Alisa M. Libby's Blog, page 12

it’s friday

It’s Friday, kittens. Time to get out our tamborines!

I hope that all of you brave NaNoWriMo souls are still typing away vigorously, showing that word count who’s the boss around here. I’m trying to decide if I should send some pages to my writing group…or perhaps contemplate said pages for a while. And apparently by contemplate I mean watch Stevie Wonder videos on youtube. But did I mention that it’s Friday? So it’s all good.

it's friday

It's Friday, kittens. Time to get out our tamborines!

I hope that all of you brave NaNoWriMo souls are still typing away vigorously, showing that word count who's the boss around here. I'm trying to decide if I should send some pages to my writing group…or perhaps contemplate said pages for a while. And apparently by contemplate I mean watch Stevie Wonder videos on youtube. But did I mention that it's Friday? So it's all good.

I can’t find a photo of the kid in the bucket. You’ll have to go the Peabody Essex Museum.

This weekend we visited the lovely Peabody Essex Museum. It made me hungry for another trip to the MFA in Boston. I was entertained by unformed novel ideas popping into my head as we looked at maritime portraits, merchants’ china, models of ships. (“Yes, you are a very intriguing beginning. But what happens next?” I asked these ideas. They had no answer.)

My favorite really enjoyed the Yin Yu Tang house, transported from China (click on the site – you can explore the house online!). The rooms were quite small, but people had fewer belongings back then so there wasn’t any clutter. Everything seemed very purposeful, thoughtful, designed according to feng-shui and spirituality, prosperity, all of those good things (as opposed to whatever is available at IKEA). But life wasn’t idyllic; in the audio tour, a new bride accounted being brought to the family and basically acting as a servant to her new in-laws. (Chamberpots here involved). However, they also had a genius contraption called a “child minder”. Basically a tall bucket in which you put your child while you tend to your daily tasks. Yup.

In other news, today’s First Page Panda is Freestyle by Monica S. Baker. It involves a dream portal and time travel. Awesome!

I can't find a photo of the kid in the bucket. You'll have to go the Peabody Essex Museum.

This weekend we visited the lovely Peabody Essex Museum. It made me hungry for another trip to the MFA in Boston. I was entertained by unformed novel ideas popping into my head as we looked at maritime portraits, merchants' china, models of ships. ("Yes, you are a very intriguing beginning. But what happens next?" I asked these ideas. They had no answer.)

My favorite really enjoyed the Yin Yu Tang house, transported from China (click on the site – you can explore the house online!). The rooms were quite small, but people had fewer belongings back then so there wasn't any clutter. Everything seemed very purposeful, thoughtful, designed according to feng-shui and spirituality, prosperity, all of those good things (as opposed to whatever is available at IKEA). But life wasn't idyllic; in the audio tour, a new bride accounted being brought to the family and basically acting as a servant to her new in-laws. (Chamberpots here involved). However, they also had a genius contraption called a "child minder". Basically a tall bucket in which you put your child while you tend to your daily tasks. Yup.

In other news, today's First Page Panda is Freestyle by Monica S. Baker. It involves a dream portal and time travel. Awesome!

vampires are immortal, see?

I read a post on Book Chick City, responding to Stephen King's thoughts on vampires: that they should be evil, soulless killers, not the soft, non-killing types we've got parading around book shelves these days, batting their long eyelashes at the lady folk instead of sucking their blood. King is contributing to a new comic series, American Vampire, in which there will be lots of blood and not much eyelash-batting. It actually sounds pretty awesome.

Still, while the overly romanticized vamps are a bit toothless for my taste, I agree with Miss Book Chick; a little variety in the undead keeps things interesting, yes? It just shows the longevity of this creature in the human imagination that it can be reinterpreted in so many ways. In 20 years some book or movie will come around and we'll be gaga for vampires all over again. But I bet those vampires will look different–not the kind that we're accustomed to from King or Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer. It will be a new twist on an old story; the fact that the vampire legend can have so many twists is what makes it fascinating to me. That's immortality, baby!

And since we're on the subject, here's a hilarious comic strip version of Dracula, which made me laugh out loud (warning: some four-letter words are used):

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=285

So, what's your favorite type of vampire? Sensitive and sexy? Deadly and dangerous? I vote for a mix of both – a vampire bad boy, still potentially deadly and filled with centuries of dark secrets. Still scary, even if there is a little romance thrown in, too. What about you?

movies teach writing

I've been thinking about Anna Staniszewski's post about learning writing tips from watching a (bad) romantic comedy. Noting how a movie is paced, how it reveals information can offer great writing insight. And watching a bad one can help, too. What could be more fun that to pull apart a bad movie? In doing so, you may expose some of your own pet peeves in storytelling.

Last week, I had the urge to watch cheesey horror films. We watched The Grudge, which I hate to bash because of my loyalty to Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy fame, but (no offense to Ms. Gellar) this movie did not work for me. Yes, it's cheesey, what did I expect? But it did make me think about what helps build suspense in a scary story. (Warning: SPOILERS ahead!!)

1. Horror stories need to create rules, and follow them. What's the specific danger facing your victims? As Tom said "What's scarier than Nothing? Anything." I'm sure there are examples to the contrary, but in this case he has a point – if we know the doom facing our characters, it can be much scarier. In the movie The Ring (another remake of a Japanese film, but this one I enjoyed) we know that the targeted characters will die suddenly, faces distorted in terror (though we don't see how until the end of the film). In The Grudge they die when a weird curse/ghost creature makes a weird noise at them. Sometimes it looks like murder, others a suicide. It's a bit vague.

2. What's the result of the danger facing your characters? It should be consistent for all of the victims in question. In The Grudge, this was a gray area. After being attacked, one victim vanished. Another one walked around like a ghost. Others just appeared, well, dead.

3. If you're going to include back story, include some surprises. We were told early on that the curse started because a man killed his family. Later we learned that…yes, indeed, that is what had happened. What's the point of all that build up to show us what we've already been told?

4. If the hero escapes, show us why she escaped. Make it believable. Make it clever. If your character escapes from a burning building, hearing a detective say "We don't know how she escaped" is not very satisfying.

In his book HOOKED, Les Edgerton suggests watching movies – especially the opening scenes – to see how the movie captures your attention (or fails to do so). What have you learned from movies, both good and bad?

werewolves do have perfect hair

There is one monster I neglected to mention on my previous post.

This guy is crazy! He will eat all of your cookies if you're not careful. I hope that ya'll are having a fun, scary (if that's you're thing) and safe Halloween!

In honor of the holiday, let's howl along with Warren Zevon, shall we?

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I'm pretty sure the drummer is a werewolf, and that the guitarist also plays sax for Dr. Teeth.

monsters!

Inspired by a post on the Enchanted Inkpot, as well as Halloween, I want to talk about monsters. I LOVE MONSTERS! I love reading about them and writing about them. Erzebet in The Blood Confession is about as monstrous as you can get – so obsessed with her own beauty that she's willing to kill and bathe in her victim's blood. In The King's Rose I had some very different monsters to write about: King Henry, and – perhaps even more so – the dowager Duchess of Norfolk. I knew that whenever the Duchess swept into the room and appraised Catherine with her ice-cold eyes, sparks would fly.

As implied above, it's the human-variety of monster that intrigues me the most. As for my favorite monster from literature, the first that came to mind was Carmilla, the titular character in J. Sheridan Le Fanu's vampiric masterpiece. Carmilla's monstrous identity is concealed behind a pretty, endearing facade. Carmilla's affection for the main character makes her true nature that much more unsettling: they're constantly walking arm and arm or whispering secret confidences. That's awfully close proximity to a monster. And the blood-drenched nightmares "warning" the narrator still give me chills!

What about the monsters that are ourselves? I read Stephen King's Carrie as a teenager, and I think it affected me so profoundly because the sad sack, depressed, troubled Carrie White was so sympathetic and repulsive – she was everything I feared I was, worthy of ridicule. What could be worse than our own fears about our true selves? And then, when she cracks and unleashes havoc on her tormenters – sweet revenge! Also, quite terrifying. The movie, in particular, scarred me at the age of thirteen.

Speaking of fears of self, I'm so glad that Ellen Booraem mentioned the Dementors and their connection to depression in the Inkpot post. This is much scarier than the scaly skin or eyeless faces: "Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soul-less and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life." (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

And speaking of Potter, I love a monster that has a connection to our hero. Voldemort's mind-connection to Harry manifests itself in terrifying dreams. Also, Harry fears that he inherited some of Voldemort's powers during their first face-off. Likewise, Wilhelmina Harker carries the mark of Dracula (the bite marks on her neck, the burn of a holy sacrament on her forehead) which is both danger and boon – they use this connection to track Dracula down. But they must be wary of any changes in the brave Wilhelmina; the evil aspect taking over her otherwise pure soul.

This comes up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too: she's the good guy, slaying vampires. But that makes her sort of magical, not like a normal human – and therefore maybe a bit more like her fanged enemies than she would like to admit. Could she really belong to the night, like the demons she slays?

So not only do I love a good monster – especially one in a human guise, with true evil lying beneath the surface – but I also love a hero with some monstrous aspects, as well. It's all a metaphor for the human condition: there is the potential for true good or true evil in all of us. Sometimes the scariest thing on earth is the face staring back at you in the mirror. We could all be monsters, if only to ourselves.

good morning my lovelies

I was going to write a blog post filled with my worries about my book, and all the work I have to do, and all the publicity stuff I've been neglecting. But…let's not, shall we? Let's just not. It's a Monday morning. Let's sip our tea and ease into the week.

I have a post on Anna Staniszewski's awesome blog, hooray! It's part of her "letter to myself" series, and I share things that I wish I had known as an undergraduate writing major:

http://www.annastan.com/2010/10/letter-to-myself-alisa-libby/

And now for a little music: a string quartet plays David Bowie's "Man Who Sold the World."

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book talk at Malden Public Library

I gave a book talk at the Malden Public Library this afternoon. It's been a while since I did a book talk and I felt nervous. I talk for a while and then stare nervously at the audience, hoping they'll have questions. And they did! Lots of questions! Terrific questions! Everything from what I like to write and read to what inspires me to my writing process. I hope the teenagers enjoyed it as much as I did. They were an impressive bunch. I only regret that I didn't get a chance to ask them about writing. I sensed that there were a few poets in the crowd.

In other news, I'm still revising. Oh, wait, that's not news at all! In fact, it's the opposite of news: I'm still doing what I've been doing for weeks, now. But I feel like I need to report to this blog, so here it is: I wrote today. I can't write anymore, I'm too tired. No, I don't plan on chasing down any more vampires over the weekend – I plan to be good and stay home and write.