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Archive for October, 2008

Failure to Launch

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Movie review time. I hope to become more frequent at doing these once baseball season is over, but in the meantime, they’ll be spotty at best.

Failure To Launch is the movie I watched this weekend. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker as well as Terry Bradshaw as Matthew M’s dad.

Warning: There will be spoilers. This movie was released in 2006, so I figure anyone who’s really burning to see it has already.

Matthew M. plays Tripp, the 35-year-old man who still lives at home with his parents. Whenever he wants to break up with a woman, he takes her home, and when she finds out he lives with Mom and Dad, they leave so fast, there’s skid marks.

Mom and Dad, though, want Tripp out of the house so they can have their freedom. They hire Sarah Jessica Parker whose profession is to date these men who will not leave the nest. She has a sequence of events she runs them through and then they grow up enough to leave home and live on their own. Tripp has two male buddies who also still live at home and Sarah Jessica’s character, Paula, has the wacky roommate who’s out to get the bird singing outside her window.

First of all, I found the premise really difficult to buy into. Not the still living at home part, the part where Paula has a business where she works for parents who want their grown sons to move out. I also didn’t buy that she could run each man through the same sequence of events and predict their reactions to each one. People are little too individual for that.

Secondly, if these parents want their sons out of the house, why don’t they just ask them to move out? Why hire some woman to manipulate them? That just seems so dysfunctional to me.

The other part that annoyed me was how Tripp was different than the other men she’d dealt with according to Paula. He had a good job, he had social skills, etc. She never sleeps with her clients’ sons, but she sleeps with Tripp–in his parents’ home while his parents are listening. Why? Because Tripp had brought her home to his parents’ house to dump her and she’s insulted by that.

I had this in my Netflix queue because I wanted a nice romantic comedy. This wasn’t it. Failure To Launch was extremely light weight and the plot holes are enormous. Matthew M didn’t even look like his usual gorgeous self, so I didn’t even really have any eye candy to help me through this ordeal.

The best part of the movie were Paula and Tripp’s friends, especially Paula’s roommate and her quest to get rid of the bird that won’t let her sleep. Animals actually play a big part in this movie. Most of them attack Tripp, even a dolphin, until the end after he’s admitted he loves Paula. Only then does the dolphin love him. Sure.

Did I like the movie? No. Did I watch the whole thing? Yes. Would I recommend it? No. Give this one a pass and find a good romantic comedy.

My rating: 2/5

Tags: movies, reviews
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Teardrops, Guitars and Lyrics

Friday, October 10th, 2008

The other day I heard a song on the radio that had me headed over to iTunes–Teardrops On My Guitar by Taylor Swift. She’s also listed as co-writer of the song, which I kind of figured because she’s like 22 and there’s something that seems incredibly young in the lyrics.

Okay, stopped myself from digressing, but barely. I always play my new music over and over for a few days and I’ve had time to think about the words to this song quite a bit. There are several aspects that intrigue me as a writer and have me thinking and that’s always a good thing. Before I start, you can find the complete lyrics at the CMT (Country Music Television) site.

For those of you who haven’t heard this song, it’s basically about unrequited love. The Point of View character (why yes, I am a writer is the singer who is talking to the man she’s in love with and he doesn’t have a clue how she feels–he’s in love with someone else.

The first idea that popped into my head was wouldn’t it be interesting to do two stories? I’d start with the man’s romance with the woman he met and fell in love with and the second book would be the singer’s story about how she found her own love. I’ll confess the reason this came so quickly to mind was that I had an idea for a set of stories like this years ago. Not exactly the same, but similar enough to remind me about them. My brain didn’t linger here long, though.

I found myself intrigued by one particular line in the song: he’s the only one who has enough of me to break my heart.

Hmm. This didn’t spark any particular ideas for a story–maybe because I was on to my third thought so quickly–but it did stop me for a minute and I decided it held Truth.

Third thought came in fast on the heels of number two and pushed it out of the spotlight. This one had to do with another set of lines in the song: he walks away so perfectly, the kind of flawless I wish I could be.

Wow. No one is perfect or flawless. We all walk around with things we could improve in ourselves and this idea is part of what made me think the person who wrote the song was young. Oops, I’m beginning to digress again. Stopping right here and moving on with my theme. Anyway, no one is flawless, but it would be interesting to explore perception versus reality, wouldn’t it? What if the point of view character–let’s call her the heroine–has this crush on the hero as a young woman, maybe even while she was still in high school, and thinks he’s perfect. What if the story takes place about ten years later and that’s when the romance happens? What if she learns he isn’t flawless and never was?

Then I started thinking about the other part of that line–the kind of flawless I wish I could be. Maybe part of what caught me on this is my own struggle with perfectionism. I spent a lot of years of my life trying to attain perfection until I had an epiphany wheeling my cart around Target one morning–there is no way to be perfect in everyone’s eyes. To use the superficial example that came to me that day, what if one person believes long hair is perfect? What if another believes only short hair is perfect? There’s no way to be perfect in both their eyes and trying to compromise on hair length would only leave both thinking there was imperfection. It was kind of an aha moment for me and one I’m still struggling with when it comes to my writing. I want my books to be perfect, but reading is so subjective, how can they ever be? I understand it intellectually, but in my heart, I’m still fighting with this.

But back to the song. It got me thinking about a heroine who thinks she has to be perfect. Where does that stem from? How does she overcome it? How does it impact her life?

Amazing how a song that’s less than four minutes long can raise so many questions and ideas. Will I write any of them? I have no clue. I get characters and write their stories. There are some authors that start with concept/plot and find characters that fit, but that’s not me. I always have characters who are fully formed people come in and then they tell me what their stories are. I’ll be watching, though, to see if any new characters arrive that will play with these concepts.

Tags: ideas, music, stories
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Under Construction

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

I might have told this story before. When I was building my house, the cabinets came in way over the allowance and something had to go. It was the upper cabinets in my laundry room that I said goodbye to, and in all honesty, I didn’t think I’d miss them. As it turned out, I was wrong. I needed that storage.

I started talking about getting the missing cabinets after I turned in Edge of Dawn, but didn’t contact the guy who made them for the house until a few weeks ago. I wanted my new cabinets to match the existing ones exactly and I wanted them to look as if they’d been installed at the same time as the originals. It worked out on all accounts.

This is the before picture on the north side of the room.

This is the before picture on the south side over the laundry tub.

Now for the after pictures:

Over the washer/dryer

Over the laundry tub.

I think the cabinets make the room look finished in a way it didn’t before. They do match the cabinets below the laundry tub and the counter exactly, a big plus. My last worry was that it would make the room feel smaller, but it really doesn’t. Maybe because the 14″ depth isn’t too much for the space.

I’m all excited now to be filling those cabinets up and relieving the pressure on other cabinets in the house. Maybe I’ll even be able to get the extra pillows off the floor of my bedroom and on a shelf!

The only thing that I’m a little unhappy about is the marks on my walls. I’m going to have to get the cleaner out and fix that, but not tonight. I’m still hoping to get to bed early, although it’s already later than I’d hoped. Ah, well, what’s another day doing head bobs at the Evil Day Job?

Tags: cabinets, house
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Visions of the Future

Monday, October 6th, 2008

The past few days, my characters have been showing me scenes from the future. Scenes that take place after the Work In Progress (WIP). I usually get scenes after I finish a book of my hero and heroine together and happy a while after the actual written end of their story, but this is the first time I’ve seen a whole bunch of them at once in a get-together type atmosphere.

The interactions have been interesting. Ryne’s pretty much forgiven Creed at this point although there’s a reserve there that wasn’t before the things he did. Deke says that Creed can’t expect her to trust him 100% again and their friendship will never go back totally to the way it was before his actions.

I also learned that Ryne, Logan, and Kel–who are all about the same age–worked together guarding the Gineal library when they were fresh out of troubleshooter training, but while they were friendly with each other, they didn’t really hang out together or anything.

Logan is the hero in Edge of Dawn, the book that will be coming out in 2009 and Kel is Logan’s brother.

Creed let something slip to Ryne–I’m not sure what–and it was enough for her to dig out and read the untranslated version of the Twilight Time Prophecy. She’s started to put pieces together and is leaning toward the same conclusion Creed reached: It’s coming.

The other interesting thing is to watch Ryne reach out and develop a friendship with two of the heroines from later books–Shona and the heroine from the WIP.

It’s not all about Ryne, though. I’m also getting a lot of information from Tris, Logan and Kel’s sister. She’s four years younger than them and she’s Sin’s heroine. Sin isn’t factoring at all in these visions of the future, so this is obviously taking place after the WIP and before Tris’ book.

Of course, the information she’s giving me has nothing to do with her story and everything to do with her brothers and the characters from earlier books that she’s met now. I’m not getting much that’s personal about her either. Although, I guess the argument could be made that her impressions of other people does give me insight into who she is.

I do know that Tris has wanted to keep up from her brothers from the time she was a toddler and be part of their “group.” The thing is that Logan and Kel are not only 4 years older than she is, they’re twins and she simply can’t have the kind of relationship with them that they have with each other. But she’s still trying to “prove” to them that she’s worthy and majorly bummed because now that both Logan and Kel are in love, she’s even more of an “outsider” than she was before.

Okay, I take it back about not getting personal info about Tris. That was some pretty important insight into her personality and it’ll definitely impact her relationship with Sin when they meet. Yeah, plays nicely into the big scenario for their story. I like it when things I don’t even know are happening fall into place.

I’ve loved getting these future scenes, BTW. My only lament is that they’re really not helping me with the WIP. Maybe they will later in the story, but not with where I’m at right now.

Tags: characters, WIP
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Watch It Online?

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

I downloaded a preview for a PBS series called Carrier. There’d been other shows on aircraft carriers that I’d seen, but those were an hour long and this one is ten hours and follows members of the crew from the moment they’re deployed until they come home. The preview was fascinating and I knew I wanted to watch the series. It looks like a good resource for someone who writes military heroes and/or heroines or paramilitary characters.

Unfortunately, the preview had come out in April and a search of the PBS website said that it wasn’t going to be replayed in my area within the 2 week search parameter. Maybe they’ll replay it later, but I couldn’t bet on that. PBS did have all the episodes available on their website. Great, I thought, I’ll download them to my iPod and watch when I have a few minutes here or there.

As it turned out that wasn’t going to work. The episodes are not downloadable and I wanted to watch them I’d have to sit at my computer. The other alternative was to buy the series and I figured I’d just do that sometime and watch it at my leisure–although I’ll confess that I wasn’t real keen on spending the money for that.

Then it dawned on me. Netflix! I don’t know why I was so slow to think about it. Maybe because I’ve had my last movie on top of the entertainment center since like, well, July. Sure enough Netflix had it available, but I could also watch the episodes on my computer from their website.

Okay, is it just me? I don’t want to watch television or movies online. For one thing, I’m usually on my computer doing something while I have the TV on. If I’m writing, I’m watching something with the sound muted and if I’m not writing, I’m probably researching online as I watch or catching up on notes or searching for a picture of one of my characters. I’m multitasking which I can’t really do online if I’m also streaming a movie or show.

For another, even if by some odd chance I’m not using the computer for something else, I don’t want to watch online because–frankly–I spend enough time staring at the screen and if I actually have turned off life support (AKA my laptop), I don’t want to turn it back on again. I’m on the computer all day at the Evil Day Job and I’m on the laptop when I get home to write. If I’m taking a break from it, there’s usually a reason.

I’m beginning to feel alone, though. I know there are a lot of people who don’t mind staring at the screen for an extra couple of hours. It’s not as if my screens are small either–my desktop has a 24″ monitor and my laptop is a 15.4″ wide screen–I just don’t want to do it.

And to be totally weird, I have no problems watching shows on my iPod and it’s got an itty bitty screen. I think the difference is that the iPod makes me mobile. I can watch while I’m in line for license tabs or while I’m waiting to see the dentist. The iPod is about convenience, but watching on the computer just feels onerous to me. Am I the only one who’s resisting the online streaming thing?

Tags: computer, ipod, TV
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The Blog Where Patti Rants

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

First, I updated my website today and added a new Extras page. This is a work in progress, but so far I have a glossary for the Light Warriors series, a list of the theme songs for all my books, and the videos are grouped together. I used bookmarks so it’s easy to access the information you’re interested in seeing.

Now, beware, I’m about to rant.

Today, I received an email from an author I have never heard of before in my life. I most definitely never signed up for her newsletter nor did I enter any contest she might have been running because I don’t enter contests from other authors. I figure they’d rather have a reader win than another writer and I do them the courtesy of not throwing my name in the pool. Yet for some unknown reason, this woman thought it was okay to just add me to her newsletter list. Grrr.

To say this irritated me is understating things. The only way people get on my newsletter is if they sign up for it, or they enter a contest where they are given fair warning that entering will put them on my newsletter mailings–and I haven’t even held a contest in a couple of years. You’d think the law of karma would protect me, but I guess not.

Where do some people get their idea of proper online etiquette? Just because my email address is available on various loops (and this was the email address I use for loop email) does not mean that I’m fair game. If she harvested this address from any of the writing loops I’m on, she violated list rules on top of spamming, and given the genre of her book, I have a fair idea from which loop she might have gotten my name.

This author accomplished thing–she ticked me off. Big time. Enough that I will never buy a book from her. I don’t appreciate spam whether it’s for Viagra, penis enlargement, or an author.

Now extrapolate. She harvested my email address, so odds are good she harvested others–probably a lot of others–and they were spammed, too. Probably a lot of these people are as angry as I am about it. Does she really think she did herself a big favor by sending out this email to all of us?

Don’t spam, people, it’s not nice.

Tags: annoyances, spam, websites
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