I’m seriously concerned about the long term financial health of our country. Still, I suspect that the movie this trailer is advertising is a bit one sided. (For one thing it looks like there hasn’t been a  Republican president since Reagan. I seem to remember two with three terms between them.)
So I got a fairly decent rejection slip a couple of weeks ago on a ghost story I had written, (Proof of Principle.) The editor suggested that I had some clumsy structure in my sentences and that by removing words here and there, and an occasional sentence entirely, I would improve the piece.
Getting this sort of feedback is really mind–blowing. It means I am getting fairly close to writing something good enough to sell to a pro-level market. The editor also suggest I try reading the work aloud to guide my edits.
Luckily for me I have just purchased a digital voice recorder. (A Sanyo Fp-600) I plan to use it to record the feedback dinner discussion for Cawdor and convention panels. (I can be a horrid note taker.) So in an attempt to edit this story I am reading it into the digital voice recorder. Any time I stumble over a phrase, I stop and go back to record that section. If I stumble twice, that gets rewritten. Also I am finding things that simply slipped past my eye, but not my ear. I am very excited about the prospects for my editing.
So it’s about three weeks until the elections and it’s time to put my rep on the line. Here’s my rum down — barring any major events that upset the applecart (peachcarts are always ignored, le sigh.)
The Democrats have about 46 solid seats that can be considered safe or not up for re-election, the Republicans have 35, that leaves about 19 seats up for grabs of which the Republicans need 16 to gain a majority. 16 out of 19 that’s a mighty steep hill. But of that 16 they only need 11 pick-ups to gain control.
Many people know that I am not a big fan of the Western. If you look through my 240 plus DVD and Blu-ray collection the list of Westerns is as Elrond might put it, ‘thin.’ I have just a few in my library. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (subject of a previous Sunday Night Movie), High Noon, and Unforgiven. Given such a limited interest in Westerns it would be surprising to most to find Rustlers’ Rhapsody in my collection.
This film from 1985 is a wonderful send-up of the Western genre. While I am not a big fan of the genre I am enough of a movie buff to know it’s conventions, tropes, and cliches. Rustlers’ Rhapsody plays on these perfectly.
The film starts Tom Berenger as Rex O’Herlihan, The Singing Cowboy. Rex rides from town to town, fighting to bad guys, saving the good guys, and always, always winning. He’s an upright, straight-shooting, hand-shooting no killing kind of hero. Befriended by Peter, the town drunk of Oakridge, Rex sets about his karma of saving the poor — and foul-smelling — sheep herders from the evil cattle baron, played with more than just a swish by Andy Griffith. Rex proves more than a match for the villains as he knows all their tricks. You see, it’s the same cliched attack that happened in every western town to every hero that stands up for the good guys. This time is different though. The Bad guys have found an evilly ingenious way to foil the good guy, one that Rex  — or any western good guy — has faced before.
This film did not find an audience in 1985 and was released just this one time on DVD, but if you are a fan of the silly zany comedies that came out of the 80s and love a good poke at cliches and overused tropes, give this a Netflix spin.
Tonight I reserved my rental car for my vegas Trip.
This is going to be fun.
So today I hung out with my pal Bear. It was a typical Sunday Afternoon for us. First we visited our local specialty bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy. I did not buy anything as my ‘to read’ stack is currently five books high. (I personally am not a fan of buying books when I have not finished reading the ones I purchased the trip before.) Then a  quick stop at our local games store Game Empire — nicely located next to Mysterious Galaxy — where I picked up an expansion deck for Munchkin as a gift to my sweetie-wife.
We had a large lunch at Outback Steakhouse. hmm I love that Sundays I do not count calories. we discussed my re-invented zombies and I am pleased to say that now two friends — both fans of the zombie movie genre — have enjoyed the ideas I bounded around about re-inventing the zombie. I still am not sure that I have a plot that will fully form, but it could be that it will just take time. My Macbeth ideas bounced around my skull for nearly a decade before they became Cawdor late last year.
I am very sorry that Conjecture’s programming looked so weak this year. I love going to my local conventions, but I am there primarily for programming and it is on that basis that I judge if a con was a failure or a success for myself.
I am not going to Conjecture. I looked t the programming and nothing appealed to me. So much so that today instead of going to the convention I stayed home with my sweetie-wfe and assembled IKEA furniture.
Let me give a shout out to my firend Gail Carriger on the 1 year anniversary of the publication of her first novel, ‘Soulless.’ It has abeen a real joy watching the last year go by and see her well-deservbed successes pile up.
Bloggin may be light to weekeend as I will be at a local convention, Conjecture.
Went to the writers group meeting tonight. I am very glad I joined. We have writers at all different levels of ability and the mix-up is very energizing and fosters creativity.
The only downside to tonight’s meeting was weather really reduced our turn-out. The freeways and roads were jammed from a sudden storm through the area.
So tonight I continued work on my zombie idea. I am really taken with the mechanics of my revenants, and what that means in a larger context. The fantasy/horror version of our world is falling into place and the first broad strokes of plot are also starting to form a puzzle.
You see the plot is a puzzle me before it is a puzzle for my readers. I’ll get the plot in bits and in pieces. I have to find ways of tying those bits into a whole, usually by means of the proper characters and the proper viewpoint.
Still, if I undertake this project it will be my biggest challenge to date. A real world setting, a novel length horror story, and a reinvention of what is now a very solid monster.