Archive for August, 2025

theater

Return to the Theater

This week I saw live theater for the first time in ages. I used to have season tickets for the Broadway musical touring show series, and when I was in college I took a couple of theater electives that required you to go to all the theater department shows. But I dropped my season tickets when they started bringing around the same shows every year and when the only new shows were those that were musical versions of movies or “jukebox” musicals. It’s been decades since I’ve been to a non-musical play.

But I now live in a town with a real theater, and I’ve made friends who are really involved in it, so I got to go to the dress rehearsal for their production of Romeo and Juliet this week. The theater is a reproduction of the Blackfriars Theater, the one where Shakespeare’s company performed once they made it big, so it’s an indoor theater with actual seats, not like the Globe. They try to keep the experience close to what it was in Shakespeare’s time, so they don’t turn out the lights over the audience. Once the candles for the chandeliers were lit, they had to stay lit (though they use electric candles in the chandeliers here). That also means there are no lighting effects. There’s also no amplification — no microphones. The acoustics in the theater are really good, and it’s a fairly small space, so you can hear pretty well even without microphones.

Though it may be a really old-school theater, they did play with the setting, so this Romeo & Juliet was set in the early 2000s in America. They used American accents with the Shakespearean text and a very modern inflection. The clothes were rather stylized so didn’t look exactly like the way I remember the early 2000s, but there were elements that reflected that era. For instance, Juliet often wore a Juicy Couture-style velour track suit, but instead of it saying “Juicy” across the bottom, it said “Juliet.” In scenes where she was reading a book, she had Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (reminding us that she was a teenager). A lot of the guys wore letter jackets from Verona High, and they were hanging out at a Pizza Hut when one of the fights between the rival factions broke out.

It wasn’t a musical, but it did incorporate music. The whole cast does a few songs before the show and at the end of intermission, with some of them playing instruments, and the actors play music and sing where it fits into the play — like in this case at the party where Romeo and Juliet meet.

One thing I’d forgotten about theater was the weird sense of having to re-enter the real world after the show is over. For some weird reason, it’s stronger for me in a play than a movie, in spite of the movie being more immersive, where the lights are out and you’re seeing that whole world. I think maybe that’s actually the reason — you have to engage your own imagination so much when seeing a play that there’s more of a transition when you come back to the real world. In this case with such minimal staging, with no scenery and no sets or props other than things the actors interact with that are necessary for the scene, your imagination has to build the world for you. It takes a little time to dismantle that imaginary world you’ve been creating and come back to where you really are.

Fortunately, I had the walk across downtown with my friends to their house on the very edge of downtown to reorient myself before I drove home (I live within walking distance of the theater, but I wouldn’t want to make the walk alone late at night. I don’t think I’d be truly unsafe, but there’s a stretch of street that’s completely deserted late at night, and there are some really dark patches, so it’s common sense) so I didn’t have that entirely unreal feeling while driving.

My friends are recruiting me to be an usher at the theater, and my neighbor is the costume designer, so I may be going to the theater more often. They work in repertory, so there’s one cast for the season and the same people do multiple plays in rotation. This season they’re also doing Two Gentlemen of Verona, starting in a couple of weeks, and then there’s another play that isn’t Shakespeare. They seem to do a lot of shows based on Jane Austen’s works, as well as classic plays like The Importance of Being Earnest.

Life

Shopping Spree

I made another Ikea run yesterday to the store in the D.C. suburbs. I had an $80 coupon I’d earned from all my shopping to set up the house, and it was expiring this weekend. I also had a set of curtains to return, since I’d bought based on their estimates, but that was apparently for if you were pleating them, and I’m not trying to pleat them. I need to be able to pull them aside enough to open the sliding door to my deck, so one set of curtains was enough. That added up to being enough that it was worth making the trip.

Trying to spend $80 at Ikea without buying anything big (like furniture) was kind of like one of those shopping spree games, where you have a certain amount of time to get whatever you can fit in your cart, though without the speed element. The one big thing I got was a Roman shade for my front door. The front door is mostly glass. It’s a sort of bubbly glass that distorts the view inside, but when it’s dark outside and a light is on indoors, you can see pretty well. I haven’t been too worried about it because I live near the end of a dead-end street and there’s a row of trees and hedges across the front lawn, mostly blocking the view from the street, but I still would feel weird about coming down to breakfast in my pajamas when it’s still dark at breakfast time. Now I can have all the light and visibility through the door in daytime, but I can block it off by lowering the shade when I want to.

But I still had to come up with about $50 worth of stuff, so I got to go through the store just throwing things in the cart. I got some hand towels for the bathroom, a set of small plates (since the “small” plates that go with my dishes are too big for things like toast or a sandwich), a sifter, some food storage stuff, and lots of candles. The candles were on sale, so I couldn’t resist. I used to joke about my Strategic Candle Reserve, but it came in handy during that big power failure we had a few years back in Texas. I didn’t replace the ones I used up then, and I didn’t try to move most of what I had left. Now I have more than replaced them. I’m ready for cozy fall and winter evenings. I even like to light a candle on my desk while I’m writing on cloudy days when I can see the light. And if I lose power, I’ll have plenty of light, with a nice vanilla scent.

I ended up going a bit over the $80 I needed to use the coupon, but I still came out of Ikea with a ridiculously low total.

There’s a mall next to the Ikea, so I did some shopping there while waiting for the Ikea to open. I hadn’t been in a mall since before the pandemic started, so I haven’t done that level of shopping in ages. Wow, prices have really gone up. I did catch some good deals and got some shoes and some boots. Since I’m walking most places now, I needed some “nice” shoes I can still walk in. Even some of my flats aren’t really comfortable for walking a mile or so in. My dressy boots were all high-heeled. So now I have some cute boots that I should be able to walk in.

Then I took back roads back home, so I’ve seen more of Virginia. I still like my area the best. My soul sings at that first sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Ikea and mall are pretty close to Mount Vernon. A lot of it is currently closed for some restoration work, but when it’s open again I may make another trip to play tourist, with a little shopping along the way. I could also catch a commuter train from there to go into D.C. without having to drive inside the Beltway.

But now I have to recover before going out tonight, and I need to get to work on book revisions. I did a lot of thinking while I was driving and now I need to look at how my ideas fit into the book.

Life

City Life

One of the funny things about my move from a large metro area to a much smaller city is that I actually have a much more urban experience here. I live a ten-minute walk from a thriving downtown area full of shops and restaurants, plus a movie theater and one of the nation’s leading Shakespearean theaters. This town also hosts a number of other arts events.

This week has been a big classical music festival. It’s about a week and a half of classical concerts in venues all over town (mostly in historic churches), with a variety of music in each concert, ranging from Renaissance to Baroque, romantic to modern, and everything in between. A lot of the concerts are free, but there are also big evening concerts that are ticketed. Apparently, it almost sells out every year with season passes, and there are people who take their vacation every year to come here and go to all the concerts.

I got recruited by a friend who’s involved with running the festival to be an usher, so I’ve spent part of this week doing the free noon concerts. I’m also ushering for one of the ticketed concerts this weekend, so I’ll get to see one of the paid concerts for free. One of the people I worked with this week is really involved with the Shakespeare theater (her husband is a retired Shakespeare professor, so the theater is the reason they retired here), and they have extra tickets for events, so they’ve invited me to the dress rehearsal and reception for the production of Romeo and Juliet next week. Between them and my neighbor who’s the costume designer, I’ll be set for theater tickets, it seems.

This is the second big classical music event of the summer. There’s also a summer institute for string players that brings in young musicians from around the world to study with top musicians, and there’s a full schedule of performances with both the students and the guest instructors.

I have a much busier calendar in this small city than I had in the big metro area, but it helps that I can walk ten minutes (or drive in less than five minutes if it’s going to be late at night) to do things instead of having to drive 45 minutes on a freeway across a major city. I also seem to have met all the people who are involved in these things, which means I keep getting drafted to get involved.

But after two days of walking downtown and then being on my feet a long time, and then a meeting with a creative group downtown this morning, my legs are currently mad at me, so I’d better rest before having to be on my feet again Saturday night.

Meanwhile, this weekend is the Narratess Indie Fantasy Sale. August 23-25 you can get a huge variety of fantasy e-books (including my Tea and Empathy) at discounted prices. When the sale opens, you can find all the books here.

 

writing life

Living Research

I had an experience last weekend that turned out to be good research for my fantasy writing: my city had a boil water order that lasted all weekend. There was a water main break that dropped pressure throughout the system, and when the pressure drops below a certain point, they can’t guarantee that the water is safe (I guess the pressure that keeps the water moving keeps bacteria from growing, or something like that). They couldn’t consider the water safe for drinking until tests came back showing it was safe. That meant that from Friday through mid-day Monday, you weren’t supposed to drink, cook, brush teeth, or wash dishes (other than with the sanitizing setting on the dishwasher) with the tap water without boiling it first. Fortunately, they got bottled/canned water donated by WalMart and Coors and were handing it out at the city park, since boiled water isn’t great to drink without steeping tea leaves in it.

For the most part, it wasn’t too bad, thanks to the gallons of bottled water I got from the city. The one thing that was a pain was having to boil water for washing the dishes I had to hand wash. That was where the fantasy research came in. It’s easy to take for granted the amenities we have in modern life, but in the kind of pre-industrial world where most fantasy novels take place, they don’t have things like hot running water (unless there’s magic that creates it). I had to think about how my characters would have to get water from a well and heat it before they’d have water for washing dishes. At least I didn’t have to go to a well, and I had an electric teakettle instead of having to use a cauldron over a fire.

When I got annoyed by the extra work, I reminded myself that this was a valuable research experience.

It’s like the way the great Texas blackout of a few years ago, when nearly the entire state lost power during a bad cold snap and ice storm, made me think about how dark things are without electricity. It’s easy to forget that we’re seldom truly dark. There are streetlights and cars have headlights. It’s darker here than it was where I used to live (well, when we had power there), but it’s still not entirely dark in my house at night because there’s a streetlamp in front of my house. If that’s not enough light, I can flip a switch and have light in the house. I don’t have to fumble for flint to light a lamp. I have to think about how characters are traveling at night when horses don’t have headlights and there are no streetlights. It can’t be a full moon all the time. I also saw how little light a candle really gives off and how small the area lit by a candle really is.

This is my reminder to always think about where the characters are getting light and how they’re getting hot water. It takes more time for them to do things, and their schedule probably has to adjust to the amount of light they have.

Fortunately, we got the all clear Monday morning, and it turned out that the first test they ran on Friday had come back negative for contamination, so the water was actually safe all weekend. Which is good because I’d already brushed my teeth and washed berries before I found out about the boil water notice, and I only learned about it because I had a moment of weakness and checked Facebook before I usually allow myself to do so. Now I’ve signed up to get text messages for city emergency alerts because I don’t want to have to depend on the Facebook algorithm deciding to show me posts from the city.

movies

Superman

Part of my birthday celebration last week was taking myself out to a movie — for the first time since the pandemic began. I went to the movie theater downtown to see Superman. This theater is vintage 1930s Art Deco, though with upgraded seating (recliners with footrests) and modern digital projection and sound. It seemed apt for Superman, like the kind of place Clark Kent would have gone to a movie in the earlier incarnations of the character.

Anyone who’s read my books would probably have guessed that I loved it because Clark/Superman here is basically an Adorkable Wizard. I’m naturally going to love a dark-haired guy with superpowers who’s still a bit dorky and awkward and generally good.

I’ve never been a huge superhero fan, mostly because I never got into comic books (no snobbery, I just never encountered them other than compilations of newspaper comics). I only knew superheroes through TV and movies, but occasionally really got into those. I remember running home from the bus stop every afternoon to get home in time for the daily Batman rerun, I watched the 1970s Spider-Man and Hulk TV series and the various superhero Saturday-morning cartoons. I saw the 1978 Superman movie and some of the sequels, then the Lois & Clark series in the 90s.

Out of all that, I’ve always been fond of Superman because I like the idea of the guy with great powers who isn’t dark or edgy and who uses his power to help other people. I tend to prefer the presentations with the idea that Clark is who he really is and Superman is merely an identity he puts on for his good deeds in order to protect his family and himself so he can have something of a normal life. I’m intrigued by the conflict inherent in that, when he gets all kinds of recognition as Superman but is ignored as Clark.

So, basically this movie was all the things I like about the idea of Superman, put together in one story, with Clark struggling with identity and purpose while remaining a ray of sunshine and an absolute cinnamon roll of a guy. I also love this version of Lois Lane and her being smart and snappy, the kind of dame you could imagine being in a 1940s movie. This version of Lex Luthor was a little eerie given what’s been going on with billionaires. You could think of him as Elon Bezos, though I think it would have been more realistic if he’d bought the Daily Planet so he could control the messages about both Superman and himself.

The way they used the 1978 John Williams Superman theme woven into the score brought goosebumps every time. That’s become such an iconic piece of music, so I couldn’t have imagined Superman without it, but it’s interesting seeing how they updated it. I just wish they’d also woven in the love theme from the 1978 movie because it somehow became an earworm after seeing the movie, possibly because I’m most familiar with the Superman March arrangement that incorporates it, so hearing the main theme without the love theme made it feel unresolved, and that made my brain try to resolve it. Oddly, it was the pop ballad version that really got stuck in my head, so I had to track that down on YouTube.

I don’t know if this is going to be a buy it on Blu-Ray kind of movie for me, but it was good for a smile and some inspiration. It was the kind of story that made me want to be better and do better. I don’t have superpowers, but what do I have the power to do?

Books

Rewriting Dickens, With Bonus Magic

A few weeks ago when I was wondering if anyone had used Dickens as a foundation for fantasy books the way people use Shakespeare, the book A Far Better Thing by H.G. Parry was recommended both here and on Blue Sky. I read it last week, and it was so good.

This book is a retelling of A Tale of Two Cities, told from Sydney Carton’s perspective, with the premise that Charles Darnay was his changeling. Carton was abducted by fairies as a small child, with Darnay left as his changeling, then Carton was returned to the mortal world and given a new identity, but he’s still under the command of the fairies as a mortal servant. Mortal servants aren’t ever supposed to meet their changelings, but a court case brings them together, and Carton starts to suspect that there’s something going on in the fairy realm. When the French Revolution happens, Carton finds himself dealing with a family history he’s just started to discover, multiple factions of fairies and their own conflicts, plus the effects of the fairies interfering in the mortal world, along with the woes of the mortal world.

I haven’t read A Tale of Two Cities since I was in high school, so I don’t know if this meshes perfectly enough with it that you could read A Tale of Two Cities and imagine that this is what’s going on in the background and behind the scenes, but that’s the feeling I get from it, that the two books would mesh pretty well, with this one explaining things in A Tale of Two Cities, like two entirely unrelated people being so identical that they can pass for each other. I was the weird kid in high school who actually enjoyed reading A Tale of Two Cities. We were assigned a certain number of chapters a day, but I ended up just reading through the whole thing, and I remember crying at the end. Now I want to re-read it with this book in mind. I was on team Charles Darnay because I tend to like the nice guys rather than the bad boys, and the drunk wastrel of a lawyer held no appeal for me. This book explains why Carton’s a drunk — the fairies have a harder time finding him and knowing what he’s up to when he’s drunk or when alcohol’s around. I also now have a very different view of Carton based on this new backstory.

I found this book to be utterly engrossing. Even though I knew how it would end (unless it somehow changed the ending), I kept turning pages to see what happened. The depiction of the fairy Realm was interesting (and somewhat reminded me of my version from my Fairy Tale series — we seem to have used some of the same folklore source materials, though I never got into changelings and related topics and I took it in a very different direction). Really, the whole thing is a clever and fresh kind of fantasy.

Though I still think it would be interesting to take the plot of something like Bleak House and put it in a fantasy world. It might also be interesting to see what this author could do with Our Mutual Friend, set in this same universe, since that one also involves unrelated people who are identical enough to be mistaken for each other. That one might be a bit more challenging, though, since the double who’s not the book’s main character gets killed early in the book, so it would have to be a prequel leading up to the events of the book to give much of his point of view.

Life

Birthday Week

According to my parents, once you get to my age, you get to celebrate your birthday all week, so I’ve had a birthday week. Wednesday after I got my car serviced, I went shopping for birthday presents and bought myself a few things. Then late that afternoon I walked downtown to see the new Superman movie. There’s only one movie theater in town, a vintage 1930s theater downtown. They have upgraded the seats to cushy recliners with footrests and the projection and sound are modern, but when you see the front of the theater and the lobby, you feel like you’ve gone back in time. One other modern touch is that they show the movies with captions. The state school for the Deaf is here, and we have a large Deaf population, from the students to faculty to the former students who decide to stay in town, so I guess it makes sense to show movies with captions. I don’t know if it’s every show or if I happened into a captioned one. For once, I actually caught all the names of the characters because I could read them. I’ll discuss Superman more once I’ve had a chance to process it.

For my actual birthday, I did more shopping (mostly errands, but I bought some fun stuff, too), then spent the afternoon reading on the deck before walking downtown to have dinner at a bistro with a sidewalk cafe. We’ve been lucky to have had a cool snap this week, so it was a perfect evening to dine outdoors. When I got home, I sat on the deck and read some more.

Today I’m easing back into “normal” life because there are chores that have to be done. While it’s still cool, before a heat wave hits next week, I spent the morning working in my lawn, cutting the grass (the lawn is small enough and hilly enough that I use a weedeater instead of a mower) and digging up some bad invasive plants. When I heard the church bells from downtown chime noon, I figured it was time to come in and take a break.

I’m waiting on a delivery from one of my birthday gifts to myself, a new desk chair. The one I have is so uncomfortable that it limits my writing time, so I got a fancy one with an adjustable lumbar pillow and a softer seat. It also looks like it should be on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, so I’ll have to start my writing sessions by saying, “Engage!”

Life

Book Recovery

It’s the week after I finished a book and am emerging from my cave to deal with everything that didn’t get done and it’s my birthday week, so it’s a week of errands and housework but also some fun stuff. Today’s fun (which is interrupting my usual posting schedule) is getting my car maintenance done and doing some shopping. Then I might do something crazy like go to a movie. My plan is to do my main work for the day while I’m waiting for my car and then use most of the rest of the day for fun.

I got a start on emerging from the cave last weekend when we had a block party. I live on a short dead-end street that’s one block long, and it’s a fairly tight little community of mostly creative people. We have artists, fashion designers, and a theatrical costume designer who does shows all over, including the local Shakespeare theater. And me, the writer. There’s also an international flight attendant, who took care of the bar. All the liquor was in tiny bottles, and I’m not going to ask where that came from. The neighbor who organized the party also invited people from around town and who are visiting the town, including a couple of musicians here from the Netherlands for the big classical music summer institute they have here.

My social life has definitely increased since I moved to this house. It’s also reached the point where it can take me longer to walk down the block to my house than it takes to walk from downtown if people are out in their yards. But since so many people are artists, they understand when I say I’m working on a book and need to focus on it.

I think my main plan for my birthday is to take myself out for lunch at one of the downtown restaurants, but I may also do some shopping, depending on how much I get done today.

Grand Day Out

Late post today because I got a bit sidetracked. I finished my draft, which was exciting enough to block out everything else. Then I decided to celebrate by going out to lunch. There was a chamber music concert at the Shakespeare theater downtown, which I’d been planning to go to, and I decided I could go downtown early and have lunch before the concert. I had just enough time to get dressed and get things together. Then I was halfway to downtown before I remembered that I should have made a blog post.

But the book is done and I had a Grand Day Out. I had a bowl of soup at a little cafe I’ve passed by a number of times and frequently planned to stop at, but it never seemed to be open. Today, I caught it open, and it was really cute. It turns out that it closes at 2, so it’s just a breakfast and lunch place, and I’m more likely to be downtown in the afternoon. I had a little time to kill before the concert, so I did some window shopping and spotted a dress I fell instantly in love with in the window of a vintage shop. I decided to go back and look at it after the concert.

The concert was incredible. In the summers, they have a music institute here in which young string players from all over the world spend the summer getting coaching and training. Part of it is that they’re put into string quartets and have to work on pieces, then they do free afternoon concerts to practice performing for an audience. They have to introduce the piece and give notes on it, and they’ve clearly been trained in the protocol of entering and leaving the stage, taking bows, etc. This summer, they did the concerts at the American Shakespeare Center, which, for some odd reason, is in this little town. They built a replica of the Blackfriars Theatre — the indoor theater Shakespeare’s company moved to when he moved up in the world and the company had a charter from the king. The theater is designed for acoustic performance. They don’t use microphones, which means the theater is made to carry sound, and it’s an excellent chamber music venue. You feel like you’re inside the instruments. Today I snagged one of the box seats that’s practically on the stage, so I could really see the nonverbal communication among the musicians. Today’s performance was two Schubert string quartets, and though these were young musicians (teens and 20s), they were outstanding.

On the way home, I stopped back by the vintage shop, and the dress didn’t seem to be my size, but since it’s vintage, it’s hard to tell, and when I tried it on it fit beautifully. The price on the tag was low enough that it was a steal, but it turned out to be on sale, and it’s tax-free weekend for back-to-school shopping, so I really got a deal. I’m not sure what vintage it is. It’s got a 50s vibe, but I suspect it’s newer than that. It’s classic enough that I can’t tell how old it is.

Then it started raining as I walked home, but I had an umbrella, and it was a light enough rain to make it not an unpleasant walk. Now it’s cool and drizzly, and I had made a pot of tea and put it in a thermos before I went out, so I’m going to enjoy an afternoon of drinking tea and reading so my brain can recover.

Of course, while I was at the concert I came up with an idea for a future book, including the main character and her first name (the name of one of the musicians sparked the idea), but I’m not going to start working on it yet.