Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 161
September 23, 2016
Mini Reviews ~ Two Little Doses of Peril
“The Invisible Assistant” by John Gaspard
I’ve read a few mystery short stories over the past couple of years. It seems that long-form mystery writers sometimes struggle to fit a whole mystery, nose to tail, into the form. If John Gaspard struggled with “The Invisible Assistant,” it doesn’t show. This story features Eli Marks, stage magician, amateur crime solver, and main character of three great mystery novels. Yet, no previous Eli Marks experience is required to enjoy this story! Not only do we get a solid mystery, but we get some magic which provides an excellent introduction to the character. I will say that I guessed the solution to this mystery before the end. It seems a little…improbable, but given the tone of the story, it works.
“Flop Sweat” from Shatterday by Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison writes speculative fiction. I’ve always liked the designation “speculative fiction” because it embraces anything that isn’t entirely current reality: science fiction, fantasy, and even horror. I don’t generally think of horror when I think of Harlan Ellison, but “Flop Sweat” is a fine piece of tension. Set against a city on edge due to a razor blade killer, radio talk show host Theresa Ketchum’s guests are cultist Brother Darkness and psychiatrist Jacob Theiss. But neither of them are the crazy one. Just how responsible *is* Theresa for what’s going on in Los Angeles?
September 21, 2016
#ROW80 ~ Round 3 in the Rearview Mirror
I had one set of plans what were usurped a few weeks ago by a totally new plan. And that’s been totally fine! For me, rejoining ROW80 has been about trying to settle back into good writing habits. Part of that ended up being open to a writing project that I’m really excited about.
So, what happened this round?
Writing
Project #1: David Abbott in the Open Court – This was the nonfiction project I was working on at the beginning of the round. It’s a collection of articles written by magician David P. Abbott for The Open Court magazine in the early 1900s. I finished the front and back matter, gave it a final edit, formatted it, and even did a couple covers. I ended up not publishing it because I decided to release it in conjunction with some of the One Ahead stories…
Project #2: One Ahead series – This is a series of stories about a fictional version of David P. Abbott solving mysteries as a magician and spiritualist debunker. Coming in to the round, I had one story of 20K done and one drafted and in need of rewrite. The plan was to rewrite story #2 and get a draft of #3 going (I have vague ideas). I really didn’t want to start releasing these stories until I had a few done. I did get some organizational stuff done and worked on the rewrite but then…
Project #3: Wicked Witch, Retired – While I love the concept of the David Abbott stories and have been tinkering with ways to tell these stories for a while (years), it’s been like pulling teeth. I know that writing isn’t always easy, but man. I really wasn’t looking for a new project, but, well, Eric and I started riffing on an old idea and finally something really caught on. I haven’t gotten as much as I wanted done and I haven’t hit the hard middle, but it’s going well. As of right now, the manuscript is at 12K. (It’s been a rough week…)
Other Stuff
Got a good ways through my website improvements and did few online classes. Now that writing is taking more of a center stage, this stuff is taking a backseat.
Future
I’m going to continue on with Wicked Witch, Retired and hopefully have a set of refined focused goals by the beginning of Round 4!]
September 19, 2016
What Am I Reading this Week? Same thing as last week, Pinky…
Still working on From the Dust Returned. I was sick last week and Bradbury’s fanciful style was too much of an additional head-spin. So I started American Ghost. If I were wise, I’d finish American Ghost this week and return it to the library instead of re-renewing it. We’ll see if that happens. Have a good reading week!
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!
September 18, 2016
ROW80 ~ Out like a dying fish…
Isn’t that a saying? “The round comes in like a lion, goes out like a dying fish?” No? Just me then…
Update Round 3, Week 11
It’s been a sucky week. And after such a good week last week! I’ve been dealing with a flare-up since last Sunday night. I got some writing done early in the week and stubbornly played some ultimate frisbee (which maybe I shouldn’t have). Everything else has been “late” or not done at all. I’ve been taking a lot of naps.
Progress
Added 1600 to the manuscript and got about a third of the way through a rewrite. I also set up a notebook stack in Evernote to help with organizing. I really wanted a tool that can link info, kind of in the form of a wiki, rather than just a spreadsheet. Poking around the internet, I found that you can link to notes in Evernote. It’s quite handy.
By the end of the round? Gosh, I’d like to finish this rewrite and maybe come out on the positive side word-count-wise.
September 17, 2016
Deal Me In, Week 37 ~ “The Daemon Lover”
Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis
What is Deal Me In?
“The Daemon Lover” by Shirley Jackson
Card picked: Five of Spades
From: The Lottery and Other Stories
Thoughts:
“Dearest Anne, by the time you get this I will be married. Doesn’t it sound funny? I can hardly believe it myself, but when I tell you how it happened, you’ll see it’s even stranger than that…”
Unfortunately, we never hear about how it happened. Our protagonist, another female character that I don’t recall Shirley Jackson naming, begins this letter to her sister as she’s waiting for her fiancé, Jamie, to come for her so they can elope. She is nervous and wants everything to be perfect. Is her comfortable blue dress too severe? The alternative is an old ruffled print that seems too young for her. She is thirty-four years old, after all. No spring chicken, but she’s sure Jamie sees all her good qualities. Unfortunately, Jamie Harris never shows up. When he’s sufficiently late, our protagonist goes to where he says he lives (she’d never been to his place). She finds that he was a sublet tenant (maybe) who moved out the day (hours?) before. But she’s certain he’d been there that morning and tried to track his progress to to her apartment. He stopped to get his shoes shined. He stopped to buy chrysanthemums for her (an odd choice for his bride). But then, he went to another house, to a room in the attic, and will not answer the door…
This story can be read two ways and neither of them is comfortable. Since we, the readers, have never meet Jamie (he just left before we meet our protagonist), and no one our protagonist talks to ever quite knows who she’s talking about, it’s possible that this old maid (but with skills and talents and a nice apartment!) has made him up. Or maybe…everyone is humoring our protagonist. Or making fun of her. A thirty-four year-old woman in a ruffled print dress that is too young for her chasing down a some man in a blue suit? Well…haven’t you ever wondered if the people around you are just humoring you, or maybe even making fun of you, but you can’t tell for sure because maybe they really are telling the truth? And I wonder, is this a particularly female feeling? Or only the feeling of someone who has never really been “cool” or popular? (Am I tipping my cards too much to say that maybe this story isn’t comfortable to me because I still feel this way sometimes?)
After googling “The Daemon Lover” (sometimes called “James Harris”), I find that this is also the name of Scottish ballad about the Devil who lures away the wife of a carpenter after being away for seven years. Maybe our protagonist will meet Jamie again in her forties. Or maybe it’s all just been a devil’s trick.
September 16, 2016
Review ~ The Seance
SCOOTER KING UNDERSTANDS illusions. In the midst of the Roaring Twenties, he performs them behind the scenes at his mother’s séances, giving the impression that Madam King communicates with the dead. Scooter also admires Harry Houdini and can hardly wait to see the famed magician escape from his razzle-dazzle Burmese Torture Tank. But when Scooter stumbles upon a dead body in the visiting Houdini’s tank, it’s no illusion. Who could the murderer be? And did he—or she—kill the right person?
As Scooter sets out to unmask the killer, the mysterious worlds of mediums, séances, and magic are revealed. No one is above suspicion, and appearances are deceiving. If Scooter doesn’t sort out the clues—and fast—he may end up as the next dead body. (via Goodreads)
The Séance is a murder mystery set in 1926 with a 13 year-old protagonist. I don’t read a lot of books with young protagonists (even when I was young) because I find it hard to believe in the proficiencies of young people. I remember being thirteen. I was pretty crap at most things. In this case though, Scooter is a boy of the 1920s who has been specifically trained with a certain set of skills. And it would have been nice if those skills would have been more intrinsic to his solving the mystery. Another problem I have with young protagonists is that they sort of require a lack of adults. In this case, there seems to be only one policeman investigating the inciting murder and he has no time for a kid’s testimony. All the other adults are pretty much buffoons, including Scooter’s mom. Houdini does make an appearance, here and there, and is a true-to-form glory hound.
I was attracted to this book due to my research into séances and I especially wanted to see how the author was going to treat the behind-the-scenes aspects. All-in-all, those details were handled fairly well. Scooter’s mother does partially believes that her psychic powers are real, but there’s nothing in the narrative that leads down a supernatural path. I was okay with Lawrence adding the fictitious spiky water tank, the Burmese Torture Tank, to Houdini’s repertoire when a unique murder weapon was needed, but there were some later details that were a little too convenient.
Publishing info, my copy: hardback, Delacorte Press, 2008
Acquired: Tempe Public Library
Genre: mystery
September 14, 2016
What Else Wednesday ~ Peril on the Screen edition
I watched/rewatched a couple of Peril on the Screen eligible movies this past weekend:
The Sixth Sense (1999) – Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, and Toni Collette
Reading “Smee” put me in the mood to watch the quintessential story of people and ghosts. I hadn’t watched The Sixth Sense in a few years and I was reminded of how really well crafted this movie is. It’s slowly and deliberately presented, and all the parts fit together. And, even if you know the twist, there are so many little details that are noticeable on rewatch. This time, I paid attention to the times when Shyamalan uses the viewer’s assumptions of what is going on and what has occurred—to the viewer’s detriment. The only thing we can trust are the images on the screen.
Cinematography Trivia: In addition to working on many of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies and Silence of the Lambs, cinematographer Tak Fujimoto also worked on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink.
The Last Witch Hunter (2015) – Directed by Breck Eisner; Starring Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie, and Elijah Wood
On the other side of the movie coin from The Sixth Sense is a movie like The Last Witch Hunter. I’ll admit, when I first saw the trailer I figured this film was another in a long line of loud, non-stop action, CGI-laden behemoths. But actually, The Last Witch Hunter is fairly well paced with even a little bit of plot. It’s by no means a great film, but it’s was enjoyable. I liked the nature-driven magic effects and Vin Diesel played a refreshingly non-emo immortal.
Cinematography Trivia: Cinematographer Dean Semler won an Oscar for Dances with Wolves.
September 12, 2016
What Am I Reading? Maybe Something Perilous
Posting later and more stripped down than usual because it’s been a pretty rough Monday.
Today or tomorrow, I should finish Iain Lawrence’s The Seance, which has been pretty decent thus far. Then I plan to start American Ghost, a nonfiction book by Hannah Nordhaus. I’m not sure how well it will work out for R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril, but we’ll see. In any case, I still have From the Dust Returned to dip in to.
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!
September 11, 2016
ROW80 ~ Back to Basics
Here I am in the last 1.5 weeks of the round finally hitting my stride and totally changing things up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For the past week, writing has been nearly the first thing I do behind starting coffee and making sure the internet hasn’t exploded. And even if the internet *has* exploded, I’ve started writing by about 8am. My writing goal has been a small 500 words daily (six days a week). I ended up writing 5,332 for the past week, bringing the manuscript to 10,039 words.
And, while I’m hesitant to say it, it’s felt good.
Goals for Week 11
Wicked Witch, Retired
First draft – 500 words daily. Shooting for 5000 for the week.
A quick clean-up/rewrite/note-taking session. I’ve been doing a bit of world-building within the narrative. I should probably nail down details and fix continuity.
September 10, 2016
Deal Me In, Week 36 ~ “Smee”
Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis
What is Deal Me In?
“Smee” by A. M. Burrage
Card picked: 10 of Spades
From: One of the great things about Deal Me In is finding new favorite short stories. “Smee” is from Jay’s list of Ten Favorite Ghost Stories. It’s available in text form at Scary for Kids (even scarier for adults).
Thoughts:
There was a time when even adults played games in the dark. Not *those* kinds of games! Sheesh.* But games like hide and sneek, and maybe smee, provided some at-home entertainment before the internet, before TV, before the radio gave people other things to do.
The rules of smee are simple. Each player takes a slip of paper. On one of the slips, “SMEE” is written. When the lights go out, the person with “SMEE” goes and hides. The rest of the players try to find SMEE, challenging one another with “Smee?” If the person isn’t “smee,” they answer “It’s me!” or rather “Smee!” If a seeker encounters the real SMEE, the challenge is met with silence. The seeker then silently stays with SMEE until the last person has gathered where SMEE was hiding. This game works is very amusing! …Unless, you play with one extra: a ghost who you might meet in the dark, who will meet your challenge of “Smee?” only with silence.
A good good ghost story doesn’t need to be complex. The ghost doesn’t need to be bloodily vengeful, have an intense hatred of the living, or even need to have their spirit put to rest. All a good ghost story needs is living people and a ghost. And an author that can conjure up the uncanny with just those two ingredients. I highly recommend “Smee” for a chilling September-Christmas read.
* Although the end of “Smee” does include a minor misunderstanding about a couple being supposedly alone for an extended period.
