by Melinda Snodgrass | Dec 3, 2009 | Blog
In addition to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the L.A. Times my morning reading always includes the Daily Dish by Andres Sullivan. Sullivan, like David Brooks, is one of the intellectuals of the right. Or he has been. He recently penned a fascinating and very thoughtful essay on why he has left the right. It is well worth a read. Sullivan is also gay and Catholic, and is trying to cope with the hatred his church is raining down on him. ...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Dec 3, 2009 | Blog
Ian sent me this link this morning. It’s really quite neat, and in some ways it encapsulates why I started writing the Edge books. I find knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge far more fantastic and uplifting than any claim of magical, miraculous, or spiritual events or powers.
by Melinda Snodgrass | Dec 3, 2009 | Blog
I’m almost recovered from the Thanksgiving Day festivities, and the overload of fun caused by having Stephen Boucher and Janice Gelb in visiting from Australia. And then there was the effervescent energy that is Connie Willis. All in all it was a lovely time. We had only one semi-disaster on Turkey Day. The door on my upper oven somehow got sprung, and wouldn’t close tight. So we used bungie cords and managed to keep it closed enough to finish the bird and...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 30, 2009 | Blog
What a terrible show. Ian and I suffered through the first hour, watched maybe 15 or 20 minutes of the second hour and gave up. Jim Caviezel is no Patrick McGoohan, and Ian McKellan just seems weird and crazy rather than crazy and sinister. Visually the little desert town was far less interesting then Portmeirion. It looked tired and run down, and the old style cars made me think they were in Cuba. Which I suppose could have been a metaphor or something, but...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 25, 2009 | Blog
On Saturday I went off and bought Halo 1 and 2. They were used so the financial hit wasn’t too bad, and I couldn’t wait to start at the beginning and get the whole story. One problem, the controls were slightly different on the X-Box versus the X-Box 360. So things that had become second nature in Halo 3 now required me to think and relearn. I was less then adroit at that attempt. For example we were entering this building. Very dark, very steep ramps leading to the control room. I...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 24, 2009 | Blog
I began my week by watching a DVD of Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood. I didn’t totally buy his performance, the growling thing really seemed over the top. Some of the supporting cast was weak, but it was a really powerful story, and the ending would make several writers heads explode. It looks like this is going to be a Dirty Harry as old man story, with a good dose of old fashioned redemptive violence, but it doesn’t go that way. It’s the...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 17, 2009 | Blog
I’ve seen a couple of movies over the past two weeks. First we went and saw THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS. It’s not totally successful, but it was very funny, the cast was terrific, and as one reviewer said — this was the Star Wars movie that Ewan McGregor should have made. Normally I hate voice overs, but this one worked very effectively to help bridge between events from thirty years ago and the present. They writers and director struggled to put in a...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 14, 2009 | Blog
I just finished reading China Mieville’s novel The City &The City. This is the first Mieville book I’ve read since I finished The Scar and promptly threw the book across the room. I had slogged through 900 pages, and it was basically Wagner’s Ring Cycle. At the end I was precisely back to the same point as was at the beginning. Nothing had changed – neither the characters nor the situation. I also didn’t like the characters very...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 10, 2009 | Blog
My friend Steve Leigh has recommended Scrivener. Daniel Abraham has tried Scrivener. Daniel gave me a tour of the software, and I think I’m going to go for it. It sets up a “cork board” on my computer where I can have the cards that sketch in the events of each chapter, and there is a place to keep track of characters, organizations, etc. Since I’m a person who really plots a book before I start writing I think this is going to be a helpful tool....
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 3, 2009 | Blog
Finally saw a movie again. It’s been a long dry spell, but I managed to catch Bright Star, the story of Keats unconsummated love affair with Fanny Brawne. I’ve only seen one other Jane Campion movie — The Piano, and I didn’t much like it. It was beautifully filmed, but I hated every character in the film. This movie I liked a great deal. The look of it was absolutely phenomenal, and it was touching and sad. These two very young people...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Nov 2, 2009 | Blog
I am officially a really, really big geek now. I had bought an X-Box, and messed around a bit with Left for Dead, and got intimidated because I really sucked with the whole moving and looking and shooting thing. Then Ian and I got sent a director’s reel, and he had done the commercial for Halo 3. It looked really cool, and it turned out when I bought the X-Box I got Halo 3. I started playing it alone, then Ian and I finished a rewrite on the script, and celebrated by...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 27, 2009 | Blog
Sorry, I’m on a political tangent today. (Thought I have managed to write four pages on the Urban Fantasy. Big fight sequence coming up.) Anyway, Justice Scalia just admitted with his own mouth that he would have dissented in Brown vs. Board of Education. Check it out.
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 27, 2009 | Blog
Hey, folks, that turncoat, Liberman has just said he will join the Republicans to filibuster heathcare reform unless the public option is removed. For people like me who don’t get insurance from an employer and can’t buy it under the current system, this is a disaster. I was counting on the public option to hold down my costs, and enable me to buy insurance. I urge everyone to call Liberman’s office and voice your feelings about this. If you’re...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 26, 2009 | Blog
Confession time — I’ve been watching Dollhouse. Not because I like it. Frankly, I hate this show, but it’s that impulse that has you craning your neck to look at a car accident. There have been a number of strange things occurring — Dushku has practically vanished from the episodes. Usually that means an actor is either making a movie or making an ass of themselves. Anybody know which it is? Next, the show is going on hiatus for over a...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 23, 2009 | Blog
I read Andrew Sullivan’s blog every day. Actually several times a day because he always has interesting tidbits of news. There was a post from a reader regarding a letter from the archdiocese of Guam opposing same sex domestic partnerships. Check out the paragraph on Islamic terrorism. The march for a return to the Dark Ages continues. A caveat. This letter is so horrifying that I tried to check it out on Snopes.com to see if it was real. I never...
