S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 117

Isolated

I live in kind of a weird spot.  I live in the middle of Washington State (sort of) in a county bigger than the state of Delaware.  The population of the town I live just outside of is about 20,000 people but there are nearly 50,000 who share the same zip code and almost 100,000 people in the county.  Yes, I know if you live in New York City there's probably 100,000 people within a few blocks of you.

This town is geographically isolated.  It's on Interstate 90 and if you go east on the interstate, the next biggest town you hit is 100 miles (160 km) away.  In fact, there is really two other towns between here and that larger town, and they are both tiny.  If you go west on I-90, you don't hit a bigger town until you get to the suburbs of Seattle, about 160 miles (257 km) away.  Yes, there is a larger town northeast of here about 70 miles (112 km) driving distance away and the "Tri-cities" are south about 70 miles (driving) and they are all bigger.

So, my point being, this is the largest town for quite a long ways around.  But we're isolated.  To get on a commercial airplane we have to drive minimum 70 miles.  To shop somewhere other than WalMart you used to have to drive, again, minimum 70 miles (actually, I usually did the 100 because it was all freeway and took about as long as going the 70 miles to the Tri-Cities).   The nearest 4-year university is, you guessed it, 70 miles away.  This town didn't have touch tone phones until the late 1970s.  And while the retail situation is improving, it's still pretty slim selection.

What inspired this post was I was looking at the National Weather Service website and our weather reports come from 100 miles away.  Why aren't they generated locally?

I have Facebook friends who live in smaller towns (in Idaho, of all places) and they have more shopping and restaurant choices than we do.  I think, for some reason, this town is so isolated that people simply don't know it's here.  We are another Starbucks stop on the interstate, and that's it.  And it's been that way for as long as I can remember (well, after we got a Starbucks, before that we weren't even a place to stop).

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

When I first saw the ads on TV for Pacific Rim, I thought, "Oh, dear, here's a live action mecha movie that will be huge on special effects on short on story."  Then the Rotten Tomatoes score came in pretty high and my kids went and saw it and thought it was good, so I put it in my Netflix queue.

The purpose of special effects in a movie is to show the audience something it can't see in real life or, in some cases, to show something it would be to dangerous, difficult, or expensive to do in real life.  And with computer generated imagery (CGI) that is only limited to the film makers' imagination and budget.  The best special effects are those where the audience doesn't even realize there is a special effect on the screen.  But with a movie such as Pacific Rim, that's impossible.  There are no giant monsters rising up from the sea and there are no huge robots with people inside them to fight the monsters.  But still, the film makers can hope to achieve the point where the audience isn't thinking "Wow, what a cool special effect" but is thinking, "I hope the robot wins this fight."  Some film makers make the mistake of thinking the special effects are the story but good film makers know that a good story and compelling complex characters have to be there, the special effects only enhance it.  My touchstone for such movies is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Huge amount of CGI effects throughout, yet it never, ever lets go of the story.  And yes, there are times you forget that Golum is a CGI effect.

Pacific Rim, while no LOTR, never lets go of the story.  Yes, there are times you think, "Wow, the CGI effects budget on this film must be huge" but it's hard to get away from that with huge robots fighting huge monsters.  It's not like 6,000 riders of Rohan that you can forget are a CGI effect.  But the personalities, the stories, and the pain and triumph of the characters always comes through despite the huge effects budget.  No, it's not Pride and Prejudice with robots and there's a few hoary clichés, but over all, Pacific Rim is enjoyable and fun.

Movie Review: Australia

Yes, I normally review movies quite a while after they come out because I watch most movies on Blu-ray or DVD from Netflix which means I have to wait until the DVD/Blu-ray to come out then often four weeks after that because Netflix doesn't release some new releases for four weeks after you can buy them because of a deal they made with movie studios to get streaming content.  Yes, it's very annoying.

But here I am about to review a movie from 2008: Australia .   For those of you math-challenged, that's five years old.

When this movie first came out I had no interest in it because it just looked like a western cum travelogue mishmash of a film.  But my mother was waxing rhapsodic about it a while back and wishing she could see it in high definition (she doesn't own an HDTV) so I said I'd put it on my Netflix list and when it bubbled to the top invite her over to watch it.

I put it at the bottom of my queue figuring it would be safely down there for months.

But, Netflix is being kind of weird lately (ever since, it seems, I sent back a non-working disc of Oblivion and demanded they send me a new one).  I have two movies released in 1999 and 2000, respectively, both on "long wait."  I had four released movies in my queue ahead of Australia and they sent me . . . Australia.  So I invited my mother over to watch it and we watched the 2 hour, 45 minute movie.

I think what happened is a bunch of Australian actors and producers and maybe even the director thought "hey, let's make a movie about the grand history of our country."  But what they forgot was: compelling characters and a plot that wasn't lifted from old John Wayne movies.  What we ended up with was a predictable plot, gross clichés (oh, aren't the native folk so much smarter and honorable than the white people), and cheesy special effects.  There was even about two minutes of film clipped right out of the 38-year-old movie Tora! Tora! Tora ! before the Japanese attack on Darwin.

Yes, the scenery was often spectacular (looked a lot like southern Utah to me) and yes, the actors did what they could with the material they were given (oh, Nicole Kidman, you tried so hard, you did.) 

(Speaking of Nicole Kidman, remember when she looked like this:
What happened? Did she have a botched facelift?)

What you had with Australia was a movie trying so hard to be epic, it was mediocre.  Yes, Australia is an amazing country with a rich history and fascinating aboriginal culture.  But this movie seemed to just gloss over all that in favor of spectacle and barely-believable romance salted with Hollywood clichés.  Not how I want to spend 2 hours and 45 minutes.

WIP Blurb

My current (novel) WIP (Work in Progress) is called The Treasure of the Black Hole.  This weekend it goes on second edit and after that it goes to proofreaders.  Then I'll have my wife read it out loud to me (yes, the whole thing) which I found with Gods of Strife (still at my publisher) really helped find things my eyes would have missed.  Luckily, Treasure is about 68% as long as Gods.

I'm so excited about Treasure, I've even written the back cover blurb for it already.  Here it is:

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of . . .
When private detective Rick Bailey is hired by the exotically beautiful and outrageously wealthy Princess Nora, he thinks it'll be easy money.  Escaping from her rebellion-torn kingdom, the princess has lost her handmaiden, Lores: the only person who knows how to find the hidden royal jewels.
But when his search for the equally lovely Lores turns deadly, Bailey realizes that there is more to this case than it first seemed.  When someone tries to kill him, he discovers that the roots of evil run deep.
With his own set of values and sense of honor, Bailey must keep one step ahead of murderous mobsters, secret government operatives, and a genetically enhanced Lores as he races across the galaxy in search of the truth.  The only things he knows he can trust are his eight-foot-tall ladybug-like secretary and a powerful weapon that responds to his thoughts.
Will Bailey find the treasure of the black hole in time and will he survive long enough to discover why it is something worth killing for?

Cheating at NaNoWriMo

Shhhh, don't tell anyone but I'm cheating at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

Here's the problem: when November rolled around I was 40,462 words into a WIP (Work in Progress).  My goal for the WIP was about 60,000 words.  That meant for NaNoWriMo I could only write about 20,000 word and you're supposed to write 50,000.

So, I made a nefarious plan.  Instead of just counting the words in my WIP, I'd count everything I wrote, including blog posts, freelance assignments, and short stories (yes, this blog post will be counted).  I know this isn't what you're supposed to do for NaNoWriMo.  But if I only wrote 20,000 words left on my WIP, I would disappoint the local NaNoWriMo group who is counting on my word count to add to their total word count (which is right now at an amazing 527,799 words).

Oh, and I finished the first draft of the novel on November 3rd, not quite at 60,000 words (after the first edits, it was 59,985 words).

Now, it might have been a bit of a stretch to include the glossary I wrote for proofreaders and editors for my WIP and blurb I wrote (and rewrote and rewrote over and over) in my total word count.  But they were things I wrote.  Not counting this blog post, I am at 32,934 words with 1,800 of them written today (in a short story I'm writing).

So, yes, I'm cheating.  Maybe next year I'll be able to start a novel on November 1st and do NaNoWriMo the right way.  My local writers' group is big on it and I want to support the group.  But I also write on my own schedule.  If I have an idea for a novel I'm going to start writing it no matter when it is.

I just hope they don't mind I'm cheating a bit this year.

My iPhone is Stalking Me

Last night I pulled down the "Today menu" on my silver and white iPhone 5S with iOS 7.0.2 loaded.  I'm not sure that that is what it is actually called but I call it the "Today menu" where it has the choices of "Today" "All" or "Missed" and usually gives you a little talk about the weather and your schedule along with stock prices.  (A Google search indicates it's called the "Notification Center.")  But last night it said something like, "It will take you about 15 minutes to reach . . ." and an address I didn't recognize.  I touched the text (not even sure that would do something) and it opened the Apple map app showing a route to that address.  I zoomed in.  It was a restaurant that, coincidentally, my wife and I have gone to the last  two Sunday nights in a row.

Now it is saying "Right now it would take you about 15 minutes to drive to . . ." and an address.  I assume the "right now" means it's looking at traffic (which I don't think is available in my little town) and figure it out.  But the address is where I go to Toastmasters every Monday night.

Unbeknownst to me, my iPhone seems to be figuring out my schedule and, in an effort to be helpful, letting me know how long it would take to get where I usually go.

I'm trying to decide if I should be happy with the convenience or annoyed at the lack of privacy.  Is this information going to Apple's servers?  (If it were an Android phone, I would assume Google had the information and was trying to figure out a way to monetize it.)  And if it's going to Apple's servers is it going to the NSA's servers?

I suppose I could turn off "Location Services" on the phone but that would eliminate so many convenient functions, including the map apps (I have the default Apple and the Google maps).  If I were a criminal that would be the first thing I would do.  Before the phone says, "Right now it would take you 35 minutes to get to the place you normally dump bodies."

And what else is my phone learning about me?  How long until privacy is a quaint notion people used to worry about, you know, before smartphones and dumb governments made it null.

College Footbal Will Break Your Heart

I'm a little angry with Steve Sarkisian at the moment.  The University of Washington Husky football coach chose at the end of last nights 59-7 victory over Colorado chose to quit instead of kicking a field goal.  A successful field goal would have brought the score of the game to 62-7.  Rather the Huskies took a knee on 4th down with less than a minute left in the game.  The Colorado Buffaloes didn't even try to advance the ball and the game ended with a whimper.

Why did I want 62 points rather than 57?  Because I wanted every point we could get to show that the Huskies are back after losing three in a row, including a blow-out at Arizona State.  Yes, Colorado is the second worst team in the Pac-12 (California, who we beat two weeks ago with a bye last week, is the worst) but still, the more dramatically we destroyed Colorado the better we'll look going into bowl selection season.  And last night's win made the Dawgs bowl eligible.

I like college football and, of course, love my Huskies.  But the thing I like about college football breaks your heart at the same time.  You watch these kids grow and learn and get better over their time playing or a team.  But then they leave and go to the pros.  We had Jake Locker for four years (he started at quarterback as a true freshmen) and watched his ups and downs.  But then he left.  Current quarterback Keith Price is a senior.  He has one more game in Husky Stadium and, including a bowl game, four games left.  And he's been amazing this year.  These kids come up, turn into wonderful players you love to watch (such as Bishop Sankey) and then they leave.

 So what's great about college football is also what will break your heart.

The Dawgs have three regular-season games left: next Friday at UCLA, a game I think they have a chance to win; then at Oregon State where they should win; and finally the Apple Cup against Washington State that they'd better win.

When the Fantastic Becomes Mundane

This morning it was 37 degrees outside.  Inside the house it was 72 degrees.  With a turn of a knob hot, clean water rained down on my body, allowing me to clean myself.

That mundane, every-day experience would be, 100 years ago, an unspeakable luxury.  And 200 years ago it was unavailable to the richest person on the planet and, if the term existed at the time, would have been thought wild science fiction.

This is why science fiction writers have it so tough.  What mundane yet amazing thing will people experience 100 years from now?  From my work in progress, Treasure of the Black Hole, comes this sentence:

"Thanks, doll," I said, and walked through the dilating door to my office.

No comment, no reaction by my character, just a regular mundane thing that would be, in this age, science fiction.

Another example from the real world.  Before the invention of the steam engine, the fastest thing around was probably a galloping horse that went, what, 35 miles per hour?  Then with steam came trains, then internal combustion gave us cars and propeller-driven airplanes.  Finally jet engines routine fly people around at over 500 miles per hour.  Cars, airplanes, trains are all mundane to us.  To an 18th Century man, they would have been fantastical.

Or think about the Internet which is only about, as a consumer product, 20 years old.  Yet we all use it, take it for granted, and it's become a mundane part of our lives.  In 20 years.

Of course, you don't want to write about mundane things.  A description of my shower, even published 200 years ago, would be rather boring.  But you, as a science fiction writer need to decided what is mundane to your characters and what is extraordinary.

WIP it Good

My WIP (Work in Progress) first draft is done.  I finished yesterday early afternoon after waking up at 3:00 A.M. and not being able to go back to sleep.  I wrote 8,440 words yesterday.  That's 14.7% of the total final length of the novel.  I was aiming for 60,000 words but it only ended up 57,478 or 2,522 words short.  I'm not worried.  Gods of Strife (my last completed novel that is now at my publisher) had a first draft that was about 77,000 words and the final version ended up being 88,000 words or 11,000 words longer (another 14.3% longer).  So the current WIP will, after re-writes, edits, and proofreading end up being over 60,000 words easily.

The problem is NaNoWriMo.  I pledged to write 30,000 words and I'm part of a group that is counting on me to put out a bunch of words.  And yes, I've written 17,274 words so far in November (including 160 words today on slight revisions to the WIP I made this morning) which is over half my goal of 30,000 words and not a bad start on 50,000 words, I pretty much have nothing to write about to get the remaining 12,726 words needed to reach 30,000 (32,726 to reach 50,000).  Yes, I'm ahead of the curve (I've written 10 days worth of NaNoWriMo writing rate in less than 4 days) but I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO WRITE.

In a week or so I can start doing revisions and re-writes on my WIP, but that's slow and doesn't add a lot of words very quickly.  If I could come up with an idea for a novella or something else to write, maybe I could reach at least 30,000 words.  I don't know.  I am, unfortunately, not a writer who can write on demand.  I need to have a good idea at least to start with.

So my first attempt at NaNoWriMo maybe be a crash and burn.  But mostly because I had my WIP nearly finished by November 1st.

Oh, and the WIP is called The Black Hole Treasure (although I may change that to Treasure of the Black Hole) and is a hard-boiled private detective about 5,000 years in the future.  Sort of a "Sam Spade in Space."

NaNoWriMo . . . Kind Of.

I know I said I wasn't doing NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month).  To be specific what I said was:

So this year I'm in the middle of a work in progress (WIP).  It's tentatively titled The Black Hole Treasure.  My goal is for it to be at least 60,000 words long.  As of this moment it is 37,855 words long.  For NaNoWriMo I promised to produce 30,000 words on this WIP (which is not what you're supposed to do).

So I'm keeping track of the words I'm writing in November and hope to write at least 30,000 words.  I have as of this moment, written 8,123 words in my WIP in the two days of NaNoWriMo.  So NaNoWriMo is working for me in that it is motivating me to work in my novel.  I went to a "write in" last night and had a blast (and wrote about 2,000 word for a total of 6,345 yesterday).  So I am doing NaNoWriMo . . . kind of.

The only problem is, on October 31st, I only had 19,538 words left to reach my word goal for The Black Hole Treasure.   So I am going to be 10,462 words short of my 30,000-word goal if I just reach the length I'm aiming for in the novel.

Now, it'll probably be longer.  I was aiming for 80,000 words for Gods of Strife (which is still at my publisher) and it ended up being over 88,000 words.  But I don't think this novel will be 17% longer than planned.  In fact, I'm a bit worried about getting to my 60,000-word goal.

So I'm sort of doing NaNoWriMo (and I have not killed my inner editor because I am still trying to make everything I write as good as possible and not just WRITE WORDS).  But toward the end I might have to find something else to write to meet my 30,000-word goal.