writing

May 2015

I think it’s safe to say that May, whatever its pluses or minuses, got off to an unbelievably terrible start.

I don’t really want to talk about that, though. The wound’s not as raw, but we still miss Tucker an awful lot. My parents went away for two weeks in the middle of May, on a previously planned trip to Budapest. And while I’m glad for a lot of reasons that Tucker didn’t pass while they were gone, being on my lonesome without even the dog for company wasn’t always what I’d call terrific.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d still kill for an apartment of my own again — which, the more I search in New York, the more I think I’ll have to — but not a house. Not multiple stories with multiple noises and an overactive imagination. I made it a point to avoid horror movies while they were gone.

Anyway, in May, I read two books. Both of these were Terry Pratchett Discworld books, the third and fourth in the series: Equal Rites and Mort. You can definitely see him, and the series, evolving as they go. The first two books are indeed a little scattershot, funny but not always great novels. Equal Rites probably sacrifices some of the humor in favor of story and character development — it’s less jokey than the first two books, and not always successful at jokes when it tries — but Mort does a very good job of integrating them both.

Some passages I highlighted — first from Equal Rites:

A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.

And the rest from Mort:

Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it’s the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals.

History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time.

When you step off a cliff, your life takes a very definite direction.

I’ll be moving on to Book 5 in the series, Sourcery, though I’m taking a short break to read the newest book in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series, Nemesis Games. The timing of its release is something like a sign from the universe.

In May, I saw 13 movies. That seems like a lot in retrospect. They were, in the order I saw them:

  • The Avengers: Age of Ultron
  • The Orphanage
  • Village of the Damned
  • X: The Unknown
  • Babe: Pig in the City
  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • The Magnificent Seven
  • The Puppet Masters
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  • John Wick
  • Whiplash
  • Legendary Weapons of China
  • The Last Waltz

In the order I liked them? Well, I’m not sure I’d even rank Village or X, which are passable enough late ’50s sci-fi horror movies of a particular type. (TCM was airing a whole bunch of movies of that type that day.) And Puppet Masters isn’t great, and certainly wasn’t done any favors by my having seen the ’70s Body Snatchers just the month before. It’s not terrible, especially in its early going, but it’s a very forgettable ’90s movie. And The Orphanage is occasionally very scary — I watched it while the parents were still here — but also strangely sad and touching by the end.

I think the only movie on the list I didn’t like was…you’re expecting me to say TMNT, aren’t you? But that was surprisingly entertaining. Not good, per se, but ninety-nine cents surprisingly well spent. No, the movie I didn’t like was Whiplash…which kind of gave me whiplash. It’s a lot of watching J.K. Simmons be an asshole for two hours. And while there are few people better at that than Simmons, it’s not really a pleasant experience. It’s intense, certainly, but in service of what’s kind of a bullshit (if compelling) ideology.

It doesn’t help that I watched it right after watching John Wick, which was surprisingly awesome. In fact, most of the other movies on that list fall somewhere along the awesomeness spectrum. The second Avengers movie is not without its problems, certainly, but it’s a whole lot more fun than it has any right being, considering how much Marvel is just using it to set up the next movie, and the next movie, and the next…

I don’t know, it was a lot of movies. I’ve talked about some of them more than others over on Twitter.

In May, I read thirty-three short stories, which is down from my high but about average for the year. I haven’t skipped a day since January. And I’m barely scratching the surface of what’s out there. Favorites from the month include:

  • “Time Bomb Time” by C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed) [though maybe less for the story itself than the skill with which Finlay pulls it off]
  • “Remembery Day” by Sarah Pinsker (Apex)
  • “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” by Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning)
  • “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
  • “Elephants and Corpses” by Kameron Hurley (Tor.com)
  • “Sun’s East, Moon’s West” by Merrie Haskell (Lightspeed)
  • “Planet Lion” by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny)
  • “Ossuary” by Ian Muneshwar (Clarkesworld
  • “A Song for You” by Jennifer Marie Brissett (Terraform
  • “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” by Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com)
  • “Two to Leave” by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
  • “Hunting Monsters” by S.L. Huang (The Book Smugglers)

So yeah, a lot of really good stories in May.

Plus, a lot more music:

I’ve also started putting together weekly “Now Playing” playlists, which are the songs I quote from on Twitter, boring and annoying people with my frequent #nowplaying hashtag. I don’t know why I do it, but it’s produced two mixes so far.

Anyway, that in a roundabout way, was May 2015. Beyond that, I wrote some, had stories rejected — one in a record two hours! — and watched more than a healthy dose of Arrow. Hard to believe it’s already June!

New fiction: “The Raven”

In happier news, my short story, “The Raven” was published this week in Lakeside Circus:

In a warehouse in Manhattan, there is a raven that can talk, and if you ask it a question, any question at all, it will tell you the answer, no matter how strange or impossible that might seem to be.

This is actually my first piece of published fiction since 2010 — that kind of is for lack of trying — and I’m really happy to be in the issue.

I hope you’ll check it out!

March 2015

In March, I read two books. I finished reading Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer, and I started and finished reading Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie.

I watched five movies. The Man Who Would Be King and Star Trek: The Motion Picture — which I’d actually never seen before — weren’t great. But the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers was genuinely very creepy, like a ’70s political conspiracy mixed with a ’70s zombie movie. And Zardoz…god, Zardoz will fuck you up. I don’t regret watching it, but…it’s not something you can ever un-see.

The fifth was The Man Who Knew Too Much, which I’d actually forgotten until just now, as I was editing this post, that I’d seen. It’s decent Hitchcock, but not remarkable.

I read thirty-eight short stories in my continuing endeavor to read at least one a day. The best of them, I thought, were:

  • “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon (Apex)
  • “We Are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed)
  • “Sickly Sweet” by Evan Dorman (Lakeside Circus)
  • “Sing Me Your Scars” by Damien Angelica Walters (Apex)
  • “Where Monsters Dance” by Merc Rustad (Inscription)
  • “The House in Winter” by Jessica Sirkin (Apex)
  • “Wild Things Got to Go Free” by Heather Clitheroe (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
  • “The Good Son” by Naomi Kritzer (Lightspeed)

I went to a meet-up of a local sci-fi club, where we watched a bunch of Star Trek in tribute to Leonard Nimoy — you know who was terrific? Leonard Nimoy — and I won a Spock glass. That (and the mint juleps) made me quite happy.

Oh, and I turned thirty-mumble-mumble-mumble. Thirty-eight. It was an okay birthday, far as those go, I guess.

Otherwise, it was a pretty ordinary March. More wintry than I would have liked — a snowstorm on the first day of spring — and a couple of other meetups unceremoniously canceled.

I’m still writing, still reading and editing for Kaleidotrope, still doing the unable-to-find-an-apartment-why-am-I-living-in-New-York thing.

And I listened to some music:

Onward to April, I guess.

February 2015

When I fell out of the habit of regularly blogging late last year, and then decided (kind of) to fall back into it, I wasn’t planning on that being only a once-a-month thing. And yet, maybe that’s what this blog is now: a recap, or re-evaluation, of the month. Twitter (and very occasionally, rarely) Facebook for my day-to-day life, and this for the “hey, that sure was a month” look back.

I honestly don’t know.

But okay, using last month’s post as a model, here’s that recap.

In February, I read just one book, Authority by Jeff VanderMeer. I’m most of the way through Acceptance, the third and final book in his “Southern Reach” trilogy. It’s been a weird ride, and although relatively short, the books have been taking me a little longer to get through than I’d expected.

In February, I saw only four movies. Two of these were this year’s biggest Oscar contenders, Boyhood and Birdman. I found both of them terrific…and both of them disappointing. They were kind of weird movies to attach so much Oscar-night passion around. Boyhood is technically more of a marvel, since there really hasn’t been another film made in this way before. But it’s equally more and less than this gimmick. The way that it was filmed sometimes revealing subtle story beats, unexpected moments, but it also often very little time for character development.

Not that Birdman fares terrifically well in this regard either. It’s a phenomenally well acted movie, and the direction is a great showcase for that acting. But I think it would be a mistake to think the film has anything to actually say about acting. It looks great, and everyone in is good, but it felt really hollow at its center.

Then again, the movie I saw between the two of those was Soylent Green, which was profoundly disappointing. (Spoiler warning: it may very well be people.) Yep, I spent my Valentine’s Day watching a crummy, badly dated Charlton Heston sci-fi movie. On the other hand, Edward G. Robinson — in his 101st and final film — is actually really good in it, so it wasn’t a total wash.

At least the last movie I saw in February was Big Hero 6, which is just a pure delight through and through.

In February, I read thirty-two short stories. I’m keeping to my one-a-day plan, only with the occasional panicked realization that a day is almost over and I haven’t read one yet. It’s been really good, and I’ve encountered some great fiction because of it. Here are some favorites:

In February, my parents were away for a few weeks, and I was house and dog-sitting for all that time. So I didn’t end up doing a lot of after-work activity.

I did finish my online writing course with Cat Rambo, getting a lot of really great and useful feedback on my second of two workshopped stories. (The feedback on the first story was good, too, but I’m a lot closer to revising and finishing the second.) We’re going to continue the group beyond the class, starting tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. I have a couple of flash pieces out for consideration right now, three pieces that are expected to appear sometime this year, and overall the writing is going okay. Maybe not gangbusters, but better than in years past.

In February, I went to another KGB Fantastic Fiction reading — there’s even photographic proof this time. I felt like I probably should, given that one of the readers, Mike Allen, recently accepted one of my stories for Mythic Delirium. (I was also a big fan of the other reader, Ben Loory’s, story collection.) So I had to do some schedule-maneuvering to make it happen, but it was definitely worth going.

In February, I went on campus twice, like I have to do three times each semester for work. I haven’t figured out which local school I’ll hit up next, but maybe I’ll wait until at least some of the snow has melted.

In February, I was in a car accident. It was minor, all things considered, and we both just lost side mirrors, but it wasn’t exactly fun. Because it was a collision, and the insurance had to be involved, it took a little longer to get the car fixed than it might have otherwise. But everything seems to have worked out. And while I also unexpectedly had to have a flat tire replaced on the car yesterday afternoon, that’s hopefully the most I’ll need to have fixed on it for a while.

In February, I again listened to some music:

And I think that was pretty much February.

January 2015

In January, I read two books: Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I read the first one for a book club I never actually attended, and the second one just because it was supposed to be good. It’s an unnerving book, almost certainly by design, but I’m currently reading Authority, the second book in the “Southern Reach Trilogy,” so it’s probably safe to assume that I liked it. (Ghost Bride was okay, too.)

In January, I saw seven movies: The Trouble with Harry, The Apartment, Fiddler on the Roof, The Sunshine Boys, Our Man Flint, That Guy…Who Was in That Thing, and Obvious Child. I think the last was my favorite, although Fiddler has some wonderful moments, thanks largely to the central performance by Tevye, and Shirley MacLaine is a (surprising) radiant delight in both Harry (which isn’t Hitchcock’s best) and Apartment (which is great but takes a weird hard turn near the end). Flint is often fun, but was probably better in the ’60s, when the Bond movies it parodies were new. That Guy…well, it certainly has a lot of those guys in it. It’s not really a documentary, much less a compelling one, but it is overstocked with a lot of recognizable and talented character actors, so you can almost forget its lack of real depth for about ninety minutes. Sunshine Boys was the most surprising, because I though I would enjoy it a lot more than I did. It felt fairly dated, and while Matthau and Burns give very good performances, the gist is often, “Hey, these two guys sure are old, huh?” (Burns weirdly reminded me a little of my own grandfather in a couple of scenes, which is not something that occurred to me when the two of them were both alive.)

In January, I read about forty-two short stories. I say about because one of them I actually listened to at an author reading, and because I’m reading stories for both my ongoing fiction class and my web zine, neither of which I’m tracking. I think these were my favorites of the ones I am:

In January, I went to a number of meet-ups and events, skipped out on a few more, saw The Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway, and attended a number of sessions of my online writing course. The course is going well, I think. We unexpectedly skipped last week, so it’s been a little while.

In January, I listened to some music:

In January, I sold another short story, a flash piece, which I’ll link to when it publishes. (This month, I hope!) This marks the third story I’ve sold in about as many months, which is nice. More rejections than that, and more stalled stories than not, but that’s par for the course.

Anyway, that’s more or less be my January.