Bryce Moore's Blog, page 303

Book Review: Full Dark, No Stars

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King



My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I didn't grow up as a Stephen King fan. I think up until college, my sole attempt at reading one of his books was The Stand, and I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't until I picked up The Gunslinger that I started to understand the appeal he has--I read all of the Dark Tower series at once, and I really enjoyed them. Since then, I've read quite a bit of his new material. I've said it before, and I'll reiterate it here, the man has a real gift for telling a story.



Take Full Dark, No Stars. I checked it out of my library and took it home. I glanced at the first page, thinking I'd just check out a paragraph to see how it begins. The next thing I knew, I was twenty pages into it. I'd gone from knowing nothing about the characters to *needing* to know what happens next. That's not an easy thing for a book to accomplish.



Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of four stories by King, all of them exploring the darker reaches of human behavior. It certainly isn't for everyone. I found it quite disturbing, and I definitely recommend against reading it late at night (unless you prefer nightmares). One of the things that makes it so unnerving is how realistic he makes it. How understandable and normal his horror is. This isn't outlandish, unbelievable stuff. This is stuff that could happen. Possibly has happened. Now, it wasn't like that in all 4 of the stories, but even in the bizarre, King manages to keep the connection to the realistic. The characters are people we can understand, and that's far more frightening than complete monsters.



In any case, it's a good book, but really unsettling. If you're not into horror, stay away. But maybe you're like me--not necessarily into horror, but unable to turn away when it presents itself. In that case, good luck. :-)



View all my reviews

Talk about a Pain in the Neck

Okay. This is getting old. I woke up yesterday morning with a kink in my neck which made it extremely painful to turn to the left. So after walking around all day like Herman Munster, I came home to get a head cold. And then I woke up with the kink spread both ways, so looking to either side now hurts. Thankfully, it hurts less than it did to look left yesterday, but I've still got the Frankenstein's Monster thing going for me. So it looks like today will be filled with me lying in bed trying to forget I can't move my neck. Yesterday evening I watched Slapshot (overrated--two stars if I'm feeling generous), Exam (an intriguing premise, but it falls apart in a flurry of over explanation at the end--another two star wonder), and a bit of the Dick Van Dyke Show (in season two now--love love love it). This morning I've watched The Red Balloon (much better than I expected a movie about a boy's relationship with a sentient piece of inflatable rubber would be--really quite good. Three stars, maybe a smidge more), and I'm going to delve into something less foreign now. Maybe something with an action flair to it, though watching it on my iPad will undoubtedly be less immersive than it would be on my big screen TV. Oh well. Not up to sitting up just yet.



Some have suggested going for a massage or some chiropractic treatment. If it's not better by tomorrow, I guess that's what I'll have to do. I just don't like strangers touching me--probably why I cut my own hair. Well, that and the me-not-liking-to-make-small-talk-with-strangers thing. Surprising that I'm so ready to make small talk with strangers on my blog. I'm just full of inconsistencies, I suppose.



Anyway--enough typing. It's making my shoulders tense. And forgive the lack of spellchecking on this post, and if anything else is out of place. Just be thankful I could post at all. I know I am.

Autism in the Movies: A Fair Portrayal?

Denisa and I watched Temple Grandin last night, and we both definitely enjoyed it. I thought it was a very well put together film. Clarie Danes seems to do a superb acting job. The story is touching and engaging. For those of you who don't know, the movie is a biographical look at the life of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who managed to overcome both of those obstacles (being autistic and being a woman trying to break into a male-dominated business in the 1960s) to make a big impact on the way cattle are handled in the beef industry. It was made for TV by HBO, and really is a top rate production. Three and a half stars.



That said, it got me thinking about autism in cinema in general, and I admit I'm not quite sure how to take a lot of performances. I don't know anyone close to me with autism, and so as an outsider to that world, I have a hard time telling if the movies that portray it are true to life or not. The thing is, it seems to me that Hollywood has a fixation on autism sometimes. You've got Temple Grandin, Rain Man, I am Sam, Forrest Gump (in some aspects), Gilbert Grape, Little Man Tate, and The Boy Who Could Fly, to name a few. And in many of these, you get big name actors and actresses stepping in to play the roles of autistic people, and you get Hollywood applauding their efforts.



Now again, I really don't know if I'm totally off base here or not. For all I know, these actors are doing a superb job portraying autism, and I should just keep my trap shut. But what this post is really about is that I'd like to hear from some people who *do* have close friends or family affected by this. How do you feel when you see these films? Are they fair portrayals? Is there anything they typically do that really gets under your skin? Because I can't help but feel like some of these movies at least oversimplify the situation. I mean, Tropic Thunder had a running gag about how the main character (a "serious actor") tried to get an Oscar by playing a mentally handicapped person and going too far. Are these movies just Oscar bait, or are the actors and actresses really doing autistic people a service?



Inquiring minds want to know . . .

Bluetooth Headsets

I've finally got one. Now I can be like all those people I see walking around, looking like wannabe cyborgs. Or--if you don't see the headset--looking like people having full-blown conversations with themselves in public. I remember the first time I saw someone talking to midair with such earnestness . . . I really thought they were off their rocker.



That said, now that I've used mine a bit, I wonder why in the world it took me this long to get one. I'm on the phone a fair bit. I can be a pretty chatty person, and I like to do things while I talk. Up until now, I've just had to do things with the phone hunched into my shoulder. Being able to talk without doing that is a huge plus. I even carried wood in yesterday while I was on the phone. Very liberating.



Anyway. This is just a plug for bluetooth headsets. If you're like me and have been leery of getting one, can I just calm your fears and give you a gentle nudge? Setup was straightforward and simple. It's not uncomfortable to have one on (certainly more comfortable than walking around with a hunched shoulder), and the sound quality is great. I don't even have that high-end a model. Mine was about $35, I think.



And on the plus side, now I can go to Star Trek conventions and don't even need to buy a costume. :-)

Vodnik Draft 5 (or 6?) Complete!

Okay, I just emailed my latest draft of Vodnik to Stacy. Right now it clocks in at 98,681 words. The draft before this was 103, 500 (give or take). So that's 5,000 words net cut, but since I probably wrote somewhere around 6,000 new words (maybe more--it stopped being easy to tell how much I'd added), it could have been a lot worse. (In  other words, I was shooting to get it down to 83,000 words. I clearly failed miserably at that. But I didn't *increase* the word count to 110,000 words. That's gotta count for something, right?)



It's strange to look at this draft and compare it to the first draft of the book. There's very little that's remained the same. At what point does a draft become a new book? It's sort of like a computer where you've swapped out the motherboard, graphics card, network card, disc drives, monitor, keyboard, mouse--everything but the case, but you still think of it as the same computer.



At any rate, I'm taking a break today. Going antiquing--looking for a piano bench. Tomorrow, I'll get to work on a Slovak pronunciation guide, author's note, dedication page (that one should be quick, at least), and acknowledgements page. Once that's all done, if I still have time, I suppose I might look at Tarnhelm (my new project) some more, although I fully anticipate Stacy getting back to me with some more changes. My due date is May 1, which seems much closer now than it did back in February.



Oh well. That's it for now. Celebrations are in order, if only of the minor variety for now.

Dealing with Themes in Writing

One of the subplots in Vodnik is how the main character deals with racism in Slovakia. Can I just say that writing about this topic has proved to be one of the trickier parts of the book? The problem I have is that I have very clear opinions and beliefs when it comes to the subject, but all the characters in the book have different views on it. Dealing with all the different views while at the same time trying to explore my own through the story . . . it's much harder than I ever imagined it would be.



My blog is different. I can just talk about whatever comes into my head, going off on diatribes ranging from Are Mormons Christian to Health Care Reform to Why Mice are Evil. I can explore the topic all on my lonesome, saying just what I feel without having to worry about things like advancing the plot, developing characters, and not being too boring. (Well, hopefully my blog posts aren't too boring, but I'm not as worried about a single blog post as I am about an entire book.)



It's different with books. For one thing, I really don't want the book to be "About Something." I dislike it when authors try to preach, and it's something young adult authors can be prone to do at times. Young Adults don't need adults telling them what to think, thank you very much. They're plenty mature to form their own opinions. But I think everyone can be benefited by being exposed to new topics and new ideas. If you've lived your whole life without going more than 50 miles beyond your birthplace, you can have a pretty narrow view of the world. (Not a guarantee, but a possibility.) Literature and movies can help you go beyond those boundaries, pointing out different conflicts you might not have been aware of before, and even making you look at yourself in different ways. At the same time, teens aren't my only audience with this book. Lee and Low (and by extension, Tu) market their books to schools and libraries, as well. So I have to keep in mind that adults are going to be looking at it and making purchasing decisions, too.



I'm not saying I'm trying to make Vodnik a piece of Great American Literature. My primary concern is to entertain. To make a really good book that people want to read and that compels you to keep turning pages. But at the same time, some of the plot lines demand exploration of those themes. Yesterday I wrote an extra scene where Tomas (the main character) talks with his mom about racism. She's half Roma (the more acceptable word for Gypsies, which is a pejorative, in case you didn't know), and he's a quarter Roma. They have olive skin--not really dark, but certainly not light skinned as most Slovaks. In America, Tomas never really had to deal much with racism. His school had a good bit of melting pot to it, and so it wasn't really an issue. In Slovakia, it isn't nearly as easy. There's a long history of conflict between Roma and Slovaks, and Tomas finds himself smack dab in the middle of it. His mom grew up with it.



So they have a conversation where he's frustrated about how people are treating him in the town, and she talks to him about how it's not that big of a deal--how once people get to know him, they'll stop treating him like that. From there the conversation goes on to talk about judging by appearances in general and how much everyone is (or isn't) prey to it. And because I can't just get bogged down in the middle of a scene talking too much about all this, the entire conversation had to be shorter than this blog post. And interesting, and appropriate, and . . .



It wasn't easy to write. I thought it would just take me a little bit, but it took much longer than that. Not hours or anything, but it just got me thinking about this topic. Hence the blog post.



Question for other authors/writers out there. Have you dealt with this sort of thing before? How have you handled it? I'd be interested for other opinions . . .



(Bonus points to whomever can figure out the connection between this picture and the post topic.)

Dear CBS Sports

Dear CBS,



Thank you for posting all the March Madness games online. THIS is how you do online television. No hoops to jump through. I just go to your site and I'm on. Yes, there are ads, but there are ads in the TV versions anyway, so I don't mind. And I can see it live. Incredible. Great picture--all around great. Now if only the Oscars and other live television would follow suit.



At the same time, could one of you please call over to your mother ship's site and tell them that their Amazing Race streaming online needs to be tweaked some? The picture isn't nearly as clean as Hulu or Netflix's. I don't mind it when you decide to go out and do something on your own instead of teaming up with an established partner--as long as you can do it well. In this case, you're not.



Thanks for listening.



Bryce



GO BYU!

Author Bio and a Pic

You'd think a short paragraph about yourself would be pretty easy to write, wouldn't you? My agent called today and asked for a brief bio and picture of me that he could include in some promotional material they're working on for their authors. I said I could get that for him, and sat down to write it on lunch break.



It's a lot harder than I thought it would be, mainly because I'm not used to writing about myself in the third person. No matter what I wrote, I couldn't help thinking I sounded like a total pompous idiot. That said, I managed to string something together, and I don't suppose it's too terrible. Want to see what I came up with? Here you go:

Until Bryce Moore first asked a Slovak girl out for a date, his exposure to Slovak culture was limited to Steve Martin routines on Saturday Night Live. When he first visited Trenčín, Slovakia (arm in arm with his native wife), he wondered how he'd been missing it all these years. He's been married for ten years now and visits the country as often as he can. He currently works as a librarian in Western Maine and lives in a 170 year old farm house. This is his first novel.

Tonight I need to get home and sift through all the pictures I have of me in front of Trenčín castle to see if there's something not too embarrassing that I can use as an author pic. Of course, a lot of the ones I took have me dressed up in medieval garb, along the lines of this:



And do I really want to appear in promo materials like that? You tell me . . . In any case, this is all definitely making this whole Book Getting Published thing feel even more concrete and real, which is a good thing.

And don't forget to enter my blog March Madness challenge!

Angel Season One (and Don't Forget March Madness!)

Denisa and I have been going back in Buffy time to watch Angel now, and we just finished Season One. In retrospect, it was a mistake of us to watch Buffy by itself and ignore Angel until after we were finished. I'm still enjoying the show, but I think I would have liked it even more if I were watching it concurrently. The shows weave together so closely, with characters bouncing back from one to the next, that I just think it makes more sense. Of course, doing it that way would be a bit more work--especially if you're trying to stream it on Netflix or watch it on disc. It makes me wonder if it wouldn't be worth it for them to release a Buffy and Angel Complete Series set, with all of them intertwined. That would be pretty cool.



So what do I like? I missed Cordelia when she left Buffy, and it's nice to see her back at it. Also nice to see some character growth. I like how the show keeps you on your toes. You never know who's going to die--or come back to life--next. (Of course, in a world where pretty much anyone can come back from the grave, it sometimes diminishes the tension. There seems to be a way to save just about anybody in this show, if the characters just put their mind to it.)



The humor's pretty good, and it gets stronger as the season progresses. The characters are good, the bad guys entertaining. The writing is fun. It's a good series.



Things not to like? Angel is his broody old self. I wasn't that sad to see him leave in Buffy. Sad for Buffy, but not sad that he was gone. Spike's just a lot more fun to be around than Angel. Even the theme music to this series is dark and brooding. I just wish the guy would lighten up once in a while and stop moping so much. But hey--he's been doing that for hundreds of years, why change now?



I also would have liked a bit of a better overarching plot. There wasn't much to tie the season together as a whole like there was in Buffy, but this is more of a quibble.



Anyway. Fun show, and we've already started Season Two. Thumbs up from both of us.



And if you missed it yesterday, don't forget to check out my blog's March Madness pool! Fabulous prizes! (sort of)

March Madness Pool

Okay, folks. I've got a splitting headache right now, so this is going to be brief. However, I wanted to give you all as much notice in advance as I could. It's time for the yearly blog March Madness pool. That's right. You, constant reader, can try to beat me in the closest thing our civilization has to a duel these days: tournament brackets. Here's how it works. I've set up a group over on ESPN's site. You go there, register, fill out your picks and then join my group. (Name: Bryce's Ramblings. The password is "meander".) ESPN takes care of the rest, doing the math, keeping track of who's winning and how many points you can still earn. All that good stuff.



So what are we playing for? If I win, then I get the self-satisfaction of being better than everyone else who chose to challenge me. But for you, I'll sweeten the deal. You get a choice this year.



A blog entry written by yours truly, detailing how great you are.
A copy of Cavern of Babel, signed by the author. (Al Packard. I'm pretty tight with him, as you may know.)
Your name listed in the acknowledgements page of Vodnik, immortalized for all time, with the "alias" of your choice. (For example: Kevin "Hall Pass" Albert. Note--I reserve the right to veto any questionable aliases. :-)    )
Something in there has to appeal to you. So come on over. Make an entry. Enter the challenge. Last year was our best year yet. Let's see if we can get even more for this year's pool.

You have until Thursday morning before the first games tip off.