Monthly Archives: September 2016

School has started, and as usual I find myself doing more writing. When I have open days full of fun and mirth, I tend to just partake in the fun and mirth and do little else. I presume this is why God did not make me independently wealth–because I will sit and do nothing, ever.

I wrote the centerpiece article for our own The Ann magazine, which is extremely exciting. It is never not a thrill to see your name in print, except I suppose if you are a defendant or accused of shooting someone.

I also contributed to our beloved Observer magazine, in the Marketplace Changes section. Again, seeing something in print is quite satisfying, even though I do most of my reading on a screen these days.

Over at Mittenbrew, I wrote about a great great GREAT brewpub, ROAK. And I continue to write for Concentrate, about our local history.

While I nervously wait for my young adult manuscript to hopefully sell (hope hope hope), I started reworking a book that I started in the late 90s. My, how times have changed! I had them sending Yahoo! messages, and there was no mention of smart phones, and they were still reading newspapers. So I suppose I have some updating to do! Here is what it’s about:

“Did you ever have one of those ‘moments’?  Where everything is as it should be, and all is well on earth and you know you are exactly where you should be and doing exactly what you should be doing?”

That is how the self-described “depressive, rotund, nobody’s dream girl” Rebecca Slater, feels when she meets the mysterious, disfigured Mike Riley. Mourning the life threatening injury of her best friend, and coping with her own mental illness, Becca ends up lost and stranded and knocking on Mike’s door one rainy day. Having spent the past ten years hiding in his home, Mike is not ready for guests, and definitely not looking for friends. Over time, they build a friendship of two lost souls who find in each other what each one is looking for.

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The antagonist is Mental Illness, and the plot revolves around her trying to find her way through a relationship will dealing with Bipolar Disorder and all of the fun that goes along with mental illnesses. The first part is the friendship, the second part is the relationship, the third part is MORE MENTAL ILLNESS FUN! I promise it’s not really depressing, but rather a realistic look at the antagonist that is in my head–in a lot of our heads.

Anyway, if anyone wants to beta read, that would be super. Meantime, the Write goes on….

 

It is rare that I will say a movie is better than a book, but when the book is practically the worst thing you have ever laid eyes on then I guess it can’t be hard to be better.

What I’m saying is that I finally saw the movie for “The Road”. I hated that book. Hate isn’t even the word. I don’t think a word exists for the utter bullshit that book was. Before I got two seconds into it, I was like, “So heeeyyyyyy, no trees huh? No vegetation? Yeah, no oxygen then, son.” That’s my problem with most post-apocalyptic stuff, by the way. They wipe out everything and with it goes the oxygen only not because Stuff. (I guess it could have been the Rapture, and somehow God destroyed shit cuz God gonna God but left the oxygen…but that was never stated in the book.)

MAJOR SPOILERS A’COMIN’!!

 

Anyway, here is my review from BookShare in its entirety: The only thing that would have made me like this book is if they had eaten the father at the end

I have no idea how in the hell that book got a publisher, but I guess some people just live right. Anyway, the movie was actually not awful. The acting was great and HOW FUCKING GREAT is Garret Dillahut. My man has been the Terminator, the dad on Raising Hope, bad guys in other movies and in two minutes in The Road, he scared the fuck out of me. Really great actor.

But what got me was the ending. It was perfect, and how I would have ended this book except that I wouldn’t written this book because I would have pulled my own retinas out first and then ate them like the cannibals ate the people in the cellar. See, in the book, the kid is left on his own and a family approaches him. For some reason, the father of the family is described as a veteran but I don’t know why because it’s not like he’s wearing an Army uniform (that I recall). They take in the boy and the woman is kind to him and teaches him about religion and it seems like an okay ending.

But in the movie, I think things went much darker. There is a blink-and-you-miss-it scene earlier in the film where a woman and her daughter are running from cannibals. I am pretty sure that the mom at the end of the movie is that woman. There is nothing to indicate that the “veteran” dad is her husband or that the kids are their kids. They have a dog who is plump and happy. So my thinking is that the woman and her kid were kidnapped by the cannibals and were allowed to live by being “bait” for others. What a great cover story! It’s a family, with a dog no less, so come on with us AND THEN GET THE SHIT EATEN OUT OF YOU! It makes sense. The woman and her kid get to live, and get to eat (human flesh but whatevs), and what do they care about the people they ensnare? They even have a dog to pet! (And it would make sense for cannibals to have a dog, all the better to track and scout humans to eat).

This ending delights me. I figure that the moment after the camera cut out, they all went back and ate the dad. I know I am a horrible person, but I just couldn’t get with this book and especially not that crap of an ending. This ending makes more sense. It’s not happy, but you have no trees and so you have no oxygen and so you can’t breathe anyway oh ha, ha, that’s right, we are ignoring that but still the world is over, so the ending shouldn’t be happy.