Life

All the Fall Things

It struck me that it was this time two years ago that I came here on a vacation/scouting mission to try to decide if this was a place I wanted to move to. That was a weirdly scary trip because I had no idea what the place would be like (as I learned in last week’s exploring adventure, there can be a big gap between the tourism website and the reality), and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to like it. If I’d been disappointed in the place and had known for sure it wasn’t for me, then in some ways life would have been a lot easier. I wouldn’t have had to make any big decisions. My life could have kept on going the way it was and I could have quit daydreaming about moving, at least to this place. I could have delayed the decision while trying to find some other place to target.

But if I liked it, then it would change from an idle daydream to a reality, and it meant I would have to make some big decisions and possibly uproot my entire life.

I did like it. In fact, I felt right at home instantly, like I’d always been here. It took me a while to firmly decide to move and to actually take action, but I think in my heart I knew all along that I was going to do it.

Now I have to remind myself that I live here. I’m not a tourist. If I don’t get around to seeing or doing something, I can see or do it some other time. I’m really feeling that this weekend, as there are so many things going on. It’s peak fall color, the last weekend of a lot of the “warm weather” activities, like the sidewalk cafes downtown and the steam train on the scenic railway (I passed it while driving last Friday, but I still haven’t managed to catch it on the nearby tracks to see it up close). Today may be the best day for the Blue Ridge Parkway or Skyline drive, as the wind is low, it’s sunny, and it’s a weekday (it still may be crowded), but I had a meeting this morning, an online meeting this afternoon, and there’s a special sale at a big bookstore nearby. I’m going to have to choose what to do and maybe find a way to squeeze it all in. Then Saturday there’s an event at the Frontier Culture Museum, as well as the downtown trick-or-treating (it’s so fun to see all the costumes), plus the houseplant store downtown is going out of business and selling off their inventory, and I want to add to my indoor jungle.

One of the things I like about fall, the fact that it’s ephemeral, lasting only a short time and constantly changing, is also the challenge about it, trying to fit in everything I want to do in my favorite season in a short period of time. The mantra is “there’s always next year.” I’m not a tourist fitting everything into a few days. I live here.

Now to go see how much I can cram into today.

exploring

Mountain Exploring

Last week’s adventure took me through some serious mountain driving to some lovely views, but also a town with a big paper mill, so it wasn’t exactly pleasant for exploring outside the car.

First, the drive. On the map, it looked like a straight north-south route of a major road that ran through a couple of old spa towns. In practice, this road skirts the side of a mountain range, so there were lots of twists and turns and going up and down hills. The scenery was spectacular, but I’ll admit the driving was a little unnerving. I was gripping the steering wheel pretty tight.

The spa towns might be good for a return visit for a spa day. One of the towns is now essentially an Omni resort. They bought the old hotel, the town is surrounded by golf courses that appear to be owned by Omni, a lot of the buildings in the town are also Omni facilities, and they own the historic baths in the adjacent town. You can go to the baths for just soaking time without being a hotel guest, and you can get a weekday day pass for the hotel spa area, but that’s outdoors so it’s closed in the off-season. If I have something really good happen (a new, big traditional publishing deal, movie option, bestseller), I may indulge myself.

After driving for some time along the side of the mountain, I reached the waterfall. It’s right there on the side of the road, and I guess they knew that would result in some traffic issues, so there’s a parking area and walkway for viewing the falls. I could hear the roaring, then I rounded a corner and the sight took my breath away. I literally gasped out loud. I’m fascinated by waterfalls, and there are apparently a number in this area, so I need to track them down.

A waterfall spills off a hillside. It's surrounded by trees with faint autumn colors, and there's a blur of mountains in the background.
This waterfall is a nice roadside attraction.

I drove a little farther and came to the town that was my destination. It looked cute on the tourism website, but what they left out was the fact that there are several paper mills in the town. If you’ve never been around a paper mill, consider yourself fortunate. They smell awful, like the whole town has been covered in manure and they’re blowing manure scent into the air. I initially was looking for a downtown park on a riverbank that had some interesting features, but I didn’t find it while driving through town. I ended up at another park on the edge of town, where I ate my picnic lunch while sitting in my car and watching the river go by. It looked lovely, but it reeked if you were outside. I got out long enough to take a few pictures of the river and to use the park’s bathroom facilities.

A river flows over rocks and tree branches, with trees leaning over the water.
Beautiful river that was soothing to look at. It’s a pity they built paper mills along it.

Then I went to my next stop, an old covered bridge. According to the signs, the bridge was built in 1839 and stopped being used for vehicle traffic in 1929. So, probably mostly horses and wagons/carriages, with maybe a few years of early cars, and I would suspect that cars were a big reason it closed because the whole thing is wood, even the roadway part. It was later turned into a park, so the bridge is now just for getting from one side of the park to the other, crossing the creek. This is apparently a fairly unique design, with the bridge being arched (it’s called Humpback Bridge), and may be the last of its type still standing, at least in this general area.

An old wooden covered bridge arches across a stream. In the foreground is a picnic table, and a tree with bright red leaves frames the picture.

I have a weird fascination/repulsion thing with bridges. They scare me, but I’m also drawn to them, and if there’s an interesting footbridge in a park, I have to cross it. This one was a little freaky because you’re closed in while you’re crossing, but there’s just enough of a gap between the wooden beams that you can see the water below. You can have claustrophobia and a fear of bridges at the same time! But it made for some pretty pictures.

I took the freeway to get back over the mountains because I didn’t think I could manage another mountain drive. Even the freeway had some twists and steep climbs, but not a lot of traffic. Then I got off the freeway and took another road heading north through the valley. I realized that even though the mountain driving can be harrowing, I feel a lot better when I’m nestled among hills and mountains. I felt kind of exposed and unsettled driving through the valley, even though I could see mountains on both sides. I liked it better when the road started getting closer to my town, where there are more twists and hills, while not quite as scary as the mountain driving.

I don’t know what I’ll explore this week. The forecast is for a lot of wind, and you don’t want to be driving through mountain passes when there are high gusts.

Life

Adventures in Plumbing

My plumbing has now been fixed, and it was definitely an adventure in owning an older home. The plumbing setup in this house is rather interesting, and even the plumber couldn’t be sure if it was an afterthought, if the house had been built without indoor plumbing and the plumbing added later or if it was built with plumbing but the plumbing was replaced/upgraded along the way. The house is from 1945, so you’d think there would be indoor plumbing by then, and it’s surrounded by older houses, so it’s one of the “new” houses on my block, but that’s a borderline time when it all depends on the budget of the person who built the house and how far out the city water had come by then. Now I’m considered on the edge of downtown, but this would have been “suburbs” in 1945. My house is on what used to be a large farming estate that was gradually sold off, but was one of the last lots sold, as the original manor house for the estate is three doors down. At one time, this was considered the country, but there are houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s surrounding my block, with the houses on my block (aside from the 1850s or so manor) mostly from the 1930s.

The problem turned out to be the bathtub drain that was connected badly with too short a pipe used as a connection between pipes, and whoever installed that had tightened it too much, probably to stop it from leaking, but that ended up breaking the washers, so it leaked even more. It probably didn’t show up on the inspection or in the first few months I lived here because it was holding, but with use that short pipe slid deeper into the connection, creating a gap. Of course, the part that had to be replaced was in the one spot that was hard to access. I was impressed that there was no swearing from the plumber as he stood on a stepstool in the basement and angled a wrench in to try to get it loose. There was some coaxing, and possibly a magic spell or two, as well as I think a few prayers, but no bad language. He was worried he’d have to cut out other pipes to access this part and then replace those pipes, but he managed to pull it off the “easy” (and less expensive) way. He was a little amazed at the “creativity” of some of the plumbing. It’s a good thing I’ve found a good plumber because I might need more help in the future. A lot of it looks like it was replaced when the house was restored, but this part looked like it was older. Not too old — it was PVC tubing, so that wasn’t from 1945 — but not done earlier this year. It might have been a relic from the previous owner, who also did some of the creative work to add central air and heat. I’ve thought it was weird being able to see all the plumbing from the house from the basement, but if this had happened in my house in Texas, they’d have had to cut into drywall.

Speaking of Texas, the Texas connection continues, as the plumber had also lived in the Dallas area. He knew my old neighborhood, and I knew of the place where he used to be a bartender.

Watching the plumber persuade the connections to loosen gave me the idea of a story about a plumbing wizard. That seems to me to be an appropriate use of magical power. Now I need to think of a plot.

And now I’m off to have an Autumn Adventure. I have a general idea of where to go and a paper map to back up the map on my phone that links to my car (since cell coverage can be spotty). I’m packing a lunch, bringing my hiking boots and heading into the western mountains, where fall color is supposed to be at its peak today and tomorrow. I’m also bringing my notebook, in case ideas strike me.

Life

Hiking Close to Home

Tomorrow is publication day for Weaving & Wyverns, book 4 in the Tales of Rydding Village series. I will be celebrating by waiting for a plumber, since I noticed something that seems to be a leak in a pipe. Fortunately, all the plumbing in this house is grouped together in the basement and the pipes are exposed, so it should be easy to get to them. There’s even a removable panel in the room behind the shower to get to those pipes. I hope it’s an easy fix. But while I’m waiting during the appointment window, I’ll be able to obsessively check my Amazon ranking. Normally, I try to get out of the house on release day so I don’t get weird and obsessive about it. Maybe the plumber will get here early in the window and finish early, so I can then celebrate the rest of the day.

Yesterday, I took my notebook and a lunch in my backpack and walked to a nearby park to do some hiking and brainstorming. The park is about a 10-minute walk from my house, and it’s the more “wild” of the big city parks. There are sports fields, playgrounds, tennis courts, and a swimming pool, but those are around the base of the hill at the center of the park. The hill has been left forested, with hiking paths winding through the forest around the hill. The top of the hill has a nice picnic area with a view of the mountains.

When I visited the area before moving here, I’d thought I’d rather live close to the “nicer” city park than to downtown because I’d want to go walking more often than I’d want to go downtown. I’d picked out the general area where I wanted to live, and that was where I got an apartment. Living there for a while turned out to be a good idea because that park isn’t great for walking. There are no dedicated walking paths, just what used to be a carriageway through the park that’s now a street, and walkers have to share the street with cars. That’s also where all the big special events like festivals, art fairs, and outdoor concerts are held. It’s a very pretty park, but living nearby can be loud. And it turns out that I go downtown quite a bit.

I ended up buying a house in a totally different neighborhood than I planned, and that turned out to be a good move because I’m still about a 20-minute walk from that park for going to festivals and concerts, but I’m 10 minutes from both downtown and the park that’s actually good for walking. I have good hiking trails in walking distance of my house. You can almost forget you’re in a city, but since the park is in a city, I don’t have to worry about bears (at most of the hiking areas around here, there are signs at the parking lots about what to do about bears) or getting lost. There may be times you don’t know exactly where you are on a trail, but all the trails will eventually lead you to a parking lot, picnic area, or park road, and you can’t go all that far in any direction without coming out of the woods. There’s one trail that does a lot of winding around the hill just to give you a little more distance, but it intersects with other trails that are more direct and with some of the frisbee golf holes that will also get you out of the woods. But you still feel like you’re in the wilderness (unless a train goes by on the tracks that run alongside the park).

I got some good brainstorming done sitting at the picnic area on top of the hill. With no Internet access, my only distraction was the view of the mountains, and then I got some quality thinking done while walking back down the hill and walking home. I need to get in better shape by doing that more often. Then I might be more up to “real” hiking. There’s a local hiking group I’d like to get involved with, but I need to build up to the kind of hiking they do.

So anyway, Weaving & Wyverns tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it. I have so much fun writing these books.

My Books

Pre-order Weaving & Wyverns

Weaving & Wyverns, the fourth book in the Tales of Rydding Village series, is now available for pre-order, and will be released October 16. It’s available at most of the major online booksellers. You can get links, as well as a universal book link for any other booksellers that might be available, on the book’s page.

There will be a paperback, but they don’t allow pre-orders on those, so that will be going live later.

Audible hasn’t yet decided about continuing the series. I guess they’re still not sure how well the first two books are doing, so if you want audio, you might want to request it from them.

I have more books planned. Right now, I have ideas for at least four more stories in that setting, but more keep coming up. I have a lot of fun playing in this world, and it helps that there are new main characters in each book, so it’s both familiar and new. I get to return to my old friends and make new friends by creating new characters. That keeps me from getting bored or burned out. I’m hoping to start mixing in some other books while continuing this series.

My current plan is to have the next book released sometime next summer. I’m trying to be better about sticking to a plan and working farther ahead. It will help that I shouldn’t be moving next year. After moving twice in the past two years, I’m finally settled.

After the book’s been released and everyone has had time to read it, I have some fun details about the inspiration behind it to share.

In other news, the Cozy the Day Away Sale is back this weekend, and I’ve put Tea and Empathy and Interview with a Dead Editor on sale. If you’re an Enchanted, Inc. (or maybe Rebel Mechanics) person and haven’t tried these series, this is your chance. The sale is on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 11-12. When it goes live, you’ll be able to find it here.

 

exploring

Festival Season

It’s festival season around here, with all the various small towns (there are no big cities in this general region) having festivals every weekend. You could hit several in one day and still have to choose which ones to go to and which ones to pass on this year. I love the idea of fall festivals, so I get excited about going.

And then I get there and find that it’s actually just shopping. A “festival” is basically an open-air shopping mall with food trucks and maybe some music. Sometimes you even see the same vendors week after week at the different festivals. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, but I still get excited about the idea of a fall festival. It sounds so quaint and romantic.

I went to one last weekend that was huge. The town is pretty small, and the entire downtown area was filled with those pop-up gazebo things and people selling their wares. There were lots of wood carvers selling cutting boards and decorative items, quilters selling various quilted things, metal work, soaps and other body products, plants, toys, etc. I did find an interesting item for a gift (so I’ve made a start on Christmas shopping), but it was hot and I was tired, so I didn’t linger to find the entertainment they supposedly had (I just saw a guy in a leather kilt playing the violin, but I don’t know if he was official entertainment or merely amusing himself). I was basing my plans on another festival I went to last year, where you could just pop in and out, but this thing was huge. You had to park at the high school on the edge of town and ride a school bus to the festival itself. I left my house after lunch, and it took me half an hour to get to the town, then half an hour to park, wait for the bus, then ride the bus to the festival, and then the driver said the last bus was leaving at 4, so I only had an hour and a half for the festival (and from what I’ve seen online, it was good that I left when I did because they ended up having big lines and long waits for shuttle buses at the end of the festival). It was a really neat little town, so I may go back when they’re not having a festival to take a look at it.

Now I’m trying to decide what to do this weekend. There’s a festival I went to last year on the border with West Virginia. The festival itself wasn’t much, but there were things going on in the surrounding area, and the scenery was fantastic, so I may head over there on Friday, and this time I’ll go over the border so I can add another state to my list. I didn’t find the apple cider donuts and the syrup mill last year, but now I have a better idea where they are. There’s also an arts festival at another nearby town on Saturday, but it looks like it might be a bit overwhelming. I may stay closer to home and do some activities in my town. There’s a concert taking place downtown on Saturday afternoon. Or there’s a ranger-led nature hike at a state park about an hour from here. That will have to depend on the weather.

The trees started changing colors in August but have stalled out since then. We’ve got a potential freeze alert for tomorrow morning, which might escalate things. Next weekend is probably closer to peak color here, so I’ll have to plan a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There’s so much fall to pack into just a few weeks.

Books

Franchise Creep

One of the latest issues coming up in the book world is fan fiction being sold and promoted as such by major publishers. Fan fiction is stories fans write using characters from existing works or set in those worlds, and authors writing fan fiction isn’t at all new. Many authors get their start in writing with fan fiction, whether actually writing it or just making up stories or playing out scenarios in their heads. The impulse to write often comes from reading or watching something and wanting either to fix it or to explore that world further. That leads to learning how to write and plot, which leads to writing their own stories. Sometimes a story that starts as fan fiction may get developed to the point it’s no longer actually fan fiction but is about original characters in an original world, or the author may be inspired by a character from another world and base an original character somewhat on that character, but with the author’s own spin. You’d only know the origins of the story if the author told about it or if you knew both the author’s interests and the fictional world that inspired them very well.

My first deliberate attempt at writing was something that spun off from mental fanfic. I’ve always entertained myself by making up stories in my head, often based on whatever TV show, book, or movie I was obsessed with at the time. Since there was only one girl in Star Wars, the girls in the neighborhood fought over who got to be Leia when we played Star Wars, and those who didn’t win had to make up their own characters. I had a lot of mental stories about my character, and along the way the stories focused so much on her and less on the Star Wars universe that they became original stories, and I then realized that if I wrote down these stories, I would have a book. I never actually finished that book because I was good at coming up with characters and situations but didn’t yet know how to plot a book, so I had a fun chapter one and nothing much more. I’m sure there are a lot of other authors who’ve done similar things. I know of a few works that started as something connected to another fictional universe, but I don’t know how open those authors are about it (some of it came up in personal conversations), so I’m not going to name names here.

What’s different is that now not only are the authors being open about the origin of their works that started as fan fiction, but the publishers are promoting these books as being essentially fan fiction, actually naming the characters and series they’re based on. That already happened with Fifty Shades of Grey starting as Twilight alternate universe fan fiction (putting the characters into different lives), but I don’t think the publisher actually pushed that connection. It was an open secret, but the publisher wasn’t promoting it with “It’s Twilight, but what if Edward was a kinky billionaire and Bella was a grad student.” Now there have been a number of books that started as fan fiction that changed the character names and details of the world and are now being published as original books, with the publisher actually promoting the fact that they’re really about those other characters, targeting fans of the original series.

I’m not going to get into the legality or ethics of that. My concern is that it’s extending the growth of the “franchise” mania to books. It’s already getting to the point that it’s nearly impossible these days to get a movie made that isn’t part of some franchise. It’s either a sequel or a remake of something that’s already been a hit or it’s based on something else, like a comic book, novel, or videogame. Books, at least, had to be original. There were tie-in novels, of course, but you don’t break in with those. Those are things that established authors get chosen to write. But are we getting to the point where your book has to be connected (although unofficially) to some established franchise in order to get it published? It used to be that if you submitted a book to a publisher and said that it was really about Han and Leia from Star Wars, even if they have different names and the names of the places are different, it would be an automatic rejection. Now that seems to be what they’re looking for, something they can market as being for fans of those other series.

I haven’t read any of the books in question, but the reviews I’ve seen mention that they don’t make a lot of sense out of context unless you’re reading them with fan fiction in mind because they’re so based on that other world that you have to know the original characters and their backstories from that original world for the story to make any sense. If you don’t know it’s fan fiction and aren’t familiar with the source material, the stories don’t work.

I haven’t tried to publish traditionally in a long time, but I hate the idea that in order to sell a book, I’ll have to write the story in which Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor actually survive the battle and run off together to fight in the Rebellion, but just changing their names and fudging the details enough to not be a trademark violation.

Actually, I’d love to write that story, and I might weave something similar to the concept into my own original world, but if I do it right, no one will know that’s where I got the idea. By the time I’ve developed the characters and their world, with a history for the conflict they’re fighting in and a fleshed-out setting, there will only be the tiniest seed of the original idea left. I just don’t want to get to the point where you can’t sell a book without it being fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off enough to appease the lawyers, while still being obvious enough that the publisher can market it to those fans. Even if we can’t get original movies or TV, we should be able to get books that aren’t part of a franchise.

Books

The Bookshop

This weekend I went to a talk on the history of bookselling in the United States, given by Evan Friss, author of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (a book on the topic), and it brought up so many thoughts. He led into the talk by telling about a particular bookstore that sounds pretty much like the Central Casting vision of a bookstore, all cozy and quaint, run by friendly people, with customers and staff who are like a community, the staff knowing the customers’ tastes and knowing books well enough to recommend just the right book to them. He talked about how there’s an emotional bond between customers and bookstores in a way that there isn’t with other retail, like hardware or grocery stores. After his book was published, he got a lot of letters from people telling him about their local bookstores (dismayed that he hadn’t mentioned them).

I realized while listening to his talk and seeing the pictures he showed of bookshops, that, as much as I love the idea of that kind of bookstore, I haven’t really had that kind of relationship with a bookstore. The closest may have been a used bookstore in the city near where we lived when I was in high school. That area was something of a book desert when I was a teenager, which was a huge culture shock to me (we moved there just before I started high school). The small town we lived just outside of didn’t have a library at that time. The school library was pretty much pointless. Of course, there was no bookstore. I don’t think we even got Scholastic book orders (we definitely didn’t have a book fair). We eventually found that we could buy a membership in a nearby town’s library, which was better than nothing. In the nearby city, there was a B. Dalton in the mall, where you could get current releases and bestsellers and a small selection of mass-market paperbacks. And there was a pretty big used bookstore.

Up until around the time I graduated from high school, it was located in an old strip mall. It occupied a couple of the storefronts, and they seem to have also moved into what would have been the back part of one of the shops. That meant there were multiple rooms, with little passageways and steps in between sections. It was the kind of bookstore where you could easily get lost, possibly even find yourself in a magical realm. The man who ran it looked like Santa Claus, but sometimes his wife (who would have made a good Mrs. Claus) was working. I don’t recall it being the kind of bookstore where the booksellers knew their customers’ tastes and hand-sold books or made recommendations. They did know their customers, but they let customers browse on their own and make their own discoveries. The shop was near the hospital district, so whenever I went to the doctor and found that I would have to stay home from school, we’d make a stop at the bookstore on the way home to stock up on reading material. I remember one time when I’d completely lost my voice due to a tracheal infection and was being sent home to rest after seeing the doctor, we stopped for books, and I found a book that was a sequel to one I’d read, but the only copy they had was a trade paperback, which was out of my price range. I was disappointed, but then Mrs. Claus declared that it had water damage and marked it down.

It probably did have some water damage, as the old strip mall was located just under a hill and tended to flood. Late in my senior year of high school, they got a new building in a different part of town. It was nicer, but it was less convenient and less atmospheric. I understand it closed a few years ago. The owner died, and the people who took it over said they weren’t getting in a lot of books. I guess the rise of e-books meant a decline in books being sold to used bookstores.

I know we’re supposed to hate the big chain stores, but I loved it when Barnes & Noble came to town. They felt like cozy bookstores, with their big, comfy chairs, but they were big enough to have a lot of stuff. And they had coffee shops! I don’t like coffee, but I really tried so I could properly hang out in a B&N cafe. I used to take my copyedits for the first few Enchanted, Inc. books to my neighborhood B&N to review. I could spread out on a cafe table, have a cup of tea, and it was near the reference section in case I needed to look something up. Alas, that store got closed down and later demolished so they could expand the nearby Kroger.

Now, I live in a town with one of those “right out of a movie” bookshops. It’s in an old downtown shop, complete with the display window in front and wood floors, but I don’t spend a lot of time there. Mostly, I don’t have room for more books in my house. I mostly get my books from the library or as e-books. I only buy print books I’ve already read and know I want a “keeper” copy of. Books are too expensive for me to do my exploring in a shop rather than a library.

A quaint Victorian small-town Main Street. To the right, there's a small storefront with display windows and a sign hangs overhead showing a dragon curled up on a stack of books.
You can see the town’s bookstore to the right. Doesn’t it look like just the right shop for that setting?

However, our library is also pretty atmospheric. It’s in an old (early 1900s) elementary (or possibly junior high) school building, with those front steps like in movie schools, tall windows, and the wooden floors on the main level. When you go up and down the stairs between levels, you can almost hear the ghost footsteps of kids running up and down the stairs.

I’ll have to read this book about bookstores when I finish my current stack of books. It sounds like good cozy fall or winter reading.

Life

Easy Time

I’ve finished work on Rydding Village book 4, Weaving and Wyverns. I’m just waiting on a cover, which is supposed to come in the next few days.

Now I’m going to get to do what I’ve been saying I want to do for years: take October off. I won’t be entirely off, but I won’t be doing work that chains me to my desk at my favorite time of year. I’m not going to be writing a first draft, editing, or proofreading. I’ll mostly be doing some planning, plotting, and brainstorming for future projects. I also have some business and promotional work I need to do and some projects I want to get started in that area. But the working time will be flexible. I’m allowing myself to take time off. If it’s a lovely day and I want to go for a hike, I will. If it’s a cool, rainy day, I’ll spend the day baking and curled up on the sofa with a book. There are a couple of day trips I want to take. There’s an old logging train in West Virginia that now does excursions into the mountains, and I want to do that. I also want to visit Monticello. On weekends, there are so many festivals around the area to visit.

I guess I need to work on the house, as well. I need to organize the basement, and now that things aren’t growing so furiously, I might be able to catch up on getting rid of weeds in my yard. I’d like to unearth the fire pit so I can have a real bonfire night or two. Right now, it’s full of weeds.

But this weekend will mostly be for rest. This morning I had a meeting in a nearby town and did some shopping while I was there. I may hit the community garden market later in the afternoon and try to time it to coincide with the steam train that will be coming by. Saturday is supposed to be cool and rainy, and I’m going to spend a very lazy day with tea and books.

movies, fantasy

Returning to The Hobbit

Earlier this week, it was Hobbit Day, the anniversary of the original publication of The Hobbit. I decided to celebrate by watching the 1977 animated TV movie version. For one thing, it’s about the only incarnation of the story you can get through in under an hour and a half, but for another, it was in some ways my introduction to that universe and even to fantasy fiction.

I was in elementary school then, and my teacher would read a chapter from a book to us every day after recess, I guess as a way of settling us all down. As the airing of the TV movie approached, she read The Hobbit. I recall there were some other linked lessons that tied it into the curriculum, but I don’t remember details about them. I did as I always did when she read us a book and got impatient with the chapter-a-day pace, checked the book out of the library, and read it much faster so that I was done well before the class was. When the TV movie came on, I told my parents that it was homework, so I had to watch it.

A stone coaster with the original illustrated cover of The Hobbit on it.
The edition my teacher read looked like this, so when I saw a coaster of it, I had to get it.

I didn’t remember much about the movie itself, not even whether I liked it or how I thought it compared to the book. I was in the midst of Star Wars mania at the time, so I don’t think it registered too much. It was a brief diversion from all things Star Wars, and I wasn’t interested if there weren’t spaceships and laser swords. I was too young for The Lord of the Rings at that time, so I’m not sure where else I could have gone with it if I had really gotten into The Hobbit and wanted more like it. I guess I could have found the Narnia books sooner (I had read The Horse and His Boy during my horse phase, but I read it more as a talking horse book than as a fantasy novel and didn’t know it was part of a series). I was reading the Oz books around this time. I don’t think I’d yet figured out the concept of genre. I just read the books I liked that were about things I was interested in at that time. I hadn’t realized that there were categories of books that similar books fit into.

It was a couple of years later before I got into the Narnia books and from there spotted The Fellowship of the Ring in the library and remembered that this was a follow-up to that book I read before the TV movie came on. Then I went into a big fantasy phase that I’ve never quite come out of.

It was interesting to revisit the animated movie after all this time, after having seen the bloated epic saga of the live-action version and having read and re-read the books. In a lot of respects, the animated version is more faithful to the book than the live-action version was. It doesn’t contain a lot of made-up stuff that isn’t in the book. It does skip some things, but I think it’s proof that they could have done a faithful adaptation in around two hours. I think Tolkien would have approved of all the insertions of folk-style songs into the soundtrack, though he might have been baffled by the disco synth sounds that often came up in the score, especially for action scenes.

If you’ve got kids you want to introduce to that universe, this would be a good option. They skim over any serious violence, like zooming out and showing dots on a map as a way of depicting the battle, and it’s very much done as though aimed at kids, focusing on the stuff kids would find interesting. It’s also a fun watch for adults who want to reset their brains after the live-action attempt at this story. Their Smaug and Gollum are a bit of a letdown compared to the live-action versions. They have a very different take on the wood elves and the dwarfs than we get in live action (no hot young dwarfs). On the other hand, their trolls look a lot more like the traditional Scandinavian depictions, and I like their take on the goblins. It is very, very 70s, so depending on your age it may be a blast from the past or so retro that it’s a bit campy.