Rain Garden, Phase One

Tuesday’s words on THE RAIN GARDEN came to 1,454, bringing me to a total of 38K and change, and to the last scene. One or two more writing sessions should do it, and then what I’ll have is this skeletal draft in need of a new title, some research, and much overall fleshing. In the meantime, I’m very pleased with the bones.

I’ve been madly chasing a number of projects and events this week. TOR.COM is hosting a series of Quantum Leap rewatch posts, by me–the first of them is on the pilot, Genesis, and can be found here. Meanwhile, the Tor/Forge newsletter is crowing about Indigo Springs winning the Sunburst Award. All of the books on the short list were TOR books, so they have extra cause to be proud.

And here’s a sign of fall, for you all:
Fall leaves

Slouching toward Wednesday

I have a new favorite blog, and it is Hyperbole and a Half. The Alot entry may be the most perfect illustrated post I have ever seen. (Badger, I suspect you will really love this one.)

Here is a newly-grown starling, sharp-edged and new and full of possibility:
YA Starling

Monday’s THE RAIN GARDEN words: 1,145 for a total of 36,575. It’s all very sparse and slenderly put together at the moment, but I am cruising toward denoument. So in one sense it’s nearly done and in another, perhaps half-finished?

Sunburst Photo Shoot

Every now and then I will be at a wine event with kelly-yoyoKelly and someone will look down to the region below my chin, and say, “I know you, don’t I?” Or, perhaps, in a sort of questioning voice, they’ll go: “I’ve seen those, um, spots… before?”

To which I reply, “Oh, yes, they’ve been the guest cleavage on the Full Bodied Wine Blog a few times.” Because by they, you understand, the other party doesn’t actually mean the spots.

Anyway. My Sunburst Award arrived in the mail on Friday, to much excitement. I promptly threw on a nice top and went out on the deck for a photo shoot. Here’s me, unpacking the beautiful medallion with my usual ladylike delicacy, and then posing with it and the spots, in a more SFnal and less wine-soaked context.

And the agony of Dee Cineloathing

I put Appaloosa on the Ziplist for two reasons:

First, it’s a Western featuring Viggo Mortensen, who can sometimes act and always ride, two things I approve of.

Second: One of my all time favorite movies is Silverado, and I’m always looking for something that has that same kind of goodness.

This is perhaps futile, given the bravura ensemble cast of Silverado–Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, John Cleese, Linda Hunt, and (in defiance of his usual tendency to fall into the worst script ever) Scott Glenn–and the awsome direction of Lawrence Kasdan.

The quest for another good Western Love has led to some dark moments in Dua filmwatching: Hidalgo might be as good as it’s gotten. We watched The Quick & The Dead with Sharon Stone, though I should admit that I did howl with glee at the sheer tackiness of its ending. We watched all of 3:10 to Yuma, Chaos knows why. And we made it to the dust dull what the hell end of Appaloosa too. We came away with a bad case of cineloathing and a realization: perhaps it’s the Silverado effect, but we don’t turn bad Westerns off. We turn off bad other stuff–dramas, comedies, SF–even when we like the artists involved. But not Westerns. What is that all about? I don’t know, but it’s on the To Learn list now.

What can’t you turn off?


Spiders

Finally, Thursday THE RAIN GARDEN words: 927, for a total of 31441.
Friday: 1044, total 32485
Saturday: 1134, total 33619. I am happy with this rate of progress. All my characters are in free-fall now… I expect to have good momentum until they hit bottom.

The thrill of Tee Victory

The cop show Blue Bloods is the new thing we are picking up this season: it tells the story of one Irish-Catholic family in New York who are all in the justice biz. Tom Selleck is the widower patriarch of the clan; he’s also the police commissioner. Donnie Wahlberg is his loose-cannon eldest, and has made detective. Actors I don’t know by name or sight fill out the roles of A.D.A. Daughter and uniformed Rookie. There’s a martyred son in the mix, Donnie’s married with kids, and a cranky Grandpa too.

Two weeks in, the verdict is… promising. There are a lot of undercurrents: old fights and new ones, family love and loyalty and work obligations clashing, and of course, a crime of the week. Also, the pilot had some nicely stylish direction and camera work.

It ain’t Boomtown, but I can’t keep holding that against new crime TV forever, now can I?

Anyone make a great new discovery this season?

In other news: Wednesday’s THE RAIN GARDEN words: 813