writer. screenwriter. learning person. loves being human.
Many thanks to John Scalzi for the chance to talk about Solitaire as part of The Big Idea series at Whatever.
I would love to hear what you think, and am asking that you please leave comments at Whatever if you’d like to respond to the piece. And show some love to Scalzi: if you haven’t read his work, I suggest starting with Old Man’s War. Great story, well told.
Enjoy your day!
I am thrilled to announce that Solitaire is now available in print from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, your local independent bookstore, and direct from Small Beer Press — as well as Kindle and DRM-free e-book editions.
It’s a terrific feeling to have the book widely available again, and I thank Small Beer Press from the bottom of my heart for all the care they’ve given it. Go buy all their books, will you?
I’m also delighted by the response to the reissue. Here’s a lovely review from Nic Clarke at Eve’s Alexandria, and one from John Mesjak at my3books. Every author needs this kind of support: it’s the best way there is these days to spread the word about a book and help it find its audience. Its next audience, in this case. I’m extremely lucky to have such a fabulous reader base for my work: I am grateful to you all. It’s great fun connecting with you. And I’m sure that this fabulous cover and the sterling reputation of Small Beer Press will help Jackal and her friends find a whole new group of friends to bring to our party.
And stay tuned tomorrow when I’ll be doing a post for John Scalzi’s The Big Idea series on Whatever.
It’s a good day for me. I hope you’re enjoying yours.
Today’s tea-snorting moment is brought to you by cheese people.
I am fascinated by this kind of funny because (it seems to me) it’s based on the particular tension of having internalized something that I know isn’t actually true (Boys Can’t Listen! And Girls Only Talk About The Tedious Minutiae Of Other People! But Boys Have To Convince Girls They Are Listening In Order To Get Sex!). Do I think men are biologically incapable of genuinely paying attention to what’s important to someone else? Well, of course not. But is this advert funny because it’s so true? Well, kinda. So what’s that about?
Gender, gender, socialization and gender. And context, too, because thirty years ago, there would have been a subtle but inescapably hostile vibe to this ad. On some level, it would have been making fun of women, a nudge-nudge-wink-wink pretend you’re sensitive and get laid moment between the guys. But today it feels to me like a comment on culture that I can share with someone who is male-gendered (assuming they have a sense of humor) where we can both laugh from our place on the spectrum. Is that because I’ve changed, or the culture has? Is it remotely possible (please tell me it is) that we are living in times when we can see our behavior around gender roles and understand the essential wackarooni of it, even if it still works on us in the everyday moments?
Oh dear, maybe I’ve just been drinking the cheesy Kool Aid. Ah well. Time for more tea.
Enjoy your day.
Nicola earned sweetie points over the holidays by watching two Johnny Depp movies in a row (I know!), and I earned sweetie points by watching 17,000 hours of Antiques Roadshow and then, Thursday night, Toy Story 3. Those Pixar folks sure do know how to reduce a person to jelly tell a story.
Massive spoiler alert. MASSIVE. If you have not seen the film, please please please do yourself a favor and just don’t read this part, okay? Assert some adult discipline and go on to the next section. Go on…..
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Okay. So, I thought the storytelling was just brilliant. I was terrified by the Junkyard Spiral of Fiery Doom; I honestly thought for about five seconds that they were really going to kill them all, even Slinky Dog and Bullseye the horse! I couldn’t see how they would be saved… then the perfection (!) of the three little green guys and the Giant Claw. Perfect setup, perfect payoff.
And then the last three minutes…. oh, I wept. Don’t you remember the times you left part of your childhood behind? It’s a thing we do in small ways without realizing, of course: ask any parent watching a child grow about all the childish things a small person can simply seem to forget in the whirlwind rush to the next grade, the next inch of height, the expanding world. But then there are the ritual moments of leaving, of putting away, of letting go, that we cannot help but realize are final. Watching Andy play with his toys one final afternoon before driving away to college, watching him abandon himself to an old joy one more time, just gutted me. To know that we are doing something for the last time is… jesus, someone pass me the kleenex. The fucking movie made me want to go up to our attic and find my teddy bear and my stuffed bunny and my beanbag frog and just hold onto them, just love them.
And then what? Put them away again? Give them to a stranger child who might beat the stuffing out of them and send them off to their own Junkyard Spiral of Fiery Doom? This is the power of story, my friends — to ask us questions we can never answer right; to remind us of what we cannot bear to remember, to teach us what we cannot bear to know, and to make us fucking laugh right before we cry. To make us like it. To make us want to go back to the well of human stories and find another one and do it all again.
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/spoilers off/
I took yesterday off of editing and read Stephen King’s latest collection Full Dark, No Stars. I bought the book with an Amazon.com birthday gift card from an anonymous reader, so thank you once again, Anon.
King is the living writer whom I most love. I really mean it that way: I do not love everything he has written equally, and a small bit of it I do not love at all, but I love this man as a writer. I love his clarity, his rock-and-roll vibe, his forays into gleeful grue. He has so much fun! And for my money, he’s the best writer of American character on the planet. He is, as I hope I am, a writer who goes down deep into the well and brings back what he finds of being human. I love him for his honesty and his brutal compassion and his joy.
And I love him for the Afterword to this book. At one point, King quotes writer Frank Norris: “I never truckled; I never took off my hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth.” And then King goes on to say:
But when it comes to fiction, the writer’s only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart. It won’t always be the reader’s truth, or the critic’s truth, but as long as it’s the writer’s truth — as long as he or she doesn’t truckle, or hold his or her hat to Fashion — all is well. For writers who knowingly lie, for those who substitute unbelievable human behavior for the way people really act, I have nothing but contempt. Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do….
— from the Afterword of Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
Amen.
On New Year’s Eve, Nicola and I did what we always do: we drank champagne and ate tasty food, and talked about the year that was and the one that will be. We try in these conversations to tell the truth about our experience and our disappointments and our “must do betters” and the things that were fantastic. We try to tell what we actually did. It’s an interesting conversation to have year after year, because part of the truth of a long-term marriage is that people don’t always have the same year. We travel together and we always will, but we are not always on the same journey. This does not bother me or even frighten me anymore, although it can be pretty fucking inconvenient sometimes. But it’s important to tell each other the stories of where we have been and where we think we might go next, so that we don’t lose each other on the way.
Nicola has distilled her year with her usual brilliance and brio. Me, well, here is some of my 2010:
Ah, and here we are back to the joys and the losses. Here we come full circle to Toy Story 3. And you thought I had lost the plot of this post (grin). I have not. I know now more than ever that the plot always takes us back to the joys and the losses, but never in a straight line. And so although I usually have goals for the year and yes, goals are good, yay goals, this year…. well, this year I think I am going to live my life with less concern about the straight-line-ness of it all. Love and life and hard work and those trips to the writing well inside me, those are my toys. I am going to play with my beloved toys as long and joyfully as I can.
Thank you for being part of my new year. Enjoy your 2011.
I hope tomorrow to have a post about the year, because it’s been a while since I’ve found time to share more than a moment here, and it would be nice to chat.
In the meantime, here is sunrise in Seattle on the last day of the decade, taken (prosaically enough) from the parking lot of the grocery store. Yes, I was there early: I have learned that all the bread is fresh and there is never a long checkout line. The meat and fish guys are cheerfully sharpening their knives, the vegetable guys are putting brightly-colored produce into the bins, the deli people are laughing and making sandwiches for the lunch rush. There are birds who live in the rafters; they fluff and flutter, and you can only hear their little voices when there aren’t so many people. A market in the first hour is a place of becoming; everything feels wide open and full of possibility.
And so too does the sky. And so too does the year, the decade, the life.
Enjoy your day, and Happy New Year to us all.
I am so looking forward to Rango (and I will say that the list of Animated Films I Have Ever Actively Wanted To See is about two, maybe). Here’s the latest trailer, which has only increased my Glee Quotient for the movie.
And as a special holiday treat, here is a brief look at the “Making of” process. I love that the film wasn’t made with actors trapped in a booth voicing to existing animation. I would imagine that can be pretty frustrating — all talk, no action, as they say. But Rango was made with actors creating the roles physically as well as vocally. Actors doing and being. And they look like they’re having so much fun, don’t they?
Fun is Good. I like it a lot. I hope you’ll have some the next day or two. Happy holidays.
Enjoy your day. And if you are so inclined, please give a moment of thanks to all the people injured or dead in the silent service of their country.
Thank you to all who supported me during the recent difficult time in which my website went missing. You’ve all been wonderful, and I thought you should know that the site came home last night with only one shoe, no underwear, a tattoo on her right arm, an empty champagne bottle in her bag (a real feat of engineering, it took me five minutes to extricate it and oh my god, the cleaning bill…), and a goofy grin.
She’s sleeping it off now. I’m so happy to see her back, I’ll probably just give her more champagne later. Along with a stern talking to, of course. I’ll go work on that now.
Enjoy your day!
Fabulous photographer Jennifer Durham is featured in today’s Seattle Groupon with a Santa/family photo special offer. Jennifer is a seriously excellent photographer: check out her portrait work and her gorgeous landscape photography.
Memories are a powerful thing. A lot of people can show you what the moment looks like: it’s a different sort of talent to capture the internal reality. If you’re in Seattle, go to Groupon and seize the moment for yourself or someone you care for.
And enjoy your day. I hope it brings you something lovely and memorable.
I’ve posted these before — the fantastic public-space songfests that T-Mobile sponsors around the world (and yep, they deserve that plug from me, I’ve had a lot of pleasure from these videos). Here’s the latest, from Heathrow airport. The really cool thing is realizing that no instruments are used: humans are the orchestra as well as the voice.
And, if you want a peek behind the curtain, here’s a lovely “Making Of” video that makes me feel even better about people and the things we do for each other sometimes…
Enjoy your day.