by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 6, 2012 | Blog
I had a mad insight into the universe today — okay, actually just a mad insight as to why this scene in the Wild Card movie wasn’t working. I had three people in the scene, and it was just hobbling along. Once I dropped one character the scene just came to life. I could up the tension, the sense of things happening just below the surface. This is why I never get tired of writing. Everyday there is some new problem to solve and that gets solved in a relatively...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 6, 2012 | Blog
When I was a kid I had this very dear friend. She was beautiful, and stunningly brilliant. She excelled in science, particularly biology. She sailed through college, and was offered a full ride to medical school. Her focus was going to be on research. But she had come from a troubled home, and at some point in her senior year she got hooked up with this fundamentalist, “every word in the bible is literal truth” Christian church. Upshot —...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 6, 2012 | Blog
I’m so glad Scott Brown said Scalia was his favorite supreme court justice. Maybe the good voters of Massachusetts will notice this little gem of an interview. Basically Scalia is saying that abortion, and homosexuality are easy cases to decide because they were illegal back when the Constitution was framed so they should be illegal now. Yeah, and slavery was legal too. So should we go back to that? And women didn’t have the vote? Also a good move?...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 30, 2012 | Blog
The whole Scott Brown attack against Elizabeth Warren over her Native American background has finally just completely pissed me off. My maternal grandfather was half-Cherokee. That makes me 1/16. More than enough to petition the tribe if I wanted to. Do I look like an Indian? Or can Scott Brown just tell with his magic eyes that can determine a person’s racial makeup. I have a feeling that Scott Brown’s magic eyes would determine I was not Native...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 27, 2012 | Blog
I’m in the process of having my website redesigned. It should get a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. We’re finally going to get up the “Doing Good” tab where you can make charity donations and get an autographed book from me. I also ran across a lovely quote from Justice Holmes which sums up my father’s and my attitude toward taxes. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish for providing this. “According to Felix...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 18, 2012 | Blog
Okay, I have to respond to Mr. Romney. Let me give you a few salient facts, Mittens. I have a Juris Doctor. I have worked in Hollywood. I write books. I manage a natural gas and oil company. I voted for Barack Obama. And I pay more in taxes then many people make in a year. And guess what, Mitt? I’m going to vote for the president again. How dare you insult me and the millions of people who, in fact, are paying taxes? They pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes....
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 5, 2012 | Blog
So I tried the experiment of using just the IPad and the Kensington keyboard on the trip to worldcon in Chicago. I alternated between working on the movie with the new Final Draft app for IPad, and writing on my Shepard story in Pages. I got really worried because I wasn’t able to upload the Mass Effect story to Dropbox. Then today I was working on it at the doctor’s office, and when I got home I opened up pages, and there was the most recent version of the story...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 22, 2012 | Blog
I’m a bit amazed that the Righteous (Antideluvian) Right hasn’t gone batcrap crazy over the very sensitive and well done romance between a male Shepard and Kaidan in Mass Effect 3. Maybe they were distracted by magical lady parts that can tell the difference between a rapist’s sperm and a husband’s sperm? Whatever the reason I haven’t heard howls of outrage from the Republicans over the gay romance in this game. It was one of the things they did right...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 22, 2012 | Blog
I’m pasting in an article from Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish because it is so apt. Sullivan is a gay, Catholic, Brit, and Tory style conservative who was initially a cheerleader for the Iraq war until he realized it was a crock, and has been outraged that the Bush/Cheney administration made him a party to torture. I think this is well worth a read. Akin’s Position Is The GOP’s That’s the truth whatever Romney now wants to say. 150 Republican...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 21, 2012 | Blog
Representative Todd Akin of Missouri is undoubtably an idiot, a blow hard, and a member of the American Taliban, but he did the American public a solid favor when he revealed the true attitudes of the current GOP leadership. Let’s put aside for the moment the stone stupid idea that women’s “lady parts” are magic and can discriminate between a rapist’s sperm, and the sperm deposited by consensual sex. I would expect nothing less from a party that...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 20, 2012 | Blog
The level of stupid in the GOP is now up to their noses. Over the weekend this troglodyte Congresman by the name of Todd Aiken said the following: “From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.” Of course...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 18, 2012 | Blog
Things appear to be on track for the Wild Cards right deal to land. We just need to makes a few more copies. I’m going to try and help Pat with that on Monday. So feeling more confident I went back to the movie. Returning to it meant I spent a day putting myself in the world (not too hard because I’ve been doing it with my Wild Card Story for Lowball) but it’s a different medium, and so it felt like starting a cold diesel engine. Yesterday things...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 15, 2012 | Blog
Today is Vento’s second day of Clicker training. This horse is scary smart. This is also very interesting because there are definable goals and behaviors that you can see occurring which is taking it out of the realm of woo-woo for me. The first seven days you do nothing but teach them to look away to receive a treat, and then touch a target with their nose. We’re on day two, and Vento has gotten both of these behaviors down pretty well. The point of...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 12, 2012 | Blog
It’s time for us to get serious and work like hell during this election season. We need to hold the Senate and the White House, and at least come close to taking back the House. Why? Just take a look at an analysis of the Ryan budget, and his stand on women’s health issues. This man is not a cuddly wonk. He is a Randian ideologue. Here is a convenient summation of just what this man stands for. And we’ve got to donate money to the Brennan...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Aug 9, 2012 | Blog
Just started replaying Mass Effect 1 with a new game, but same Shepard. Karpyshyn and his team did it right. Why, oh why didn’t the producers in the third game pay attention? This is a great example of how to start any work of fiction be it game, movie or book.The irony is that you are maybe 10 minutes into the first game when you see a picture of this huge, squid-like spaceship. It’s creepy as hell, and later you learn that you have been shown the ultimate...
