Currant Events (or problems with spell check)

First, I must apologize to the currant growers, who may have come across this title when searching the web, and came here eager for news of the current state of the currant industry.

One of the problems if you're a bad speller, is relying on programs within Works, Word, Open Office, Gmail, Email, etc. that are supposed to check your spelling, making you look erudite, thus giving your opinions and rants greater weight and respect. Usually, they're pretty good, not up on the latest netspeak and shortcuts, but that's a small problem.

The bigger problem is homophones (rain/reign/rein, break/brake). Most of them I don't have trouble with. Occasionally, I'll have to stop and think: they're = they are, their = belonging to them, there = a location. I generally find if I'm typing fast that last one will get by me sometimes. And spellcheck can't tell you you're using it incorrectly.

My biggest homophone problem, as you might have guessed, is the word which means contemporary. I was using it frequently in something I was writing, and I'd have to check the dictionary every time it came up.

At least in this case, a mnemonic device has proved very effective. If I need to write about current events, or an electric current, or river current, a picture of an animated, wrinkled fruit pops into my head. It is jumping up and down, waving its little stick arms, its eyes angry and mouth going a mile a minute. The currant is ranting (get it -- nudge, nudge)! It is therefore not the write right (damn homophones!) spelling for any of the meanings I want to convey.

I'll never get that wrong again. Now, if only some spellchecks could be made to admit when they don't know what a word is. Recently, my Open Office spellcheck didn't highlight the word "dieing," which I had twice in a manuscript. Since it couldn't figure out what I was trying to say, it just ignored the whole business.

Deliveries

Today I got the two things I had ordered. First, UPS delivered the second Destroyer adaptation from Cutting Audio. They really ship promptly; I only placed the order the 19th. I'm looking forward to listening to this one -- Infernal Revenue -- more than the last one. It's one of my favorite Destroyers. I'm glad that Cutting Audio got the contract to do the adaptations, but I wish they weren't doing them in the order the books were published. I don't remember if the other company did that too. I didn't buy them all, just the ones I liked best. Cutting Audio may only have the contract for this year; I don't know if Gold Eagle will bother once they no longer have the contract to publish the books. However, they do retain the rights to all the Destroyers they've published, for how many years I don't know. So they'd still be making money on the books if they let Cutting Audio continue. And this way, maybe eventually we'd get to an audio adaptation of The End of the Beginning!

Second, the mailman delivered my book from Lulu.

I knew I'd be thrilled to see my book as a book, not just a computer file, but I had no idea how it would affect me. I actually teared up a little as I was looking through it. And not because of grammar and punctuation errors (though they are certainly there)!

It really is gratifying to see something you've created in your head and on the computer in solid form. It's a book, darn it, a real honest-to-God book. Not with the polish or sophistication of a commercially published book, but still... At least maybe, if I'm reading it through all the way for the first time really since finishing it, if it still holds my interest, maybe that means it's not hopeless.

Horror at the Movies

I'm not a horror movie aficionado. My taste in scary movies runs to the old Universal monsters -- Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man -- or the poorly done ones of the fifties and sixties. You know: the Blob, the Creeping Terror. Monsters that had to be helped by their victims, who stick their hands in unknown goo or run around in circles or really, r e a l l y slowly until the guys under the shag rug catch up with and devour them.

I've completely ignored horror's evolution into the bloody and gory, the psychotic madmen with chainsaws and the supernatural villains who kill without discrimination or motivation. You can get enough of that reading the news. Callous sadistic people are a minority, but they make themselves known. In short, I don't like these movies, so I don't see them.

My friend's husband, son and sister in law go to every horror movie. It's a thrill -- like riding a roller coaster or bungee jumping. And a test: they can face the grossest of the gross-out stuff and take it. That's fine with me. I don't like the bloody, explicit horror movies that started with Day of the Dead, but to each his own. I don't think it's the end of civilization, or that people will see these things and become desensitized or psychotic killers. There are some traits, like callousness, that are inborn, and emerge to a greater or lesser degree depending on a person's upbringing.

However, the latest excuse for a horror movie disappointed them. I'm not naming it; it doesn't deserve any publicity. It wasn't a question of gore, even though this was excessive, according to them. It's the spirit of the movie.

Even in the worst of these things, there are a few conventions. There's usually a hero who outfoxes the killers, a few people who have been made sympathetic and the audience roots for them to survive. Generally at least some of them do. The evil force -- whatever it is -- is defeated. At least until the sequel.

This movie, it seems, is extraordinarily mean spirited, even for the genre. According to my friend her son described it thus: The first half hour is soft porn -- beautiful young people continuously having sex -- boobs and penises out bouncing around. Then the remainder of the movie is unrelieved bloody violence. Brutal torture and bloody killings. Everybody dies. One girl who survives being blow torched in the face and having her eye pulled out throws herself under a train, gore and body parts flying about. No reason is ever given for what's happened; there is no plot.

I wonder about the motivations of the writer, director, and anyone instrumental in foisting this off on an unsuspecting public. I've read conservatives who say that Hollywood's liberal screenwriters and directors are more interested in pushing their own leftist agendas than in making good films. Is this some sort of propaganda effort by necrophiliacs? Do the people behind this film get off on gore? Is that why they have the soft core at the beginning -- to get everyone excited, then abruptly replace the images of sex with those of violence? And they hope that people are going to stay stimulated and begin to associate violence with feelings of sexual pleasure?

Not that I believe it's going to work. As I said earlier, that level of callousness and psychosis is inborn. All they're going to get from this effort, if anything, is people demanding their money back. My friend's son was disturbed and disappointed. This movie will, I predict, sink into obscurity; even the DVD version will end up in the bargain bins and go largely ignored. Unless it's publicized by people objecting to it. It is objectionable. But, much like a two year old gleeful shouting naughty words, if there's too much of a fuss made over it, thrilled by the reaction he will continue with it longer.

Recent Rowling Article

Very good J K Rowling article in the Tatler. The only version I could find was from The Leaky Cauldron's files. It went into how her mother's death while Rowling was still writing the first book has been felt in the series as a whole. Death is never far away in the Harry Potter books; Rowling doesn't pull any punches. Good characters die, bad characters die. Facing death becomes inevitable when the only alternative is to sit by and let evil spread unopposed. Yet even with that, Rowling's deaths aren't noble sacrifices as a whole. Characters are killed suddenly and senselessly. Diggery doesn't get a chance to fight back. He isn't killed throwing himself in front of Harry and taking a Killing Curse meant for him. Black's is quick -- the result of a lapse of concentration during a fight. Minor characters are killed off-page, brutally and arbitrarily. They're targeted because they oppose Voldemort, but it seems to be more a matter of luck than of skill who escapes and who dies.

The one jarring sentence in the article is, unfortunately the first one. That sentence, "A tear slowly trickles down JK Rowling's cheek," sounds uncomfortably Rita Skeeterish to me. It reminds me forcibly of the one of the sentences Harry spies being written down during his first interview with her. "Tears fill those startlingly green eyes as our conversation turns to the parents he can barely remember." (GOF, U.S. paperback ed. p.306) It doesn't spoil the article, but it kind of tripped me up until I got into the rhythm of the rest of the piece.

Rowling hadn't wanted to let her mother she was writing a book, probably because she hadn't much hope of getting it published. I think that was the biggest regret -- not that her mother missed all the fame and fortune and adulation. That's a big regret of mine, too. My mother always thought I could write for publication, but while she was alive I hadn't tried. I haven't published a book or an article, but I was published in the New Blood anthology, and that would have thrilled her. I think she would have liked that I was expressing myself here and in blogs too.

But you can't change the past; you just have to go forward and try not to regret what you can't change. And hope there's a way that somehow, somewhere, our mothers are aware of what 's going on and are happy for us.

Functional family? Don't make me laugh!

I've been reading a lot in blogs lately about dysfunctional families. It's Christmas season that sets these things off -- a time when our expectations most exceed reality and disappointment in non perfection is most acute. Calling any family dysfunctional is being unnecessarily redundant. Find me a family that's functional -- go on, I dare ya. Movies and TV don't count; neither does any family you haven't been a part of. Too easy to be fooled by a good facade when a stranger is present. If you're looking for perfection anywhere, you're doomed to failure.

I'm watching one of my favorite movies -- Meet Me in St. Louis. It has just about the most goldenly perfect depiction of family life ever seen on the silver screen with none of the grating mawkishness of the Brady Bunch. Most times I watch it in a happy glow of nostalgia for an era and family which never existed, an idealistic glimpse of what everyone wishes their family were like. There were a few times I watched it tearfully, sad that my family could never measure up to the Smiths.

But, you know, even the Smiths had their moments of discord and familial failings.

Agnes runs off on Halloween leaving her sister Tootie behind because she's too little. And talk about juvenile delinquency! What those children are allowed to get up to -- bonfires, for heaven's sake.

Mr. Smith doesn't consult anyone in his family before deciding to accept a new position which means moving his family to New York. Everyone is pretty upset. Most of them stalk out in a huff (although the parents' singing draws everyone back, determined to make the best of it).

Rose and Esther are mortified when their dates fall through, and they face the disgrace of having to be escorted to the Christmas ball by their brother. They narrowly miss being scarred for life.

Yet at the end of the film they're a united and happy family.

I know there are a lot of families out there with some very serious problems -- drug/alcohol abuse, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, mental illness. I'm not taking that lightly. But now everyone has decided, via mega viewings of Dr. Phil and Montel, that they're expert analysts. They study their family, find it lacking, and blame their problems on negative and non supportive kin.

Most people have been damaged by their family. The main exceptions are the alphas -- the golden children who grow up to rule the pride. Or those few who are exceptionally resilient and thick skinned.

I'm no exception. My main problem, from always being the odd one, the belittled one, is a lack of self-confidence. When it seems like someone is snubbing me, when someone who has been friendly suddenly turns cold, my first thought is usually that I've done something wrong. It worries me. I feel hurt. I wonder if I should approach them about it, or just cut and run. It's compounded by my difficulty picking up subtle hints. I don't: I need a brick to hit me (or someone to come right out and say things clearly and distinctly).

Then I try to look at it from another perspective. Maybe it's the other fellow's fault. Maybe he has his own problems, his own inadequacies. Maybe she hasn't had much practice relating to people.

I'm far from shrugging off situations like this, but I'll continue to work at it. And I won't bemoan my dysfunctional family. When I go to Christmas dinner, I'll remind myself that they are insecure people who have to put me down to feel good about themselves. Not My Problem unless I choose to make it so.

Snow Day?

I'm really hoping they cancel school tomorrow. Not that I'm a student -- haven't been for over twenty years, but I work at a school, and if the city cancels, I don't have to go in.

Normally I don't mind so much. I don't like to drive in snow, and this year I'm not familiar with my new (used) car and how it behaves in slippery or snowy conditions. But I can get to work on the bus, with one transfer. Which is also handy if my car's out of service.

However, I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat, achy, feeling blah, and it hasn't improved any over the day. Being able to sleep in tomorrow would be such a great thing! And if there is school, with the snow seeming to be a definite thing, it's going to be wild tomorrow.

For some reason, as long as it's not snowing too badly by seven a.m or so, they don't seem to want to cancel. Even if by dismissal time they know that there's going to be three or more inches on the ground, the roads treacherous, and the school buses having to make their way through a city of people who've left work early to beat the rush hour storm traffic.

This has happened before, and what it usually means is that, starting around 10 a.m. and continuing until school gets out, there will be a steady stream of parents through the front door getting their kids dismissed early. A few times there were dozens of dismissals out of a school population of about 330, not counting the ones who started showing up at the side door from a half hour before school ended and were taken care of by the day care workers.

Then I'll have to slog through the snow to the bus stop, wheezing and sneezing, and stand ankle-deep in freezing slush to wait for a bus which will probably be late because of the weather, to catch a bus to take me to wait for another bus which will also be late.

One time the traffic congestion and driving conditions were so bad, none of the buses could do their routes after about four p.m. They had one final bus for each route at about 6:30 to get all of us who had been trapped downtown home. That day I got home after seven, after leaving work at 3:30. And my house, under non inclement driving conditions, is about fifteen minutes away from work.

If you're coming snow, come early!

News from Brian Murphy about Gold Eagle

For those who are familiar with the Destroyer Series, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, there has been a new development in their relationship with Gold Eagle. Warren Murphy did not renew their contract when it was up for negotiation last summer, though he did let them exercise their option to publish the Destroyer through 2006.

One of the problems with the negotiations was that Gold Eagle did little to promote the series. They even refused an offer by the owner of Destroyer Club to buy an advertisement for the club in the back of the books. For some reason, now that they've lost the series, Gold Eagle is willing to offer a dedication/acknowledgement of Warren's site. You can view the picture below.

Nano and Web Site

Getting toward the halfway point in Nano! I was hoping to be at 25,000 words tomorrow, but I slacked off a bit today. Only got to 22,195, which means almost 3000 tomorrow if I want to make it. But I will sit down and try. Funny thing is, I've been flying by the seat of my pants lately. I didn't really plan out anything too much. Things just seem to work themselves out as I go along. For instance, originally, I had my heroine's brother telling her too much too soon, but I put up some roadblocks to that as I was writing it. Now, she's searching for answers somewhere else. I only thought of that plot point yesterday, but it gave me something I was sure about to write today. But I didn't feel as inspired to write it, though I got some speed up around eleven.

They had four My Name is Earls on tonight, and I got distracted watching them. Funny show, and sweet.

I still have ideas for tomorrow. The situation I have my heroine in is going to be playing out for a few chapters. No hurry. I still have half my word count to go.

There's an excerpt posted on my viewer profile over at Nanowrimo. It's crude and I haven't edited at all, so if you want to go check it out, I'm dmcourt there.

I'm getting tempted, too, by my new web site. Jerry finally persuaded me to register my name online, so I got a web site too, while I was at it. I worked on that a little, but there's still much to do, and I don't have a really clear idea of what I can put on it. I could have a book review section. And set up links and advertise the Destroyer and New Blood on there too, if anyone ever finds the site! For now, I'm just cross posting a few of my blogs there.

As soon as I finish my book (for now), I'll turn to the website. They have different themes besides the ones you can choose from. I'd like to decorate it for Christmas for now, then after Christmas, either go with a winter theme or -- probably better -- a tropical theme. I'm sure to be sick of snow by January.

Grateful

Got this over at Live Journal . I really need to do this. Too often I only think of things that go wrong or that I'm not happy about.

Gratitude Meme: List ten small things you're grateful for, then tag five other people to do the same.

1. Chocolate
2. Good old movies
3. Bad old movies that are so bad, they're good
4. Sundays
5. Typing instead of writing by hand
6. Warm days in November
7. Cool days in July
8. St. Francis of Assisi
9. My comfortable old bathrobe
10. live journal/blogs

Nano went well today. I couldn't write much Friday, but I had written over on other days, so I wasn't behind. But I mean to get far enough ahead this weekend so if something comes up during the week, I won't go too far behind then. I'm up to 9185, and if I can get in at least 2000 (hopefully 3000) tomorrow...

I was really proud of myself today. I couldn't start writing until after six, and I was starting on the third chapter. I had planned the first seven chapters, but decided, as I was starting tonight, to move what I'd had planned for the third chapter into the fourth chapter, and substitute one written in third person dealing with the villain. When I sat down, I had no real idea what was going to come out, but come out stuff did. While it's not great literature, I really wasn't expecting to pull ideas and words out of thin air like that. I hadn't really thought my villain through until I began tonight.

My cat seems much better today. I'm crossing my fingers. He was able to walk around much better. Yesterday, when he came home, the first thing he wanted was the litter box. He had to rest halfway to the bathroom, then, after doing his business, he lay down in the box until he could get up the strength to get out. He wasn't eating the special food they'd given me and he felt cold when I picked him up.

Today he's walking longer before he has to rest. I gave him his regular food tonight, and he's gone to the dish three times so far and ate a little bit each time. He feels warmer and his nose is pinker. I'll just have to keep giving him his medicine and hope for the best.

All in all, a much better birthday than I was picturing a few days ago.

Rights and Wrongs

I'm one of the administrators over at Destroyer Club, a site dedicated to the series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. There have been over 140 books in the series since 1972, many of which have been written by ghost writers. Some background material before my rant.

When I first found the series, it had just gone over to Signet, and Murphy & Sapir were still writing it (for the most part). Then Will Murray took over as the main writer, with an occasional book by Murphy, Sapir, or both. I didn't realize back then about ghost writers. M&S's names were still on the books, and if they were a little different, they were still entertaining and featured the characters I had grown to love.

Signet gave way to Gold Eagle, and a few years later Murray gave way to Jim Mullaney, and still the series went on. But Gold Eagle didn't advertise it very well and didn't seem to care about selling as many of the books as they could. Jim Mullaney was made an offer he needed to refuse during his last contract negotiation, and a new writer took over. Sales plummeted, and as it stands now, Warren Murphy has refused a new contract with Gold Eagle and is shopping for a new publisher for the series. Since then the books have taken a nosedive in quality with the new writer, and GE has never promoted it, it's going to be a bit of a task.

Jim Mullaney, who continues to love the series, has been trying to help get the series back in the public eye a bit. Last week, National Review Online (the web branch of a conservative magazine) published an article by Jim. It posited that one of the reasons for the series' sliding popularity was that the conservative slant that had been in place since Murphy and Sapir's books had been sliding toward the left. He also happened to mention that the ghost writer before him, Will Murray, had also in his opinion not stayed true to the series' conservative roots.

Now, agree or disagree, it did get the series a bit of publicity, much more than it's had since Murphy and Sapir's Destroyers were mentioned in the New York Times Book Review. Sales (on Amazon.com) of the Assassin's Handbook 2, a privately published reader's guide to the thirty years of the series, even went up a little in the days after the article appeared.

However, Will Murray took it rather badly. Which is his right. However, he used this as the occasion to join the Destroyer club and make his first post there -- not to answer fans' eager questions, or give them a chance to say how much they loved his books, but to rant against Jim Mullaney. As one of the administrators, I can't take sides on the forums, but my blog is my own.

What an honor! After over a year of the club's existence, another one of the ghost writers finally shows up and it's to do nothing but spew venom against a fellow writer. Makes me wonder, if he cares so much about the Destroyer, why it took him so long to find us. It was pretty quickly rectified once he'd got a bug up his butt.

Contrast his behavior to that of Warren and Jim's, who have been posting on the Destroyer Club since the beginning. And while both of them have expressed their opinion about Gold Eagle, they haven't attacked the latest ghost writer or dissed other writers of the series. Even with Gold Eagle, they've never named names.

The Destroyer club is supposed to be a site for the fans to talk about Remo and Chiun and Smith and CURE, ask Warren and the ghostwriters questions, and just get together to talk. It is not supposed to be a site for one of the writers to slam another of the writers, no matter how justified he might think he is. The other admins aren't happy about his little temper tantrum either.

It really bothers me how he's gotten people's hopes up. Finally, another of the ghosts is on the forum! Several members responded eagerly to his post. They didn't give him the angry reactions he wanted, but were excited to see him there. The more cautious ones didn't weigh in; they probably read the message and found it disturbing. But I would bet everyone's hoping he'll be dropping in on us regularly now he's found us. I feel that since he's done his spewing and didn't get the indignation and support he craves, he won't be back. Which stinks for the fans. It's sure to occur to them that he could have found this site easily a year ago and didn't bother. And the site is for the fans, not for him to spit venom at Jim or engage in vendettas.