My Books

Rydding Village Book 2

Bread and Burglary book coverAfter a bit of a delay caused by my move across the country, followed by another delay due to my procrastination about getting a book cover made, I’m pleased to announce that Bread and Burglary, book two in the Tales of Rydding Village series, will be published August 7, and the e-book is currently available for preorder. There will be a paperback on release day, but they don’t let you preorder those.

This book follows up on Tea and Empathy, continuing with the development of what’s going on with Elwyn and Bryn from that book, but also focusing on Lucina the baker. We find out why she has so much trouble sleeping, and finding out that the guard who stayed to become the new apprentice smith is from the homeland she had to flee doesn’t help matters. Things get even worse when items begin disappearing from people’s homes, and of course the newcomer is the first suspect. Lucina worries they’ll start to wonder about her, too, if he’s the thief, so the best thing she can do is try to clear his name. Meanwhile, he’s homesick and excited to meet someone from his homeland.

It’s my usual mix of mystery, magic, and a hint of romance. And this one will make you hungry because there’s a lot of baking. I did a fair amount of baking while I was plotting it and writing the first draft. I wrote the first draft before the move, then started revising it while I was waiting for my furniture to be delivered to my new home. Without Internet or a television, I didn’t have a lot else to do, so I spent a whole day reading the draft and making revision notes.

I already have the next book planned and partially outlined, so I hope to be able to get that one out before the end of the year.

I set August 7 as the release date because that’s my birthday. I figured I’d be sure to remember it, and it gives me something else to celebrate. I don’t know what I’ll do for my birthday, since I don’t know a lot of people here and it seems like most of the places downtown are closed on Wednesdays. Celebrating a book release helps make the day special, no matter what else I do, but I’m pretty sure cake will be involved. Buying the new book would make a great birthday gift for me. I have dreams of making it at least onto the top ten list of one of the Amazon categories.

movies, fantasy

The Journey’s Beginning

Last weekend, I decided to go back to where it all began and rewatch the movie that got me started thinking about that whole romantic fantasy road trip subgenre, which made me realize it was a thing that I like, which made me realize that a story idea I had long ago actually could fit into that, which led me to replot it and try to write it. I’m currently rewriting it (I’ve been working on it off and on, but I’ve also written seven other books and a number of novellas since then), so since I found this movie on Hoopla, I thought I’d rewatch.

Back in early 2021, I started watching a fantasy movie called The Crown and the Dragon on Amazon, and very early in the movie I knew that this was a kind of movie I’d like, so I stopped it to go make popcorn before settling down to properly watch it. It perfectly fit what I later identified as the romantic fantasy road trip story structure. I’d never seen it before, but I knew each major beat that would happen — not really predicting the outcome, just knowing where the turning points would be. It was interesting rewatching it after doing so much thinking about this topic.

This movie is just barely fantasy cheese. It looks gorgeous. There’s not a lot of info on IMDB, but based on the names of most of the production crew, I’m guessing it was filmed in Ireland. The cinematography is excellent, the score is good, and the acting is far above most fantasy cheese. The actors are neither wooden nor overdoing it. Most of them don’t have a lot of film credits, so I’m guessing they mostly cast Irish stage actors. The two things that drag the movie down are the effects and the plot. Any time a dragon shows up, it’s painful. It’s like someone taped a stick figure drawing of a dragon to the film, or else like a really bad Photoshop job where you can tell that an image has just been pasted into another image, without correcting the light angles, shadows, etc. Then there’s the plot.

Not that the plot is necessarily bad. There aren’t big holes or logical leaps. It just seems to be missing a lot of context. I’ve watched this movie twice, and I still don’t have a good sense of what’s actually going on. The heroine is on a mission to bring a particular item to a castle in time for a king to be crowned, while the bad guys are trying to stop this, and yet we never see the king and we don’t really know why he needs this item. The item’s actually needed for fighting a dragon. We don’t know who the bad guys are or what they’re trying to do. I know fantasy writers are encouraged to leave some of their worldbuilding off the page because you don’t have to explain everything, but you do need to leave the stuff that’s essential for understanding the story. This movie feels like it was based on an 800-page novel that had to be cut down to a two-hour movie, and then the movie had to be cut to under 90 minutes so it could be on TV. Given that this movie is just under 90 minutes and has transitions that seem like they were created to stick in commercial breaks, I wonder if maybe it did start as a longer movie, then the only distribution it got was on TV, so they ended up cutting the stuff that explained the plot.

But it really does fit my pattern. We have the hero and heroine striking the bargain for him to help her get to the castle. There’s bickering along the way, until they’re attacked by the bad guys and barely escape together, which leads to a bonding scene and later to dancing. At their destination, he’s ready to leave her to her destiny, but then he returns to her and helps her achieve her destiny.

The romance is satisfying (though a bit more development in the middle might have helped). The fantasy elements had potential if they’d been explained a bit more. They needed much better dragon effects because that was 1980s-level bad, even though this movie was from the 21st century. There are some continuity issues (that may result from things being cut), like the heroine falling in mud in one scene and the same clothes being pristine in the next scene, or the hero having nothing but the clothes he’s wearing, and then in the next scene, with no explanation he has on different clothes and a sword. Or the time he drops the sword and dives into the ocean to escape a bad guy in one scene, but then in the next scene he has the sword again after he’s out of the water. All in all I’d say the impression is good fantasy cheese that’s a bit frustrating because with a bit of work and a slightly bigger budget it could have been a good romantasy movie. The people making the movie did a good enough job with what must have been a tiny budget that they should have been able to get the chance to go on and do bigger and better things. I remain annoyed by the scarcity of good, big-budget fantasy films. There’s clearly an audience, but aside from the Lord of the Rings movies, it’s like the studios have no clue what to do with them. They don’t know how to pick projects, and they utterly fail in promoting them, which then creates the self-fulfilling prophecy that fantasy movies don’t do well enough to justify the budgets they require.

My Books

Twenty Years Ago

Enchanted, Inc. book cover, showing cartoon fairy and frog prince in business attireOn Monday (July 22 if you’re reading the archives), it will have been twenty years since I got the book deal to have the first two Enchanted, Inc. books published.

I wrote the first book in the fall of 2003, got an agent in early 2004, then spent some time making revisions that my agent suggested. The book went out on submission to editors in late May. I’d been published before and was used to dealing with publishers, but I still was rather naively optimistic. I was so sure that the idea was clever and perfect for the market, so I had high hopes of the book being eagerly snatched up by publishers.

That wasn’t quite the case. Rejections began trickling in. By the time July rolled around, I was starting to get nervous. There were some positive signs, though. A number of editors loved it and had passed it on to the next level for consideration.

Then in mid July, one publisher announced the intention to make an offer on it. Since it was still with several other publishers, that triggered an auction. That’s when all the editors who are interested in a book have to make offers by a certain time, and then there’s negotiation as the agent lets all the interested parties know what’s on the table. A big part of it is money, but other things can also come into play, like whether they’re willing to go for a multi-book deal, the payment schedule on the advance, what promotion will be involved, and publication date. You might be willing to take a lower advance to get the book published faster, for instance. There might be conference calls with the editors to discuss their vision and plans for the book so the author can figure out which editor they want to deal with.

The auction was originally set for July 21, but there was a schedule conflict, so it was moved to July 22. As soon as the auction was announced, more rejections rolled in as publishers declined to participate. I was beginning to wonder what would happen if you had an auction but nobody came. At least I still had that initial publisher, right? Except they couldn’t make an offer because the executive who needed to sign off on it was out of touch. But then an offer came in from Ballantine Books. My agent didn’t think the other publisher could match it, so we took that offer. I’d sold my book in a two-book deal, so it was guaranteed a sequel.

There have been times when I’ve wondered if maybe we should have waited on that other publisher. They were going to publish it as fantasy, while Ballantine was publishing it on the mainstream side of the house as chick lit. The chick lit market tanked not long after the second book was published (but fortunately after I got another two-book deal for books three and four), but the urban fantasy market was just taking off.

I celebrated the book sale by buying a pair of shoes, the shoes now known as the Infamous Red Stilettos. I’d spotted them when shopping with a friend around the time I landed an agent, and I was drawn to them about the same way Katie was in Once Upon Stilettos. I didn’t have the money for them, but I told my friend that if I sold the book, I’d buy those shoes. When I called her to tell her I’d sold the book, she told me we were going shoe shopping. It was during that shopping trip that I made a quip about the shoes being magical, and that was when I came up with that storyline for the next book (I already had the part about the corporate spy in the proposal I’d sent to the publisher).

The timing of the sale worked out great because there was a big writing conference the next week, so I got to celebrate with my writer friends and meet my agent in person.

I can’t believe it’s been twenty years. Surprisingly, that book is still in print, when a lot of other books that came out around that time (and got more of a publicity push) have gone out of print. It’s been optioned for film/TV twice, though both times the option was allowed to lapse without anything getting done. It’s been published around the world in a number of languages. I have copies on my shelf in Japanese, Dutch, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese, to name a few. The series ended up being nine books and a short story collection, which is more than I originally planned. I’d planned it as a five-book series.

I think a celebration is in order for Monday. I won’t buy more shoes, but maybe I’ll get some ice cream when I go to the community band concert in the park that night.

movies

Good Fantasy Cheese

I actually managed to watch a whole movie last weekend, something I hadn’t done since the move. It was one I thought might fit my fantasy road trip pattern, something in the “fantasy cheese” category that I originally saw on a Saturday night on the Sci Fi Channel. It’s currently streaming on most of the ad-supported services, but it’s also on the hoopla library system, without ads.

The movie is George and the Dragon, but it showed on Sci Fi as something like Dragonsword, and it’s a rather odd movie. To paraphrase a line from a book I had as a kid, when it’s good, it’s very, very good, but when it’s bad, it’s horrible.

The story is essentially a spin on the St. George and the dragon myth. War-weary Sir George returns home after the Crusades and just wants a plot of land where he can live a quiet life. He goes to the king to ask permission to buy some land and learns that the king’s daughter has disappeared on the eve of her wedding. The king says he’ll give George the land if he can find the princess. But the princess has other plans involving what may be the last dragon egg, and George isn’t a fan of dragons after one maimed his father (though he’s not entirely sure he believes his father about that).

When compared to the other fantasy cheese movies on Sci Fi, this one is a cut above. When compared to “real” movies, it’s on the B-movie end of things. It’s very tongue-in-cheek in a lot of places. I got the feeling the filmmakers were trying to do something along the lines of The Princess Bride, with some self-aware humor. The fact that the closing credits are bloopers and outtakes shows that the movie wasn’t meant to be taken entirely seriously, and for the most part the humor works, though there are some odd bits like a skateboard chase scene involving a priest (that I would suspect could be mapped onto the similar scenes in Back to the Future). Yes, a medieval skateboard chase. The priest lands on a little wagon and the sides fall off, turning it into a skateboard. This has very little to do with the overall plot, but it sets the tone.

The casting is mostly better than the usual fantasy cheese movie, in that most of the actors are moderately (even well) known and most of them are quite good. We have James Purefoy and Piper Perabo as the leads, with people like Simon Callow and Joan Plowright in small roles, Val Kilmer in an uncredited cameo, and Michael Clarke Duncan and Patrick Swayze in supporting roles.

Swayze is by far the weakest link and the biggest “why?” in the movie. Not that he’s bad if you take his performance out of context. He does a good job portraying his character and seems to be having a lot of fun. The problem is that the movie is set in medieval England, and Swayze sounds like he’s from Texas. I’m sure it would have been even worse if he’d attempted an English accent, but this is worse than Kevin Costner’s attempt at Robin Hood. True, the people in this time period (and more on that later) would have been speaking either Norman French or Old English and we have to assume that everyone is being translated into modern English, but it would help if everyone who’s from the same place sounds like they’re at least from the same continent. (Duncan and Kilmer also use American accents, but they’re not supposed to be English, so it’s not so grating.) Piper Perabo is American (and also a Texan), but she does a decent English accent (at least, to my American ears).

As for the time period, I’m not sure what was going on with that. George is returning from the Crusades (in an opening that’s basically a copy of Prince of Thieves), which would put this after the Norman Conquest, but we’re dealing with a King Edgar, who’s not on the list of Norman kings, and who has his court in the north of England, where the main threat is from the Picts, which would put this during the Saxon era and before the Saxon kingdoms consolidated — long before the Crusades. This is supposedly England in our world, but at times they treat it like secondary world fantasy. The costumes are generic medieval-ish. Some of the men’s costumes are pretty good, aside from the poor kid who goes through the movie with a bath mat tied around his shoulder. The princess wears a dress that’s obviously polyester stretch velvet. She looks like she’s wearing a princess costume from Spirit Halloween.

But George is a wonderful character, going through all this stuff when he really just wants a quiet life, and Purefoy manages to find a nice balance in making him world-weary without being a downer. The duke the princess is supposed to marry keeps trying to make him jealous about marrying the princess, and George doesn’t care. He just wants his land. He and the princess have good chemistry. She’s very much the modern “spunky princess,” but I think it works here. As long as the film focuses on George, the princess, the royal advisor, and the kid who’s helping them, the film is a lot of fun. There are some excellent fight scenes that are quite inventive, especially one where there are multiple factions and shifting allegiances, with people going from fighting each other to fighting the common enemy and then back to fighting each other. In these parts, Patrick Swayze is even good, probably because he’s not talking.

This is very much a turn-off-your-brain popcorn flick, but it can be fun if you’re looking for a fantasy film you haven’t seen dozens of times (why are there so few good fantasy films?). It’s better than some of the cheaply made movies on the free streaming services and the lead characters are pretty likable. It has a nice ending that leaves you with a smile.

It turned out not to really fit my fantasy road trip pattern because the road trip is a very small part of the movie. It’s the good part, which may be why that was all I remembered of it. It is kind of a fantasy rom-com, though the hero and heroine don’t meet until about halfway through the movie.

Books, TV

Reboots

It seems like half the movies and TV shows being made right now are reboots of some kind or another. The movie listings have to include dates so that you’ll know which version it is. If you look at the TV schedule, you might think you were back in the mid-80s because all the shows seem to have come from that era. There’s Night Court, The Equalizer, and for a while there were new versions of Magnum, PI and Hawaii 5-0 (I don’t know if they’re still on).

Night Court is a sequel, of sorts, following up on the characters and events of the original series, with the daughter of the original series’ main character taking over the courtroom where her father once presided and the prosecutor from the original series now coming out of retirement to be a public defender. There’s a Frasier reboot that’s also apparently a sequel (I haven’t watched it).

I believe Magnum, Hawaii 5-0 (the only one of this bunch I’ve watched), The Equalizer, and the new Walker, Texas Ranger are all reboots/reimaginings, taking the concept of the original series and doing an entirely new series set in the present day.

I loved the old Night Court but found the new one to be not funny at all. I think part of the problem was that it was still essentially an 80s sitcom, so it felt stale and dated to me. This might have been the perfect opportunity to really reimagine it and change the format. The concept of the series could have made for a good mockumentary, like The Office or Parks and Recreation, since a young judge taking over the courtroom where her father once presided is the sort of thing someone might make a documentary about. It would have been interesting to see these characters when they knew they were on camera.

This got me started pondering what other series they could reboot. They already did Charlies Angels as a movie. Remington Steele could be quite timely in the era of #MeToo. It’s basically a series about sexism and mansplaining, since it’s about a woman who’s an expert in her field but has so much trouble being taken seriously that she has to invent a male boss to be the figurehead for her business, and then when a con artist steps into the role of the imaginary boss, people listen to him even though he has no expertise. It might be interesting to turn it from a romantic comedy to a psychological thriller, given that he’s essentially blackmailing her and holding her business hostage. As much as I loved Pierce Brosnan in the series, it is kind of creepy that the characters fell in love, when you think about it (though I missed the final season or two when they got together because I was in college without TV access).

Since they rebooted Magnum, they could do a follow-up series of Simon and Simon, its schedule mate. That was a series about two brothers who were complete opposites (one a slick preppie, one a laid-back cowboy) running a small private investigation agency in San Diego, and I think the timing works out that they could do a series about their kids having taken over the agency. Make one of the cousins a woman, and maybe she’s the laid-back one who likes the agency the way it is while her male cousin wants to grow the business to be a major agency.

I wonder if a reboot of Moonlighting would work. That was the series that introduced Bruce Willis. It was about a former model (Cybill Shepherd) who lost all her money when her accountant cheated her and fled the country. One of the few investments she had left was a low-end private investigation agency that was meant to be a tax write-off. She decided to go to work there and actually run it to make money, since it was her remaining source of income, and she clashed with the wacky detective who’d been running the place. A lot of the success of the series was due to Bruce Willis’s personal charisma and the chemistry between him and Shepherd (though apparently they actually loathed each other), so I’m not sure if you could recapture that. I’d just want to see someone play with that concept and be willing to do some of the wild stuff they did, like the black-and-white episode or the one where they did The Taming of the Shrew, but without it flying horribly off the rails in the later seasons. “The Moonlighting Curse” is what they call a series being ruined by the leads getting together romantically, but I don’t think it was the fact that they got together romantically so much as it was the way they got together. They dragged it out a bit too much with the will they/won’t they and a lot of contrived obstacles, then got the monkey wrench of Shepherd’s real-life pregnancy, with twins, so it was impossible to hide it behind a potted plant, and that led to writing the pregnancy in with weird stuff like the fetus’s perspective. I think you could have them get together without it ruining the series if it were done gradually without all the monkey wrenches. The basic personality clashes would still be there.

Thinking about all this made me ponder whether you could do a reboot of a book. I know long-running franchises like the Nancy Drew books get updated. Nancy keeps getting moved forward in time, from the 30s to the 50s and then to the 70s and to modern times. Apparently, she’s now a modern teen with a cell phone and Internet. I just know as a kid I liked the 30s and 50s ones, hated the newer 70s ones because Nancy’s clothes were a lot better on the covers and in the illustrations when she wasn’t wearing bell bottoms.

But would there be any market for taking a book published in the 80s or 90s and rewriting it to take place in the 2020s? Would the author write the same concept differently if they wrote it now? I found myself thinking about that as I approach the 20th anniversary of selling Enchanted, Inc. to a publisher. How would I write it differently if I wrote it now? Not just going in and adding smart phones and changing the pop culture references, but taking that same concept of a woman immune to magic being recruited by a magical company and writing it again. What would be different if I did that? I can’t say for certain, mostly because I have zero interest in doing that, so I can’t wrap my brain around it. It’s not the kind of story I want to tell now.

Looking at my bookcase, there’s nothing that really jumps out at me as a “I wish the author could go back and redo this” situation, though that’s probably because I only have the books I absolutely love on my bookcase (especially after all the purging I did before the move). I wouldn’t have kept the ones that needed a do over.

Is there a book you’d want to see revisited and updated in some way?

In other news, Interview with a Dead Editor is part of a promotion for cozy fantasy-type books today. Check it out to find more cozy reading.

Life

New Habits

Supposedly, making a big break in routine is good for creativity because it forces the brain to make new connections and pathways. The example I’ve seen most often is that brushing your teeth with the opposite hand from the one you usually use will make you a bit more creative all day because you’ll have set yourself up for thinking differently, or taking a different route to and from work will make you more creative. If that’s the case then a big move like the one I made should make my creativity explode because I’m having to rethink everything.

A lot of that comes from fitting a two-bedroom house (one bedroom used as an office) with two living areas into a small one-bedroom apartment. Along the way, I got rid of several bookcases, a large desk, and a lot of plastic storage baskets and bins. That means I can’t put things away in the same places where they were in the old house. I started to automatically shelve books on the same bookcase where they were in the old house, then stopped to consider when I use those books. For instance, I started to put my writing books on the same bookcase where they used to go, but it’s now serving as my entryway. It used to sit beside my desk, so I could swivel in my desk chair and get to those books for reference. Now there’s a different bookcase in my office area. I moved the writing books over there so I could get to them when I was writing and put other books on that shelf.

Setting up the kitchen also forced me to rethink things. There aren’t a lot of cabinets in the tiny kitchen here, though there is a large pantry. I automatically put the dishes in the cabinet near the sink, over the dish drainer. That would be an obvious and convenient place for them, but that cabinet is small and up high. The rack I have for inside a cabinet that allows you to stack dishes and still be able to access them didn’t fit in that cabinet, so I would have had to stack dishes a different way. I couldn’t make them all fit, and it was up high enough that I’d have needed a step stool to reach some of the dishes. Then I got the bright idea to put that dish rack in the pantry, where it fits. I have the dishes I don’t use often on the top shelf of the cabinet, and I moved some of the things from the pantry to the cabinet. It’s maybe a bit of a pain to go to the hall where the pantry is to get out the dishes, but I wash dishes daily, so I’m mostly just getting them out of the dish drainer, anyway. I do still automatically reach for that cabinet, but I’m starting to develop some different habits.

I was having trouble finding a good place to do yoga. In my old house, I had a big open space between the sofa and TV. I could put on a YouTube yoga video and roll out the mat in front of the TV. Here, the only space in the living room is in the path from the front door toward the kitchen area, and it was pretty cramped. Then I realized that I have a nice, big open area in my bedroom. I can bring my laptop in there for the videos. It was a big mindset shift to exercise in the bedroom, but I had room to move, and it was a rather peaceful setting.

Then there are all the other changes to get used to, like going to different grocery stores. They have a Kroger here, but it’s vastly different from the one in my old neighborhood, and they have stores we didn’t have back there. I’m figuring out which one I like best. I tried a new one yesterday, and I’m not sure what I think. It was probably closest to being like the Kroger in my old neighborhood, but it had just enough differences to throw me off. It seems like different things are less expensive in each of the stores I’ve tried, so I may have to go to multiple stores to get everything I need.

I’m still reworking and rewiring habits to figure out what works best for the way I’m living now, and I’ll have to do it all over again when I get a new house. I think the year of living in a really small space will help me learn what’s essential, and I’ll certainly appreciate having a real office again.

Now we’ll see if my creativity explodes because of all this.

Life

July 4

I enjoyed my small-town July 4 celebrations. There were some downsides from living close to the festivities (I got to hear the all-day concert, whether or not I wanted to), but it was nice to be able to do the things I wanted to do without worrying about traffic or parking. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to enjoy a July 4 fireworks show and then have a 5-minute (or less) walk home.

First, there was a parade in the morning. They used the road that runs through the park, so the only road that had to be blocked off was the one they used for lining up the parade units, and there were a lot of nice, shady spots along the route. It wasn’t unpleasant to sit outside in the shade. I think this may have been my first July 4 parade at which I didn’t end up with a bad sunburn. Most of the parade units seemed to be either people showing off their classic or fancy cars or businesses and organizations promoting themselves. Some just drove their business vehicles in the parade, like the HVAC company with a truck full of air conditioning units or the cement truck. Some got a bit creative, like the company that installs rock and stone countertops that played “We Will Rock You” on a loop as they drove their truck with stone countertops in the back. Most of these groups passed out candy or promotional gizmos.

So, when I saw the Little Debbie delivery truck coming down the road, I joked to the people sitting by me that this was the unit I hoped passed out samples — and then they came around handing out packets of brownies.

No marching bands, probably because school’s out for the summer and it would be hard to round everyone up, but there was a bagpipe band. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America” played on bagpipes. They must have been pretty good because I could identify the songs, and that’s not always the case with bagpipes. They also played “Shenandoah,” which seems to be mandatory around here. It’s a major earworm for me because we sang it for one of the patriotic concerts in choir, but I only remember a couple of lines that repeat themselves in my head, and every time I hear the word “Shenandoah” it triggers the song. Living in the Shenandoah Valley, it’s pretty much running non-stop because I think every local ad during the news talks about being in the Shenandoah Valley. I need to find exactly where the river runs and pay a visit.

I took a turn through the carnival grounds after the parade, but there were threatening clouds, so I headed home, and it started raining soon afterward. I ended up spending the afternoon indoors, watching 1776 and reading. I watched the Capitol Fourth concert on PBS, then it was time for our local fireworks, which were pretty good for a small town. I didn’t have the best vantage point because there were some trees and a streetlamp in the way, but now I know the general area of where to go, and it beats sitting in traffic.

I also got a sense of what it’s like living on this end of the park, which may factor into my decision of where I want to buy a house. The neighborhood I’m mostly targeting is on the other side of the park, so it will be convenient for the weekly band concerts and general park activities, but the big concerts at the baseball stadium shouldn’t be as loud. It wasn’t too bad as long as I kept the TV or the stereo going. It was like a neighbor was playing music too loud inside their house if I didn’t have my own noise going. The main issue was that the neighborhood dogs were going nuts from the noise. The barking was more annoying than the music.

Now I’m trying to get in a normal day’s work, and I keep forgetting it’s Friday rather than Monday. It feels like a Monday. In fact, it took me a few minutes after I woke up to realize what day it was, and then I had to hurry to take my trash out because Friday is garbage day (I actually got it out an hour before the garbage truck came by, but the panic came from realizing I could have missed it).

Life, My Books

Life Imitating Art

When I announced my move to a small town nestled in a valley, I got teased a bit about having actually moved to Rydding Village. But this wouldn’t be the first time my life has ended up reflecting something I’ve written about.

In my very first published novel, the heroine is the daughter of a successful romance author and is trying unsuccessfully to write her own romance novel, but she has a big breakthrough when she realizes what she really should be writing is fantasy. It took me five published romance novels and a lot of rejected romance novels before I had that realization for myself. The very first thing I tried to write was actually sort of a Star Wars mental fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, but when I got serious about writing, it was fantasy. I got sidetracked into romance because the best organization for learning the business of publishing and the craft of writing a novel at the time was the Romance Writers of America, and since there were so many more romances published and there were romance publishers who didn’t require authors to have agents, that seemed “easier.” It took me many years of banging my head against the wall of romance writing and publishing before I had the grand epiphany that I didn’t actually like romance novels all that much and that what I really liked reading and writing was fantasy. I do like to have a love story in my fantasy, but I’m not crazy about the way love stories are told in the romance genre.

I ended up getting the job the heroine has in my third published book. I’d just made up a job based on things I knew enough about to write about, then put it in a particular setting. It wasn’t until I was working in the new job a few years later that I realized I was doing the exact job in the exact circumstances I’d written about.

One of the reasons I ended up deciding to make this move was that I realized I’d been writing a bunch of books that all involved characters living in or finding a hidden enclave nestled among mountains. Most of them haven’t been published (yet?), but it was such a strong theme that I finally realized that maybe this was something I wanted.

In a book I’ve been working on off and on for years, one of the issues the female main character is dealing with early in the book is that she feels stuck where she is and wants to find somewhere else to go. I wrote that part before I even started seriously contemplating the idea of moving, so I guess it was a subconscious thing I was wrestling with.

I think I was imagining this town more than twenty years ago because while I was trying to write romance, one of my “banging my head against the wall” books was set in a small town. I described the town’s July 4 celebration in detail (it was a major part of the book). It turns out that this town’s July 4 celebration is pretty much exactly what I described in that book (which will never see the light of day. It’s so far from what I want to write that there’s no point in publishing it, and the plot is now so outdated it wouldn’t work). Fortunately, the whole celebration takes place at the park at the end of my street, so I can walk over there to check it out and see how close to it I got with my descriptions. I guess it’s not too different from the things a lot of towns do for July 4, but it wasn’t the way the small town I was from did things, and the city where I was living at the time didn’t do things that way. I made it up entirely based on what I thought should happen in a town like that, decades before I knew this town existed.

I don’t know if I have subconscious longings that come out in my books or if there’s something else going on. With the job I wrote about before I knew it was a real job, it wasn’t actually a job I wanted to do, and it turned out to be kind of a nightmare. I do think the fantasy vs. romance was something I knew deep down inside and wasn’t ready to let myself believe. As for the move to “Rydding,” I’m pretty sure that was a longing. I’d been considering making a change for years, and when I was trying to come up with some paranormal or fantasy women’s fiction, I kept coming back to the same kind of place. I knew I wanted something like that for myself. It just took me a lot of research to find it.

Most of my books don’t come true, though. I haven’t found a job at a magical company and I haven’t connected with a hot wizard, alas.

TV, movies

Bi-Starial

Earlier in the year, the New York Times crossword puzzle had a clue that was “the better of two science fiction franchises,” and it worked whether you answered Star Wars or Star Trek (there were two possible answers for the crossing words). I actually had to waver between them and ended up doing the thing where you put both letters in the square, showing it could be either. I’ve never really understood the whole Star Trek vs. Star Wars thing because I’m very much on team Why Not Both. I guess you could say I’m bi-starial. I have a long history with both franchises and my obsession has swayed back and forth, depending on what’s more prominent in my life at any given time.

My mom says she used to nurse me as an infant while watching the original run of the original Star Trek (yes, I’m old), so I guess you could say I’ve been a fan since birth. I have vague memories of seeing episodes as a child, and I watched the animated series. But then I saw the original Star Wars when I was nine and became utterly obsessed with that for about six years.

The Star Wars obsession faded somewhat after Return of the Jedi, I think in part because the story seemed to be over and there was no more speculation about what would happen next to keep me occupied. Also, none of my friends seemed to be into it (I later found there were a lot more closet geeks in my hometown than I realized, but we were all keeping quiet about it and it took us thirty years to find each other), which gave me nothing to keep the obsession going. But then one of the local TV stations started showing Star Trek reruns every afternoon, right around the time we got home from school (my parents worked at the school, so we all commuted together), so it became a family routine to get home from school and watch Star Trek. We’d gone to see the movies, and I knew enough about it to know who the characters were, but I hadn’t really watched the series in any depth, and when I did, that obsession hit. I found some of the novels at the used bookstore and finally appreciated the stories in the movies.

The Star Trek obsession was reinforced when I got to college and the gang on my dorm floor gathered every afternoon to watch before trooping down to the cafeteria for dinner. I was the journalism major surrounded mostly by engineering and computer science majors, so Star Trek was one of the things I could talk to them about and sound reasonably intelligent. The Next Generation came on while I was in college, and we also gathered to watch that, usually after dinner on Saturday nights. I got really into that show and even bought the novels as they came out. We did watch the Star Wars trilogy on our movie nights every so often, so the Star Wars thing was still lurking. It just wasn’t top of mind during those years.

There was a slight resurgence in the Star Wars interest after I graduated from college when the original Timothy Zahn novels came out, actually continuing the story, but I didn’t much like most of the Expanded Universe books that came afterward. Then Deep Space Nine came on, and I was back to Star Trek obsession. I started watching both Voyager and Enterprise, but I didn’t finish those series (I did come back to watch the Voyager finale, though). The Star Wars Special Editions came out during this phase, and I did go see those with friends from work, but The Phantom Menace didn’t revive the Star Wars obsession too much. It was Attack of the Clones that did that, and that came after Deep Space Nine ended, so there was no Star Trek at the time. This was the first new Star Wars movie to come out when I was in a place in my life when I could see it as often as I wanted to, and I actually wanted to, so one of my friends and I went to see it three times that summer. Revenge of the Sith is oddly paired with Enchanted, Inc. in my mind, since they came out at around the same time. Revenge of the Sith came out the week before Enchanted, Inc., and then I saw it a second time the day I had my author photo taken (I saw the movie in the same dress that I’m wearing in that photo).

There was then a dry spell in between, when there wasn’t any new Star Wars or Star Trek. I mostly drifted to Doctor Who during that time. The Clone Wars animated series was on, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I picked up on Rebels about halfway through its run. Then the Star Wars firehose opened and we started getting tons of new Star Wars stuff with all the new movies, and then the various TV series. I’m back to being that nine-year-old kid who’s utterly obsessed, but there’s a lot more material to immerse myself in. I don’t have to just reread the novelization of one movie while listening to the soundtrack in order to get my fix.

At the same time, though, they’ve also started giving us a lot of new Star Trek. I didn’t have Paramount+ so I hadn’t seen much of it. I saw part of the first episode of Discovery when they showed it on CBS during the pandemic, but that station wasn’t coming in well for me and I gave up after getting mostly glitches. The one I got into was Strange New Worlds, when they had the first season on Prime Video as one of their “free this month” previews.

That series follows the Enterprise under the command of Captain Pike (the one in the wheelchair-like device in the episode that was repurposed from the unaired original pilot), with a very young Spock and Uhura. A young Kirk shows up from time to time. I feel like this series captures the vibe of the original series, but in an updated way. They even manage to get the aesthetic so that it feels like it could be from the same era, but somehow without it looking too dated (the way they manage to get Andor to look like the original Star Wars without it screaming that it’s from the 70s). My brother gave me Paramount+ at Christmas, so I’ve been able to catch up on watching the rest of that series.

I’ve also picked up on Lower Decks, an animated Star Trek series that’s both a good Trek show and a spoof of Star Trek. It follows the ensigns who don’t work on the bridge, who do the grunt work, on a ship that isn’t the flagship of the fleet. They’re on the “second contact” ship, the one that comes in to handle the paperwork after a ship like the Enterprise has made first contact. It’s set after The Next Generation (Riker is captain of his own ship, finally). The show pokes gentle fun at all the Trek tropes by showing them from the point of view of the crewmembers who are just trying to do their jobs. For added fun, there was an episode of Strange New Worlds that had the characters from this animated series be transported back in time to the Enterprise and converted to live action (using the same actors who voice the roles). The episodes for this series are only a half-hour long, so this is what I watch when I don’t have time for anything longer.

I started watching Picard with my brother at Thanksgiving, but I haven’t had a chance to finish it. I also want to revisit the original series, since I know I missed a lot of connections and references on Strange New Worlds.

I feel like we’re in a golden age of Stuff Starting With “Star.” I could watch nothing but Star Wars and Star Trek and fill all my entertainment hours. With there being so much of both, I’m kind of teetering between the Wars and Trek obsessions. I may be leaning closer to the Wars, just because I think I’m more emotionally engaged with that universe and it’s essentially fantasy in a science fiction setting, which is more my jam, but I don’t feel like it has to be a competition. It’s more like “Yay, lots of fun stuff!”

Life

Summer

One fun thing about this move is that I haven’t needed to do my annual “I hate summer” post. Summer here is quite different from back in Texas. It’s still somewhat hot, but it’s more like May or September (or even October) weather in Texas — and this is apparently a bad heat wave.

I will admit, on the days when it’s really muggy, it does feel kind of nasty. I wouldn’t want to be outside in it for long. But I’m still having breakfast and lunch outside on the porch most days. I just come inside for the afternoon when there’s more direct sun on my porch. Most mornings, I at least start with a sweater on. Up until about a week and a half ago, I was still wearing sweatshirts most days. I did have to turn my air conditioning on last weekend, but more for the humidity than the heat. Even without the AC, it’s never gotten as warm inside as I used to set my thermostat in Texas.

And that means I’m actually getting a real summer. When I lived in Texas, it felt like we missed out on summer because it was too hot to go outside and do summer things. I thought of the typical summer activities as fall activities. Here, you could actually go camping (since it gets cool at night even when the day is hot), have picnics, go to outdoor concerts and festivals. Every Monday night, I go to a community band concert in the park, and they’ll start doing weekly jazz and bluegrass concerts in the park next month. I generally need to put on a sweater toward the end of the band concerts as the sun starts going down. It’s quite pleasant sitting outside in the park, watching the fireflies come out and listening to music. In Texas, it would still be in the upper 90s and you wouldn’t want to sit outside.

I’ll be able to go to the July 4th festival without worrying about having to be outside in 100-degree temperatures. I may not stay there all day, but I live a block or so from the park, so I can come and go throughout the day, and I may as well go to the fireworks, even if they are later at night than I usually stay up, since they’ll be close enough to keep me awake, anyway.

I probably won’t be hitting the swimming pool, as I’m a weenie and used to only go swimming when it was over 100 because I don’t like being in cold water and I don’t like being in the city pool with all the kids screaming and splashing (one good thing about my old place was that we had a community pool that almost no one used, so I usually had it to myself, especially since I liked to go swimming when it was really hot). But I can hang out in the park, especially in the shade, which is abundant, as the park is full of huge old trees.

Fall is still my favorite season, and I’m looking forward to that, but I imagine it will feel like an extended fall to me, since summer here is so much like early fall in Texas, and then I’ll be going to Texas for Thanksgiving, so I’ll be there just in time for real fall to finally show up there. For now, though, I’m making lists of “summer” things I haven’t had a chance to do in a very long time. What do you think of as summer activities?