2008, Thus Far
Jan. 2nd, 2008 02:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustAfter picking Cal up from Mom's this morning, all of us spent much of today in bed--Cal is feverish and still has a chesty, awful cough; Steve has diarrhea and the lurg; I just...don't feel so great, which might be actual seeg or knowing I have five thousand fucking things to do and time, to quote Marianne Faithful, ain't long. Or both. But:
*Read Lane Robins' Maledicte, first official book of 2008, which is decadent, cool and more satisfying than Ellen Kushner's latest, though mainly because its cross-dressing swordsperson protagonist A) is not infaliable and B) eventually figures out they're being zoomed so C) stops doing dumb crap. (Ooh, SPOILERS.) At any rate...it's a fine debut novel, I like the characters, and I hear she's hard at word on a sequel--(pre-)sold!
*Did roughly 800 new words on "The Underneath", which I'm now consciously trying to make Lovecraftian; I've got a whole outline, beginning to end, and think I may have finally broken in to my main character's voice. Then again, I'm also deliberately using second person, because I know I want to keep it under 5,000 words, and find that second person allows me to not give so much of a shit about doing things "justice". We'll see if the result is readable.
*In other news, my bathroom reading of the moment is an Essential Luke Cage, Power Man collection which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theengineer gave me for Christmas (last night). It's crazy stuff, and it works best if you read Luke himself as a classic Blaxploitation character, but all the action narration in Stan Lee's slightly whiny, seventy-year-old New York white guy ALL! CAPS! STYLE! In the issue I'm on right now, for example, Luke is attacked by a posse of big cats (lions, tigers, etc.) who speak in human, Hispanic voices. "Matalo! Die, die!" They yell, tearing at his iron skin. Luke: "No way, Leo! Bullets bounce off this body! You want me DEAD, you WORK for it!" Switch to action narration: "Closing his thoughts to all but primal DEFENSE REACTIONS, damming the floodtide of swirling QUESTIONS that can only DISTRACT...LUKE! CAGE! GETS! IT! ON!!!"
(Earlier, in the story which sold me on this collection [and whichtheengineer first showed me about a month ago], Luke borrows a rocket from the Fantastic Four and flies to Latveria to lay the beat-down on Doctor Doom, who's reflexively stiffed the Hero For Hire for a grand total of $200.00. Doom: "When my men reported a CRAZY BLACK MAN in the Fantastic Four's craft, I knew it HAD to be you!" Luke (typically unimpressed): "Where's my MONEY, honey?" It must be read to be believed.)
All right, drugs and bed. Tomorrow, marks!
*Read Lane Robins' Maledicte, first official book of 2008, which is decadent, cool and more satisfying than Ellen Kushner's latest, though mainly because its cross-dressing swordsperson protagonist A) is not infaliable and B) eventually figures out they're being zoomed so C) stops doing dumb crap. (Ooh, SPOILERS.) At any rate...it's a fine debut novel, I like the characters, and I hear she's hard at word on a sequel--(pre-)sold!
*Did roughly 800 new words on "The Underneath", which I'm now consciously trying to make Lovecraftian; I've got a whole outline, beginning to end, and think I may have finally broken in to my main character's voice. Then again, I'm also deliberately using second person, because I know I want to keep it under 5,000 words, and find that second person allows me to not give so much of a shit about doing things "justice". We'll see if the result is readable.
*In other news, my bathroom reading of the moment is an Essential Luke Cage, Power Man collection which
theengineer gave me for Christmas (last night). It's crazy stuff, and it works best if you read Luke himself as a classic Blaxploitation character, but all the action narration in Stan Lee's slightly whiny, seventy-year-old New York white guy ALL! CAPS! STYLE! In the issue I'm on right now, for example, Luke is attacked by a posse of big cats (lions, tigers, etc.) who speak in human, Hispanic voices. "Matalo! Die, die!" They yell, tearing at his iron skin. Luke: "No way, Leo! Bullets bounce off this body! You want me DEAD, you WORK for it!" Switch to action narration: "Closing his thoughts to all but primal DEFENSE REACTIONS, damming the floodtide of swirling QUESTIONS that can only DISTRACT...LUKE! CAGE! GETS! IT! ON!!!"(Earlier, in the story which sold me on this collection [and which
theengineer first showed me about a month ago], Luke borrows a rocket from the Fantastic Four and flies to Latveria to lay the beat-down on Doctor Doom, who's reflexively stiffed the Hero For Hire for a grand total of $200.00. Doom: "When my men reported a CRAZY BLACK MAN in the Fantastic Four's craft, I knew it HAD to be you!" Luke (typically unimpressed): "Where's my MONEY, honey?" It must be read to be believed.)All right, drugs and bed. Tomorrow, marks!
