I will make a Sunday Night Movie entry tomorrow. We had a meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group tonight and that took up my evening. I really want to do my Sunday Night Movie because it was a film I had not seen and it surprised me that I liked it.
So in the face of the rain of rejections I received last week I am starting the outline for my new novel Command & Control. Yep, that’s me too stupid and too stubborn to give up.
C&C is another Seth Jackson novel, and last night as I lay in bed waiting for Mr. Sandman to send me a dream my mind gnawed at the plot and how the first third of the book is going to work. (The last third is what I know best right now.) Suddenly the particle of inspiration smashed through the creative centers of my noodle and I had a great idea.
Of course it was late, I was already in bed and nearly asleep. Other nights I might have leapt out of bed and rushed to my computer to note the idea, but not last night, not after the cold I have been fighting. I worked the solution over in my minds, saw how it created a very nicely character arc that the story had been lacking, and then went to sleep.
Because I spent so much time thinking about it before I went to sleep. I did not forget it Yup, it still looked good today. The outlining has begun.
Now your moment of musical horror…
Not only have I been sick, but both agents that requested partials has passed on representing Love & Loyalty. There’s still more than a score of agents to hear from but it’s hard not to let my spirits sink.
Yesterday afternoon I had a friend over and we watched a film he had never seen, Lawrence Of Arabia. That was quite enjoyable, but as the afternoon went on I started to get a stronger and stronger sensation of pain in my throat. I went to be early and did not watch a film in the night time.
This morning my throat was so bad that again I could not work. ( speak constantly at work something that does not mix well with a sore throat.) I stayed home and did pretty much nothing the entire day.
I feel so lazt.
So over there on the right side of the page you’ll see I added a link to the website, Darths and Droids. It is a web comic satirizing Star Wars as a loosely run RPG.
This web comic is not for everyone, but man I have found it hilarious. I was pointed towards it by my long time gaming buddy Tom. (not my brother Tom, or my nephew Tommy, or my brother-in-law Thom, or even my other gaming buddy Tom.)
If you have done a lot of RPGs, and I mean table top not on a computer screen, and have endured the Star Wars prequels, then this web comic is likely to hit your sweet spot. This fictional RPG game actually make much more sense than the prequels ever have.
If you decide to give it a spin it really is best to go to the archives and start from the beginning. I did and in two days I burned my way to current.
So I now know what to get my Republican friends for Christmas, clothes-pins, because holding their nose for Romney for twelve months until the elect is going to require some assistance.
It is kind of surprising, to me at least, that I have never seen this particular giant bug movie. I think I have seen nearly all the others, but somehow this one kept slipping past me. With this screening I can now call my science-fiction double feature viewing complete. That is I have seen ever film referenced in the song Science-Fiction Double Feature at least once. (Of course I have seen some of them many times.)
Tarantula naturally is about a giant spider ravaging the desert countryside killing cattle, ranchers, and hobos, before turning toward the small defenseless town full of ever so tasty civilians.
The film was directed by Jack Arnold who, just a year earlier, had directed the classic film Creature From The Black Lagoon, (one of my favorite monster movies.) Tarantula is not up to Creature standards in budget, special effects, (Though these are credible) or scripting. However the film does have some charm to it particularly in the fact that most of the film is not about the giant spider. Mostly the movies focuses on Dr Deemer and why the townspeople who had accept this stranger man now suspects he is up to no good. It doesn’t help that Deemer associate turns up dead in the desert of a deformity that takes years to develop when he seemed quite healthy and normal just weeks earlier.
Dr. Deemer has been working with radio nucleotides in an attempt to make an artificial food to feed the coming billions in the world population. In other scripts he would have at this point become obsessed with his formula and injected his partner, forcibly, to prove it worked, but no in this movie. The partner and a lab assistance injected themselves without consulting Dr. Deemer certainly that they had liked the problem. Since they both end up dead and deformed clearly they had not, but the assistant, driven mad by his deformity over powers Dr. Deemer and injects him, but in the fight the lab is trashed and a Tarantula, already nearly the size of a man, escapes and continues to grow.
This was a fun little film, but not one I can heartily recommend. (Though if you watch and listen closely you can spot Clint Eastwood in an early role.)
I must have gotten a bit fo the con crud last weekend at World Fantasy 2011 because this week has been coughs and sore throats. However that is not going to get me down because one of the literary agents I would most like have represent my work responded Friday with a request for a partial. (What that means is after I sent him a letter explaining/pitching the novel Love and Loyalty he requested to see a sample of the novel.) Hopefully he likes the sample well enough to request a full. (The complete manuscript)
I mailed the partial off to him this morning.
here’s to crossed fingers and sincere prayers.
11/30/11 Awoke with a nasty headache. Took a treximet and went to work. Two hours later the headache subsided but all day long I had migraine effects. (vertigo, etc.)