Musings

I’m waiting on the pictures from Comic-Con so I’m going to take a moment to turn back to my other passion — politics. The Republicans are unbelievable. They do everything in their power from pictures of blonde women, to code words to push that Barack Obama is a black man who “doesn’t know his place”, and when he laughs at them, and calls them on it, they accuse him of playing the race card.

Well I guess when your campaign is empty of any new or important ideas you resort to lies, smears and fear. We have an opportunity to see this country reborn, money can be invested in clean, new technology energies that will create jobs and capital. We can put people back to work repairing our crumbling infrastructure destroyed after decades of Reganomics, maybe we can convince the next generation that politics can be about service instead of the same old crap.

But instead I’m afraid that change is going to be too scary for too many people. The Obama headquarters opened up down on St. Michael’s Dr. As soon as I’m done with these last two conventions I’ll be there volunteering. This may be the last chance we have to save the Constitution and the republic.

Thursday I had my one item or programming. I decided to dodge the hotel restaurant and seem some of the sights. The doorman recommended a restaurant some nine blocks away. I like to walk, and often walk a couple of miles every morning so I set off. What I didn’t know is that San Diego has _really_ long blocks, and compared to New Mexico the air felt saturated with moisture. I was starting to wish I had gills and a personal fan by the time I reached The Mission. I ate a light breakfast, read the Atlantic (the issue about the growth of Christianity in Africa. If I get to write more books in the Edge universe this is definitely going to be explored.) I took a different route back to the hotel which allowed me to seem more of the Gaslamp district, which is very charming.

I cleaned up, and studied the program. There was a Dr. Who panel with Russell Davies and Stephen Moffit that I really wanted to hear, but the line to get in stretched and snaked through the upstairs hallway outside the meeting room. My guess would be that it extended for a quarter mile. I gave up, and hoped that the Torchwood panel at 1:00 wouldn’t be as heavily attended.

I did manage to get into the Torchwood panel. It consisted of three of the actors, John Barrowman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, and an executive producer. John Barrowman who plays Captain Jack is _very_ pretty, but I got the distinct impression he is a typical ACTOR. He did tend to hog the spotlight. One highlight was when he and Naoko Mori sang a duet from Miss Saigon. They both starred in that musical, and they have beautiful voices.

After a seafood salad lunch I headed off to my panel. I found Caroline Spector and Warren Spector sitting outside the panel room looking as overwhelmed as I felt. We sat and visited until it was time. Our topic was writing superheroes in prose. Because there are so many professionals who attend Comic-Con there were eight of us on the panel. Which mean we didn’t have a lot of time to make our points. I tried to be insightful without being boring. The crowd was a bit thin in the beginning, but at the thirty minute mark we suddenly had a full house.

Afterward the wonderful people at Mysterious Galaxy led us off to the Sail Pavilion for our autographing. I signed quite a few copes of INSIDE STRAIGHT, but a few people had bought THE EDGE OF REASON. The Sail Pavilion has a Bird Air canvas roof that sweeps into points as if you are looking up at the sails on a schooner. It’s very beautiful and impressive. About Mysterious Galaxy — I have a link to the store. They have one of the most complete science fiction and fantasy collection in the business so if you’re ordering on line you might consider them rather than Amazon.

After my official obligations I went back to the exhibit hall and looked at collectables until I ran into Pat Rogers. We decided to have dinner together, and then we found Len and Chris and it became a party. Len was still burbling about the Fox presentation. The studio had really, really wanted him to show up, and boy was he glad he skipped Dr. Who and went there. Hugh Jackman was the surprise guest, and after talking about Wolverine, he asked if Len was in the audience. When Len waved Jackman came off the stage and thank Len for creating such a wonderful character.

Dinner was at the Harbor House which is a wonderful wood and glass building right on the edge of the bay. We lingered over drinks, delicious seafood and dessert for hours. You’re probably starting to see a pattern here — whenever I’m near the ocean I tend to eat nothing but seafood because what we get in New Mexico is not the best. I love my high desert, but there’s a part of me that really wants to live on the ocean.

I returned to the room around eleven because Carl was driving in from Las Vegas and I wanted to be there in case the front desk didn’t want to let him in. I’d asked Carl to bring his spiffy new camera to shoot some pictures. My little Cannon is fun, but limited and the lag time on the shutter is terrible. After using Carl’s camera I think I’m going to buy myself a new one. Anyway, once he downloads the photos I’ll start embedding them in my posts. If you haven’t been to Comic-Con you will be stunned and amazed.

How to describe the madness, energy, frenzy that is Comi-Con? I guess to say that it’s mad, energetic and frenzied. I’m presently curled up in my hotel room, resting my feet and taking a break from all the input.

I’ll start on Wednesday == for once I had an unremarkable flight. After getting through Security Theater, (as my editor, Patrick aptly calls it), I read a couple of Economist magazines, and then I was in San Diego. I grabbed a cab, and got dropped off at the Omni Hotel which is a curving, gleaming, glass tower. Up the elevator and the bellman opened the door of my room to reveal an expanse of glass, a view of the bay and Coronado Island. Sailboats were scudding past like clouds in a blue sky and it was _gorgeous_. This is one of the prettiest rooms I’ve even seen.

I was meeting Len Wien and Chris Valada at the DC booth. Chris caught me outside the convention center, and whisked me through registration, and into the exhibit hall. It goes for _miles_. At least they lay down carpet, unlike Worldcon, so it’s not as hard on the feet as you move through row after row of booths selling comics, art, tee shirts, videos, models, books, swords, etc. etc. etc. The studios have large booths — Sci Fi, Warner Brothers, BBC America, etc.

A very famous comic book artist had done an amazing picture of Obama as Superman but with an O rather than an S, and they were selling tee shirts. I immediately bought one. Especially when I found out that they had tried to get him to do a McCain tee shirt too, and he refused because, as he said, “I don’t like McCain.”

I’ll be posting pictures of the exhibit hall, me in the tee shirt, a view from the room, etc. once Carl emails them to me.

I was introduced to Paul who is the publishers of DC comics, and he indicated he would be open to my pitching a comic book idea. I was delighted. I’d had such fun on my little vignette for Wild Cards. At 9:00 the preview evening ended and we joined this mob of people leaving the convention center. That was a little scary. I got separated from Len and Chris in the crowds, and I’m a small person so I found it daunting to be in the middle of such a throng. But thank god for cell phones. We all found each other again, and headed into San Diego’s Gaslamp District in search of dinner.

We were all hungry (since it was 9:30) so we picked a bar thinking it would be fast. It wasn’t particularly fast, and it was incredibly nosy, and the food was not very good. It was also a place that seemed to think that rude waiters was “fun”, so there was this waiter standing at the table behind us YELLING at this woman to SHUT UP! at the top of his lungs. I came really, really close to decking him and spending the weekend in jail. There was also a really terrible band playing to add to the general joy.

I knew I was going to have a busy day on Thursday so I called it a night, and went to bed. More later. I have to get ready for a WGA reception.

I’m heading out to San Diego for Comicon late this afternoon. I’ve never attended before, so I’ll have lots to share when I get back.

I’ll also write my review for THE DARK KNIGHT. I can give you this much. It will be good. Maybe it’s better I’m waiting a few more days. This would be a difficult movie to discuss without revealing some of the plot twists because they are so illustrative of excellent screenwriting. This way more people will have seen the movie, and I won’t risk spoiling anything.

On Friday Daniel Abraham called together the troops, Walter Jon Williams, Carrie Vaughn, Ian Tregillis, Victor Milan, Ty Frank and me to help him work through the major story arcs for his new five book fantasy series that he’s getting ready to pitch to his publisher. Carrie had driven down from Colorado to see this process in action. For those of you who might be new readers at my blog, the plot break is something I brought back from Hollywood (sounds rather like a virus, but it’s actually a good thing).

I brought the white board and dry erase markers, Daniel provided limitless coffee, iced tea, coke, and pizza for lunch, Carrie provided brownies and I supplied the oatmeal, raisin, chocolate chip cookies, and we spent the day exploring a new world at its inception. Here’s a picture —

Daniel had done a lot of thinking about what makes fantasy work. (Check out his blog at bram452.livejournal.com for his thoughts on the subject with additional analysis by George R.R. Martin, Steve Stirling, Walter Jon Williams, Ian Tregillis and me. The other issue Daniel has been pondering is the whole idea of accessibility. What is it that pulls a reader or a viewer into a book or a television series and keeps them reading/watching.

In addition to all the philosophical underpinnings Daniel had also prepared a length document with his thoughts about the characters — which ones would carry the view point, the magic system (very creepy), the villain — how to make him first sympathetic and then tragic, but all the time keeping him evil, etc. etc.

We began by analyzing the view point characters, their arcs, what they wanted, places in the five books where they might connect, and so forth. Some of these character moments actually provided the tent pole scenes that were going to become important within each book. During the discussions we began to realize that one of the projected POV characters just wasn’t working. We kept trying, but he finally got demoted to important character, but not someone in whose head we needed to spend time. Scenes and dialogue began to suggest themselves. Daniel was scribbling on the board, and then it was time for pizza.

Fortified by cheese, carbs and sugar Daniel erased the character names, and instead wrote in Book One, Book Two, etc. He then wrote down the final scene in each book, and we back filled from there. Since we knew what had to happen to each character at roughly this point in the series, it wasn’t too hard. It’s surprisingly helpful if you can anchor that final scene, another way to put it — if you know how the book or script ends — everything else starts to fall into place. If you’ve got some of the big tent pole scenes it becomes even easier. Then the smaller scenes just suggest themselves. You know what’s got to happen to carry you from tent pole to tent pole and ultimately to the conclusion.

At five o’clock Daniel had to head off to pick up his wife at work, and we all retired onto the back porch to chat and watch the afternoon thunderheads building. The sky got darker and darker, the wind began to gust around the house, and rain started falling. Kat and Daniel’s dogs, especially the Great Dane, were not happy so I went into the house to bring them into the laundry room and out of the storm. Suddenly the loudest sound I have ever heard ripped through the air. The Dane when from the biggest dog in the world to trying to emulate a Peakinese. I ran out to check on the crowd on the porch, and into a babble of conversation. Ty had seen the lighting arcing across the supports of the porch toward Ian and Walter, small tree branches had rained down — it could have been a real bad day for the science fiction field. Carrie and I took pictures of the tree where it had been scarred by lightening.

But Daniel says this tells very little of the story. He climbed on the roof of his house to survey the _scorch_ marks, and the places where masonry had been _blown_ out of the chimney. Yikes! He said he’ll send me a photo. Walter and Ty kept talking about how they group on the porch were going to get superpowers, and then asking me what superpower I’d received only to add with mock sympathy — “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t get any superpowers.” I think my superpower was _not being on the frigging porch when lightening hit the house_!

Daniel and Kat returned and we learned that he’d literally looked over at Kat as they were driving, and said, “I hope that didn’t hit our house.” After recovering our shattered nerves with more brownies and cookies we actually managed to go back to work. As we sat looking, with satisfaction, at the board, Daniel said quietly — it looks like a historical, a history of events in a different world. Aside from one element of magic there are no trolls, elves, dragons, etc. That engendered a discussion of: “Do you actually need the trappings that we’ve come to associate with high fantasy?” Our conclusion — yes, you do. You may not have to call them elves, trolls, dwarves, etc., but you have to give the reader a different world. This isn’t to say you can’t do a mock historical and do it very well, check out Guy Gavriel Kay, www.brightweavings.com but that wasn’t what Daniel wanted to create.

By now it was dinner time, and the idea of other races was something Daniel wanted to process. So we went off for Greek food, and then I headed back up the hill to Santa Fe. It had been a very productive, fun (and alarming) day. So, that was how I spent my Friday.

Saturday night Ian and I rewarded ourselves for an afternoon spent working on the movie with dinner out and an outing to see HELLBOY. I was so stoked to see this film. I love PAN’S LABYRINTH. I liked the first Hellboy movie a lot and del Toro has become one of my favorite directors right up there with Ang Lee. Unfortunately, what I discovered is that del Toro isn’t a writer.

There were many, many wonderful scenes, but they never went anywhere, and many of them didn’t advance the story at all. At the end I found myself thinking that what the Hellboy movie needed was a lot more Hellboy. Basically, it never gelled as a story or as a film. There were beautiful visuals, interesting characters, but the lack of structure ultimately sank the entire endeavor. The more I write, the more I read and the more I watch; the more I feel that structure is everything. You can have wonderful dialogue, great scenes, stunning visuals, but if the core story isn’t there you end up with an ultimately unsatisfying experience.

Daniel Abraham also made a great point — none of our protagonists ever protaged. This entire problem could have been solved in the first fifteen minutes of the film if the princess had taken the same action at the beginning of the movie as she took at the end of the film. But the scene of Abe and Hellboy drinking Tecate and blubbering while they listened to Barry Manilow was priceless.

So after seeing four movies in one week here is my ratings for this crop of films. Number One — WALL*E for a simple story beautifully told. Number Two — HELLBOY for the visuals and the characters. Number Three - WANTED because the direction was interesting. Number Four - HANCOCK because the first third was an interesting movie and Will Smith is an appealing actor.

As for the rest of the summer cop thus far — I really, really liked IRON MAN, and KUNG FU PANDA was charming and very pretty. And I liked SEX AND THE CITY because I feel a connection to those women and it reminded me of the show which I also really liked.

I saw three movies in three days — which is unusual for me. I tend to think about how I want to see a movie and then not get around to it. But holiday weekends just seem made for movie outings. Saturday was WALL*E. I was once more awed by the creative genius of the guys at Pixar. And the courage — this is basically a silent film, certainly for the first 15 to 20 minutes. And the decision to use excerpts from the film version of Hello Dolly — wow. Even more wow — it worked. There was the classic “second stage rocket” that takes the movie in a new direction (and it this case it was actually a rocket). We’re presented with the problem, and our plucky little robot helps solve the problem. Interestingly, I found the movie less involving when it was about the humans rather than the robots, but over all I like this movie _a lot_. It showed courage, wit and heart. You can’t do much better than that.

On Sunday we went off to see WANTED. This thing has been getting good reviews. I don’t know why. James McAvoy was having fun with his tongue drilled firmly into his cheek, and he did a surprisingly good American accent, but it got very tedious, very fast watching him get beat up during the training sessions. Training sessions are always tough to dramatize, and lingering on them wasn’t working for me. At least when Mr. Miyagi trained the Karate Kid it was creative.

I also found the voice over to be intrusive in the extreme. This was a movie that was trying to hard to hew close to its comic book roots, and it doesn’t work. I just finished writing an 11 page vignette for Wild Cards, and I’d been doing a lot of research and study on how to write comics before I tackled it. The use of the narrator (caption) in comics help you get over transitions when the frames don’t move, and can impart vital information that is hard to convey in pictures. Another way to put this is “get over heavy ground lightly” (which is an old cavalry adage). It works just fine in comics. It doesn’t work just fine in a movie. Occasionally you can tell me something, but I’d really rather be shown.

Ultimately I found Wanted to be predictable in the extreme. I did like the pictures the director, Timur Bekmambetov, painted. He was interesting enough that I will check out his other films.

Monday night was HANCOCK. I have to give this a lower score than WANTED for the simple reason that while Wanted was trite and predictable at least it made internal sense. The second half of Hancock make zero sense. Here’s my take on Hancock. It was two completely different movies that got into a superhero car wreck. The first movie was interesting and a different take on superheroes. It wasn’t the comedy the trailers had promised, but I actually liked the sad, isolated man as he was portrayed by Will Smith. In a way both Hancock and Wall*E had the same problem — they were the last (or only one) of their kind.

I think they went back to the prison counseling sessions too many times, (a monor quibble) but I was interested in watching this man discover his humanity and his connection to people. They we found out — in a stunning coincidence — that he wasn’t the last of his kind. SPOILER ALERT!!! If you intend to see this movie stop reading now.

There was another one, and she was married to the man Hancock saved in the first act. They tried to put a bandaid on this with some gibberish about the two god-like people were drawn to each other, but there was something about when they were together they became weak and lost their powers and started to age, but that didn’t seem to be afflicting them until it was convenient for the plot.

There was the wife’s desire to just be an ordinary person, but then she gets into a fight with Hancock and they destroy downtown Los Angeles. Don’t they know people have cell phones with video?

Then there was the totally contradictory end where they both lose their powers, but they seem to feel everything the other person is feeling. But then she dies and Hancock doesn’t get his powers back. Instead he’s weak and is about to be killed, but he’s saved by normal human guy. They he’s dead (or nearly dead), but he manages to regain enough strength to hobble far away from his dead partner, and suddenly his powers come back, and she’s not dead anymore.

That’s when I threw up my hands and gave up on the thing. For a moment I thought they were going to take the really brave and dark choice and kill them both since they were the last of their kind, but no. They come back to life and live happily ever after.

I’ve been cheering on the superhero dominance of movies because I really, really want to sell my Wild Card’s script, but I’m beginning to rethink this. It’s leading to a summer filled with really terrible movies.

To take the taste of our my mouth I’ve been watching THE GOOD SHEPHERD. It’s not a perfect movie, but Matt Damon’s performance is excellent. I’ll finish watching it tonight. Thank god for Netflix.

I had a very fun Fourth of July. I’d been invited to the home of Pat and Scott, who are described as the Party Gods by our local fan and writer community. There was great food, a gaggle of writers, super conversations, and fireworks.

One of the funniest things was watching Pat and Scott’s dog, Einstein, try to play with the fireworks. While holding his squeak toy he raced around and around the shower of sparks, so we had fizz, fizz, spark, pop, squeak, squeak, squeak. He would even bow to the fireworks in that puppy play gesture that is so cute and sweet. He seemed to be reacting to the fireworks as if they were another animal rather than something to fear. I’ve never seen a dog who wasn’t terrified of the fireworks so this was charming.

Then it stopped being charming, and nearly stopped all of our hearts when Einstein rushed in and grabbed a firework in his jaws. Fortunately he grabbed it from the side, and went running off with it as the sparks shot from the side of his mouth. When we all shouted he dropped it, and gave us a look like, “What? I was having fun.” After that we took turns holding Einstein or the squeak toy to distract him from the show.

I spent most of the weekend writing on the Wild Card short comic I’m doing as an extra to go at the back of Daniel Abraham’s final issue of THE HARD CALL, working on a screenplay with Ian, riding Vento, and admiring my new landscaping. I have _plants_ at my house. And the _rains_ have started. Hip hip hooray! I’ll finish up the comic today, and then turn my attention to my story in the third Wild Card book, SUICIDE KINGS.

I also went and saw a couple of movies. I’ll be posting about them later.