Janice Law's Blog, page 25
June 13, 2012
COVER OF MY NEW MYSTERY, THE FIRES OF LONDON, TO BE RELEASED AS...
COVER OF MY NEW MYSTERY, THE FIRES OF LONDON, TO BE RELEASED AS AN EBOOK IN EARLY SEPTEMBER.
June 12, 2012
Chiaroscuro
One of the most effective devices in the painter’s tool kit is chiaroscuro, the arrangement of light and shadows for maximum dramatic effect.
There’s a reason that Rembrandt, Caravaggio and de La Tour have retained – or increased– their popularity in modern times with our passion for theatrical drama and extreme emotions. Light and shadow, klieg light bright and inky darkness, do the trick.
I’ve been thinking about chiaroscuro as I’m working on a little landscape with an extreme contrast between a dark slope shadowed by shrubs and trees and a little glimpse of chartreuse leaves with brilliant sun behind them.
I can tell you, it’s harder than it looks.
June 10, 2012
Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s death leaves a big gap in US letters. He wrote fantasy and science fiction and nostalgic stories about small towns touched with melancholy, and in everything he wrote, there was the real human touch.
Others wrote ‘harder’ science fiction or wilder fantasy. Bradbury never forgot that stories are first and foremost about people, even if those people were Martians.
June 9, 2012
Birthday gift- shirt of my favorite cycling team. No excuse now....
Birthday gift- shirt of my favorite cycling team. No excuse now. I’ll have to get out my bike.
June 8, 2012
Old Stories
My mother used to regale me with stories about the early movie serials, especially The Perils of Pauline, which was an audience favorite featuring cliff hanger endings to each episode so that fans would be lured to the theater weekly.
I thought about Pauline, iconically lying tied to railroad tracks with train approaching, villain cackling and hero racing to her rescue, reading Jussi Adler-Olsen’s well done The Keeper of Lost Causes. His heroine/victim is a modern woman and his villain is way more ingenious than the old guy with the black hat and the cape, but the triad of woman facing certain death, nefarious villain and desperately racing hero still is literary- and doubtless box office- gold.
June 7, 2012
Memorial Day barbecue & concert. Band members reputed to be...
Memorial Day barbecue & concert. Band members reputed to be 80 and up
June 4, 2012
Ingenuity in Mysteries
I just finished a very well written mystery that left me depressed. No, not envy this time.
It strikes me that the combination of ingenuity and gore- so popular at the moment- is particularly soulless without a great character as detective. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple bailed out Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes plus Watson rescued Arthur Conan Doyle, and even P.D. James would have seemed shallow without Adam Dalgeish.
A great character adds a touch of humanity and realism to intricate and peculiar deaths and imaginative criminal MO’s. Without a great detective, in the sense of a great character, the reader is left with the unpleasant aftertaste of bizarre violence.
May 31, 2012
The orchestra at the Memorial Day concert, visually interesting...
The orchestra at the Memorial Day concert, visually interesting in their red shirts.
May 29, 2012
Grange Hall Show
At one time, the Grange Hall was the social and cultural center of our small town. That was back before electricity arrived in the ‘20’s and good roads, radio and television broadened recreational opportunities.
When the Grange disbanded a few years ago, the town renovated the old building and it now hosts regular musical events and meetings. Art work remained difficult to display - all those windows, all that original plaster! – until a new hanging system was purchased.
Net result- first art show.
