One of the best books on Writing

first5This is going to be a short little post because I am utterly exhausted and will be climbing into bed in the very near future. It’s been a  busy week at work and I’ve continued to put in the hours on my novel, Cawdor.

What I want to talk about tonight is one of the best books I have read on how to be a better writer. The book is The First Five Pages by Agent Noah Lukeman. Many of the books on writing that I have read deal with broad concept level writing. How to construct plots, beginning middles and ends. That sort of thing and  that is very important. (Two books I would recommend are Writing The Breakout Novel by Donald Maass and Beginnings Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress.)

The First Five Pages should be on yourself with those two books. What Mr. Lukeman does with his book and help you diagnose and fix the detailed problems that get books rejected quickly. He gets down into the weeds of the matter and shows you how to tell a weed from a flower. The chapters are clear and concise, building on each other to lay open the complex task that is writing. At the end of each chapter there are work assignments to help you learn the lessons.

This book is exceptionally well written and deeply insightful. Cawdor is going to be  stronger novel because of it, If you are struggling with taking your writing to the next level, I think this book would help tremendously.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Innocents (1961)

innocents So last night I watched an atmospheric horror film from the early sixties, The Innocents (1961) based on the novella The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James.

The story is about a young and inexperienced nanny, Miss Giddens  – played wonderfully by Deborah Kerr – who is sent to look after the household and two young wards who are the niece and nephew of her employer.  Their uncle wants nothing to do with the children, being a bachelor and happy in his lack of responsibilities.

The household, Bly House, is in the country and the characters are isolated there, living in their own little world. Things seem normal enough until Miles, the young nephew is sent home, expelled from school under mysterious circumstances. Miles is played by the outstanding young actor Martin Stephens best known to me as the David the leader of the alien children in the classic SF film The Village Of The Damned. He is equally good here playing an equally stranger and terrifying child.

Events take a turns for the strange and Miss Giddens begins to suspects that not only is the supernatural afoot in the household, but that the two innocent children are hiding terrible secrets and that the innocence is all lies and deceit.

This film works its horror without overt acts of violence or scenes of random brutality. It is a slow piece, with careful photography  that builds suspense and tension with understated shots, and a disdain for photographic trickery. The image above is one of the ones I found most unsettling in the film. I can’t explain the image too much without indulging in spoilers, but it is the heart of the story right there in one image.

Today’s horror films have, in general, lost all sense of the unease that should be at the heart of horror. There is way too much attention paid to pain, suffering, and dismemberment. Torture-porn is not horror in my opinion. Horror comes from that moment when the sand shifts under your feet and the world no longer works the way you thought it did. This film capture that emotional wonderfully.

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Asinine Political Writing

From One Jonah Goldberg

Let me say up front, I don’t think President Obama is to blame for the Fort Hood shootings, and I don’t think it’s fair to say otherwise.

But (you knew there had to be a “but”) that doesn’t mean Obama won’t pay a political price for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage.

At first blush, it seems distasteful to take a political yardstick to the pain suffered at Fort Hood. But if we are to consider this incident part of the bloody tapestry of the larger war on terror, there’s no way to separate it from politics. After all, the war on terror has been driving politics in America for the better part of a decade now.

And that might offer insight into why so many are eager to make the massacre a story about the psychological breakdown of a man who just happened to be a Muslim. . . .

For instance, it seems likely that Obama has already suffered a rhetorical defeat. Whatever his faults, President Bush got to say one thing that the American people always appreciated: After 9/11, he kept us safe from a terrorist attack on the homeland. If Hasan acted as a jihadist terrorist and not a disgruntled psychiatrist, Obama can’t even make the same claim about his first year in office.

There is so much that is wrong with what was written by Mr. Goldberg in the above excerpt.  To bring up an opponent’s possible political cost from such a horrendous crime is the kind of tack left to propagandist and not any form of serious thinker or writer.

If this was an example of Islamic terrorism  since 9-11, then you can’t really say that Bush 43 kept us safe and prevented all attacks on US soil after 9-11 either. John A, Muhammad, the DC sniper from 2002, was convicted and recently put to death for acts of terrorism within the united States.

All seven justices agreed that Mr. Muhammad’s conviction under a previously untested terrorism law was appropriate. The law dispenses with the triggerman requirement in cases where the killing was “pursuant to the direction or order” of someone engaged in an act of terrorism. (NY Times April 23 2005)


What takes this sentiment of Mr. Goldberg’s into lunacy is that reflect on the Obama administration. As though Major Hasan would not have snapped in the same way had John McCain and the Goddess been elected in 2008. (There is no ideology save Conservatism and Palin is it profit. Blessed is her flirt and may peace be upon her.) In all likelihood this would have happened exactly the same way and then of course there would be silence from Mr. Goldberg about how this reflected poorly on the president.

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Short Story The Station On The Edge

So here is  a story that is about to be placed into the trunk. It was a semi-finalist in the Writers Of The Future contest, but has been unable to find a paying home. Please enjoy it and others of mine in the trunk.

The Station On The Edge

by

Robert Mitchell Evans

“We’re going to die!” Peymon’s voice cracked as he trembled in his seat. I can’t say I blamed him. Things didn’t look at all good right then, and they grew steadily worse. Paymon was a small man with a thin frame, nearly nonexistent chin and a enough nose for three men. His short black hair was as unsettled as Paymon himself.

“Shut up or I’ll eject you right now!” An empty threat; the police cruisers shooting at us held my attention, not his bloody whining.

“Can we make the jump?” Carol was cool, either from manipulated genes or a natural ice-queen personality. I couldn’t tell which. Carol was much more to my liking. she was tall with long rich blond hair, more than ample curves, and blue eyes that color I’ve heard Earth’s sky used to be.

Continue reading →

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a curious sense of mortality

So it is open enrollment at work for our healthcare and other benefits. This year I am taking care of something I should have done at the last open enrollment, upping my life insurance to cover the cost of the condo should something happen to me. I want to make sure my sweetie-wife has no worries about where she will live if that happens.

So I got on line and made the changes and upped the coverage to cover the outstanding price on the condo.
This has left me with a curious sense of my own mortality. I’ve been married less than two years, and I was never married before and never had a mortgage before. Somehow making these changes really brought home to me that death is out there waiting for me.
(It didn’t help passing the scene of a deadly bicycle/auto accident on the way to work Monday.)

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Bugged by a crazy idea

For the last few days a silly idea has been bugging me.

We moved into this condo a year ago in May, May 2008 to be precise. In what has become my office we have a nook where someone expected a wet-bar to be installed. There is a sink, wioth working water, and racks above for cocktail glasses. We’ve not planned to use it as a wet bar and mainly just use it as storage currently.

I was online at Amazon and I saw home soda kits available for purchase. Now I buy a lot of soft drink and thought that this might be a way to save money. (The mark-up on soft drinks is outrageous.) Well, the kits for sale certainly didn’t pan out. These counter top units make two liters at a time and that would have been plenty for me, but they use off brand syrups. In other words it would have been generic colas and not the name brands I like. The name brands are not sold in consumer sized lots, but rather in three and five gallon bags-in-boxes for used with pressurized soda fountains. I am very picky about the tastes of my soda and I certain the off-label brands would not have satisfied me.

Soda fountains…..

Here’s where the madness began.

How about installing a soda fountain in the nook where the wet-bar would be. It has water line, power, and space. There would be easy access from my office and the living room – where my friends and I game and watch movies — which is right off my office.

I went as far as to do internet searches on systems. Boy, are they expensive.  Two flavor towers brand new can run $1500. It would be a long time before that investment paid off in savings. ( about a 12 pack per week, @ 5.99 per pack means I spend per year about $312. Evne if I cut my costs in half it would take about 10 years to pay off.)

Of course used systems are much cheaper…..

It’s a silly idea, but one that holds a strange fascination for me.

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