I have deliberately waited several days before commenting on the events last Friday in Tucson Arizona. My reasons for waiting were manifestly simple; I wanted to have more information. The earliest reports are always the most sketchy and the least reliable. Eye witness testimony is notoriously untrustworthy. (Consider that for decades we though the RMS Titanic was one piece because eye-witness testimony said is did not break up and sink, but merely sank.) Continue reading
Today I suffered with a headache that orbited close to the event horizon of migraine status, only to sling-shot away at the last moment into dull low level pain before heading back in for another pass at the pain.
I got zero pages written as I could barely think much less create.
On the plus side my pal has been released from the hospital and is now back home recovering from his stroke. We’re all pulling for him.
Well, yesterday I got the email that After more than 18 months my novel ‘love and loyalty’ wad rejected by a publisher. I can take the rejection, but the wait was awful. Now I have to decide if I want to revise or send it right out.
This is truly one of my favorite films. The Maltese Falcon is the film that launched the genre of Film Noir and in many ways it has never been equalled.
I first saw the film in my Introduction to Cinematography class back in my old college days. That was a grand course. Every Tuesday and Thursday we’d sit though about 25 minuets of lecture, then watch a film. (Films started on Tuesday and we completed them on the Thursday session.) It was done chronologically, starting with silent films and working our ways through the decades of film production. (Mostly we saw American films, but there were a few foreign movies.) Many movies I would have never sought out I watched there and I truly learned to love all sorts of film.
The Maltese Falcon is movie that made Bogart as start, it launched the directing career of John Houston, and it forever stamped on our collective psyche what a hard-boiled detective is like.
Curiously this is the third adaptation of the novel into film. The first was made ten years earlier and did modest box office, the second was made in 1936 and strangely titled, “Satan Met a Lady.” It starred Betty Davis in the femme Fatale roole, but the film was played more for laughs than serious crime fiction and it failed with audiences and critics alike.
One thing I would really love to do is to attend a high-level writing workshop for SF and Fantasy Writers. (Thought I am more of an SF and Horror writer to be precise.)
The problem is that the workshops are intensive in money and time and it’s really hard to see how I can make one of them happen for me.
This is an old, well established and very well though of workshop. It used to be back east, but move to the campus of UCSD recently.
Tuition: $4957
Length: 6 weeks
Housing: Included with tuition, but mandatory that participants stay in the workshops housing.
Airfare: None for me I live in San Diego
There is simply no way I can swing $5000 for a workshop and 6 weeks away from my day job. Never going to happen
Not as old as Clarion, but I hear good things about this workshop.
Tuition: $880
Length: 1 week
Housing: $155/night call it $1000 food not included
Airfare: $700 (trans continental.)
The cost are much better this with one, I’m looking at $2500 for room, tuition and airfare, plus likely another $500 for food and rental car. so call it $3000
I don’t know as much about this one, but the instructors are both very talented writers. (One being a favorite of mine and one of the best in the field)
Tuition: $3200
Length: 2 weeks
Housing: Included, but not food.
Airfare: $304
Food/Rental car: $800
So total cost is $4300 but two weeks of vacation time required.
Man I would love to do one fo these, but I just don’t think I can.
le sigh
Worked 4 hours of OT today after foolishly staying up until 1;30 am watching Inception. Now Iam tired.
the less about today the better
Brian is doing better and we visited him tonight at the hospital. There were four of visiting and I think it really helped his spirits. I remember how bored out of my skull I was when I was in the hospital and I didn’t have to deal with the frustration and relearning basic skills.
At lunch I ended up on calls to my insurer and it looks like everything is going to work out there, but I do not have solid confirmation that my Rx’s have been ported over yet. Until I do I will be nervous.
So, in short :
Pages: 0
Calories 1900/1732
At my day job things were rushed and busy and hectic. I did manage to get 3 pages written on my breaks and lunches. (Okay on lunch and one break I was too frazzled on my first break and spent it reading ‘The Man Who Would Be King.”
I got home after grocery shopping with my sweetie-wife to find an email telling my that one of my dearest friends, Brain, was in the hospital after suffering a stroke.
I rushed to the hospital and spent time with him. I’m told he is going to recover so right now thing look promising. If you are of the praying type please if you can find time to mention him thank you. (He wouldn’t ask as he is not the praying type.)
Needles to say I did not get anything more written today.
Calorie Count: 1900/1995
Page Count: 3
Today turned into a a lot of errands during my normal writing time at my day job. (Read breaks and lunch) And tonight was the meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group so that ate up my evening writing time. Less than a full page written. *le sigh* I shall have to try and make that up somehow.
Today was also a return to my diet after taking a break over the New Years weekend. Really with this calorie counting app it is easy for me to watch what I eat and that is really the key to successful dieting — for me.
Nice surprise at work. I got my gifts for 5 years of service at the company and that included $250 in certificates that could redeem at a number of places. I selected Amazon and now I have free games, books, Blu-rays and movies head my way. Yah!
Page Count: less than one
Calorie Count: 1916 out of 1900