Douglas Rees's Blog, page 2

The Hunger Games

    I saw The Hunger Games last night. Having heard that the movie didn't provide adequate background on the story, I was curious to see just how much of Suzanne Collins' dystopia did make it to the screen. On the whole, I was impressed. A few titles at the beginning, the video at the reaping, seemed to me to get the idea across pretty well, without interrupting the narrative flow. It also seemed to me that the sets, locations and costumes did a good job of carrying the story (where did they get those wonderful faces for the citizens of DIstrict 12?).  

     On the other hand, I've read the book. So, my question is, did the script do what it needed to do in terms of putting the audience int he world of the story, or not? And if not, what was missing, and what might have been done differently?

    Just asking.

Game of Thrones

    Saturday I and a Little Group of Serious Thinkers watched the entire first season of Game of Thrones. I'd never read anything by George R. R. Martin, though my wife is a huge fan of his novels. I did hear him speak on a panel at ComicCon last year. Anyway, I became intrigued, partly becasue is twas a good story, but also because there was so little fantasy in this fantasy. It reminded me more of the kind of Thundering Historical Epics my dad used to buy in paperback for 35 cents, writen by people like Frank G. Slaughter and F. Van Wyck Mason. And the story at many points echoed various bits of Tudor and Stuart history. It made me wonder if Martin hadn't written historical fiction diguised as something else. On the other hand, the correspondences are vague enough that I could have been making the connections myself.

    So my question to real George R.R. Martin fans is, what do you think or know about that? 

 

Ambushed

     After more than a little technical trouble, Ambush Books is up and working. Yay. As I may have mentioned, Ambush is an online imprint  which intends to bring back out-of-print YA and middle grade titles ("teen and 'tween") in digital formats at reasonable prices. If you're a writer who falls into this category and haven't yet posted your old titles yourself, check us out and see what we can do for you.

TOPPERS

I've been writing, or perhaps more accurately, trying to write, plays for the last few years. I think it's a good idea for writers to stretch themselves by learning new ways of telling stories, and play writing was always smething that interested me.

Anyway, after four or five years of off-and-on effort, I have a production going up, a five-page epic entitled TOPPERS, which will be produced by the Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View, California. Debut is set for the 11th of May. I'm really jazzed. Elven books published? Swell. But a five-minute play? That's something. Something new, anyway.

I'm learning more and more about how different writing theatre is from writing novels. The process is far more collaborative. I belong to two groups of playwrights, and the feedback we give each other is extensive. As a novelist, I wouldn't expect to get this kind of input from anyone but my wife a a few friends. I 've been finding it hugely helpful. There's no equivalent to the editor in the theatrical process, and in theatre, unlike movies, the playwrght has the final word about the words. But rehearsals start soon, and when we get to them, I expect I'll be hearing from the actors and the director. More to learn.

TRIPLE THREAT + 1

It's been a while since I worke

Out of the Maelstrom

     Early in November I came home to find my wife nearly in shock. Her face was covered with the streaks of tears. It was not what I had expected. My wife is a relentlessly cheerful creature, and such a countenance made me think that someone had died, at least.

     "We have to move," she said. 

     Our landlord had indeed died a few months before and his widow, in order to settle the estate, had decided to sell the house we were living in.

     We are experienced gypsies, but the holidays are not the best time to look for a new place. There's less than usual out there, and besides — Thanksgiving. Christmas. Y'know?

      Nonetheless, we found a place, and with the help of some wonderful friends, got moved into it. We have now reached the point where we can say we're settled in, at least in most of the rooms. My books are still packed, and our vast collection of tchotchkies remains to be dealt with, but we have seeral rooms in which we can eat, sleep, prepare food, and relax in the evenings. That's a great deal. But one thing was lacking.

     Internet. We have been without internet access from our new place for a solid month. This has had several side effects, such as forcing me to start drinking coffee again — purely in order to get access to the web of course — and sneaking around the ether trying to find an unsecured server. Or whatever they are. 

     How did our pioneer ancestors deal with this? Smoke signals? The historical record doesn't say. But the worst is over. We can now waste time online again without ever leaving our new place to do it, and the world has righted itself.

     Which is my roundabout way of saying I can start blogging again. And with Ambush Books about to debut, I will have something new to blog about. 

Mystical, Magical World War II?

My friend who is doing NaNoRiMo is writing a sort of steam punk. From the sound of it, it's a very good idea. He has set it in Britain during World War II. This I find very interesting. As far as I know, no one else has written a WWII steam punk. But I wonder if we won't be seeing more of this kind of thing very shortly.

Perhaps enough time has passed that the greatest war in history is about to enter a sort of mythic realm where the materials of history can be reworked in ways that were not possible while the planet was covered with people who could remember what it had actually been like.

There are a couple of useful words in at least one African language that bear on this; sasha and zamani. Sasha refers to a person who is dead, but still remembered by living people. Zamani is someone who has no rememberers. World War II will very shortly be zamani. The last veterans are entering their nineties, and here in the United States they are dying at the rate of over a thousand a day. In a few more weeks it will have been seventy years since Pearl Harbor, and he war was more than one-third over by that point.

So, is it time for World War II to join its predecessor as a romantic background for popular fiction, and if so, what themes are going to emerge from that? Or is the war of Buchenwald and Auschwitz to grim ever to be written about in this way?

Any thoughts?

I’m Going To Miss the Dutch Door

I’m going to miss our Dutch door. The ability to swing open half the access point to this house and startle window salesmen, pizza guys, and the occasional fundamentalist (I almost spelled it fundamnmentalist, Dr. Freud) has been a charming feature of this place.

But Halloween has been the night the door really comes into its own. It has provided me was a sort of stage on which to perform my annual Clueless Old Guy act:

“Oh — it’s so wonderful. You children don’t even know me, and you’re bringing me candy.”

“Trick or treat. Trick *or* treat. All right, I’ll have a treat, please.”

“Agh! Don’t you people have anything better to do than to go around terrorizing citizens for candy?”

Of course, you can’t do that with the really little ones. Them, you have to help train:

“Say ‘trick or treat’. Please say ‘trick or treat’. I can’t give you the candy until you say ‘trick or treat’. Help me out here.”

The kids don’t think too much of my act, usually, but the door astonishes them. Some of the smaller ones don’t want to leave. They want to watch the door work. Or they hang back, looking over their shoulders to see what it might do next.

Next year, I’ll be opening a door somewhere else, and wherever it is, it will certainly be some kind of ordinary one-piece sort of a door that won’t astonish anybody.

I'm Going To Miss the Dutch Door

I'm going to miss our Dutch door. The ability to swing open half the access point to this house and startle window salesmen, pizza guys, and the occasional fundamentalist (I almost spelled it fundamnmentalist, Dr. Freud) has been a charming feature of this place.

But Halloween has been the night the door really comes into its own. It has provided me was a sort of stage on which to perform my annual Clueless Old Guy act:

"Oh — it's so wonderful. You children don't even know me, and you're bringing me candy."

"Trick or treat. Trick *or* treat. All right, I'll have a treat, please."

"Agh! Don't you people have anything better to do than to go around terrorizing citizens for candy?"

Of course, you can't do that with the really little ones. Them, you have to help train:

"Say 'trick or treat'. Please say 'trick or treat'. I can't give you the candy until you say 'trick or treat'. Help me out here."

The kids don't think too much of my act, usually, but the door astonishes them. Some of the smaller ones don't want to leave. They want to watch the door work. Or they hang back, looking over their shoulders to see what it might do next.

Next year, I'll be opening a door somewhere else, and wherever it is, it will certainly be some kind of ordinary one-piece sort of a door that won't astonish anybody.

NaNoRiMo

There's something about writing fast. It's somehow more impressive that Noel Coward could dash off Blithe Spirit or Private Lives than it would be if he'd taken a year on them. Similarly, National Novel Writing Month has something of the excitement of a race about it.

NaNoRiMo, if you're not familiar with it, is a self-imposed challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. Thousands of people do it, some of them more than once. One friend has completed seven NaNoRiMo novels, and started on his eighth two days ago.

It's not just amateur authors who do it. Some years the YA listserve I'm part of is full of messages of encouragement as published writers use November to complete work in progress, or even to go the whole nine yards.

For myself, I don't seem to have the discipline to make it work for me. I've tried a couple of times, but didn't write any faster, or finish anything. I thought about trying again with my WIP Like cats and Dogs, but I know what would happen. So all honor to those of you who have taken up the challenge yet again. May your words flow smoothly, may you hit your goals, and may every one of you who wants it find a publisher.