Oops Forgot
I just returned from picking up my daughters from the local (crappy) movie theater out on Satellite Beach. They wanted to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy yet again. They have each now seen it twice which equals me although I did not willfully see it twice. I would have been good with having only seen it once, except at the second viewing I stayed for the credits and saw the little piece that I remembered would have been missing from the book otherwise. Nice touch.
Anyway, as we were returning from the movie and listening to the Real Rock 101.1 station in Orlando
http://www.realrock1011.commy youngest daughter, Sarah realized that today was the Earth Day Birthday concert, hence also my birthday. That coincidence had been pointed out when the rock station first announced the show. Since there are no coincidences my daughters believed it was a sign that this year we should all go see the concert in honor of my birthday. We did not. I had to work; I am poor. (See rock station's web site for bands - it was a show to see but one I had to miss.)
Anyway as there was some to-do about the concert on the radio that was the only memory jog needed for them both to suddenly realize at 9:36PM that it was my birthday and had been all day and they had forgotten it completely.
Once we had made it back home, Amanda hastily noticed a Valentine's Day card that she had send to me that was still lying on top of the counter in the kitchen (hey it has only been what a couple of months give or take a half?) Anyway she snatched it up and hastily scribbled her birthday sentiments as an appendum to her Valentine's Day offerings.
Sarah produced a new though conspicuously hastily contrived card. On the front it reads 'Happy Birthday Dad!' Inside it reads, "Sorry I forgot about your b-day until about 9:36PM. Yeah..... bummer..... I'll get you a funnier card from the belated section of the CVS store tomorrow. Love (with a heart), Sarah. She added a drawing at the bottom stating beside it that she got bored.
Note: My daughters told my son and he decided to tell me that he had surreptitiously bought a pail of ice cream in honor of the event but he had been so hungry earlier that he had consumed at least half of it already. Oops, sorry.
Jina never remembers my birthday. Whenever I forgot hers in 1993 it was a huge issue but I think the last time she remembered my birthday was when I was in the hospital in 1995. What a helluva birthday was that!
Honestly I do not purposely make a big deal out of my birthday. I have been through enough of them to satisfy me for more than a lifetime. I would willfully take the next ten off, thank you.
Anyway, don't bother me with any apologies. If I really mattered to you then you would have remembered. Alas, I am only like you, someone that will never remember your birthday either.
Happy Birthday to me,
I rate like a flea.
All the dogs in the world,
They all bite at me.
I told you I suck at poetry/lyrics. That, my friends is as close as I will ever come to being a poet.
E
Randomness- A General Review of The Works of Douglas Adams and a Few Comments on the Movie
I never really appreciated to power of a fiction novel for entertainment until I was in college. I had suffered through the classics and did all the required book reports throughout grammar school. We had studied some of the greatest authors when I was in high school. Quite honestly, though, it wasn't until I was a freshman at Purdue that I started to enjoy reading books.
Whatever possessed me to take a couple of literature courses...?
Before college I could not imagine ever reading a book in one session. That really is how a book should be read, I think. Maybe authors should cooperate and keep books to much shorter lengths. Yeah, I said that. That was me. The very same guy that sseems incapable of writing a 'short' anything.
It is probably no surprise that a couple of my favorite authors at the time wrote science fiction. It may surprise you to know that both Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Douglas Adams have a good deal more influence on my writing all these years later - even though I do not write like either of them.
I remember reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A friend of mine at college had just finished reading it and handed the book to me and said, "Here. This guy is even more warped than you are. Enjoy."
I admit that I did not think it was possible for anyone to be any stranger than I was. You see, all throughout high school I had managed to effectively not care about not fitting in. So by the time that I was at college where difference is tolerated even if not accepted, I was a grand master at being bizarre.
I also admit that I didn't go straight away to find a cozy corner and start to read about Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Once I began to read, though, I could not put the book down. The only book that I had ever read cover to cover without stopping was H. G. Wells The Time Machine. Hitchhiker's Guide was maybe not the second book that I could not put down but at the time it was one of the select few. When I had finished I couldn't wait for more.
I guess it is timely to discuss all this because of the recent release of a screen adaptation of the book. My children are much more well-read and I was at their age. To some extent I suppose that is to be expected. My children have the rare opportunity to see someone writing a book, conjuring the images from the thinnest vapors of imagination. When I find inspiring is that my children seem to be pretty good at writing.
My kids have read Hitchhiker's Guide, of course.
A friend at work mentioned how transgenerational Douglas Adams books are. I think most well done humor is. In Adam's case the randomness of his style, of the things that his characters do and say, the gadgets of the book and the hilarious commentary on bureaucracy, politics, religion and physics speak to the kids of today. It wasn't that the great wit and satyre were lost on my generation it is just that the spontaneity of the plot seems uniquely suited for the young of today.
The movie did rather well its first week. I'm sure that anyone that saw it without having first read the book will not like the movie as much or may even not understand it. The movie doesn't have to follow the book, although it sort of does.
The protrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox in the movie is nothing like the scheming, conniving, egotistical opportunist of the books. In the books Zaphod is a a borderline genius, and just generally very cool. In the movie he is portrayed as an idiot, a lucky idiot perhaps. His most famous contribution to Glactic culture was the Pan Galactic GargleBlaster, a drink that is explained in the movie but I think they left out that Zaphod invented it. I think the movie character was intended to poke fun at politicians who rely on image more than substance - well like that doesn't haoopen in the real world. So maybe the intent was a hollywood cultural dig at 'W', whom so many of the elite of Southern California seem to think of as the Village Idiot of Crawford, Texas. Like Bush maybe there is more to Zaphod that meets the eye. Zaphod has two heads and female Vice President. So the similarities collapse under the strictest analysis.
Another difference was that Arthur Dent and Trillian have a love relationship. In the books Arthur identified with her as a fellow earthling and even vyed for her attentions but whatever he felt foir her was largely unrequited.
What I really missed was the full explanation of the Improbability Drive's reliance on Bistro Math. Granted that would be a very hard concept to explain in a movie, for those that have never read the books. I personally feel it is the most hysterically random part of the series of books, well that and the planet Cricket.
I have said somewhere in this blog before that books and movies are separate genres. I can respect each as a distinct medium. Some books translate to film much better than others. As much as I laughed and enjoyed the movie, it failed to live up to the quality of the book.
E
Update on New Strategy
If you have been checking for updates, my apologies. I really have been very busy .
Earlier today I completed revisions on Spectre of Dammerwald. I am very happy with the book. I will warn one and all that it is very different from what I have written in the past.
I have to confess that I never really considered ever writing a book like Spectre of Dammerwald. The only reason it exsists at all is because my publisher said that I should write a children's book. No, it is not a children's book, but that is how the project began.
A year ago last January I had been fighting with the plot of Book 9, even before I had really finished Book 8. I'm sorry that is how I usually write. It may seem silly to have so many projects going at the same time but I have found that because of it I do not get bored with the process of writing. I can move from one plot to another.
I had fully intended to take a very long break from writing whenever I had concluded Book 8 but as I was already into writing Book 9, it just never seemed to happen. Then, around that time I had a run in with the real estate management company and had to prepare to move at the end of Feburary. All things considered all of that probably worked out for the best. Last years hurricanes did a number on the house where we had been living. I never doubt that there are balances in nature.
My publisher had sent me an interesting project that he had been working with since before he ever saw a rough draft of From The Inside To The Closer. I had of course heard a good bit about the infamous children's story that one or our mutual friends had written. I read the story. It needed some work but it was essentially a good story aimed at 8 to 14 year olds. I did some of the editing, massaged a couple of rough spots, and basically made a couple of decent suggestions. That was what I did for about a month inbetween packing, moving and unpacking.
When I had finished the editing on James Ela's Finding CJ, I got permission to send it to Ela'na for her opinion. She read it in a day or so and loved it. There were a couple of revisions that polished the book a good deal but I was not much involved in much of that. I did some of the layout in Quark Express, the program used throughout the industry to 'create' book layouts.
After that I was ready to finish Book 8 and really get into writing Book 9, what I fully intended to be the conclusion of the second series, Two: The Power of X - a trilogy to complement the six book saga, One Over X. One minor problem. As I have mentionjed before, I really suck at writing endings.
Book 9 demands that severla plotlines come together. There was a little of that in Book 7, a lot more in Book 8 but by the time Book 9 concludes everything needed to be resolved - as much as such was possible, anyway. Major problem, though. The ending that I was working with demanded a lot more detailed information of events that take place long before the events in Books 1 or 2.
So, around April of last year, I started working directly with a few pages of notes that I had used for creating the original Wolf Story that is introduced in Book 2. Since my publisher was suggesting that I do a children's book, I decided to have at it. The first chapter of Spectre of Dammerwald emerged from that effort and very early in the chapter the young Wolfcats Ela'na and Rotor start to act less and less like children.
I mention all that just to give you a historical reference to why I wrote what I did when I wrote it.
Today is my brother's birthday. He would be 69 had it not died in 1945. Maybe it is somewhat fitting as a tribute to him that I completed the revision of a book today. Not only is the book important to the first and second series in ways left to be revealed, I am pretty sure that it is the best book that I have ever written. It is a fun book with a good deal of detail and tie ins to things that are to come. It also greatly amplifies and provided background into many of the Wolf characters mentioned in Book 2.
Previously I posted an excerpt from the book. I have rewritten it extensively though so I'll re-post chapter 1 later this week as a sample of what I have been doing.
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