You do it like this

A fine essay over at the L. A. Times explains how it's possible to write a novel while still being a working mother. Lots of good tips and insight here.

Elements

In honor of Roger Waters touring The Wall (can't wait for November!) and because I have a lot on my mind yet nothing to say, here are the typical elements of a Pink Floyd song (found somewhere on the Web, I honestly can't recall where).

The average Pink Floyd song contains these elements:

• People talking at the beginning
• Birds tweeting
• People talking at a party
• Cash registers
• Heartbeats
• Footsteps
• Cars driving by
• A guitar riff
• A bunch Of fucking annoying cymbals
• Cash
• 4 minutes of silence
• Scottish accents
• Spanish accents
• Synthesizers
• People yelling
• Guitar solo
• A teacher telling children to eat their meat
• Aforementioned teacher telling children they can't have pudding if they don't eat their meat
• Various animal sounds
• Satanic chanting
• Something about World War II
• Clocks ticking
• Saxophone solo
• Howling woman
• Vocal delays
• A few more minutes of silence
• A helicopter
• The second verse
• Guitar solo
• Special guest vocalist Stephen Hawking
• Organ sustain
• Bicycle bells
• Wailing
• Crazy guy laughing
• Copious lap steel guitar parts
• Screaming
• Guitar related noise
• Wind
• Acid
• Vomiting
• Bloat
• Guitar solo
• "Congratulations, you've just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to old Pink, care of the funny farm. Chalfont."
• Guitar solo
• Fadeout/More people talking
• Quacking ducks
• Screeching pterodactyls

Sounds accurate to me!

Ode to a tomato

Bought the prettiest heirloom tomato at the store the other day. So pretty I was tempted to not cut it up for bruschetta. But I resisted, and it was damn good bruschetta.

Writing craft: A most invaluable resource

Now playing on the iPod - "Faccia a Faccia" - Ennio Morricone

There's a lot of information out on that there internet, and it isn't always easy to find writing advice that's actually helpful.

Lucky for writers (whether they are beginners or long-established pros), there is Backspace. Both the Backspace site and its writers' forums are full of what writers need to know. Whether you need help refining your query letter, tips on writing craft, or simply a place to hang out with like-minded people, you'll find what you're looking for.

Back to school

It's back-to-school time! Let's have a song to mark the occasion, courtesy of Pink Floyd.

Review: Piranha 3D

My review of the cleverly stupid Piranha 3D is up at Horrorview.com.

How much does a writer make?

Now playing on the iPod - "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" - Primus

So how much DOES a writer make, anyway? I wouldn't know, as I've never been paid for my fiction or my reviews. The answer can be found courtesy of The Rejecter, and let's just say that it's a good thing I love what I do and don't need to be paid for it.

Watch this now: A tribute to Ray Bradbury

Not your ordinary kind of tribute either.

Rachel Bloom's song "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" has it all: proper awe for the master, recognition of the fact that talent is sexy, fangirl enthusiasm, just enough vulgarity to make things amusing, all wrapped up in a damned catchy pop song. Watch it now (though not at work, because of the naughty lyrics).

Review: Deception

Sometimes even imaginary boyfriends can't save a movie, as I make clear in my review of the tepid thriller Deception, now up at Horrorview.

Writing process idiosyncrasies, part 1

Now playing on the iPod - "White Punks on Dope" - The Tubes

Probably one of the toughest parts about writing over the long term is determining your process. What steps do you take or circumstances have to happen for you to write consistently and effectively?

Some writers create outlines. Some write on 3x5 index cards. Some use a certain kind of paper. Some write in the nude. Some can write anyplace or any time; others need to be in a certain place and can only write in the evenings. Some can listen to music while they write. Some create detailed biographies of characters.

What makes the process so problematic is that it's a highly individual thing, and none of the idiosyncrasies I've listed in the preceding paragraph are good or bad in and of themselves. What matters is: is it effective for that writer?

Writers need to find their idiosyncrasies for themselves. And this is tricky - it's often a trial-and-error process. You may try to emulate a writer you admire, but that's as open to success and failure as choosing a process at random. You have to find what works for you, and not worry when people say, "Gee, but [famous writer] wrote while standing on his head, eating a strict diet of corn dogs and gin-and-tonics. Maybe if you did that, you'd get published." If you know the head-standing and corn dogs/gin-and-tonics method won't work for you, don't do it. Do what works for you.

One of the things that works for me is creating what I've named "Soundtracks to Imaginary Movies." I got the idea from the novel The Bridge by John Skipp and Craig Spector, in which they provided a list of the various albums that they listened to while writing the book - music which helped inspire them. I started creating playlists for my books - if there were movies made of these books, these songs would be on the soundtracks.

I have a few oddball rules when creating these Imaginary Soundtracks (hey, it's an idiosyncrasy).

First, I try to avoid done-to-death songs (no "Gimme Shelter," no "Solsbury Hill," no "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") or songs that are indelibly linked with a particular film (Quentin Tarantino, I hate you for using "The Lonely Shepherd" before I could).

Second, I think of how the songs could be incorporated into the story in a "found" way - playing on characters' stereos or on jukeboxes (falling-in-love montages are generally avoided, but I allow the occasional "mopey" montage - see Sarah McLachlan's "Full of Grace" below).

Third, I take into account the characters - is this something they would listen to? I've rejected several songs that were lyrically appropriate - Joan Baez' "Diamonds and Rust," Public Image Ltd's "FFF," and the Gin Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy" spring to mind - because those songs didn't mesh with the characters' tastes and personality.

Similarly, the songs have to be appropriate to the setting. I had to nix a number of songs for a party scene when I remembered that the party was put on by a church (a very hip church but a church nonetheless) and the DJ probably couldn't get away with playing The Violent Femmes or House of Pain. That said, the jukeboxes in the KellyVerse are very well-stocked and eclectic - hey, it's my imaginary world and I get to make the rules.

Below are the Soundtracks for the Imaginary Movies of my four books. I've included YouTube links to songs when available. These aren't "concept albums" - they won't tell the whole story in song - but they will give you a feel for the book's dramatic arc and overall mood. And if you're wondering why Johnny Cash is the common denominator, it's because he is awesome.

Novel: Ashes

Garry Eister - Quintet for Glass and Strings, "Dance"

Jackson Browne - The Pretender

Tori Amos - Spark

Pink Floyd - Dogs

U2 - Running to Stand Still

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Run Through the Jungle

Wilson Pickett - Mustang Sally

Liz Phair - Polyester Bride

Mountain - Mississippi Queen

Donald Fagen - New Frontier

Dave Brubeck - Take Five

The Everly Brothers - Devoted to You

The Pogues - I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day

Johnny Cash - Delia's Gone

Novel: Reckoning

Dennis James - Irish Lullaby

Sarah McLachlan - Full of Grace

Beethoven - Piano Trio in D Major "Ghost"

Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street

Danielle Dax - Touch Piggy's Eyes

Sleater-Kinney - Entertain

Johnny Cash - Hurt

The Clash - Brand New Cadillac

Social Distortion - Ball and Chain

Golden Earring - Twilight Zone

Switchblade Symphony - Dirty Dog

U2 - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives

Oh Susannah - Johnstown

The Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

David Gilmour - A Pocketful of Stones

Novel: Undertow

Jethro Tull - Bungle in the Jungle

Liz Phair - What Makes You Happy

B. B. King - Slidin' and Glidin'

The Beatles - Dear Prudence

Rolling Stones - Far Away Eyes

Cheech and Chong - Basketball Jones (video not safe for work)

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues

Sweet - Ballroom Blitz

The Cure - Just Like Heaven

Motorhead - Ace of Spades

Elvis Costello - Pills and Soap

Bob Dylan - Ballad of a Thin Man

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

Soft Cell - Tainted Love

Tom Waits - The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)

Stone Temple Pilots - Big Empty

Marianne Faithfull - Incarceration of a Flower Child

Isaac Hayes - Walk On By

Concrete Blonde - Joey

Novel: The Day After Yesterday

Tori Amos - Pretty Good Year

Johnny Cash - Memories Are Made of This

k. d. lang - Crying

The Smithereens - Gloomy Sunday

Julee Cruise - Into the Night

Sleater-Kinney - Jumpers

Phantom of the Paradise Soundtrack - Faust

Grateful Dead - Brokedown Palace

The Mediaeval Baebes - The Coventry Carol

U2 - Bad

The Pogues - Sally MacLennane

Tom Petty - Straight Into Darkness

The Cars - Drive

The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

Elton John - Harmony

Queen - Spread Your Wings

Harry Nilsson - Without You

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - People Ain't No Good

Elvis Presley - You're the Devil in Disguise

Robert Plant - Big Log

King Crimson - Matte Kudasai

Tanita Tikaram - Valentine Heart

Tears for Fears - Head Over Heels

Faith and the Muse - Willow's Song

David Gilmour - On an Island

Arcade Fire - Wake Up

Tom Waits - Come On Up to the House

Neil Young - Don't Let it Bring You Down

Pink Floyd - High Hopes

This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren

Bonus soundtrack for The Day After Yesterday (music for the Halloween party chapter)

Dick Dale and His Del-Tones - Let's Go Trippin'

The 5 6 7 8s - Woo Hoo

The Blasters - I'm Shakin'

Van Morrison - Wild Night

Shocking Blue - Venus

Marvin Gaye - Got to Give it Up

Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes

The Jaynetts - Sally Go 'Round the Roses

Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

ELO - Rockaria

David Lindley - She Took Off My Romeos

Michael Penn - No Myth

Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen

Julee Cruise - Rockin' Back Inside My Heart

The Primitives - I'll Be Your Mirror

The Ink Spots - I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

Coming soon: Writing process idiosyncrasies, part 2!

A beauty comes to the shelves

I somehow - can't recall how - learned that a new edition of William Peter Blatty's novel The Ninth Configuration was forthcoming. Not just any new edition, but one that packages the novel with its earlier incarnation, Twinkle Twinkle "Killer" Kane, and includes an essay by film historian Mark Kermode (lifted from his intro to the published screenplay of The Ninth Configuration).

Just received the book and it's better than I had dreamed of. For one, it's a gorgeous hardcover edition that includes marvelous illustrations and a number of covers used for both Ninth Configuration and Twinkle Twinkle "Killer" Kane throughout its printing history. But the icing on the cake is that the book is a limited edition of 200 - each numbered and also signed by William Peter Blatty. My copy is number 20.

This is just amazing. I'll still keep my old paperbacks (so I can re-read the books) but this is truly treasure for the shelves. Thanks to the good folks at Centipede Press for putting this edition together.

Review: Galaxy of Terror

If you need a good, schlocky B movie, look no further than Roger Corman's Galaxy of Terror - review is up at Horrorview.

Review: Fair Game

Now playing on the iPod - "No Myth" - Michael Penn

My review of the sad-and-lame-at-the-same-time black mamba "thriller" Fair Game is up at Horrorview.

Now that's what I call writing: Richard Yates

Now playing on the iPod - "Hey Jealousy" - Gin Blossoms

One writer I admire tremendously is Richard Yates. His style is very straightforward and without flash, yet he uses his unadorned style to portray lives of quiet desperation. I can't read his books too often because his characters are so sad, often without even realizing it - they are people who have dreams that will never be achieved, most often because they sabotage themselves or simply don't even recognize their dreams.

Disturbing the Peace is not one of Yates' best books, but even his lesser works have a great deal to offer. In one paragraph, he tell his readers everything they need to know about a character:

[Janice Wilder] was thirty-four and the mother of a ten-year-old son. The fading of her youth didn't bother her - it hadn't been a very carefree or adventurous youth anyway - and if her marriage was more an arrangement than a romance, that was all right too. Nobody's life was perfect. She enjoyed the orderly rotation of her days; she enjoyed books, of which she owned a great many; and she enjoyed her high, bright apartment with its view of mid-town Manhattan towers. It was neither a rich nor an elegant apartment, but it was comfortable - and "comfortable" was one of Janice Wilder's favorite words. She was fond of the word "civilized," too, and of "reasonable" and "adjustment" and "relationship." Hardly anything upset or frightened her: the only things that did - sometimes to the point of making her blood run cold - were things she didn't understand.

You can guess that Janice won't take it well when, in the very next paragraph, she learns her husband has had a nervous breakdown.

I highly recommend Yates' novels Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade. (Caveat: Don't read them if you're looking for something to cheer you up.)

Back from Comic-Con!

Well, just one day at Comic-Con is certainly not enough. And because of Amtrak's schedule, I didn't get there in time for the panel I really wanted to attend, the one for Castle (thanks to the attendees who put the panel footage up on YouTube, especially the bit when Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic read a racy passage from the Heat Wave tie-in book. Rowr!).

Oh well - I maintained the Con zen mode as much as I could, consoling myself with some shopping. For Scott I got a rare Edward Gorey book. For myself I got Joe Bob Briggs' Profoundly Disturbing (about genre/cult movies that changed cinema), Amber Benson's Death's Daughter, and the graphic novel adaptation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy And His Dog (plus two other stories) - signed by Harlan too!

Wrapped up the day with a showing of "Once More With Feeling", the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, and then dinner at Lou and Mickey's with my friends. A good day!

This time tomorrow... Comic-Con!

I may only get one day at Comic-Con but I'm going to make the most of it. Hoping to catch the Castle panel (and get my copy of Heat Wave signed) and the Buffy musical episode. At the very least I'll have a fun time with some friends and do some shopping. Can't wait!

More linky goodness

Some more fun to be found on the internet:

Slushpile Hell features examples from bad query letters. Let these examples be a lesson to us all.

There's a fine post at Writer Beware about the importance of self-editing. Frankly I can't imagine not self-editing - I love that part of the process. I rediscover my book, make it better, and occasionally say, "yeah, that's a pretty cool bit."

And for the truly brave and demented, here's an imagining of how Toy Story would have turned out had it been written by Cormac McCarthy. Damn.

Review: Matango

My review of the Japanese movie Matango (aka Attack of the Mushroom People) is up at Horrorview.com.

Fun things to read

Now playing on the iPod: "San Tropez" - Pink Floyd

I've found some entertaining things to read on Ye Olde Internet recently and thought I'd share them with you:

Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books explores the fun of trashy pulp novels dealing with crime, sex, and melodrama. It's worth reading just for the covers, but also provides reviews should you stumble on these books in a used bookstore.

Awful Library Books showcases inane, dated, or just plain bad books discovered in the deepest recesses of library shelves. I discovered this site when searching for Latawnya the Naughty Horse Learns To Say No To Drugs (if you must know more about this book, some kind soul has done a dramatic reading of it).

From the Shelf Awareness newsletter, a peek into what a bookstore owner has to deal with every day. The highlight/nadir of the customers was probably the man who told his kid they wouldn't go into the bookstore because "Reading is stupid." Or the person who asked, "Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV." Sigh.

Lastly, for some fun there's I Write Like - use this writing analysis tool to see how your writing (or someone else's) compares to famous writers. Sample of my fiction apparently resemble works by David Foster Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk, and Vladimir Nabokov, which is cool. I threw in samples of random movie review as well, and in addition to Wallace and Nabokov, got comparisons to William Gibson and H. P. Lovecraft. The weirdest thing about all this? I haven't read a thing by Wallace or Gibson. Go figure.

These are a few of my favorite things...

Oh, will you look at this!

The American Library Association has an online store, and many products to choose from (proceeds go to fund advocacy, awareness, and accreditation programs for library professionals). Their newest poster in the "Celebrity READ" series is the ever-awesome Nathan Fillion, and a perusal of older posters shows another one of my imaginary boyfriends, Ewan McGregor (see images above).

Hot guys with books. It doesn't get much better than that. And come to think of it, there is some bare space on the walls of my office...

Where was I? Anyway, plenty of celebrities in the poster series to choose from, including Anthony Hopkins, Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie, Hilary Swank, Stephen Hawking, and many more. Check it out at the ALA's online store.