These “interactive” posts rarely work, but what they hey – what are you all reading this summer?Possibly in no particular order, my summer reading list is quickly shaping up to include the following:
I’m also listening to Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man
So what about you, fellow reader? What are you planning to read this summer?
Superman making his debut in Action Comics No.1 (June 1938). Cover art by Joe Shuster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yesterday afternoon, Eldest Daughter and I went to see Man of Steel, the latest incarnation of the Superman franchise in film. We’re working on making this a tradition – last year, the two of us went to see the Avengers movie together to usher in the summer, and Man of Steel made sense as this year’s entry.
Was it worth it? Yes. While there’s a part of your brain that may wonder why a cape flaps still outside the atmosphere, you have to remind yourself that you’re watching it flap on a man that’s flying, so maybe your priorities on what to criticize are a little askew. I won’t give away any spoilers here; it’s an action film, a summer blockbuster release that lives up to that standard. There’s a lot of action, a lot of flashback, and very few moments for deep, meaningful character development. But then, we’re watching Superman, not Shakespeare, and I don’t really think it’s fair to expect depth about a man that flies in tights with x-ray vision and bulletproof skin. The origin story wasn’t one I was completely familiar with (historically more of a Marvel reader than a DC reader), but it still worked for me.
The best gauge of a good movie: the two and a half hours pass by unnoticed. You know the movie’s drawing to an end, the action is winding down, but you never felt your attention wander or that time had actually passed. To that honor I leave the recommendation that you shouldn’t sit under the A/C vents like we did 
And of course, no review would be complete without that final word -
ZOD!!!!!
I’ve had this looming over me for about three days now, but a confluence of long days at the office, going to see Man of Steel with Eldest Daughter, and general fatherly and work duties have kept me from acting on it.
I’m 300 words from the 50k mark in W.I.P.
Is that significant? Probably not to you, jaded reader, but for me that’s the the start of the downward slope. My original estimate had this novel clocking around 80k, not because I seriously though that’s how long it would be, but because that’s how long the average minimal length novel is. Coming in under that was not acceptable – past it, fine.
I could be wrong, but I expect I’ll get closer to 100k or more, which is great. It also breaks my self imposed timeline for completion, but that’s ok, the important part right now is to finish the novel, not meet some arbitrary deadline that no one expects.
So why do those 300 words feel so daunting?
The Seeds of Doom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
All things being equal, I am what you might call a closet advocate. I have my opinions (yes, I know how common they are), and from those come the convictions that I try and stick to, and I stick to them as best I can. I don’t put it out there much, but occasionally I find myself compelled by the greater conscience to speak my mind.
Enter change.org. Here’s a website, a social media spokesperson if you will, that exists to give people a means of funneling those beliefs for a need for change and unifying them, so that united your voices can be heard on the social or political issue that you feel strongly about. I have, in fact, signed a few petitions on change.org, adding my voice to the fray for what are to my senses injustices.
But this is going to far, in my opinion.
What goes too far? Let me sidetrack for a moment, just to bring it all around.
I have been a fan of the Doctor since I was five or six years old. My earliest memory of the Doctor? Watching the Baker episode “The Seeds of Doom” before going to bed on our (portable) black and white television in my room. Probably explains my long standing aversion to brussel sprouts, which I would swear is what the prop guys used for the seeds in that episode. That memory still scars me and stays with me all these thirty some years later. In subsequent years he was that random bit of television that was like mana when I could find it, campy horror and science fiction and outrageous props with nearly visible wires and rubber suits. Pure gold.
The most recent incarnation of the Doctor, starting with Eccleston, is much the same, although completely different. The special effects are immeasurably “better,” the stories a little heavier, and the format – now filling a single hour time slot vs the serial nature of the original – drops a lot of the repetition, though you could make an argument that the shorter story (overall) means the writers have less to work with (like Gaiman’s recent episode, the script of which was cut so much it was almost hard to follow – just so it could fit the time constraints of a 42 minute episode).
And what, pray tell, does this have to do with change.org? I received in my inbox a week or so ago an email from change.org about a new campaign I might be interested in. Was it to help the victim of some senseless social injustice? Perhaps to add my voice to a petition to congress about a law being abused unfairly?
No. It was a call to replace to the current director of Doctor Who.
WHAT!? This is how we use an engine for social progress and change? To ask for a new director for Doctor Who?
I am a huge fan of both, but this is a crossing of the streams that makes me question whether interaction with the human race is really worth it.
In the last week, I’ve written 3,678 words – a number that isn’t too shabby until you take into account that 3,667 of them have been in the last two days.
It isn’t all doom and gloom. Thanks to a stupid human trick[1], my word count spreadsheet is looking pretty nifty, and now I can at least visually see any trends in my writing chain. But that’s not why I’m back top of things. For that, I want to say thanks to my wife and a friend from work.
Last blog post, I was all kinds of concerned. I was staring at my novel’s elephant in the room – dragons – and lamenting the fact that they were nothing more than a McGuffin, pulled out when convenient but not used nearly enough in the story to warrant them being there. Two people took the time the next day to seek me out, and I they both deserve thanks.
First, Mr. Nameless at work (you know who you are, but since I didn’t say I’d do this, I don’t want to out you as a reader of inane blogs). Your words of wisdom about tropes were, if not spot on, still the words that helped me get out of my funk, get over myself, and just get back to telling the story. Thank you, hoss.
Second, my wife. If anyone will ever deserve a book dedication, it’s this woman who sat down before I left for work and told me what I needed to do to fix the story, gave me case examples for reference material, and knows me so well and completely because she could do all of this without having read a word of what I’ve written so far. Talent? Maybe. Or super power deserving a cape and special boots. Certainly proof of psychic mojo.
So I’m almost back on track. Technically still working against a negative number according to one of the formula in my spreadsheet, but all in all right on schedule for being done with the novel by the end of the summer. Other formula suggest that I am coasting my way towards victory at this point and that the worst of it is over. I scoff and laugh at their foolishness, the silly google spreadsheet formula that they are, but then my wife would have to give me another pep talk, and I’m not sure I want to waste that this soon. I have a limited number of pep talks from her in a year, I’d hate to have used one on formulae.
1. Google spreadsheets let you set a conditional background. In my case, I’ve set the conditions of 0 words as red, between 1 and 500 as yellow, between 500 and 2000 as green, and anything greater than 2000 as blue (that’s “yowzer” blue to you). Stupid automated visual tricks will save me some day.