This, That, The Other
Sep. 28th, 2012 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustCal's Birthweek dinner went really well last night--he was good and responsive and stayed in his chair almost all the way through, dealing with being in a restaurant ably. This morning he was very tired, but good-natured, and that seems to have stayed true all the way through today. Now I'm giving him some time on the john with his iPad before going over to Mom's, where he'll stay over tonight.
For myself, I still feel...really discombobulated, like I just can't get my damn brain to work very well. It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me) that whatever the book is that I'm not “supposed” to be thinking about because I'm not actually “supposed” to be writing that book, that is naturally the book I will be thinking about most often. In recent days, the Forbidden Topic of choice has most often been The Dumb Supper, the pitch for which CZP thankfully likes a lot, which means I may indeed be going on to that right after Experimental Film. It's my not-Paranormal Romance...more an Urban Paranormal, maybe? Because in this narrative, any hint of romance is pretty thin on the ground, though I think my main character may eventually have sex with someone, if only just to blow off steam.
Parsed down, The Dumb Supper is about Carmen Durbin, who was Toronto gangster Frank Volpe's last official girlfriend from age 15 to age 20, right up until he had the bad grace to get shot, stagger over to her condo and die on her couch. In order to stave off a gang war, she then reanimated him temporarily using a family brand of Traveller sin-eating magic that involves metaphorically “ingesting” bad luck, sending him back out into the world to tie up all his loose ends before dying again. It knocked her on her back for a full year with what her doctors called sudden-onset Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but it also left her with ownership of the building she lives in and a modest income from the other tenants' condo fees; since then, she's been able to go back to school (working towards a degree in forensic accountancy), take care of her crazy family, and even do a bit of neighbourhood trouble-shooting for other criminal element hangers-on.
Suddenly, however—smack in the middle of one very busy week—her former boyfriend's widow slides back into now 25-year-old Carmen's life, demanding she do her a service. As the kid sister of Dom “the Cop” Azzopardi, Stella Azzopardi Volpe is mob royalty on both sides and no one to screw with even on her worst days, not least because there's probably a pretty good reason she's known locally as “Stella la Strega.” Mrs Volpe claims all she wants Carmen to do is introduce a cousin of hers who seems to have materialized out of nowhere—Pia, pretty but vacant—to the man who took over Frank's spot, but Carmen has her doubts. And so an odd little back-and-forth begins, with the two women hammering out an antagonistic yet strangely intimate relationship, as Carmen strives to avoid falling into an ever-increasing series of potential traps without once again resorting to the magic she barely knows how to use without risking her own life.
It took me a little while to get a real handle on Mrs Volpe, mainly because other mob wives kept getting in the way, from Connie Corleone to Maerose Prizzi to Carmela Soprano. Then I remembered I'd originally developed her as a feminized riff on Wiseguy's Sonny Steelgrave, someone prevented from holding real power except through the man her brother married her off to, who uses Italian malloch' to even things up but would've loved to be a rock star or a hit-woman. (“Zia Peppina”, Andrew Vaschss's titular Strega, has a certain influence here as well [“I have my Mia and I have myself. I will always have myself.”], though I don't see Mrs V. As being quite that fatalistic or trapped in gender-roleplay.) So part of my assemblage on The Dumb Supper has to do with acknowledging that the person in it who's “my age” and would share my own cultural-historical memories isn't Carmen (as if!), but Mrs Volpe.
Here, therefore, is a Mrs Volpe playlist:
The Cuckoo in the Heart of the Woods from Carnival of Animals (https://www.box.com/s/9ei28co70fop6pyk5k7w)
Born To by Jesca Hoop (https://www.box.com/s/hv2jnuva4rtmidesv7v6)
Gratitude by Danny Elfman (https://www.box.com/s/h5ehdgvfwmq3h3pgoep2)
Eyes of a Stranger by Payola$ (https://www.box.com/s/hvjykdqqsz63da2tmgr4)
Lust for Love by Images in Vogue (https://www.box.com/s/7ds5pqhu4r0qazabbf7h)
Bad News From Home by Randy Newman (https://www.box.com/s/6g8vaxz1v0ez95wgeehs)
Never Too Late for Love by Warren Zevon (https://www.box.com/s/p5jx3226iwk07bpua6zx)
Ice by Daniel Lanois (https://www.box.com/s/wzr8ekuw31tp5uyut5ps)
Crossing the River by the Devlins (https://www.box.com/s/d7ket9sxpqjaf9yjsooc)
I Call it Love by Concrete Blonde (https://www.box.com/s/6uanzdsh35qevaiejkv0)
All I can tell you is, it'll probably make more sense once you read the book. Psych!
Now, back to what I'm supposed to be writing...
For myself, I still feel...really discombobulated, like I just can't get my damn brain to work very well. It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me) that whatever the book is that I'm not “supposed” to be thinking about because I'm not actually “supposed” to be writing that book, that is naturally the book I will be thinking about most often. In recent days, the Forbidden Topic of choice has most often been The Dumb Supper, the pitch for which CZP thankfully likes a lot, which means I may indeed be going on to that right after Experimental Film. It's my not-Paranormal Romance...more an Urban Paranormal, maybe? Because in this narrative, any hint of romance is pretty thin on the ground, though I think my main character may eventually have sex with someone, if only just to blow off steam.
Parsed down, The Dumb Supper is about Carmen Durbin, who was Toronto gangster Frank Volpe's last official girlfriend from age 15 to age 20, right up until he had the bad grace to get shot, stagger over to her condo and die on her couch. In order to stave off a gang war, she then reanimated him temporarily using a family brand of Traveller sin-eating magic that involves metaphorically “ingesting” bad luck, sending him back out into the world to tie up all his loose ends before dying again. It knocked her on her back for a full year with what her doctors called sudden-onset Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but it also left her with ownership of the building she lives in and a modest income from the other tenants' condo fees; since then, she's been able to go back to school (working towards a degree in forensic accountancy), take care of her crazy family, and even do a bit of neighbourhood trouble-shooting for other criminal element hangers-on.
Suddenly, however—smack in the middle of one very busy week—her former boyfriend's widow slides back into now 25-year-old Carmen's life, demanding she do her a service. As the kid sister of Dom “the Cop” Azzopardi, Stella Azzopardi Volpe is mob royalty on both sides and no one to screw with even on her worst days, not least because there's probably a pretty good reason she's known locally as “Stella la Strega.” Mrs Volpe claims all she wants Carmen to do is introduce a cousin of hers who seems to have materialized out of nowhere—Pia, pretty but vacant—to the man who took over Frank's spot, but Carmen has her doubts. And so an odd little back-and-forth begins, with the two women hammering out an antagonistic yet strangely intimate relationship, as Carmen strives to avoid falling into an ever-increasing series of potential traps without once again resorting to the magic she barely knows how to use without risking her own life.
It took me a little while to get a real handle on Mrs Volpe, mainly because other mob wives kept getting in the way, from Connie Corleone to Maerose Prizzi to Carmela Soprano. Then I remembered I'd originally developed her as a feminized riff on Wiseguy's Sonny Steelgrave, someone prevented from holding real power except through the man her brother married her off to, who uses Italian malloch' to even things up but would've loved to be a rock star or a hit-woman. (“Zia Peppina”, Andrew Vaschss's titular Strega, has a certain influence here as well [“I have my Mia and I have myself. I will always have myself.”], though I don't see Mrs V. As being quite that fatalistic or trapped in gender-roleplay.) So part of my assemblage on The Dumb Supper has to do with acknowledging that the person in it who's “my age” and would share my own cultural-historical memories isn't Carmen (as if!), but Mrs Volpe.
Here, therefore, is a Mrs Volpe playlist:
The Cuckoo in the Heart of the Woods from Carnival of Animals (https://www.box.com/s/9ei28co70fop6pyk5k7w)
Born To by Jesca Hoop (https://www.box.com/s/hv2jnuva4rtmidesv7v6)
Gratitude by Danny Elfman (https://www.box.com/s/h5ehdgvfwmq3h3pgoep2)
Eyes of a Stranger by Payola$ (https://www.box.com/s/hvjykdqqsz63da2tmgr4)
Lust for Love by Images in Vogue (https://www.box.com/s/7ds5pqhu4r0qazabbf7h)
Bad News From Home by Randy Newman (https://www.box.com/s/6g8vaxz1v0ez95wgeehs)
Never Too Late for Love by Warren Zevon (https://www.box.com/s/p5jx3226iwk07bpua6zx)
Ice by Daniel Lanois (https://www.box.com/s/wzr8ekuw31tp5uyut5ps)
Crossing the River by the Devlins (https://www.box.com/s/d7ket9sxpqjaf9yjsooc)
I Call it Love by Concrete Blonde (https://www.box.com/s/6uanzdsh35qevaiejkv0)
All I can tell you is, it'll probably make more sense once you read the book. Psych!
Now, back to what I'm supposed to be writing...
