Still Alive (Still Coughing)
Dec. 22nd, 2009 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI just wanted to drop a quick note to let y'all know that I'm still above ground. I took a break from writing/working on my revisions for _Almost to Die For_ to celebrate the holidays. What, already? Yep. Our family exchanges some gifts at Christmas time, but, for us, the big deal day is Winter Solstice/Yule (which was yesterday.) My folks (who are secular humanist/Unitarians) came up on Sunday to exchange some gifts and whatnot, and we had a great time. Mason got some great winter loot -- a new sled, a snow ball maker, a snow fort maker (like those sand castle molds, except for snow), a scooter, and ton of other stuff. I got a couple of Captain America shirts and money for my coffee card. Hooray! Shawn got this cool stain glass/plate thing she'd admired last time we were in LaCrosse and some "folding money" as her father would have put it, which she intends to use on some fun, frivolous shoes.
Last night, we lit the Yule log and exchanged more personal gifts. I gave Shawn a cloth/bling covered box she admired at Pier 1 as well as some silver earrings that depict Raven stealing the box of the sun. Shawn and I used to read the story of Raven to Mason when he was quite little, so the earrings have a lot of special meaning. Mason gave us a calendar he made at school. We gave him some family puzzles (we love those mystery puzzles, so I got him some of those) and games we could all play together. Shawn gave me a subscription to InTouch, my absolutely favoritest trashy celebrity magazine.
Life is good.
We took light from the Yule log and lit a couple of votive candles, which we let burn all night. Mason got one for his room, and Shawn and I had one in ours. The sun accepted our gift of light, as the candles were all burned out by morning.
Alas, I still have this deep chested cough. I _do_ think I'm getting better, but, man, recovery has been seriously slow going. I feel just rotten enough that getting back to work on revisions has been hard today. I look at all the good suggestions my editor has made on the text and I think, "Nah." Although, I have been doing them, I've just been hard pressed to be motivated to, you know?
I had a little panic this morning because a friend thought that she'd heard that _Tall, Dark & Dead_ was out of print. A friend of hers had tried to perchase it and couldn't. So I quick sent off an email to my editor, who assured me that it's still listed in print and they have over a thousand copies still in the warehouse. I guess there's a distributor who doesn't deal directly with Penguin that sometimes can cause this sort of thing to happen. I'm just glad I didn't miss an opportunity to buy copies of the remaindered book, though it does remind me that I should probably plan ahead and budget for that eventuality. I can't imagine the series is going to stay in print too much longer after the last in the series comes out next May.
Speaking of the last in the series things, Shawn and I watched the Christian Bale Terminator movie last night. There was *some* cool in that film, but the most interesting part of the story (the character of Marcus, a terminator who doesn't know he's a machine,) could have been explored more, IMHO. I kind of liked that the audience was in on Marcus' secret from the beginning, and so you had a chance to watch all clues build up to his big "oh crap!" moment, when he can see the machine bits poking out of his ruined body. Also, the whole theme of "what does it mean to be human?" is a noble one. I'm fairly convinced that Marcus was, in the end, a better human being than John Connor --our supposed hero -- who, ironically, ends up with a machine's heart. The implication THERE was never much explored, either. I mean, here's a guy who has, in many ways, stripped himself of his humanity to effectively fight the machines ending up with a HEART of a terminator -- a cold, mechanical (if efficient) heart. I mean, DUDE. It was very tin man all over again, you know? Which one of them had the bigger heart, as it were? The machine. Clearly.
But it wasn't presented as nearly that deep, alas.
The movie kind of suffered from having to be an action film. There were some nifty chase/fight scenes (I rather loved the driver-less motorcycles, and I liked the "harvesters"), but if I had been the director, I'd have removed a lot of the John Connor storyline and focused on Marcus. I'd have left just enough Connor in, so you could have the comparison (cold efficient killer = human; decent, caring protector = terminator), but the whole subplot of needing to destroy Skynet's San Francisco base could have been mostly sidelined to explore Marcus' delemia more, IMHO.
But they didn't ask me.
What's up with Hollywood, anyway? They should have called. My number is listed, after all. :-)
Last night, we lit the Yule log and exchanged more personal gifts. I gave Shawn a cloth/bling covered box she admired at Pier 1 as well as some silver earrings that depict Raven stealing the box of the sun. Shawn and I used to read the story of Raven to Mason when he was quite little, so the earrings have a lot of special meaning. Mason gave us a calendar he made at school. We gave him some family puzzles (we love those mystery puzzles, so I got him some of those) and games we could all play together. Shawn gave me a subscription to InTouch, my absolutely favoritest trashy celebrity magazine.
Life is good.
We took light from the Yule log and lit a couple of votive candles, which we let burn all night. Mason got one for his room, and Shawn and I had one in ours. The sun accepted our gift of light, as the candles were all burned out by morning.
Alas, I still have this deep chested cough. I _do_ think I'm getting better, but, man, recovery has been seriously slow going. I feel just rotten enough that getting back to work on revisions has been hard today. I look at all the good suggestions my editor has made on the text and I think, "Nah." Although, I have been doing them, I've just been hard pressed to be motivated to, you know?
I had a little panic this morning because a friend thought that she'd heard that _Tall, Dark & Dead_ was out of print. A friend of hers had tried to perchase it and couldn't. So I quick sent off an email to my editor, who assured me that it's still listed in print and they have over a thousand copies still in the warehouse. I guess there's a distributor who doesn't deal directly with Penguin that sometimes can cause this sort of thing to happen. I'm just glad I didn't miss an opportunity to buy copies of the remaindered book, though it does remind me that I should probably plan ahead and budget for that eventuality. I can't imagine the series is going to stay in print too much longer after the last in the series comes out next May.
Speaking of the last in the series things, Shawn and I watched the Christian Bale Terminator movie last night. There was *some* cool in that film, but the most interesting part of the story (the character of Marcus, a terminator who doesn't know he's a machine,) could have been explored more, IMHO. I kind of liked that the audience was in on Marcus' secret from the beginning, and so you had a chance to watch all clues build up to his big "oh crap!" moment, when he can see the machine bits poking out of his ruined body. Also, the whole theme of "what does it mean to be human?" is a noble one. I'm fairly convinced that Marcus was, in the end, a better human being than John Connor --our supposed hero -- who, ironically, ends up with a machine's heart. The implication THERE was never much explored, either. I mean, here's a guy who has, in many ways, stripped himself of his humanity to effectively fight the machines ending up with a HEART of a terminator -- a cold, mechanical (if efficient) heart. I mean, DUDE. It was very tin man all over again, you know? Which one of them had the bigger heart, as it were? The machine. Clearly.
But it wasn't presented as nearly that deep, alas.
The movie kind of suffered from having to be an action film. There were some nifty chase/fight scenes (I rather loved the driver-less motorcycles, and I liked the "harvesters"), but if I had been the director, I'd have removed a lot of the John Connor storyline and focused on Marcus. I'd have left just enough Connor in, so you could have the comparison (cold efficient killer = human; decent, caring protector = terminator), but the whole subplot of needing to destroy Skynet's San Francisco base could have been mostly sidelined to explore Marcus' delemia more, IMHO.
But they didn't ask me.
What's up with Hollywood, anyway? They should have called. My number is listed, after all. :-)