Category: LHA

June 10th and I’m already moping about the heat.

Hot weather sucks. It makes you stick to furniture and lose your appetite and your car is an oven and the air is foul and the garbage rots in an instant and your feet smell bad. If your skin is as white as mine, you have to stay out of the sun or cover yourself in yards of cloth or worse, white, sticky goo so you don’t fry up and turn to ash. And if you have crackly, asthmatic lungs, forget about it. Between heat, humidity, and ozone, you need a stupid Darth Vader ventilator.

Yeah, I’m cranky. Want to make something of it?

OK – here is a real-time effort to change my mood. (Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.) Happy birthday, Maurice Sendak. And a million tulips of the heart to daughter Meredith, who kicked righteous butt at Senior Awards Night last night, bringing home an armload of recognition for her work for the marching band, on various committees, including Prom and GSA, and who also got a Golden Apple, because she is such an amazing woman. (Yes, I cried. Again.)

Didn’t get much writing done yesterday (which is also contributing to this mood) so I updated the website. Check out the PROM discussion questions. Please send me more, via this journal. Let me know if you want me to credit your name. Also updated the What’s New page and my CV.

If you’re bored today, read this interview with Jon Scieska. Me, I’m going to lay down on an air conditioning vent.

Drum roll please!

The American premiere of the movie version of SPEAK has been changed. The film will be shown on both Showtime and Lifetime cable channels on Monday, September 5th, 2005. Yep, this is Labor Day. (Don’t have a time yet.) The Powers That Be in the film world say that this kind of simulcast has never been done before. Whatever. I’m am just thrilled that it will finally be shown!! Many thanks to Annie Young Frisbie, co-producer and co-screenplay writer, for passing on this great news!

If any of you are going to have SPEAK viewing parties, let me know here, OK. Not that I want to crash your party, but it would be fun to know the details. I can’t wait to hear what you guys think about the movie itself.

Here are some links for the curious: film details on IMDB and my web page about the movie (don’t have corrected dates on it yet).

One of my most faithful correspondents, Max, has been anxiously awaiting the film. In honor of his patience, I’ll pull his latest note from the mailbag today. (BTW Max, you get the award for asking the best questions!)

Max writes: This may sound like a dumb question, but do you think a lot of dialogue is required in a book? Do you think that dialogue should be a huge chunk of the book, or are some books better off with more descriptions and personal thoughts? Sometimes, I just start writing dialogue but then later, I feel it would might have been easier to get my point through by just writing what she thought instead of a whole conversation. I also want to ask you about the revision process. Is there a certain way that you revise your books that really works for you?

There is not an easy answer here because it depends on the needs of the book and the character. There is not a lot of dialog in SPEAK because a major plot point is that the main character doesn’t talk much. There is much more dialog in PROM because that main character has a busy family and friends, so it makes sense that she has to talk a lot.

The book I’m writing now seems to be going this way: Step 1 – develop a scene that has a long, long chunk of dialog. Step 2- Fret about length of dialog. Step 3 – Cut dialog. Step 4- Fret that scene is missing crucial elements. Step 5 – Write new dialog. Step 6 – Finally figure out character motivations and the point of the scene. Step 7 – Develop actions that will remove the necessity of some dialog (SHOW DON”T TELL). Step 8 – Trim back dialog again. Step 9 – Vow not to look at scene for a week or so. (a week later) Step 10 – Trim dialog even more. Less is always better, IMHO.

Fell asleep thinking about my new story. Woke up at dawn thinking about it, too. This is a good sign.

I’m staying in the cave and typing all day.

More coffee!!

Because it is cool and friendly and human-sized, that’s why.

We moved to Syracuse, NY when I was in first grade. We moved out of the city itself when I was 14, but stayed in the area. I left for college when I was 19 and swore I’d never return.

So, of course, I’m moving back to the area in July. (More on that later.)

On Saturday night, Beloved Husband and I drove to downtown Syracuse to enjoy the Taste of Syracuse, a two-day festival set in the middle of downtown. What is the point of the festival? To eat, listen to music, and eat some more. (I told you it was a great place.) The corridors where the food tents were set up were a little crowded (point for next year’s planners; space them out a bit more), but the food was good. The beer and wine was expensive enough that nobody got hammered and became obnoxious. It was the blend of races and ages that I remember from my childhood, and pretty much everyone was relaxed and smiling. Kids played in a huge fountain. Music and the smell of barbecue in the air. We saw friends and family members and laughed a lot.

What really took us down there was the band After FX. If you live in Central New York, make a point of seeing these guys – they rock the house!!! We are friends with the bass player, so we’re biased, but the crowd was huge when they started playing and there were loads of people dancing in the streets (including yours truly). The following day was my first wedding anniversary with BH. The night spent dancing and grooving in Syracuse was the perfect celebration.

Mer and I have spent the afternoon laughing about some pranksters from Cornell. I wish I could hang out with them!

Many, many thanks to everyone who wrote in about the Book Meme. I went to the library and brought home some Vonnegut. I’ll let you know about it. In the mail today came the news that CATALYST will be published in Germany (no date yet), and I received the British version of PROM (available in the UK next month). It has a very different cover. I’ll scan it in and post it on the website, which reminds me I have some other updates to do. Mer leaves for work in an hour and I’m going to try and write then. She is done, done, done with school. I took her to lunch yesterday after her last final. It is a strange and wonderful feeling.

I’ve been tagged, thanks to dirtylibrarian.

Total number of books I’ve owned I gave away most of my books two years ago when I moved to this apartment. I think I’m down to about 250. At one point it was probably 600. I am on a book diet until the current crop of children (three of them) finish college (2009). That means I only get to buy books I absolutely need to mark up for research. Everything else has to come from the library.

Last book I bought Defenders of Liberty: African Americans in the Revolutionary War by Lt. Col. Michael Lanning.

Last book I read Idoru by William Gibson. I returned this to the library without finishing it. Just could not get into the story. I recently read his Pattern Recognition which was much easier to follow.

Last book I finished Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke. I go on kicks where I find a mystery author I like, then obsessively read everything that author has written. Burke sets his mysteries in southern Louisiana. They are often tied to racial incidents which happened two generations earlier. He is great at describing setting, and has a fun cast of secondary characters. He also has some trademark descriptions which seem to show up in every single story, which amuses me. Right now I’m reading Yellow Dog by Martin Amis. I love all of his stuff.

Five books that mean a lot to me: 5? *sighs*

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block. When I first read this I said to myself “You’re allowed to do this in a book?” It changed everything for me.

Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life by Elizabeth George. I love her fiction and have learned massive amounts from this writing guide.

Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Masterful and heart-wrenching. Taught me about blending humor with tragedy.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Childhood favorite and old friend.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Contains all the tools I use every day.

If you fill out this meme (which is kind of like a quiz, if you’ve never seen the word before), leave a link to yours in the comments section. I want to see what books are important to you guys.

I’m back in PA where it is hot and humid and I’m already cranky about it. Today’s goal is an absurdly high number of words to be written in the WIP. Might also go to the gym to deal with my crankiness.

In non-cranky, non-book news, BH and I had a blast in Syracuse Saturday night. Details and info about a great band tomorrow.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to report this. I saw a porcupine. A real one. A real, live one bumbling down the side of the road. It was neat.