Bryce Moore's Blog, page 164

Heavy Meta: Interview with Bryce Moore

Suffering from election fatigue? Have I got you covered! Listen to me talk about anything *but* the election for once. It’s a recording of this week’s edition of my radio show!

Granted, it’s sort of a podcast where I’m a special guest on my own podcast, but I didn’t ask the questions (and I didn’t know what they’d be ahead of time), so it’s not like this was staged or anything. Just a good old fashioned 20 minute discussion about my thoughts on writing. I thought it turned out pretty well, though perhaps I’m biased.

As a bonus, there’s a top 10 list of movies about writers and writing, made up by yours truly. Tell me how badly I messed it up.

(And go vote if you haven’t already!)

Further Adventures in Family History

I’ll admit it: I might have a problem. Each Sunday, Denisa and I sit down to do “just a bit of family history.” This time, I even suggested we set an hour time limit so that we wouldn’t lose our whole Sunday. But the thing is, I get into the research a little bit, and the next thing I know, it’s dark out. (And not just because of Daylight Savings Time.)

Oh well. At least I’m having a fun time, right?

Yesterday’s adventure was focused on delving further back into Denisa’s Križan line. A couple of months ago we’d done a bunch of work and discovered that her great-great grandfather, a preacher in a small town, had been married twice. We found a bunch of information on his families, but when we tried to find information for his parents, we figured out that he hadn’t been born in that town. He must have moved there when he was assigned to be the preacher. We had an idea as to when he was born (they included his exact age when he died), but there were no birth records in the town for him, so we figured we were stuck.

Yesterday, I decided to try again. (Well, scratch that. I forgot that I’d tried the first time. Same thing, right?) I did a search for Karel Križan, and quickly remembered I’d hit a road block before. When I searched online for his name, I only came across the same records I’d found before. Except this time I noticed that in one record he’d been listed as Karol, not Karel. So for kicks, I switched the search to Karol Križan.

This time, I found the birth record for Carolus Križan, born in the right year as the man I was looking for. And when I went to that birth record, I found that he was born on the right day, as well. I wanted to call it right then, but Denisa was still skeptical. Križan is a common name in Slovakia, and it could be possible that two people with that name were born on the same day. Could I somehow prove it further?

So I figured maybe Carolus was married in the same town he was born in. I checked the marriage records for him. Nothing in the right years. To be thorough, I kept checking a for year or two after what I thought would be right. We discovered a Jan Križan had been married in 1857 in that town. And one of the witnesses for the marriage? Karel Križan, the local preacher from a village. The same Karel who’s Denisa’s great-great grandfather.

So that was a pretty great feeling. It meant we now had the name of Karel’s parents and where he was born. We used that to find the names of all 9 of his brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, the records in that town got pretty crummy a bit further back, so we weren’t able to find the names of his grandparents. Maybe one day.

But the cool thing is that Karel was born in a town that’s literally right next to where Denisa’s brother now lives. And we had no clue about that until yesterday. I love cool coincidences like that.

Anyway. Maybe that’s not incredibly interesting to anyone else, but it was to me. Then again, I’m a librarian. I love me some good research, and I’d never thought I’d be able to do cool family history research like rhis, since my Mormon family got to all the easily accessible stuff decades ago.

Looks like I had to marry into it.

Center for Talented Youth Time

Last night I went to an info session for Tomas for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Talent Search program. That sounds much more exciting than it actually is. Basically it boils down to this: 7th graders take the SAT and see how well they do. If they do well enough, then they qualify to take college classes or go to 3 week summer camps with other kids who did well on the SAT in seventh grade.

My brother Joel and I both did it when we were back in school. I went to CTY summer camp at Franklin & Marshall in Lancaster, PA for two years in a row. The first year I took Latin. The second year I took ancient Greek. I had a blast both times. It was so strange to be around so many extremely bright people. Not that my friends were dunces or anything, but I went from my school (where I felt extremely smart) to a place where I felt like one of the slower kids on campus. It was humbling and my first taste of the “big fish/little pond” phenomenon.

There were dances, outings to local stores or the mall, dorm food, talent shows, and more. And an awful lot of classes, of course. I basically took a semester of college Latin in 3 weeks, then the same for Ancient Greek. Can I remember much of either class now? Not really. I still know the whole Greek alphabet. And I think I remember how to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in Latin, so . . . win?

I still remember some things about those summer camps:

We had this card game we liked to play called Mau Mau. I don’t remember anything about it other than that we made up the rules as we went along. We thought it was great. (And it turns out it’s a real game.) We also played a lot of Egyptian Rat Screw, which I thought (until moments ago) had to be made up as well, but I guess I was wrong about that one too.
Food was great. They had a wok bar that I really liked where you could put anything you wanted into a wok and cook it up. There was also this guy who liked to have 6 glasses of milk with every meal. We were convinced he was going to die from protein poisoning.
There was a tradition at each dance where everyone poured out for the song American Pie. There were different moves to make and things to shout out at different parts of the song, and I still mentally do them whenever I hear the song on the radio.
Going to the mall was particularly awesome. Because if you had money, you could buy whatever you wanted. (Somehow, this feeling has not persisted with me . . .)

But the experience helped me in other ways.

First and foremost, it taught me not to be afraid of the SAT. I passed it in seventh grade, for crying out loud. So when it came time for me to take the SAT and ACT for real, I wasn’t scared at all. (I actually probably should have taken things a bit more seriously. I didn’t even study for the ACT. Not even enough to know what I could and couldn’t take with me to the test. I just assumed it would be exactly like the SAT. I remember getting the results back. I’d gotten a 34, and I was really disappointed at first, thinking it must have been out of like 100 or something. (Who makes a test be out of 36? I ask you.)) So that helped me prepare for the college application process.

And as I said, it also helped knock me down a few notches on the pride scale. (Though I’d still have a few more notches to go. But that’s probably still true today. Sigh.) Getting away from home for a few weeks and being on my own helped with me becoming more independent, and since it was on a college campus, I had some familiarity with that when I went off to college, as well.

So I’m really happy Tomas has a shot at this. That isn’t to say we’ll be able to afford it if he does well, but the option will be there, and that’s important.

Of course, when I did it way back when, my teacher had a whole regimen of training classes to help us be ready for the test. That doesn’t seem to be the case here where we live now. So after some online snooping, Khan Academy does free SAT prep. My plan is to work through some of that with Tomas and get him ready. A large part of succeeding on these tests is being familiar with the types of questions that are asked, how to pick them apart, and how to manage your time on the test effectively.

Anyway. We’ll see how he does. He should be taking it in January. I’ll let you know how it goes!

World Series: Time for the Radio

[image error]Like many people, I wanted to tune into the World Series last night to see all the action. The trick was, I’m a cord cutter, and no amount of online acrobatics was getting me any closer to actually viewing the game. I have a fair bit of experience making that happen, so it was frustrating to not be able to do it.

The solution was simple: tune into the radio. The trick was reminding myself that could be done. (Duh.) So once I had that ironed out, I was able to lie there in bed, experiencing the game the same way people have been doing it for years.

I’ve listened to sports radio quite a bit over my life, actually. There have been plenty of BYU games that I could only listen to that way, and back when I was reading gas meters in college, I’d listen to some baseball to pass the time. Baseball translates really well to radio, which is probably one reason the sport was so popular for so long. It’s easy to understand and follow from description alone.

Confession time: my most memorable radio sports experience happened in my first city on my mission: Schwarzenberg, Germany. Missionaries aren’t supposed to watch sports or television, and I’d been out in the country for five months or so. But at the time I was a big Utah Jazz fan, and they’d finally made the finals, and I discovered if I sat in the kitchen of my apartment and angled the radio just right, I could pick up the broadcast of the games from a military station miles away . . .

So yeah. I broke down and broke the rules. It’s probably my fault the Jazz lost. But it’s not like I was doing that instead of missionary work. I set my alarm and got up in the middle of the night to listen. I still remember being huddled next to the radio, listening to it quietly. (Didn’t want my companion to wake up.)

Listening to the Cubs win last night gave me flashbacks to that experience. (I was in bed, listening on my iPhone as quiet as it would go. Didn’t want to wake up Denisa.)

Some things change. Some things stay the same.

Though I wasn’t breaking any rules last night, at least.

Go Cubs!

 

Want to Hear Me Read the Second Chapter of MEMORY THIEF?

A month or so ago I did a reading with The Other Stories, a podcast that has authors read from their books and then interviews them about their writing. I’m pleased to say it’s finally been posted on their site, and you can hear it here.

I read the second chapter of the book. It was done over Skype, so the microphone isn’t the best, but it’s not too painful on the ears, I hope. 36 minutes in all, with half of it being the reading and the other half me talking about where the book came from, what inspired it, etc.

This is handy, since I didn’t have my own podcast to  post this week. It’s almost like I planned it!

Anyway. Give it a listen and tell me what you think.

The Problem with Halloween

Okay. Now that the holiday is safely past us, I can speak up on something that occurred to me a few days ago, right about the time I was ready to pull all my hair out as Denisa and I tried to keep Halloween on track. First, a disclaimer: I actually really  like Halloween. I like how it gets people out and about. I like how it connects communities in ways Thanksgiving or even Christmas doesn’t. And while sure, you get some people decrying its pagan roots (some people are just allergic to fun), for the most part, we can all indulge our collective sweet tooth together for a bit and not have to worry about the “real meaning” of the holiday. (Interestingly, this is one holiday where you’re not supposed to think about the “real meaning” that closely . . .)

However.

It’s a holiday that has pretty high expectations from a kid perspective. You’ve got costumes. Pumpkin carving. Lots of decorations. Candy purchases. Parties. Cookie decorating. Trick or treating. Scary movies to watch. It’s a lot of moving parts to keep coordinated. You know me, though. I’m all for a good party. Except Halloween comes with no time off at all. No national holiday. No way to really catch your breath around the festivities.

We get two days for Thanksgiving, and all we’re really doing for that holiday is eating a ton of food and gearing ourselves up for the end of the year Christmas/New Years stuff. (Yes, I realize not everyone celebrates Christmas.  But this post isn’t about Christmas. It’s about Halloween.) Easter and Valentines Day don’t have too much baggage around them. Nothing you can’t whip together in an afternoon or an evening if push comes to shove. What other holidays do we have to worry about? Fourth of July? Burgers. New Year’s? Turn on the television and count down from ten. St. Patrick’s Day only needs green food coloring, when you get right down to it. Groundhog Day? (Hmm. Let’s not go there this post either. Groundhog Day is special.)

Granted, there’s “holiday spread” at play in all of these. Leprechaun traps. Elaborate valentines. Big parties. But Halloween has been doing this stealthy trick (it seems to me) over the last decade or so, morphing from something that seemed pretty straightforward into something that’s becoming very involved.

Or is this just my experience? Denisa and I didn’t even do a big party this year, and it still felt like we were juggling blazing cats while blindfolded. I’m all for fun, but sometimes I think I need to back away from the fun some.

Or else Obama could declare another national holiday. As a last “going away” present? I’m sure his poll numbers would skyrocket . . .

Just a thought. Bring on Thanksgiving!

Top Ten Family-Friendly Scary Movies

I made up a top ten list for the radio show/podcast we were going to record today, but the recording fell through, which is sad. And so I’m left with this top ten list that isn’t going to be topical by next week. What to do with it . . .?

I always find lists on the radio more compelling than the ones that are written up, mainly because there’s more suspense and you have to wait to find out what the top picks are instead of just scrolling to the end, but something’s better than nothing, so here we go.

First, a disclaimer. I made a big long list to whittle things down, and I took some movies out of the running early on to try and keep things as focused as possible. Thus, Nightmare Before Christmas fell by the wayside, as did Gremlins. Those two exist in their own funky Halloween/Christmas appropriate movie genre. I took off The Birds, The Others, Poltergeist, and Sixth Sense because the goal was to avoid giving children permanent psychoses. And then I lopped off Clue, Private Eyes, and Goonies because, while tonally-appropriate, they’re just not really Halloween movies. I left Little Shop of Horrors off because of how flat it just fell with my kids, even though I still love it.

With all of that out of the way, I’m left with movies that I’ve personally seen that are great Halloween films to watch with the family. I’ve ranked them according to my taste, but realize that some of the newer movies are possibly ranked lower than they should be, just because I haven’t seen them enough. I like to have a few viewings at least for something to break into my top 5.

Anyway. Without further ado, here’s the list:

10 & 9: ParaNorman and Coraline–These are two of the ones I was talking about. I remember really loving ParaNorman, but I’ve only seen it once. The same holds true for Coraline. Was I just in a forgiving mood that one time? Are they as great as I thought they were? I could easily see these shooting higher up in my rankings once I’ve watched them again. Creepy and fun throughout. ParaNorman is about a boy who has to save his town from an old curse, while fighting zombies. Coraline (based on a book by Neil Gaiman) tells the tale of a girl who discovers an alternative version of her house, complete with parents whose eyes have been replaced by buttons. But something evil is afoot . . .  If you haven’t seen these two, you should. I could have put them in any order relative to each other. I’d like to watch them  again to see if I can start really differentiating them from each other in the rankings.

8: Lady in White–I’ve seen this one 2 or 3 times. I remember watching it in high school with my best friend and her mom, and getting in trouble because I guessed the ending. (Maybe I’d already seen it by then?) A young boy sees the ghost of a girl who was murdered, along with her killer. He starts getting stalked by the killer, and it gets scarier from there. Intense.

7: The Innocents–The 1961 version with Deborah Kerr. It’s based on Turn of the Screw, and it’s genuinely creepy. I’m also pretty sure most people haven’t seen it these days. You should check it out. A governess may or may not be losing her mind as she interacts with her charges, who may or may not be possessed. Scary without being bloody. Just good old-fashioned frights. You don’t need color to be on this list.

6: Monster Squad–From 1987. A group of kids team up to save their town from Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and others who have joined forces to take over the world. Funny and scary at the same time. I remember loving it, but I (again) have only seen it once . . .

5: Watcher in the Woods–Classic Disney horror. A girl disappears from a church during the middle of a seance/ritual. Her ghost haunts the area and the family who moves into her old house years later. This movie seriously messed me up as a child. It’s only fair to pass it on.

4: The Witches–Roald Dahl has written some awesome books. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Matilda. The BFG. His books have a style all their own. The Witches fits right into this, and somehow the  movie adaptation is just really freaky. A boy is on vacation in the same hotel as a gathering of witches, and it’s up to him to stop them. Even after he’s turned into a mouse.

3: Ghostbusters–Come on. Who hasn’t seen this? Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis. A trio of academics team up to catch ghosts and defeat an ancient evil. Just watched this Saturday for like the thousandth time. Love it.

2: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow–The Disney verison. It’s short, but it’s awesome. How can you not love this? Like Ghostbusters, I assume everyone has seen this.

1: Something Wicked This Way Comes–The epitome of family-friendly scares. Disney horror at its finest. I watched this a lot when I was younger, and it always freaked me out. It will always be the movie that pops into my head first when this genre comes up in conversation. Comparing it to the others, I’m not sure it’s better than all of them now, but it’s earned this spot by pioneering effort.

So there you have it. My top 10 list. Did I miss anything? Get anything terribly wrong? Any movies I really should have seen that I haven’t? Speak up!

And happy Halloween!

Movie Review: Little Shop of Horrors

There are some movies I just assume everyone has seen, because I’ve seen them myself so many times. But then I talk to people and mention the movies in casual conversation, and I’m reminded that just isn’t the case. So even though it feels redundant to me to review such an excellent movie musical as Little Shop of Horrors . . .

I’m going to do it anyway.

Because everyone should watch this movie. It’s just so much fun, and so unique. And never mind the fact that when I had Tomas and DC watch it with Denisa and me the other night, their response to the movie was . . . less than enthusiastic. (They couldn’t get over the Audrey’s accent in the movie. Sigh.)

If you didn’t know, the story is simple: normal guy finds alien, man-eating plant. Becomes famous, but at the cost of blood and bodies. He’s in love with a girl who’s dating a sadistic dentist, and he wants to save her from the hellish neighborhood they live in.

Oh, and it’s got songs and music from the same team that brought you The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. (Side note: wouldn’t it be awesome if Disney would do an animated version of this movie? They’re doing all these live-action versions of animated films. Why not flip that around, guys?) It’s got some of my favorite songs from any musicals. I grew up playing the dentist song over and over. (On vinyl. Go ahead. Make fun of me.) The music is funny and smart and beautiful all at once. That ain’t easy to pull off.

The film version gets even better by starring Rick Moranis, with cameos by Bill Murray, John Candy, Jim Belushi, and more. And to top it all off, it was directed by Miss Piggy and Yoda or (as he’s otherwise known), Frank Oz.

Seriously. This is a fun blast of a movie. It’s one that you should watch, and since it’s Halloween time right now, why not watch it between now and the main event?

5/5 Love love love this movie. Even Audrey’s accent.

Writing Update: I’m Officially Over the Million Word Mark!

It’s (once again) been a while since I gave you all an update on my writing. So I suppose today’s as good a day as any to right that wrong. Interested to hear where I am on any particular project? Here’s a quick rundown of my books, in the order they were written:

Into the Elevator–First book. 67,000 words. Will never see the light of day.
Blood Countess–Second book. 15,000 words (I think I’ve lost a good chunk of writing somewhere. This is all I can find now, though.) Was to be a collaboration. I wrote my half. Will never see the light of day. (Though it did feature a Vodnik as the villain, so I suppose some of this book eventually meandered its way to publication. If I were to write a sequel to Vodnik, this is one area that is a possibility for exploration, as the setting is only a few miles from Trencin.)
Weaver of Dreams–112,000 words. I’ve toyed with rewriting this one from time to time. I really like the concept, but when I went back to read it, I was horrified by the text. Probably will never see the light of day.
Cavern of Babel–PUBLISHED! 37,000 words (89,000 total for the whole trilogy) You can read it this instant on Kindle. If you want a print copy, I’ll sell those for $5 pretty much wherever I go. Just let me know ahead of time you want one. (I actually wrote two sequels to this, but I lump them in with this single book. Odds of them getting published? Slim to none. Though I will say the name of the first sequel would be City of Lost Alpacas.)
Adventures of Barboy–48,000 words. Medieval fantasy romp. Will never see the light of day.
Vodnik–PUBLISHED! 106,000 words. You can read it right this instant.
Ichabod–71,000 words. One of my personal favorite books, though I do wonder if it would stand up to the memory if/when I reread it. I’ve toyed with self-publishing this for a long time. You never know . . .
Pawn of the Dead–65,000 words. Essentially a rewrite of Adventures of Barboy, set in my hometown and the present day. Slim chance of it ever seeing the light of day, though I suppose I could self-publish it. It wasn’t bad, from what I remember.
Tarnhelm–81,000 words. YA noir fantasy. Currently in submission limbo. Would love to get it published, but it might take a long time to get there. Not planning of self-publishing this one, as I think it’s good enough for professional publication.
Get Cupid–70,000 words. Never going to see the light of day, but pieces got cannibalized in a later book.
Memory Thief–PUBLISHED! 55,000 words. You can buy it right this instant. (Not available as an ebook yet.)
Our Lady of Questionable Morals–92,000 words. Currently on submission. I love this book. I really hope you all get to read it someday.
Book Binder’s Curse–55,000 words. A Peter Pan adaptation. I personally really like it, but other readers . . . not so much. Doubtful this will ever see the light of day.
Magic at 30,000 Feet–65,000 words. Fourth draft is complete and currently on the desk of my agent. I would love to get this out on submission this year.
Utopia–87,000 words. First draft is complete. I’m giving myself some space before I go back to read it, because this book is either crazy awesome or just plain crazy, and I need perspective to be able to judge it. I had a blast writing it, though . . . My first science fiction book, too.

Grand total? 1,078,000 words of actual finished text! Which means finishing Utopia was the book that officially brought me past my million word mark. I had no idea I’d actually written that many words, and that doesn’t include 7 projects that I started and made a good amount of progress in before I abandoned them.

And that brings us to the present day, where I’m excited to announce I’ve officially begun work on book #16. Codename: Murder Castle. I’ll go light on details for now, but I’ll say a few things about it:

It’s my first non-fantasy, non-sci-fi book. Straight up historical murder mystery/suspense.
It’s still YA (of course), though the plan is for it to be on the older side of YA.
I’m already 6,000 words into the book, give or take. (I’m free writing at the moment, getting a sense of the voice and exploring a few scenes scattered across the story. I have an idea of the plot, but it might get refined some more.)
My main character is the third female POV character I’ve written. My first two books had girls in the starring role, but I haven’t written one since. (Well, technically Buttersby in Cavern of Babel is female, but I’m going to say alpacas don’t quite count the same way.)

It feels great to be writing new material again. It brings its own set of difficulties (getting to know a new POV character well enough to write them and do them justice, figuring out plot tangles, etc.), but I love it.

Here’s to anothe million!

Librarian Badge of Honor

I’ll admit it: I’ve been longing for a card catalog for at least five years or so. Denisa bought me a small one (6 drawers) a year or so ago, and that was a good step, but I wanted the real deal. A full, free standing card catalog like you’d find in an old-school library. But they don’t come cheap these days. People have figured out they’re awesome pieces of furniture, great for storing any number of things.

Like, say . . . Magic the Gathering cards.

(You know you might have a problem when you’ve got so many cards that you start looking for a professional storage solution to house them.)

Last night, I’m pleased to say that dream came true. I’m the proud new owner of a beautiful old solid oak card catalog, complete with 30 (count them: thirty) drawers. It sitting next to my side table in my bedroom even as I write this.

Getting it proved to be more difficult than I anticipated.

It’s a solid piece, three and a half feet tall, three feet wide, and a foot and a half deep. A friend with a trailer was generous enough to drive out with me to pick the catalog up. Denisa had work and a parent/teacher conference, so I took the kids along for the ride. All told, we were underway for about three hours getting it and taking it home.

And that catalog is solid. It was like moving a brick, but without any easy way to hold onto it. Getting it up onto my porch, through the front door, back through the kitchen, into the mud room, up the stairs to the addition, through the hall to the bedroom, and across the room to the corner was no small undertaking. I pulled a few muscles in my leg that are still recovering. It’s a good thing I’ve been lifting weights at lunch, let’s just leave it at that. (And I think my friend is still on speaking terms with me, but I can’t 100% confirm that. He’ll probably be less willing to help me move furniture in the future. Unless I’m doing something lighter, like a piano.)

But it’s home now, and I get to fill it with all manner of things when I get home today. All my Magic cards for starters. After that, I’m not sure. Maybe some arts and crafts? They’re just so handy. All those deep drawers, ready to bring order to pretty much anything you’ve got.

And for those of you wondering how I’m going to organize my cards, it’ll be chronologically by set, then by color. I can fit two rows of cards in each drawer, so 60 rows total. I’m hoping to get a rough estimate on how many cards I have at the moment as I put them away. Then when the other half of my collection (that I bought from a friend) comes up to join me from where it’s resting in Pennsylvania at the moment, it will all be together in one place at last.

I think I have a good long while before I’ll need a second catalog.

Let’s hope so, at any rate . . .

Here’s a pic: