by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 3, 2016 | Blog
A Man for All Seasons – Act One Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that! More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 6, 2016 | About Writing
There’s a saying in writing that you have to be able to “kill your babies”. Which means that sometimes there is a scene or a character that you just love, but it has to go. It can’t stay in the narrative. I’ve faced two of those in the past week. Both times, on the Wild Cards story and on the novel, I wrote a scene or in one case a set up, and in the back of my head a tiny little voice went “Ah, come on!” It behooves writers to listen to that tiny...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 14, 2016 | About Writing, TV & Movies
Over the past two weeks I’ve seen two movies. STAR TREK: BEYOND and last night SUICIDE SQUAD. I only went to see the Trek film because I had been asked to do an interview about it. I had been actively looking forward to Suicide Squad. My reactions to both were polar opposites of what I expected. NOW THERE ARE GOING TO BE SPOILERS!!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED I ended up enjoying Beyond far more than I expected, (I kept murmuring to myself, “why oh why couldn’t we have had some humor and...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 17, 2016 | Blog
I can’t believe I’m writing about this again, but as I type three more police officers have been killed today. Three others are in the hospital. As the shooting was occurring the Baton Rouge police were putting out warnings about men armed with long guns — _In a state with open carry_. I know this is going to earn me howls and objections, but can we stipulate that in a civil society open carry is crazy? At this point police forces around the country are worried if not down...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 8, 2016 | Blog
Over on Facebook I’ve been nattering on about horses and the World Science Fiction Convention because I truly cannot make sense of Dallas. Or perhaps it’s all painfully obvious and understandable, and I’m trying to avoid facing it. We have a divided society with economic and social inequality. We have a fraught history as regards race in this country which we have never honestly faced. We have an increasingly militarized police force and minority populations who feel...