K.A. Laity's Blog, page 161

BitchBuzz and a Contest

Yes, up to my usual anti-social behavior in my column this week:

No Ho-Ho Holiday Films!By K.A. Laity When you've seen too many cheery reindeer, children singing and hearts growing three sizes, it's time to strike back.



I know there are many who can't wait to pull out that pile of Christmas DVDs every year and spend days laughing and crying with Charlie Brown and Lucy or Rudolph and Hermie or find out what Bedford Falls would have been like without George Bailey.



The rest of us need a break from all the sappy sentiment and I will warn you if you dare get out Love Actually it will come to fisticuffs. So if like me you spend the holidays dreading the next turn of that roulette wheel in the DVD player, here are some films you can suggest that meet the criteria of "holiday" themes but aren't the same old schmaltz... Find out what I recommend here: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/no-ho-ho-holiday-films.html#ixzz18IQLauVJ I'm not really a Grinch: I just get overloaded on schmaltz like everyone, considering some places start playing Xmas music in October. My pal Karen has come up with a list of sf/fantasy recommendations for holiday films: check out her blog.

Contest: Yesterday on Facebook, Kit Marlowe gave away a copy of her novel The Mangrove Legacy. I've decided I'm going to give one away here for my birthday :-) Come back tomorrow and comment on the post to have a chance to win. I'll choose a winner at random from among the commenters. I do have the hope that some of these freebies will result in reviews, too [she adds with a hopeful look].

The Mangrove Legacy ON SALE NOW!

Kit Marlowe's novel The Mangrove Legacy is out!



For sale now at All Romance eBooks -- just $5.99.



Two English girls, pirates, kidnappers, orphans, disguises, a ghost, interesting facts about insects, cheese, the King of Naples and at least one improving book:





This ain't your mama's Gothic!



Yes, very pleased to have this out. Thanks for everyone who was there for the rather prolonged composition process. Give yourselves a pat on the back for helping me. Cheers!



You can win a copy over at Kit's Facebook page.



UPDATE: I'm also the featured Wednesday writer over at UnBound. Thanks, Adele. Join me to talk about zombies!

Bits and Bobs

Over at Patti Abbott's blog, you can read the final installment of La Ronde, the round robin story in which I took part. The fun of these things is that they take a lot of unexpected twists and that's certainly the case here. Vastly entertaining.



Perhaps the strangest news story regarding wombats ever...



It's possible Amelia Erhart has been found.



Tomorrow, of course, The Mangrove Legacy comes out. You can win a copy over at Kit Marlowe's Facebook page.Don't forget to take a look at the trailer. I'll put up a buy link tomorrow assuming all goes as it should (given the loopiness of anything computer-based lately, I am always adding caveats). Have you been reading the new serial? How do you think it's going?



I get the final papers of my one course tomorrow. I hope to finish grading quickly so I can enjoy my birthday without thought of work waiting. I have more reviews to post, too, but we'll see how the week goes. So little time, so much to do!

Review: Tamara Drewe

How can you go wrong with Posy Simmonds as your source (and Thomas Hardy as hers), a script by Moira Buffini and a stellar cast guided by Stephen Frears? Well, you can't go far wrong at all, it turns out.  Tamara Drewe is great fun, lots of laughs and a few tear-worthy moments. Admittedly, I'm a sucker for any film about writers and writing, but this one's quite enjoyable.



The story begins in what seems to be the idyllic writers retreat "far from the madding crowd" in Dorset. Tamsin Grieg (made to look much older than she is) and Roger Allam own the farm; she's the careful tender of the animals and writers, he's the successful mystery writer who's a little too full of himself. It's not giving anything away to say he's also a philandering jerk, too -- almost from the start of the film we know this and much of the story revolves around this, and not a small amount of the humor. The writers in residence provide a lot of the humor, too: "The hat is on!" one vehemently tells another, indicating that no one should speak to him. Central to the narrative is the American writer Glen (Bill Camp, who looks like Warren Zevon's nebbishy brother), the unexpected lynchpin as the blocked academic trying to write about Hardy.



What breaks everything apart is the arrival -- or rather, return -- of the native daughter, Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton). Her former love, the golden handyman, Andy (Luke Evans) still longs for her but her eye's been drawn to seriously sexy boy band drummer Ben (Dominic Cooper :-), whose arrival draws the attention of two bored village teens, Jody and Casey, who are die hard fans of Ben's band.



Even if you know your Hardy, there are plenty of twists and modernisations to keep you guessing. I love the way the story captures the aimless boredom of the teens' life in an "idyllic" country village, which for them means there's nothing to do. There's extra fun for writers and readers, of course, but I think all kinds of folks will have a good time with Tamara.

Review: Tamara Drew

How can you go wrong with Posy Simmonds as your source (and Thomas Hardy as hers), a script by Moira Buffini and a stellar cast guided by Stephen Frears? Well, you can't go far wrong at all, it turns out.  Tamara Drew is great fun, lots of laughs and a few tear-worthy moments. Admittedly, I'm a sucker for any film about writers and writing, but this one's quite enjoyable.



The story begins in what seems to be the idyllic writers retreat "far from the madding crowd" in Dorset. Tamsin Grieg (made to look much older than she is) and Roger Allam own the farm; she's the careful tender of the animals and writers, he's the successful mystery writer who's a little too full of himself. It's not giving anything away to say he's also a philandering jerk, too -- almost from the start of the film we know this and much of the story revolves around this, and not a small amount of the humor. The writers in residence provide a lot of the humor, too: "The hat is on!" one vehemently tells another, indicating that no one should speak to him. Central to the narrative is the American writer Glen (Bill Camp, who looks like Warren Zevon's nebbishy brother), the unexpected lynchpin as the blocked academic trying to write about Hardy.



What breaks everything apart is the arrival -- or rather, return -- of the native daughter, Tamara Drew (Gemma Arterton). Her former love, the golden handyman, Andy (Luke Evans) still longs for her but her eye's been drawn to seriously sexy boy band drummer Ben (Dominic Cooper :-), whose arrival draws the attention of two bored village teens, Jody and Casey, who are die hard fans of Ben's band.



Even if you know your Hardy, there are plenty of twists and modernisations to keep you guessing. I love the way the story captures the aimless boredom of the teens' life in an "idyllic" country village, which for them means there's nothing to do. There's extra fun for writers and readers, of course, but I think all kinds of folks will have a good time with Tamara.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Kleinzeit

I find it amazing that Russell Hoban's singular book Kleinzeit seems to be out of print. Amazon lists the version on the left as the most recent one (2002) but he doesn't seem to have the same popularity here as he does in Britain (where he lives, no surprise). Most of you probably know the Frances books and I've certainly gone on at length about my love for Riddley Walker on various occasions, but I hadn't read Kleinzeit until recently.



While reading it in November, I decided to recommend it to everyone who was doing NaNoWriMo as the perfect inspiration for the difficult task of writing, especially for the first time. It mashes up a sort of Pynchon-esque mystery of coincidences and misheard words with a delightful surrealism: the titular character ends up in the hospital for trouble with his hypotenuse. His troubles begin on the most mundane sort of day when he begins to experience a sudden pain. But then something else happens:



Kleinzeit got out of the train, poured into the morning rush in the corridor. Among the feet he saw a sheet of yellow paper, A4 size, on the floor, unstepped-on. He picked it up. Clean on both sides. He put it in his attaché case. He rode up on the escalator, looking up the skirt of the girl nine steps above him. Bottom of the morning, he said to himself.



Little does he know that yellow sheet of A4 will take over his life: he loses his job, he's admitted to the hospital, he takes up the glockenspiel and he takes up with Sister, he meets a red-bearded man who lives in the Underground. And everything seems conspired either to kill him or turn him into a writer. It's not surprising that Hoban has said that this novel is where he found his voice.



One of my favourite passages comes when Kleinziet, reads from Thucydides' The Pelopennesian War as he contemplates Athenians and the blank page of yellow A4:



I promise, said Kleinzeit to his dead mother, I'll be, I'll make, I'll do. You'll be proud of me.

Suppose [the Athenians] fail in some undertaking; they make good the loss immediately by setting their hopes in some other direction. Of them alone it may be said that they possess a thing almost as soon as they have begun to desire it, so quickly with them does action follow upon decision. And so they go on working away in hardship and danger all the days of their lives, seldom enjoying their possessions because they are always adding to them. Their view of a holiday is to do what needs doing; they prefer hardship and activity to peace and quiet. In a word, they are by nature incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so.

Right, said Kleinzeit. Enough, He opened the door of the yellow paper's cage, and it sprang upon him, Over and over they rolled together, bloody and roaring, Doesn't matter what the title is to start with, he said, anything will do. HERO, I'll call it. Chapter I. He wrote the first line while the yellow paper clawed his guts, the pain was blinding. It'll kill me, said Kleinzeit, there's no surviving this. He wrote the second line, the third, completed the first paragraph. The roaring and the blood stopped, the yellow paper rubbed purring against his leg, the first paragraph danced and sang, leaped and played on the green grass in the dawn.



Up the Athenians, said Kleinzeit, and went to sleep.



It delights me to no end that Hoban fans go around on February 4th leaving sheets of yellow A4 in the tube and other public places with quotes from the author. I can't imagine a more wonderful tradition to have connected with one's books. This novel is quite wonderful and I recommend it highly -- and then go get Riddley Walker and the rest of his books! I love Hoban because his stories all make their own singular way, ignoring genres and rules and convention. What better way to write?



See more "forgotten" books at Patti Abbot's blog where you'll doubtless find friends like Todd.

BitchBuzz: How to Ruin the Holidays + Mangrove Trailer

First, my column for the week: if you're mild-hearted and love the holidays, you may want to skip it. I am particularly proud of finding that picture of Katy Perry:



How to Ruin the HolidaysBy K.A. Laity Whether you celebrate Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Solstice or Yule, you have an equal opportunity this year to destroy all hopes for any beautiful memories from social gatherings by following a few simple rules.



People get too stressed trying to make the holidays perfect: cooking, cleaning, buying, singing, organizing and spend, spend, spending. They put up trees, light menorahs, bake cookies, mull wine and in the process, gain weight, lose hair and empty their bank accounts.



Ruining the holidays can be accomplished with very little effort and almost no spending or preparation. You do not need to make elaborate plans (although a well-thought out scheme can have a spectacular pay-off) and cooking is completely optional, as are fuzzy jumpers with appliqués.



How can you ruin the holidays? To find the answers: http://life.bitchbuzz.com/how-to-ruin-the-holidays.html#ixzz17d1QLUsM

While book trailers have been said to be a waste of time, I can't seem to help wanting to make them. So to amuse myself, here's one for Kit Marlowe's The Mangrove Legacy coming Dec 15th (in case you forgot ;-)

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Purposeful

I started out the day purposefully: I got a needed oil change, ran to the store and then came to campus. There things began to bog down a bit, not only because there was a lot of email to get to and a call from the Dean but then there was the printer not working. I haven't bought new ink for my printer at home, so I've generally relied on printer here on campus. When we got new printers and a whole new print admin, I was the only one who never had a problem printing. Everyone else was screaming for blood because of course they decided to make the change at the beginning of the semester. So I've taken advantage of the one colleague in the building to have him print a couple of emergency things and will hope the Mac guy gets around to me soon.



Yes, we have one person in IT who's competent in Macs. We have (last I knew) over 200 Macs on campus. And you wonder why our last Mac person quit to go to Skidmore where she has fewer headaches and more pay... oh, that's right. No wonder at all.



You can catch up with the latest episode in La Ronde, the round robin story started by Patti Abbot. Today's installment (#10 already!) is "It's Raining Down in Texas" by Graham Powell. Amazing turns this narrative has taken: now in Texas.



The Mangrove Legacy will be available from All Romance Ebooks on December 15th! You can get The Big Splash there now (as well as at Noble Romance and Amazon).



21st Century Gothic will be printed on my birthday :-) though it won't be available until 2011.



I just got word that my presentation "Bringing a Medieval Woman to Life" (about writing a play on the life of Christina of Markyate) got accepted for the Great Writing Conference in London next June. Looking forward to that. I'm also considering a conference in Akureyri, Iceland as well. We shall see. Yeah, don't remind me of that note which says "Just say no!" I am (on the whole) doing less. Well, less of some things. Combining things, too, seems helpful (work that does double duty). But yeah, it remains the case that there is so little time, and so much to do!

Happy St. Nick's Day

[image error] Or did you get the Krampus instead? Well, my lovely Krampus chapbook designed by The joey Zone is out of print, but you can hear me read it as a podcast. I hope to scan it and get an electronic version available soon, but things are just so hectic (when is that not true?).



I had a lovely lovely time in Connecticut with all the crew. It was great fun that didn't last nearly long enough because I had to come home. Thanks so much to the Queen of Everything for being such a fabulous hostess, my birthday twin Marko and everybody who came. Thanks too to Elena for giving me lunch the next day and -- whoohoo -- knocking out an idea for a new Jane Quiet story! Fingers crossed she gets time to start drawing this week: an Egyptian theme -- how's that sound?



I got my author copy of the collection Exposure from Cinnamon Press that has my short story "Rothko Red" in it. Quite a lovely little volume. I also got notice that I have three items in the new issue of Femspec , reviews of King Kong Theory, Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy and Women and the Divine. Yes, it had been so long since they were submitted that I had completely forgotten about them. Guess I better remind myself to add them to the CV. This is why I need minions!



All right: back to grading. The end is near! I should have all my grading done and submitted before my birthday -- whoohoo!

Whirlwind Travel

NYC on Thursday to see Lynda Barry and Maira Kalman and today I'm off to Connecticut for the final party at the Aloha Alcohula. So, in haste with the hope of more later:











My route: drive down to Poughkeepsie, Metro North to Grand Central, arriving after everyone's already stopped waltzing. Then off to the Met Museum. Many things to see there: the Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand exhibit, especially Stieglitz's photographs of Georgia O'Keefe (even bought the postcard set), loved Katrin Sigurdardottir's installations, and of course, I'm always a sucker for Rothko:



Afterward I had a lovely sushi dinner and then headed over to the 92nd St Y for the talk: Lynda Barry is just so utterly amazing. She said she was really nervous and so what was best was to do something really frightening (though she said it would be even better to eat a hotdog, but --) so she sang a song to the tune of "Coal Miner's Daughter" that explained her family (Norwegian and Filipino) and her difficulties growing up. I can't capture her madcap and inventive conversation. She talked about everything from trying to find tears for great art and instead finding them when she met Jeff Keane of Family Circus, because that comic had given her such hope as a child, a way to imagine a happy family through that little circle. Or her Filipino grandmother who told the most horrifying descriptions of the woman who was really a vampire who took her legs off and crawled across your ceiling and used her long tongue to suck your blood because you leave your clothes on the floor! Her new book Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book is a companion piece to her incredibly inspiring What it is, but aimed at drawing rather than writing. She describes it as like Highlights but for any age and so if you were stuck in JiffyLube waiting for your car, you could pick it up and be less tense and really enjoy yourself. For her, the power of drawing is plain: after working on Cruddy for ten years on a computer, she was overwhelmed by the awesome power of the Delete Key. Once she started using a brush to write the letters, she finished it in nine months.



Maira Kalman is quite amazing too: though more reserved than Barry, she was equally inspiring and surprising. Her work shows the power of just keeping your eyes and mind open (what Russell Hoban calls "being a friend with your head"). Everything from a hilarious letter from Proust, a dead Swiss writer in the snow on a newspaper wrapping a parcel, the three hole punch at the Pentagon that puts holes in the paper on which top secret documents written: all of it can blend together in your head and come out interesting art. She even played the clip from WC Fields in The Man in the Flying Trapeze where they make fun of a pseudo-Gertrude Stein-ish piece.



Glad I made the trip down; fortunately Robert was able to give me a refuge halfway home from the train station as I got into Poughkeepsie about midnight. Of course he made me sleep on this:



Off to Connecticut today for my joint birthday party with Marko: it will apparently be the last party at the Aloha Alcohula before its make-over. Should be fun! I had my own make-over already:

It's actually purple not blue (note how washed out my eye color is), but nice and bright :-) Might wear my purple tiara, too.