good idea, I don't think you would have found a single person that would have said "yes."

I could go on and on with these examples and go one to debate the success or lack there of when artists strayed from what the story that was coming from them into other areas. For instance, the thing most criticized about Return of the Jedi is the ewoks, a thing which Lucas did not envision but fell back on because he didn't feel like he could realize his vision of an epic battle of wookies against the Empire. There's Kevin Smith and his decline in success as he tried to move toward making movies he thought people wanted rather than making the movies he wanted to make. And more and more and more.

The thing is, though, when you try to make what you think people want, everyone is disappointed, because you can't meet the expectations of everyone and, then, you haven't even made something you're happy with, so no one is happy. Make the thing that only you can make -- the book, the movie, the painting -- and don't worry about the rest. Don't deprive the world of that thing that only you can bring to it.

I'll leave you with this:


[This post has been brought to you by the Insecure Writer's Support Group.]

Deliberate vs...: A Post About Thinking (Part One)

Before I start, I just want to say that I'm not talking about anyone in particular in this post (and the next). In all actuality, I have no way of knowing what sort of thought processes any of you have. I'm speaking in generalities based on studies of people and how people tend to be. If you feel personally offended by anything I say here, I just want to point out that it's not me pointing that finger at you; it's you. I can't do anything about that.

This post is not about gun control or about guns at all other than that it is a response to a comment from my Freedom Line post, so I don't want any comments about guns or civil rights or anything else even if I mention that conversation, which I will. If you want to comment about guns, go read that other post and the comment thread there and make your comment on that thread. This is not a conversation about guns.

However, during that conversation, I was told that I was having a knee-jerk reaction to the recent child massacre and that if I would only apply reason to what I was saying I would see that I am wrong. If only I could approach the subject intellectually rather than emotionally, I would find a different answer to that question. The problem, then, is that my post was not based off of any kind of emotional reaction at all. Beside the fact that the views expressed in that post were not new to me, I waited weeks to make that post so that I would have time to get my thoughts in order (rather than the next day (or the same day) as many other bloggers did), just as it has taken me two weeks since that comment was made for me to get my thoughts in order to make this post. I just don't make rash comments.

Let me add here that this is something about me that often creates... issues... between my wife and me. She will ask me something and want a response right then, but I just don't have one for her. I have to think about almost everything before I respond to it. This goes for movies and books and, well, everything. On top of that, I can almost always separate my emotional response from my actual views about an individual topic (you can see my recent review of An Unexpected Journey for an example of that). Most people respond like this:
"I don't like this thing; therefore, it is bad," or
"I do like this thing; therefore it is good."
I talked about that stuff here and also in some other post that I'm not going to keep looking for right now. At any rate, those things are not necessarily the truth. 2/3 of my kids don't like broccoli, but I'm, like, 99.7% sure that broccoli is not just good but very good. Whether they like it or not.

Having said all of that, there are two basic ways that people "think" about things, two ways that people arrive at conclusions and decisions: one is what we would call decisive, but that is more because of an incorrect perception that decisive also means "quick," which it does not; and deliberate, which involves more time and actual thought before coming to a conclusion. In all actuality, what we call "decisive decision making" involves almost no thought at all. It's all emotion and "gut" instinct.

Guess which one is the most prevalent. And guess which one we, as a culture, hail as superior. Yeah, "decisiveness". Culturally, we are ALL over that shhhtuff, like a fly on it. How prevalent? Oh, probably something like 80% of people arrive at what they believe about a subject based on this model of "thinking." Or maybe I should say non-thinking. 80% (It might be as low as 70%, but many studies indicate a number higher than 80%, possibly as high as 90%)! That means that most people just respond to things without ever bothering to actually think about the outcome.

So, yeah, most people that responded to the child massacre in Newtown by yelling "No more guns!" did so as an emotional response to the situation. However, most people that have responded to that by yelling "You can't have our guns!" have responded in the same way. Neither side has invested much thought into the issue. From that standpoint, both sides are wrong. [I am personally horrified (emotional response) that gun stores are now complaining that they can't keep supplied, right now, due to the rush of people to buy more guns and that the specific weapon used to murder those children is the item in the greatest demand. Not that I don't understand the compulsion, but you can't tell me those people are acting rationally.]

I should also add that virtually all of the decisions that lead to the housing bubble and the economic collapse of 2008 were made by these 80% of people [this is not my opinion; there have been many studies on the causes of the economic collapse and every single one of them points to bad, "positive" decisions]. In many cases, the people actually evaluating what was going on and saying things like "this is a bad idea" or "we need to slow down," the people waving the red flags back in '06 and '07, were fired outright. Well, let go. They were told they were no longer needed and to take their "negativity" elsewhere. Why? Because we love people that will quickly arrive at a decision and act on it right then at that very moment. Don't stop to think! Just do it! We call those people decisive and hold them up as the epitome of how to be. Don't show doubt. Don't evaluate. Just react.

The problem with that is that in almost every study done, these people are shown to be wrong something like 70-80% of the time. Because they don't bother to stop and engage their brains, they come to the wrong decision. Do the wrong thing. And they take everyone else with them. And, yet, we continue to hail these people as heroes and follow them blindly in almost all circumstances. It's like... it's like deciding that the person you're going to cheat off of in math class is the kid scoring 30% on his tests because he's failing in such a self-assured manner.

This phenomenon baffles me to no end, and I'm sure it's what leads to mobs. No one wants to listen to the guy saying, "Hey, this is a bad idea!" And no one, and I mean no one, wants to be that guy. It sucks to be that guy. I know, because I grew up being that guy. You end up being the guy standing alone while everyone else goes off to do something stupid. Sure, later, they come back and say, "Man, you were right. We shouldn't have done that." But it doesn't keep you from being alone.

Maybe it all has to do with patience; I don't know. Most people don't have any, and that leads to bad and wrong decisions. Maybe it's just that most people aren't that smart. That sounds bad, because, by definition, most people are of average intelligence. I'm not one of those people (which is not me being arrogant, it's me stating an objective truth based upon actual data (which I will not go into right now)). Unfortunately, it sometimes (sometimes more than sometimes) causes me to look down on people of average intelligence as being less intelligent than they actually are, if that makes any sense. I do try to control that, though, and I'm much better than I was when I was in high school.

At any rate, I'm not one for jumping to conclusions, because I just don't jump. I have to gather evidence and look at all sides of a situation, and, sometimes, I'm never ready to come down conclusively on an issue. This is usually because I don't feel that the evidence from any side is conclusive enough. In that respect, I'm not the best at giving a definitive answer about things, contrary to how it might be seen on here at times, because I want room to accept new information and modify what I think about a subject based on new information. This, also, is contrary to how most people are. Post-high school (and certainly post-college), most people (much greater than 80%) will completely dismiss new information about a subject they have previously arrived at a conclusion about. It makes me sad, because it's the thing that has caused the huge political and religious divide in our country. It's also why, generation after generation, you typically have the young pitted against the old, because the old just will not accept that there could be anything new to add to what they know.

All of that to say that if more people would just slow down and actually look at the evidence, both sides of the evidence, or, maybe, all sides of the evidence, we might not have such a huge gap in our world. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.
Next time, the three types of decision making processes.

An Expected Self-Indulgence

The more I heard about The Hobbit in the lead up to its release the more trepidatious I became. The Lord of the Rings, overall, is an excellent adaptation of the book. They're great movies, but they are also great adaptations. Mostly. Except for the few places where Peter Jackson got all self-indulgent and added stuff in just because he liked it better that way. Like the elves at Helm's Deep, which still just makes my ears steam. To hear him say in an interview that he added them in there because he just wanted there to be more elves because he loves elves so much just makes me want to smack him, because what he did completely undermines Tolkien's purpose for that battle.

And let's just not even talk about King Kong, because that was three hours of the most self-indulgent crap ever.

At any rate, the more I heard about what Jackson was doing with The Hobbit, the more I worried that that was what he was doing, making a completely self-indulgent movie. But my wife kept telling me to give him the benefit of the doubt because he'd done such a good job with LotR. >sigh< It turned out I was correct. Jackson needs three movies for his version of The Hobbit because it is exactly that: his version. And his version is not a better a version. In many places, it destroys what Tolkien did just so that Jackson could shove The Hobbit into his version of Middle Earth. [And now I know why the Tolkien family has restricted Jackson from any more of Tolkien's material than he already has access to (meaning he was only allowed what was in The Hobbit and LotR and denied everything else).]

The biggest problem, though, was that, while watching the movie, it was amazing. I mean, it really was amazing! But I couldn't get immersed in it, not completely, because the back of my head kept poking at me, saying, "But it's wrong!" And the problem with that is the farther away from actually watching the movie I get, the more the wrong parts bother me. So, although I enjoyed it while I was actually watching it (most of it, anyway -- the part with domino trees was just DUMB (and took me back to the swinging dinosaurs in Kong, which was also DUMB)), the more I think about it, talk about it, read about it, the more upset about it I get and the less I like it. Which will not keep me from seeing the others and, probably, owning all of them. And that bothers me, too!

And speaking of reading about it, my first impression upon walking out of the movie was that people who have not read the books would probably find more to like in the movie, because they wouldn't have the feeling of wrongness about it that I have. However, the more reviews I look at from people that have no other exposure to Tolkien than the movies (and some that haven't even seen LotR), the more I'm finding that people that don't already like Tolkien don't like this movie. So... if you haven't read Tolkien, you won't like this movie. If you have read Tolkien... well, you might like it if you read Tolkien a long time ago and aren't really "into" it, but if you are really into Middle Earth, I'm not seeing how you can really like what Jackson's done to it.

My sons are good examples of this. My younger son is most upset about the lack of the songs, because they are mostly excluded. And he hates the inclusion of the pale orc. As does my older son. (As do I.) They both have complaints about the movie that are at war with the fact that they enjoyed watching the movie. You shouldn't come out of a movie feeling both "I loved it!" and "I hated it!" You just shouldn't. The short of that is that we are all conflicted about it. Everyone except my daughter, I suppose, because she hasn't read any Tolkien, yet, but, because she lives in a Tolkien-ish environment, she has a predilection toward it.

Or, maybe, people who are really into LotR but not The Hobbit, people that read the trilogy because of the movies but never bothered with Hobbit, will really like it, because Jackson really did everything he could to make this (series of) movie(s) as epic in scope as LotR. But, see, that's not what The Hobbit is, so the movie is continuing to just bother me.

In fact, Jackson just mapped Hobbit onto his LotR template, so it's wrong from the very beginning: the prologue. It worked in Fellowship, because there is so much back story in LotR that the prologue gave us a sense of history that lead up to the events in the trilogy, but it fails completely in An Unexpected Journey. For one thing, Bilbo doesn't all that stuff before he goes off on his journey; he finds out as he goes along, so we lose the sense of discovery that Bilbo had, because Jackson just lays it all out for us at the beginning. I squirmed in my seat during that part, but I was still reserving judgment. By the end of the movie, though, I was annoyed with it.

I was annoyed with it because Jackson uses that bit of prologue to introduce Thorin's non-existent nemesis. Non-existent in the book, I mean. This piece of plot that has been woven in is the biggest weakness of the film. I say that because every member of my family (except my daughter) came out of the movie hating the pale orc. Not necessarily for the same reason, but we all hated him being in the movie. He is so NOT needed.

But, see, the prologue is not the only way we see Jackson trying to harmonize the movies. The fight with the goblins and the Great Goblin is just like the flight through Moria with the falling stairs and all of that with the Great Goblin subbing in as the Balrog. Bilbo puts the ring on for the first time in the very same way that Frodo does. The elves come in and rescue the dwarves from a fight that doesn't even exist in the book. The stone giants... oh, well, I don't know where the heck that crap came from, but it was dumb. Having them would have been great, but having the party end up climbing around on them was ludicrous. And since when were they actually made from stone? Did I say self-indulgent? Oh, yeah, I think I did.

Having said all of that, the movie was still beautiful and wondrous to behold. The acting was... well, Martin Freeman was ohmygosh awesome. And it's a good thing, too, because Jackson gave much of Gandalf's role in the story to Bilbo in order to increase Bilbo's importance at an earlier stage in the story. (Bah!) Richard Armitage (whom I loved in BBC's Robin Hood) was dashing as Thorin and completely not what I expected but in a good way as opposed to the rest of the movie. Dwalin and Kili are the only two other dwarves that get large enough roles to actually comment on beyond the fact that they are there and they are dwarves, and both of them do just fine. If you've seen the other movies, the rest is as should be expected. Oh, the scene with Gollum was excellent in that Andy Serkis was, again, incredible.

Of course, there's Radagast... Sylvester McCoy (a previous Doctor, so I'm pre-disposed toward him already) did a great job with the part he was given; I'm just not quite sure how I feel about that part. On the one hand, I really liked it; on the other, really? Really? That's what Jackson came up with?  He had the opportunity to bring Radagast, a character hardly mentioned in any of the books, to life for the first time, and that's what he came up with? Seriously? He had freaking bird poop running down his face! Of course, he had a sleigh pulled by rabbits, too, which was really cool.

I think the real problem with the whole thing is that Jackson didn't have anyone standing next to him during all of this to say, "What the heck? Is that seriously what you're doing there?"

And before anyone starts comparing this with Lucas and the prequels, there is a huge difference: Star Wars belongs to Lucas. He wasn't screwing around with something that belonged to someone else. Middle Earth and The Hobbit don't belong to Jackson, so all the screwing around he did is rather disrespectful to the source material.

Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, there were parts where I felt like I was watching that instead. The Great Goblin was so much Jabba the Hutt. And, actually, the part where the Pale Orc is demanding Thorin's head made me feel like I was at Jabba's court. And, then, there was the line by Galadriel, "The riddle of the morgul blade..." >sigh<

My general reaction to An Unexpected Journey has been much the same as my reaction to The Dark Knight Rises: I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but the more time I have to think about it the more it gets under my skin. Like a thorn. And I'm just picking at it and picking at it trying to get it out but succeeding only in working it deeper. And there are two more of these movies to go! But I really want to see Smaug!

Let's just not talk about the moose, okay. We're gonna try to forget about that altogether.
Now I want to go watch "A Room with a Moose" from Invader Zim, the only place we should have a moose, I'm sure.

Tolkien's Failure (an IWSG post)

This is not one of those posts meant to make you feel better by allowing you to compare yourself to the failure of "stars" before they made it big. Actually, I hate those posts. I don't care how many times Rowling or Dr. Seuss or Stephen King or John Grisham were rejected before they met with success. If it makes you feel better when you get a rejection, well, good for you, but that's not what this post is about. Personally, I just don't find those kinds of stories all that inspiring, but, maybe, that's because I don't have an issue with persistence. Or maybe I just believe in the value of what I'm doing and don't care so much about the outside validation. That's probably closer to the truth. I do what I do because it's what I do, and I see the value in it, so I don't care as much whether other people do or not.

Sure, I'd like it if other people value my work, because, you know, it would be nice to actually make a living, well, even half a living, from writing, but I don't derive my worth from what other people think of my work.

I think it's vital that we don't derive our meaning from other people's opinion of what we do. After all, there's Van Gogh. Completely not appreciated in his own lifetime. We just don't, can't know how our work will be perceived later on.

Which brings me to Tolkien...

It might seem surprising, but Tolkien considered himself a failure in his literary life. Yeah, that's difficult for me to imagine, too, but it's true. But, then, it all comes from how we define our success, which is something I've mentioned before. The importance of knowing what it is you want when you start all this writing business. If you don't know what it is exactly that you want, you are sure to meet with failure, because you're going to layer over the world's idea of success over your life rather than your own.
Which isn't actually what Tolkien did, but, still...

So what happened with Tolkien?

The main thing to realize with Tolkien is that neither The Hobbit nor The Lord of the Rings was what he considered his real literary work. In many ways, those books were accidents. No, Tolkien's real work was The Silmarillion and his history of Middle Earth, work which never saw publication during his lifetime. So, despite the wide success and popularity of his two most famous works, he never believed he'd been successful because of the repeated rejection by publishers of his "real" work.

To put this slightly more into context: When Tolkien originally wrote The Hobbit, it had nothing to do with Middle Earth. At all. It was a bedtime story for his kids. He didn't ever really mean to publish it. Only by the insistence of his friend, C. S. Lewis, and the accidental discovery of the manuscript by the publisher's son did it end up being published at all. Tolkien didn't take it all that seriously, and, like I said, it wasn't related to Middle Earth, which had already been his writing project for 20 years by the time The Hobbit was published.

The Hobbit was successful enough that the publisher wanted a sequel. Tolkien tried to give them The Silmarillion, but they turned it down. No, they wanted more hobbits. Tolkien sat down and began to work on that sequel: An Unexpected Journey, the book that eventually became The Lord of the Rings. See, as he was writing it, he realized that the stuff with the rings was the stuff from the end of The Silmarillion, and it was at that point that it all became a part of Middle Earth. It was an accident, and Tolkien had to go back and revise The Hobbit to make it part of  the narrative. Because, you know, it wasn't.

So, see, George Lucas is not the only one to go back and change things after the fact. That ring Bilbo found really was just, initially, a trinket. Something Tolkien threw in to enable Bilbo to escape from Gollum. He had to go back to the already published manuscript and make the ring important. Make into the One Ring.

Of course, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings became more and more popular. This is despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews when the books were published. Well, not so much with Hobbit, everyone loved The Hobbit when it was released, but, initially, the critics and reviewers hated LotR. But people did not, and they became great best sellers.

But it didn't matter to Tolkien, because, despite their success, he still couldn't get anyone to publish Silmarillion. He spent the rest of his life working on it and the other histories of Middle Earth, and no one would agree to publish it. To himself, he was an artistic failure. It would be rather like painting a great, intricate painting and not being able to get anyone to look at it, to study it, but, one day, sitting down with a kid and making a doodle for him and having everyone go crazy for the doodle. Tolkien was saying, "Look at this! Look at this!" and pointing at Silmarillion, but everyone was busy waving his doodle around saying, "But we like this!" And that is how things stood when he died.

It was only after his death that his son succeeded in getting The Silmarillion published.

So what is it I'm getting at here? Well, a couple of things, actually.
1. I think the thing that more people really need to do before they start writing is figuring out what they want to get out of it. I mean, what they really want to get out of it. Is the actual goal popularity? Is the actual goal to get rich? Is the goal immortality? Is the writing a path to something else or is the writing the goal? If more people knew this ahead of time, they might be more satisfied with their journeys.

Here is where Tolkien knew what he was doing. He knew what his goal was, and he didn't achieve that, so the success of his published works didn't matter so much to him, because those things were not his goal. He did actually fail to achieve his true goal.

2. Be malleable or flexible. Be able to acknowledge the things you do actually succeed at. Recognize your triumphs and adjust your goals to fit with where you are succeeding.

This is where Tolkien did not know what he was doing. His purpose was so single-minded and he was so unwilling to adapt that he was never happy, and he could not acknowledge the success of his two books. His creation, his Middle Earth, is brilliance. The scope of what he did is beyond what anyone else has ever done, and I'm not sure it's something that can be done again. Well, perhaps Asimov achieved something of the same thing with his robot and Foundation books. At any rate, so focused was Tolkien on the foundation, on The Silmarillion, that he could not see how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings rested on that foundation and how much they relied on his entire body of work. They were a part of that whole; I think he just chose to ignore that.

The thing is, Tolkien's goal has actually been achieved; he just wasn't around to see it happen. The Silmarillion has been published along with so so so much more of his work. It's actually quite incredible what Middle Earth has become. It's too bad he wasn't around to see it happen, but... But.
That's kind of the thing, he did what he wanted to do and what he believed in, and, even though it took people a while to recognize it, they did recognize it. I think he would be dumbfounded to find how... pervasive... Middle Earth has become on a cultural level. Which is what he wanted. He wanted to create a mythology that would speak to people, and he stuck to it, and, in the end, succeeded. Beyond anything he might have imagined, I'm sure.

But, see, he knew what he wanted, knew what his goal was, and he stuck to that thing. I think the real achievement is being able to look at your work and know that you have done what you wanted to do. Which is why you have to know why you're writing. And, you know, if you are writing for fame and fortune, not because you want to write, maybe find some other way to get there, because writing isn't a great way to go about it.

What Makes a Favorite Author?

When I was younger, a favorite author was all about favorite books. That seems like a natural thing, right? You have some favorite book, so the author of that book is your favorite author. It was all dependent upon the book.

So, in high school, my favorite authors were Tolkien, David Eddings, and Piers Anthony. Tolkien is probably self-evident enough that I don't need to explain him, but, even if not, I'm not going to explain him. I started reading Anthony during middle school. A friend of mine gave me one of his books, Split Infinity (a great title), as a birthday present, and I started reading everything he'd written. I followed him for years. I didn't quit reading his books because I quit liking him; there was just always something else I wanted to read more, because, well, it, whatever "it" was, was better. Eventually, I quit buying his books, and I haven't read anything new by him in nearly 20 years. Why? Because, honestly, his books just aren't all that good. At one point, I tried going back and reading some of the ones I'd loved as a teenager, and it made me wonder about myself. I mean, what was I thinking?

And then there was Eddings...
Eddings is the reason this post came into being, but that post is actually going to be the next post, because it made me think of this post instead. Eddings is all because of The Belgariad. I love The Belgariad; it's one of my favorite series ever, and, for a long time, I gave credit to Eddings as being one of my favorite authors based on my love for that series. But, you know, that's really all he has, and there came a time when I gave up on his books, too, and not just because there were other things I wanted to read more.

The whole "favorite" thing is tricky, which is why I don't have any favorites lists, but you can pop up to my "Of Significance..." tab to find out more about that.

Anyway... I remember when I realized that I couldn't claim Eddings as a favorite author anymore, not that I remember when it happened, but I remember it happening. I still loved The Belgariad, but I also realized that nothing else he did was ever going to be that good, or, even, close to that good, and I felt kind of betrayed. How could I love this one series so much and the author not be one of my favorite authors?

I had separation anxiety. Author/book separation anxiety to be exact. But that's really the point, an author is not the same as his work. That can be a hard thing to understand as a fan and as an author as so often we take someone's displeasure of our work as a personal attack. Well, sometimes that does happen, but, mostly, it's about the work.

These days, I'd say my top three favorite authors are Tolkien, Mary Doria Russel, and Neil Gaiman (yeah, I know, Tolkien hasn't changed and isn't likely to). I should probably make that four and include Stephen Lawhead. The interesting thing? There's not a book by Gaiman that I would point to as one of my favorite books ever. However, I love his style, and, pretty much, I will read whatever he puts out. Right now, anyway. The same with Lawhead, overall, although that could change after his Bright Empires series (you can read the review of the first one here). I wouldn't say any of Lawhead's books are among my favorite books ever, either.

And, then, there's Richard Adams and Watership Down. Watership Down has been one of my most beloved books for 30 years, and I know it is, because the only book I've read more than it is The Hobbit, but I've never considered Adams one of my favorite authors. He just wrote a book that I love.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is knowing how to separate what is a book you love from who is an author you love. What makes someone an author you love? For people that don't read much, it can really just come down to the author of their favorite book, like, right now, I bet there are women all over the place that would call that James woman their favorite author. But, for those of us that do read a lot, and read authors that write a lot, how do you deal with the disappointment of a bad book or string of books from an author you want to call your favorite? Do you cling desperately to calling that author your favorite even though s/he is writing stuff you hate, or do you toss that author aside in favor of some new shiny author that hasn't had the chance to disillusion you yet?

I'm not even sure that "favorite" is a term I can adequately use anymore. There's Jim Butcher and his Dresden books, and I love those. That's my "favorite" series fiction at the moment, and, when I was younger, that would have meant that Butcher made my favorite author list, but not anymore. His books are my popcorn, and, though I love popcorn, I don't want to live off of it. I need stuff with a little more substance and a little more to say as my regular diet.

Anyway... where I am now, my "favorites" are the authors that I read and think "wow! I want to write something that good some day. I want to write like that." However, I will never write like Tolkien. I'm not sure anyone ever will again. What I'm saying is that the author doesn't have to write my favorite story, s/he just has to write excellently. Sometimes, it's difficult to separate those things. At some point, maybe Gaiman will write a book that affects me like The Sparrow did, but it's not something he needs to do for me to look at the way he writes and really admire it. I might love The Belgariad, but I don't want to write like Eddings.

I don't normally do the whole question at the end of the post thing, but I am this time, because I'm curious as to how this works for you guys. Are your favorite authors just the writers of your favorite stories? Do you have favorite authors that have not written any of your favorite books? What do you do when a favorite author falls off the author wagon (starts producing the same old crap over and over again)? Who are your "favorite" authors/books and do they match up?

Create Your Audience

As is so often the case with me, I was thinking of something that lead me into thinking about something else entirely and making a connection between the two. Just follow along, and it will all become clear. I hope.

We are all, probably, (somewhat) familiar with the story of how Apple got its start and how no one believed that there would be any interest in the consumer market for the personal computer. We've all learned about how HP and who knows who all else turned down Wozniak and Jobs and how wrong they were for doing so. Short-sighted. Closed minded. Whatever you want to call it. All these guys said, "there's no market for that," and we've derided them for it ever since. I mean, I learned about this as early as 6th grade and continued to have it drilled into my head for the next 12 years, give-or-take, of schooling after that. All the way through my (required) college computer class. Those business guys were just stupid to not see the potential that Wozniak and Jobs were trying to introduce. This has become, in many ways, part of our cultural mythology.

The thing is, though (and here is where my thinking sort of went off track), those guys were not wrong. Yes, I said that. The HP corporate types and all those suits that said "no" were not wrong. There was no market for the home computer. To put it in other terms, the home computer didn't have an audience. Steve Jobs (and Steve Wozniak) created that audience.

And it's kind of amazing when you think about it. I use my computer all the time. It's a tool and a toy, and I can't really imagine trying to get by without it (even if it was nice to be away from it while on vacation (although, in that case, it was that it was nice to be away from the Internet more than the computer itself)). But, looking back, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would have wanted to own a personal computer way back in 1980. They didn't do anything. And, yet, we were enamored of them.

I had one friend who had one (not "one" as in a particular friend, like "I had this one friend," but "one" as in I only knew one person that actually had one), an Apple IIe (I think; It could have been a II+). His parents were doctors, not just regular doctors but some kind of specialized research doctors, and he's the smartest guy I've ever known. Smarter than me (if only by a few points (of course, a few IQ points are huge)). He was in his head all the time and had almost no social skills. I was the only person that could really relate to him when we were in 4th grade (before we got moved away to the school for smart kids), so I was the one that got to go over to his house and "play on the computer." He didn't have any other friends. There was no Windows, only a DOS prompt. There was some game that we played with this little guy that ran around and dug holes and climbed ladders. When we got to 6th grade and had our first computer class (remember, smart kid school; this was the only elementary school computer class in all of Shreveport, possibly in all of Louisiana), I'd go over to his house to test my BASIC program assignments. That's not an adjective, by the way, it's a computer language that I would bet most millennials have never even heard of. We got to write programs that did things like allow us to use the computer as a simple calculator. You know, because, if you didn't write a program for it, you could not use the computer for that!

Do you understand what I'm saying? When the first personal home computers came out, they did... NOTHING! I can't, now, figure out why anyone would have wanted one. And I have no idea what my friend's parents did with theirs. Of course, they were both research scientists, so I'm sure they had uses for it; I just can't imagine them. So, when those corporate suit guys said, "there's no market for that," they weren't wrong. And, yet, they were.

Because Steve Jobs went out and created a market. An audience. And, now, we can't imagine living without the things. Even though your smart phone can do oh so much more than the first personal computers ever dreamed of doing. I'm talking about your phone, here!

Likewise, there was a time when science fiction, as a genre, didn't exist. Imagine if it still didn't and Jules Verne was only just now writing his odd stories about travelling to the moon and into the center of the earth and in the depths of  the seas. Publishers would say "there's no audience for that" and they would be right. Verne, along with Wells not too much later, would create the audience.

And, although fantasy did already exist before Tolkien, Tolkien created the fantasy genre as we know it today. He was told, with both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, there is no audience for this. Why? Because there wasn't. It's rather difficult for there to be an audience for something that does not yet exist. Tolkien created his audience.

But, as I said way back up there at the beginning, I was thinking about one thing that lead into a supposedly unrelated thing. That other thing is a conversation in this writing group on Facebook:

An author posed the question of whether it's a "bad idea" to switch from 1st person POV to 3rd person POV in the middle of a story. Of course, I didn't want to just say, "hey, I've done that, so I think it's fine," so I responded from a more neutral stance of asking why the author wanted to do it. Not that I wanted to know but that the author needed to know. Basically, there should be a reason for it beyond just the desire to switch POVs. Later, I said that the author needs to tell the story that she needs to tell it in the way that she needs to tell it (that's what I believe about any story (tell your story)).

What surprised me, though, is the number of people that responded that it is a bad idea and that the reason that it is a bad idea really boiled to "there is no audience for it." Basically, "it's not done that way" meaning  that it's not done that way because no one would be interested in that, just like no one would be interested in owning a home computer. Or science fiction. Or fantasy epics.

What gets me here is the lack of willingness, often, in the writing community to try anything new. To go to new places. People look around and say way to often "it's not done that way" meaning "you shouldn't do that." But the rest of the world doesn't really work that way. The rest of the world spends its time looking for the new big thing while the writing world spends its time only looking for only the next big thing. I think this is at the heart of the troubles in the publishing world. When e-books became a thing, a new thing, the publishing world screamed "it's not done that way!" and "there's no audience for that!" Clearly, they were wrong.

But that's beside the point...

The point is that you should never let someone tell you "there's no audience for that" for a thing that has never been tried. Or something  that has rarely been tried. I mean, if there's an audience for deep fried pickles, and there is, there's bound to be an audience for anything. And everything. The response, always, to "it's not done that way" should always be "yet." "It's not done that way... yet." So, you know, big deal if there's no audience for what it is you want to do. Go out and make your audience. Create it. Build it.

The thing is is that Wozniak did not build that first computer because he was trying to build something for public consumption; he built it because he was interested in it. He knew that he wanted to have something like that for himself. He didn't really know how many other people would be interested, but he knew he was. Jules Verne didn't start writing his science fiction stories because he looked around and decided that he needed to create a new genre of literature; he wrote the kind of story he wanted to read. The same was true of Tolkien. He wrote, created, what he wanted, what he felt a need for.

The lesson, then, is this for you writers out there: write what you want. Unless you are completely, uniquely idiosyncratic, it's more than likely that there are other people out there that want the same thing you want. So, if you want to switch from 1st person to 3rd and back or... whatever, if it's what you want for your story, do it. Then go create your audience.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: the Internet and the Invisibility Cloak

Today, you get a double dose of incredible science that has come from fiction. Why? Because I just couldn't make up my mind between the two. Not the things themselves necessarily, but they stories behind them.

First, the Internet:

Not to get too detailed, but Internet research goes back into the 1960s. However, it wasn't until the '80s that it really began to develop. Before people really knew about it, it was already becoming a huge Idea in science fiction. William Gibson latched onto it so early that his ideas about what the Internet would or could become in such works as "Johnny Mnemonic" and Neuromancer are completely indistinguishable from the development of the actual technology to such an extent that he's often credited with the actual Idea for the Internet. It's impossible to distinguish how much of an impact his early writings may have had on the development of something that was barely even begun, so there may be truth in that. We also have to acknowledge the movie WarGames (1983) which is the first movie to really put the Internet in our faces (as well as AI (see this post)).

That movie gave my mother nightmares for weeks.

But let's take a step back... back to the end of the 19th century and a man by the name of Samuel Clemens. Clemens was fascinated with science and technology. He even wrote a novel about time travelling and was great friends with Nikola Tesla. The two spent great amounts of time together in Tesla's lab. Of course, Clemens is better known to us as Mark Twain.

In 1898, Twain wrote a story called "From the 'London Times' of 1904" in which he has a device called the telelectroscope. The device is based on the telephone, which was still a new thing and fairly rare, and allowed the user to view and interact with people all over the world. The Internet. In fact, the telelectroscope made the daily doings of the globe "visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by [any amount of distance]." That sounds a lot like facebook and skype and... well, any number of other things.

So... yeah... Mark Twain dreamed up the Internet and social media. And he hung out with Tesla. We really don't know what all Tesla was into, but Twain wrote a story about time travel. It makes you wonder how he might have had an idea about the Internet. Just sayin'.

And, now, the invisibility cloak:

After flight, invisibility may be man's longest running fascination. To be unseen. From a literary standpoint, we can look (again) to H. G. Wells. The Invisible Man (1897) takes a remarkably scientific stance in its approach to making a man invisible. There is no "magic potion" here, just optics research that results in a man being made to be invisible. With disastrous results. The end of the 19th century seems to be full of warnings about messing with science that isn't really understood. [Except for Twain's Internet story. In that one, technology is used to solve a murder.]

Invisibility and the quest for invisibility was a familiar theme throughout the 20th century in both literature and science. It includes, but is not limited to, the One Ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, any number of super hero stories and movies, and, recently, Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter, invisibility takes the form of an invisibility cloak.

And how cool is that? Because, unlike flight, anyone can use an invisibility cloak. No skill involved.

So... science has been looking at ways to make things invisible for a while now. Since World War II, at least. We can make objects (like airplanes) mostly invisible to radar and other light waves not in the visible spectrum, but who cares if a plane doesn't show up on radar if I can still see it with my eyes, right? There have been attempts at things that are like invisibility, but most of these are just fancy ways of camouflaging things.

Like the one they are really excited about right now:
It involves using crystals. Two crystals working together can cause the light to split and... well, it's not important. Here's what they can do with it, right now: the can make an ant or a grain of sand invisible. Basically, with this technique, the thing being made invisible is only limited to the size of the crystals being worked with. And they think they can make bigger crystals. The problem? You can see the crystals! What's the point of that, I, again, ask. What good does it do to conceal something if you know there's something concealed? You may as well throw a blanket over it.

Speaking of which...

There is another method being worked on, and, supposedly, the Idea for this one was inspired directly from Harry Potter (I couldn't find the original article I read about it, though, so I can't confirm that). Basically, someone said, "Why not make it like a cloak?" And they started trying to figure out a way to do that.

What they came up with is carbon nanotubes. These are strands of carbon tubing about the width of a hair. The thing about carbon is that it cools very rapidly but also conducts heat extraordinarily well. The tiles on the bottom of the space shuttles were made of something similar to this, and I've personally witnessed one being heated until it was glowing red and been invited to touch it as soon as the heat source was removed. Cool (yes, it was cool, but the tile was also cool to the touch just moments after being heated by a blow torch). Anyway, they have these carbon nanotubes that are very similar to thread. When heat is passed through them, they undergo something similar to heat waves rising off of hot sand in the desert and become invisible. Like this:

They can't sustain it for more than a few moments, at present, but it's a step. And it's a pretty cool step if you ask me.

The Pigman's Influence

History is important. Not the details, per se, but the trends. The things that lead from one thing to another. Sometimes, there are specific events that are important, but, mostly, it's the formulation and growth of ideas over time that really affect us now and in the future. It's true for society, and it's true for individuals.

Yes, your personal history is important. Not just because of how it affects you but because of how it affects your children (if you have them) and those close to you. Why do we do the things we do? What lead us to these events and these places?

But most people tend to... forget... about the past. Put it behind them and not worry about it. That often leads to getting stuck in particular behaviors, but that's not really the point of all of this. And I'm not saying we should live in the past, because we shouldn't. However, we should constantly (or, at least, relatively constantly) review our pasts so that we can form our presents into the futures we would most like to have.

So... a brief history lesson. About me. Some of this, I've covered before, but let's review for those who may have slept through it or been late to class.

When I got ready to write The House on the Corner (see the links to the right or the tab at the top of the page), I needed something on the outside of myself to be accountable to. See, I knew from my own past that I had an issue with pushing through my initial ideas. Basically, I'd have an idea, I'd start writing, I'd run out of said idea, and I'd let the piece sit and sit until I had no interest in going back to it. This was a problem, and I didn't want to have that as a problem anymore (see, looking at my past to figure out what I would need to do in the present to change the future). I decided the best force to keep me writing would be my kids. I mean, there was no way that they would let me start a book, start reading it to them as I was working on it (my plan) and, then, allow me not to finish it.

If I was going to be writing something to read to my kids as I went along (an idea I got from Tolkien, by the way, as that is how he wrote The Hobbit), I needed to write something for my kids. At least, something that was appropriate for them. And, then, why not write something that was about them? Well, not about them but something with characters based on them. That would really get them involved and keep them after me to finish. By the way, that whole thing totally worked (as you can see by the finished product).

But I still didn't have a story or a method by which to tell it. I'm not going to get into the story, at the moment, because what I want to talk about is the method. My problem was that I have three kids, and I needed a way to share the story between the three of them so that there wouldn't be hurt feelings. And that's when I remembered The Pigman. Back to the past again.

The Pigman is a book by Paul Zindel, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for the play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds). Pigman was his first novel and significant enough that it used to be on school reading lists (maybe it still is?). In fact, that's why I read it, because it was an assigned book when I was in middle school. At any rate, that kind of dashes that whole idea about no one's first book being any good. And Zindel wasn't even a writer! I mean that in that he was a chemistry teacher and never really had any intention to write at all. But, if you want to know the details about that, you can look him up.

Anyway... At the time, The Pigman didn't really mean a lot to me. It was a fine book, but it wasn't, nor has it ever been, one of my favorites. However, it has always been a book that has floated around the back of my mind. I've completely forgotten books that I liked way more, but I have never forgotten The Pigman. [And, really, I suppose, that's the kind of book anyone wants to write. The kind the reader can't forget.]

Possibly, it's the subject matter that melded it into my brain, but, even more, I think it's the style of the book. At any rate, it's the style that drew me back to it when I set out to write The House on the Corner. Pigman is written in what I'll call a dueling 1st person perspective. Two high school students, John and Lorraine, take turns telling the story, and they tell it just as if they were writing a letter to someone. Or, more specifically, writing in a journal. There are odd bits included, like the snake quiz from the zoo, that are totally like the kinds of things that we would put into our journals when we had to keep them when I was in school. And they sort of bicker and argue with each other within the telling referring to each other and correcting each other.

Now, I don't know if Paul Zindel was the first person to use multiple 1st person perspectives in a novel or not (I did try to look it up but decided I didn't want to spend the time on it as it's not really that important (at least not to me at this moment)), but I've never seen it used anywhere else. And I read a lot. And I have a degree in English with an emphasis on literature, and we never studied anything about anything else even like that. What I'm saying is, as far as I know, Zindel is the only person to have used this particular style in a book (well, was the only person), and it's something that's generally taught as a "no no" in school, but, yet, there we were studying the book in school. And it (the multiple 1st person thing) is something that, over the years, I have often pondered on and found interesting.

And wondered why no one else ever did it.

But, then, when they teach you, as much as they teach you about fiction writing, which is to say not a lot, in school to not use multiple perspectives and to even try to stay away from them in 3rd person writing, maybe it's not surprising that that kind of thing isn't seen more often.

But it held the answer to my issue of how I would go about writing House. I would use multiple 1st person perspectives. That way each of my kids would get a "turn" telling the story, and none of them could complain. And that seems to have worked, too, because no one ever complained, and whoever was going to be "telling" the next chapter would always be sure to be asking me a lot about when the next chapter would be ready. So that worked out, too.

And all of that leads to this:
I really, at the point I started writing House, had no real memory of what The Pigman was about. In fact, last week, I still had no real memory of what it was about. I just remembered it was about these two kids who met this man they called the Pigman, there were some ceramic pigs involved, it dealt with death, and both kids told the story. I figured, if I was going to write a whole book based on my memory of this other book, which I did, I should go back and read it again and see if there was anything else that might have made that book stick in my mind for so long, even if it was something I couldn't remember.

My first thought while re-reading it was, "wow, I bet this book would never be published today." Not that I read a lot of YA stuff, but it certainly doesn't fit in with the things that are big right now. It's not dystopian. There are no vampires. There are no zombies. There's nothing paranormal at all, in fact. It doesn't start in the middle of the action. In fact, it's rather slow, and it may lead you to wonder, for a while, what it's really about. But it is about something, and, although it's a bit dated in its references, it's about important things. The things teenagers have to deal with but try to avoid dealing with. Most of all, it's about dysfunctional families, and that's something that all kids can relate to even if they can't relate to the specific circumstances of John and Lorraine. At any rate, I think the book is still relevant, and  people should still be reading it. It's too bad they're not.

After reading it again, I can say that it's still not going to be one of my favorite books ever. It's just not that kind of book. It doesn't jump up and grab you and yank you in. However, it is a book that lingers. And, now that I have read it again, I'm sure the impressions that it has re-made will bring me back to it at odd moments just like it always has. It's a quiet book that will leave you feeling melancholy even if it doesn't bring you to tears. It didn't bring me to tears. Not like, say, The Bridge to Terabithia brought me to tears when I read that as a kid. Other than Where the Red Fern Grows, Bridge was the only book to bring me to tears as a kid. So Pigman is not like that. It just... makes you wonder. And makes you reflect.

Growing up is hard. It's complicated. I hope I am able to capture the same struggles in my books as I continue on in the story arc I started with The House on the Corner. In the end, I suppose, I would rather write a book like The Pigman, a book that lingers on in the mind of the reader for 30 years, than write a book that flashes and pops but is forgotten in a week. Maybe, that's what I learned from it when I read it all those years ago.

Well... also, I just like the idea of seeing the same story from different perspectives. And I hope I have captured that with House. I think I have. The voices are fairly distinct and people have really seemed to latch on to a particular one that speaks to them more than the others. My daughter's teacher, whose class I have been reading in, picked up the book on her Nook last week while the kids were out of school. And read it. She was telling me about her experience with when we got back to school this past Monday:
1. She really liked it.
2. She said, "I could really hear [my daughter's] voice." Not my voice. My daughter's voice. I think I did as well with the boys (although, I have to admit, and I was really surprised by this, I had the most fun writing the chapters from Ruth's perspective).

Anyway... all of that is really about how interesting I find that a book I read 30 years ago and could barely remember could so heavily influence the writing of my own book. It's good to look back and see how these things from our past have influenced us. Even though House is full of Star Wars references (because Star Wars has been such a huge influence on my life (and the lives of my kids)), I think it's Pigman that has exerted the stronger influence. The Star Wars stuff is just more noticeable.

Now for some NOTES:

1. As I mentioned previously, Briane Pagel is running a great, big Star Wars blogathon over at his blog The Best of Everything. There are still 87 questions to go, so you still have plenty of time to get involved. To make it even sweeter, mention that I, Andrew Leon, sent you over, and you will get 50 bonus points! for signing up to play! How can it get better than that? Yes, just mention my name in the comments, and Briane will give you 50 points! And there are weekly drawings just for commenting. You don't even have to get the correct answer! Just comment, and you could win a prize! This week's prize is A Dead God's Wrath by Rusty Webb, so you should certainly sign up for your chance to win if you haven't already read it.

2. Since I'm mentioning Pagel and since I've been talking about my book (just click the tab! do it!), I thought I'd mention that Pagel is, actually, currently reading The House on the Corner. He had something to say in my comments recently that I can't restrain myself from quoting:
"I have no idea where the story is going but it's a great story nonetheless. At least three times I have thought 'OK, that's what this story is' and then it's not that thing AT ALL.

Everyone who reads this blog should, if they have not done it already, immediately go buy a copy of your book."

How can I not re-print praise like that? And, really, he touched on one of the things I really wanted to accomplish with House. To not be predictable. I didn't want it to be just another one of those formula stories that everyone will know how it ends by  the halfway mark. Thanks, Briane! I appreciate what you said. :)

And that wraps me up for the day. And the weekend. The weekend of not breathing because we're going to be busy straight through it. Seriously. If I don't make it back next week, it's because I didn't survive. But I hope you all have a nice, relaxing weekend! Think of my while you're napping!