Unsolved Mysteries

          1. The “Capitol Collection” by CoverGirl

Okay, I like makeup as much as the next girly-girl. I’ve invested way too much of my paycheck in Urban Decay eyeshadow and Too-Faced mascara. But, I also read books. I read the Hunger Games series, for example. And I have to say, I think the folks at CoverGirl are really sort of missing the point. First off, their “Capitol Collection” upholds the beauty ideals of the Capitol—presented in the book as a selfish, dysfunctional dystopia with values that are completely out of whack—and inhumane. So, by all means, let’s encourage our young girls to dress up and do their makeup like those folks. But the ads also offer a range of looks “inspired by” the various districts.

Yeah, I'm sure that's a great look for a day of planting and hoeing in Rue's hometown. 

Um, hey...CoverGirl? The folks in those districts you’re so inspired by? They’re not wearing any makeup.  They’re too busy trying to survive. These folks are pretty busy trying to eat without having to use tesserae that exponentially up the odds that their children will have to go fight and die in a gladiator-style arena. So that look inspired by the agriculture of District 11? That makes absolutely no sense.

TVD: the nation's number one employer of stand-ins. 

      2. Why Can’t They Hire Some New Actors on The Vampire Diaries?

Nina Dobrev is great. She really is. I get the whole doppelganger thing. It’s pretty out-there, but, hey, this is a show about vampires who go to high school, so it’s not like I signed up expecting logic or realism. But, come on. This week’s ep featured not one Nina character—not two—but THREE. She was playing three characters! And what’s-his-face who plays crybaby Stefan was playing two (both of whom kept having Gollum-type moments, so at times it seemed like four). TVD writers, these folks do a great job handling all the crazy you throw at them. But surely you could invent some new characters, and hire other actors to play them? I guarantee Hollywood is full of attractive young actors who could manage to say words like “the cure for vampirism” and “she’s the anchor for the spell that created 'The Other Side'” with a straight face.

3. On the Seventy-first day of Christmas, a migraine came to me...

Again this year, as though someone flipped a switch, on November first, the holiday ads, music, offers, etc. began to come flooding in. Actually, they crept in around the edges even during my beloved Halloween season. I was catching up on a DVR’d series the other day, and saw an ad for Party City for Halloween costumes directly followed by a Macy’s “holiday season” ad. Macys actually seems to have decided that as of September 1, their “season of giving” has officially started. Soon Black Friday will be August 31. Seriously, though, has anyone else done the math here and realized that if the holidays kick off on November 1, given that they tend to hang around for at least a good week to ten days after the new year, we are now looking at over seventy days of holiday madness? Yep, that’s right, the holidays are now twenty percent of the year. For all you folks who’ve already starting snapping Instagrams of elves on shelves—better pace yourself. 

Someone has a lot of time on their hands. 

4. Oddities

Has anyone ever watched this show? It’s on Netflix (which is ruining my life, by the way—or at least my word count). If you haven’t don’t start. It’s weirdly addictive. The show is about a tiny antique store in Manhattan that sells weird stuff—except I’m pretty sure the show’s title refers to the people who walk in the door.

The other day a guy paid hundreds of dollars for a giant kidney stone. I guess technically it was an antique? But: whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

Also: ew.

5.  How will I ever finish NaNoWriMo again...now that I have Netflix?

I’d write more about this one, but season four of Sons of Anarchy is calling.

Vampire Book Club

Last night I attempted a NaNo word sprint. I ended up with more of a brisk walk...900 or so words later, my brain began to shut down. It was 8:30, after all, and by that point I’d been teaching and grading papers for going on twelve hours. 

So I turned, as I so often do, to the sparkly box with the pretty pictures that’s insidiously plugged into the wall of the same room where I try to write. And I was psyched to find that the CW was playing The Originals. Now, my love/hate for The Vampire Diaries is well documented on this blog, but I must say, for me the spinoff is much more fun these days. Perhaps because it’s not crushed under the weight of a five-year old love triangle. I mean, seriously, how long can these things go on—until something happens, like one of the guys falls in love with the girl’s infant daughter, for example.

Anyway, back to the delightful romp that is The Originals: wow, that’s a fun show. It has everything: cool setting (New Orleans), great soundtrack, attractive leads. These actors may not find themselves in the running for an Emmy next year, but they are certainly less wooden than some film actors, so there’s that.

Last night’s episode opened with a scene that was very popular among my bookish Tweeps: sexy vampires Elijah and Klaus were having some quiet reading time, and their sister Rebekah walked in and asked what was up with “vampire book club.”  But Rebekah was soon distracted from making fun of reading when she spotted Klaus’s “snack”—the poor girl bleeding out on Rebekah’s fancy carpet.

So far, I’m in, but the thing about this show—and pretty much every other stupid thing I currently watch—is that they started to lose me with a lot of Ridiculous Made Up Magic Crap.

I know, there’s loads of R.M.U.M.C in Harry Potter, and those books are pretty darn terrific. Even the movie versions are pretty good, although if Harry uttered just one more “Expelliarmus” or “Stupefy!”...I just can’t even. Learn a new spell, Harry.

Learning a new spell is not a problem on The Originals, or its parent show. It’s pretty much deus ex machina magic all day on both shows. Need to keep two characters apart for no actual reason? Invent a “sire bond”! That’s not inconsistent at all. Only fifty percent of the population of Mystic Falls is a vampire, so it’s not weird that no one’s ever heard of this nonsense before.

Last night’s episode featured such a pileup of made up crap, that even though I was watching it for a fun escape from my boring life, a part of me had to wonder at what point I’d stop buying in. Forget suspending disbelief: at a certain point, it’s just about how much crazy you can process.

The first layer, the main characters are the first vampires, which their mom sort of invented with some kind of spell. They also have every power you can think of, including being able to brain-warp other vamps. AND one of them is half werewolf. AND AND he magically impregnated a werewolf girl.

So far, I’m hanging on...but then there’s this whole witch-war, and a witch who’s magically linked to the pregnant werewolf, and a witch from the other army or whatever kidnaps the other witch and shoots her up with a MAGICAL NEEDLE that will kill the werewolf/vampire baby.

 

Dressy vs. Casual Witches+ Magical Needles

There was also magical rope at one point, but I digress. Essentially, I’m just wondering how much crazy CAN a show pile on, before the story collapses beneath the weight of the R.M.U.M.C?

I have no idea, but I’m dying to find out. I’m just rooting for the magical hybrid miracle baby. That little monster’s going to really complicate matters, if you ask me. 

One-Page Wonders

I know I’m in loads of good company when I admit that I hope someday to write full time.  I have so many ideas for stories that it’s hard to pick just one to focus on. Just now I’m about to get back to editing with another round of notes on a finished WIP (editing round two). But I’ve still got my NaNo book from this year just begging to be finished.

I don’t usually write part of a book and walk away, but work and multiple projects has led me to do this a couple of times in the last few years. At one point in my fledgling career, about a year and a half ago, I walked into bookstores and heard what my kids were reading and decided that post-apocalyptic books were the way to go. Silly me. One thing you learn with your ear to the ground in book world as that when a trend seems to be at its height it’s actually already over. Book trends are like stars—by the time you can see the light from your little world, they’ve already gone supernova somewhere closer to the center of the universe.

So my post-apocalyptic tale is stuck somewhere around seven thousand words.

I’ve had a lot of other ideas over the years that I know I’ll probably never write. I’ve started a few of them and literally only wrote one page. I enjoyed making the title page for each, though, and finding the perfect epigraph. I love giving things titles. I wish I could title things as a full-time job.

Here is a list, in no particular order, of my one-page wonders: books or ideas for books that will never get past the clever epigraph character-naming stage. But they sure were fun to ponder for a bit.

1). Ruined: A Regency Romance

I wrote one page of this, and I’m not even sure I have it anymore. I’d read about two thousand Regencies and loved most of them. A part time teacher at my old school saw me with one and told me she’d written a few years before. They were out of print, but she brought me a copy. All of a sudden I was like, hey, regular people just like me write these!  I’ll write one!

The perfectly odd part about this scheme is that I possess an uncanny ability to sound, at any given moment, as though I in did fact dwell in the environs of Jane Austen’s era. I feel quite confident that my manner of expression would elicit approbation from all and sundry. It’s a strange skill, indeed, and at some point I shall endeavor to find a way to capitalize upon it.

Long story short, I found out they don’t even publish Regency books anymore. Alas!

2) Last Year’s Dead: Paranormal Romance (?)

The phrase paranormal romance didn’t exist as a thing when I wrote the first page of this maybe six or seven years ago. I realized around about paragraph three that I had no idea where to go with the idea. The inspiration for the not-quite-an-idea was the Celtic superstition about Samhain or Halloween: that the veil which separated the world of the living from the world of the dead was thinnest on that night. The MC would have lost her boyfriend in the past year, some dreadful accident, and she then she’d get mixed up with a group of would-be Wiccans while trying to contact him.

Bottom line: sort-of magic+ time travel/paranormal is also played out (thanks Twilight)=moving on

3) Secret Title: Roman a clef

Secret subject. This is for if I ever really do retire.

Hint: it’s a lot less glamorous than it may sound.

4) Linked—Paranormal Romance again? (what’s wrong with me? I promise this was way before Twilight!)

This one never got past the idea phase. The MC meets someone she has a telepathic connection with. From what I’m seeing on Twitter, a lot of people are tackling the mind-reader thing right now. To them I say, bon chance. A) sounds very confusing to write and B) if I’ve heard of it, the trend is probably over.

5) Speaking of mind-reading, I had this really interesting idea for something really cool with social media giving people a glimpse into the future. Which now already exists as The Future of Us.

It’s really too bad, because my title page kicked ass.

So now I wave a fond goodbye to these poor little book orphans, and continue searching the world for the next big idea. It’s all about the idea. And, of course, the timing (*shakes fist at Jay Asher*)

Mass Hysteria

Last week we were studying the history of Halloween in my Humanities class, and we watched a History Channel film which pointed out that the ritual and traditions surrounding Halloween make it okay to decorate your lawn with severed body parts, for example. The fact that a lot of other people are doing it makes it not only okay but even kind of cool.

There have been a lot of posts this past week about the NaNoWriMo—how and why once a year a whole bunch of people all jump in and do this crazy thing: commit to writing a 50K word novel in just thirty days. The notion of telling the inner editor to shut the hell up for a month is one great reason, of course. But I think the idea that a lot of other people are sharing the experience with you, at the same time, makes this crazy idea not only okay but also really cool.

When I first heard about it, I was like, November is just too busy a month. They should move it. But then I realized that as a teacher with more than one job, there is no such thing as a non-busy month. It might as well be November—and in fact I’m guaranteed to have two days off, then, and even though I’ve got some extra shopping to do, and at some point a turkey pan to clean, that’s still not nothing. Now, on my third NaNo (one win, but fingers crossed for this year) I’m starting to appreciate the fact that the event happens ever year, at the same time—a ritual that a lot of us participate in. Not because we have to, any more than it’s required that every American put a plastic zombie on their front porch. Those of us doing this illogical and busy-life defying feat are in it because we love stories. And win or lose on the word count front, we are all part of that process this month.

This year I’ve talked my AP Lit class to participating along with me. We have spent two class periods noveling, everyone engaged in his or her own silent work, but we were still all part of a group, all working toward the same goal—a completed story. I’m not sure how many of us will make it to the finish line, but I really believe that writing the first novel is the only way to become a writer of novels. I still plan to revisit and revise my first book (which I finished a long time ago) one of these days—but even if I never do, I credit that book with teaching me how to write.

It’s also how I learned how to type really fast.

For everyone out there with a full-time job or two, with kids, dogs, cats, papers to grade, home improvement projects—with no time to write—in November: write anyway. There’s never going to be a non-busy month. There will never be enough time. Write anyway.