Technical Difficulties

I was experiencing technical difficulties and couldn't post for the past couple weeks. Something about the ftp being dropped and lost and something else ... yadda, yadda, yadda. Now I think it's fixed. I'm going to post something that I had written a couple weeks ago. And then I'll get caught up on the posting. Yeah!

Royale with a Side of Hot Damn

This was an old post that I had written before my ftp troubles.


Yes, I finally saw Casino Royale. Being a huge James Bond fan was I concerned that Craig could pull it off at first? Yes. Just because I had always pictured Brosnan since his Remington Steele days as playing Bond. Suave, sophisticated, utterly British Brosnan seemed the perfect pick to carry on the Bond legacy. And Craig, well, he's British but rougher, edgier. Would he transform into the sophisticate, able to blend in with high society filled with villianous moguls?

Oh, yeah and more so.

The movie starts off with a bang and Bond's wry wit, which is one of the things that always sets Bond movies apart from other action/spy films. The beginning is in black and white and seemed a homage to the cold war era Bonds. He's going for his double "0" status which gives him a license to kill when deemed necessary. According to the rules he needs to assassinate two people in the line of duty to move up to "00" agent.

And I'm sure you know what happens.

We get insight into what makes Bond tick and why he shies away from relationships. There's a depth to Bond which is revealed in this movie that Brosnan touched on in Tomorrow Never Dies but which Daniel Craig takes a step further in showing us Bond's inner (and physical) strength to make him the cool, calcualting Bond we have all come to love. Having your heart and country betrayed by the one you love would harden any person, and James Bond is no exception. This vulnerability makes him all the more desirable and human.

Terrorists and arms traders are the villains of this movie. Just watch the Bond movies from the beginning to the present and you can see what political fears are gripping the country, if not the world, at the time. And I think that's what makes Bond so popular. We all wish for someone (maybe even ourselves) to right the wrongs in the world and take down the bad guys working behind the scenes to destroy the world. And do it with style, while sipping a shaken Martini with a cool, kick-butt women (or man) on your arm.

The only thing missing were the array of gadgets and Q. It gave the movie a more serious tone and kept the fighting scenes focused on Bond's hands-on skills, but I do miss a few sharks with freakin' laser beams coming out of their heads.

As for my writing. Well, I'm still plugging away on revisions. I was stuck on this latest chapter, yet again. It wasn't flowing with the others, so I rewrote the beginnning and I hope it works now. And I hope to pick it back up tomorrow. Between work, buying Christmas gifts, parties, and visiting with friends ... my writing's been pushed to the side for now. Love the holidays, but definitely need more time!

Danse Macabre

As promised, here's my review of Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton.

I'm an Anita Blake fan. Been so since I picked up Guilty Pleasures about 6 years ago and read through the first couple books during a 3-week-proposal-from-hell in St. Louis. Yes, you read me correctly. St. Louis. Where the books are set. In fact, I hadn't ever realized that I was in the same city until she started mentioning certain roads and highways and I'm like ... hmmm ... that sounds familiar. Anyway, I digress ...

As many critics have noted already her books have gone from action-packed, horror mysteries to more paranormal erotica. In the beginning, Anita was more focused on finding and killing the bad guys and keeping humans safe from the various zombies, witches, vampires, and wereanimals that passed through the city to wreak habit. Now she's trying to reign in her need to feed on sex. For those of you who haven't read her books, Hamilton has created a world where vampires and wereanimals exist beside humans and are trying to garner the same rights as human citizens of the country. If vampires are dead yet undead, do they still have the same rights as a living citizen of the U.S.? There's prejudice against those who turn "furry" where many won't hire them at schools or public institutions for fear of them infecting others. Interesting take in endowing the monsters with humanity.

Anitia is a certified zombie raiser and would be paid by people to raise family from the dead to ask about wills or where they hid money or maybe a judge would ask a victim to be raised as a crime witness. Very unique and cool idea.

There are not only werewolves but wereleopards, wererats, werehyenas, panweres (those who can turn into mutliple animals) and many more which are introduced as the books progressed. She does an excellent job of weaving folklore and fairytales into her stories and making all these creatures work so well together with their own political agendas and rules governing the vampires and wereanimal communities. Her writing is fast paced; her character descriptions very detailed and I've used these for inspiration in my own writing. However, Danse Macabre was a little slower. Maybe because there wasn't as much fighting scenes as there were sex. And don't get me wrong I don't mind the sex scenes, but I expected more to happen. In the beginning, we are introduced to the main conflict that Anita may be pregnant. If you read her other books, her two main squeezes were Richard (alpha werewolf) and Jean Claude (master vamp of St. Louis). Jean Claude has bound Richard and Anita to him with two marks which allows them to draw on each other's power, communicate psychically, and make themselves stronger individually. If they get the third mark then they would be bound together for eternity. It hasn't happened, yet. Richard is on again and off again with Anita because he's jealous of her relationship with Jean Claude and her two wereleopards, Micah and Nathaniel. Through the marks with Jean Claude she's cursed with the "ardeur." It essentially fills her with a sexual need that has to be fed or else her power drains affecting those around her. This leads to the second conflict in the book: she doesn't know who the father is, since she has had sex with multiple men in order to feed this sexual energy. The third conflict is of vampire politics. Jean Claude has a vampire ballet company performing in St. Louis. He invited all the master vamps to the city to see the performance. Of course, most of the master vamps are power hungry and egotistical and having lived so long they essentially act as if they're above reproach, doing whatever the hell they want and damn the consequence. They want to test the extent of the triumvirant Jean Claude has formed when he bound Anita and Richard to him with the marks. They are also concerned about the power Anita possesses being a necromancer. She has power over the dead—zombies and vampires—and her power has been heightened by the marks of Jean Claude. So she's seen as a threat within the vampire community. Not to mention that the Mother of All Darkness, the orginal vamp/wereanimal, keeps poking her fangs in Anita's life. Of course, most of the challenges from the master vamps involve sex. Since Anita's ardeur has risen, she's running out of men to feed upon, so the master vamps have all brought someone from whom to choose believing that will endear them to Jean Claude and Anita. (Think Princess Charming picking a lover instead of a bride.) Most of the story focused on Anita's lovers arguing over who the potential father is. The other half dealt with vampire politics and domination—both with psychic power and sexual actions. Some people have complained that her sex scenes aren't written well. I found them satisfying and left me wondering at the ability of someone to please multiple men at a time. Really gets the old imagination ticking, if you know what I mean. :) The ending was too abrupt. The ballet scene described at the end should have been the climax. It was such an interesting concept and the ballet itself with vampires floating in the air around the audience and the new vamps (especially one of the first made vamps) introduced made for an interesting scene that was cut way too short by Anita's need for sex. I would've much preferred for the ballet to happen earlier, the vampire sexual powerplay tempered, and the whole pregnancy relegated to the background. I liked it. I didn't love it as her other books. It didn't hold my attention and make me stay up reading well past my bedtime. I like the new characters. I like where she's going with the Mother of All Darkness (aka Mommie Dearest). I like her sarcastic humor. But I'd love more action. More tension. Sexual tension is good but when every other chapter is another build-up to a new sex scene it tends to lessen the anticipation. Just like riding a roller coaster that has the same hill over and over again. You stop getting surprised over what is up the next hill and even though the drop may be thrilling, you want to experience something new like a loop or a twist when you top it. I'll definitely read her next one because Hamilton to me is the mother of paranormal romance. But I just hope the next story will give us more character growth than growing her array of sexual partners.

3 1/2 stars out of 5

Rejection, Vegas, and the Half-Eaten Bootie

So the day before my trip to Vegas (baby) I got a rejection from the agent I had been so hoping would like my story. Oh, well. Good news is that she gave me feedback, which is better than a form letter (and a sharp stick in the eye) and shows that perhaps it has some promise. But she was confused about the world I created. (I could easily fix this). And didn't feel a connection to my charactions, which is the part that totally worries me, because that may not be an easy fix. Ugh! Then I think about the speeches Cabot gave and Dodd at the RWA conference this year. Cabot in particular talked about receiving countless rejections about how her story wouldn't work. How her style wasn't right for the market or that people couldn't relate to it. Now her style is emulated throughout popular fiction. Not to mention the popularity of The Princess Diaries which went on to become a successful movie. This is my first rejection on my story. So how much should I take it to heart? Like some of my friends and fellow writers have said. Keep going and if you recieve feedback from others in the same vein then take another look at it. I know that there' still more work to be done. I may return to the first three chapters (which is what she read) and do more revisions. But right now I need to keep plugging away. I'm past the 200 page point in my rewrites, which is good. My husband read a few chapters on the trip and has a few corrections, which I'll do before I had them over to my critique partners. Such a long process, but with every step I'm learning so much and improving. But it seems like it never ends. A fellow writer that I met at RWA last year has a Regency coming out next fall. She just received 7 pages of edits from her editor to input before Feb. Seven pages!!! And she'd gone through so many interations already before being accepted. So crazy!

Needless to say, I drowned my sorrows (and money) at the roulette wheel and with several screwdrivers and cosmos. I also learned to play craps. Well, let me rephrased that. I learned how to lose at craps. We saw the show Ka at the MGM Grand, which I highly recommend. It was the most amazing production I'd ever seen. The stage actually lifted and pivoted and turned and at several points rose to a 90 degree angle to create a wall which the actors climbed. The athleticism and grace of these performers blew me away. It's not like the other Cirque du Soleil performances, because this one tells a story of two twins separated when their parents, who are the king and queen of the land, are killed. It's like an acrobatic opera. Fantastic!

When we got home, I got news that my dog was sick. She ended up in the vet hospital because she had ate half of her bootie (which we had used years ago to deter her licking her paws). I'm not sure where she found it since I had put it away awhile ago. But it was such a big piece that it got stuck in her small intestine. They had to cut her open and remove it. Now she has staples and looks like a Frankenstein dog with the metal going up her stomach. She's doing fine now. Pouty but fine.

Now off to work and writing. So much to catch up on. I read some books and will post reviews tomorrow. Yeah!