August 2023 Update!
Check out my Patreon if you want to read more!
This summer is kicking my ass a little. Half my brain is still in pandemic times, and half is trying to remember that having multiple things scheduled on the same weekend, several weekends running, used to be normal. How do I plan! Where did my energy go! Argh!
This month’s lesson: I’m still on the topic of voice. This month I’m indulging myself with a close-reading exercise I’ve never done before: What does it look like when the same author writes very different kinds of stories? Can you still “hear” the voice? How does the setting/genre change the voice, if at all? Let’s find out!
I appear to have survived San Diego Comic Con without catching covid, which I was actually really worried about. I know at least one person who did get it, and I’ve been hearing stories of more. I masked up except when I was doing my program items. Most people didn’t. Don’t know if it helped but it certainly didn’t hurt. I haven’t had covid at all and I’m not sure how realistic it is to keep it that way. But if I’m going to be in a convention hall with 100,000 of my closest friends, I’m wearing a mask. I’ve also had exactly one cold in the last three years, and that’s sure a plus. Hand sanitizer FTW!
Work: I’ve been working on my current novel, The Naturalist Society, and nothing else for two solid months. I’ve almost got a complete draft. I have a few more sections I need to add. I’m compiling all my notes and outlines to see what I missed and what needs rounding out. Then, I’ll read it over, make even more changes, then print it off, read it and mark it up, and then…maybe then it’ll be done. At least until the editor gets a hold of it and gives me notes.
But I’m starting to feel like it’s time to work on something else. I’ve got that itch.
I’m going to be Co-Guest of Honor at Bubonicon in a couple of weeks. Then MileHi Con in October. Then it’s time to start thinking about 2024, holy cow.
Reviews:
Caught Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny right before it left theaters. Great third act. Terrible first and second act. Which is weird, right? The first two acts didn’t really have any puzzles—they weren’t very clever, and that’s what we actually like about Indiana Jones. The action scenes went on way, way too long and were kind of boring, frankly. But then… That third act. I started getting surprised. There was a moment when anything could happen. It got really crazy, in a fun way. Indy’s profound character moment (trying to avoid spoilers) really got to me. (“I’m staying,” he says, with a look of such longing. Realizing that maybe this was what he’s been chasing all along. I could feel that.)
Barbie: Surreal, hilarious, there’s never been anything quite like this. (Except maybe something like Joe versus the Volcano or various Coen Brothers flicks? Visually I mean, not thematically.) It feels a little like that first gender studies class you take in college that gets you all fired up and you stop shaving your legs and start wearing cargo pants but then summer rolls around and you realize you actually like having shaved legs and BEACHING in your swimsuit and maybe you can do that and still be a feminist… Anyway.
The MCU finally lost me with Secret Invasion. I don’t plan on finishing it. I mean, it’s basically the same plot as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and what happened to Carol finding the Skrull a homeworld and –
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*** I’m very, very angry about what they did to Maria Hill, who was one of those great reliable side characters, likeable and competent, someone I was always happy to see. And now she’s gone. Fridged, even, to motivate Nick Fury’s arc. One reviewer pointed out that the MCU has now killed off seven recurring women characters in the last five years: Gamora, Natasha Romanoff, Jane Foster, May Parker, Wanda Maximoff – and let’s not forget they didn’t just kill her off but destroyed her entire character arc from WandaVision — Queen Ramonda, and now Maria. This is a pattern. A very unpleasant, bad pattern. It’s either “We can’t find stories to tell about women” (I’ll give you a hint, it’s the same stories you tell about men, it’s just that the main characters are women, ta-da!), or “Killing off a woman side character is a great plot device because it makes the main characters – i.e. the men – feel bad.” I’m willing to bet this isn’t being done consciously by the writers and show runners. I bet in each individual instance it feels like good, powerful storytelling. But you line them all up like this and, whew, yeah. It’s like that moment I realized Joss Whedon almost always shockingly impales someone at the bottom of the second act to get a rise out of the audience. It’s like looking behind the curtain. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. I’m angry and tired.
I’ll go see Marvels for sure, and maybe the next season of Loki just to ogle Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson (I never claimed to have any dignity on that matter). After that, I might be done with the MCU.
Meanwhile, we’re at the tail end of summer and I still haven’t been to Rocky Mountain National Park, which is practically in my backyard, and I haven’t been kayaking and… it’s always this way, isn’t it?
