brimaresh

I recently watched, read, and considered the merits of having translated "Ghost Hunt," an anime based on a manga based on a light novel by Fuyumi Ono.

I watched the show during my tradiational Saturday Bad Movie Night, with my lovely writing group, because we needed something to help us recover from a particularly bad movie (The Happiness of the Katakuris).

After watching it, I was left thirsting for ghosts and paranormal researchers.  Not on T.V. like A&E's Paranormal State, but in a good, solid, book-ish form. 

I greedily devoured the manga (close enough), and then what I could of the light novel.  And that's where I ran into problems.  The novel is not, in fact, out in America.  It's not published in English at all, in fact.  It's in Japanese, and Chinese.  I could only read the first four chapters, which someone had started translating to practice their own language skills.  And even then, I was struck with guilt over doing that.

Sulkily, I went to the book store with @indigounicorn trying to find a ghost book.  I was after The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters or Graham Masterton's The House That Jack Built, but any ghost story would have done. I was desperate for one.  Enough so that after an hour of looking on my own, I asked both the employees working the front desk.

Neither could name a single ghost story, let alone one I might not have read yet.

I sulked some more (but I still bought Justine Larbalestier's Liar, which was a really great read), and then went on digital hunt for a good ghost story. I could find a lot of supernatural romances.  A lot of urban fantasies that happen to use ghosts.  But a real ghost story? One that pits people up against the ghosts, and has a plot that is about hauntings?

They're as elusive as ghosts themselves, it seems.

P.S. I love the new cover for The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  A small part of me wants to write a book to match it.

P.P.S. I love the covers of Susan Pfeffer's The Dead and Gone and Life As We Knew It, too.  I may read them, based purely on the covers.

P.P.P.S. Amelia Atwater Rhodes's Token of Darkness is coming out soon.  She's my friend, and I still like the book, so that has to mean something good. I think it may be a borderline occult mystery, too, which makes me love it a little more in my deprived state...

Even before the movies came out, Draco Malfoy was one of those characters that people split two ways on -- love or hate.  He was a foil to Harry Potter--even though they were the same age, their upbringing was polar opposites.  He was rich instead of poor.  Pureblood instead of mixed.  Raised with magic instead of as a muggle. Light hair instead of dark.  And he chose to go to Slytherin, gladly, instead of to beg his way into Gryffendor. There was all this potential there, and people loved it.  Or hated it, if they were solid with Harry.

It wasn't that Tom Felton was hot (though that plays a huge part in it now, I believe), it was that he was such a 2-D character compared to everyone else that people were forced to believe that somewhere in there, he had to have some depth. They could see the potential that J.K. Rowling couldn't show since I have decided to believe that it was Harry's prejiduces and not her own that muddled our perspective of the Slytherins.

I think a lot of controversial characters work like that.  People like them because there's just enough there that they can see the potential, and not enough there that they have to if they don't want to.

I'm a Doctor Who fan. Anyone who has met me knows I've got my own Sonic Screwdriver, a full-size poster from Nine's era, and that my fondest wish is that t-shirt, "You Never Forget Your First Doctor" from thinkgeek.com. 

I also have a close aproximation to Rose's handy dandy pink zip-up, for when I'm feeling particularly blue and need a little bit of geekiness to cheer me up. I loved all the seasons with Rose as the companion.  They had a lot of explosions. A lot of one-liners. And a lot of hope.  She was optimistic, and that made it fun to watch.

I loved Donna, too, after she and the Doctor got to know one another.   Not as optimistic, not as upbeat, but she was hard working, and clever, and for me, that works just as well.

But I always had problems liking Martha. I didn't like that she was running around unrequited, and almost mourning the Doctor's hearts not being hers.  I didn't like that this smart, intelligent women blamed The Doctor for the ills in her life.  I didn't like that she wasn't grateful for the chance to see the stars, because in her shoes, I would have been so excited to see and experience and do all the things she did.  Even the bad parts, because even if the glass is half empty, hey, it's also half full. And half a cup of adventure is better than nothing.  And anything worth having is worth working for.  If it's not worth working for, why on earth would you want it?

There was one bright point in all of Martha's time, and that The Master.

Oh, I can't say enough good things about The Master.  The theatrics. The taunting.  He had a sense of humor on par with that of The Doctor, a diabolical plan, and the ability to look at the long road, to plot and plan and wait until it was time.  And as a time lord, that's a very handy skill.  And if that wasn't enough, he was completely mad.  And I couldn't help but love him all the more for it.

I was a little bit afraid, when I heard he'd be coming back, that I would be dissapointed by what was done with him.

Now, I wish I had a Master poster to go with my Doctor one, and a laster screwdriver.  

They're each fine and fun on their own, but together?  The Master and The Doctor are a delight to watch.  Their relationship is such a snarl, it is, to put it in the words of the ninth doctor, fantastic.

I always say that Stephen King is one of my heroes.  Joss Whedon, too.  Russell T. Davies belongs on that ever growing list. Somewhere high up on it, too.

There's a year-end review up on  City of Exiles: http://www.brittanymaresh.com/

Goes a bit into what I've accomplished this year and sets a goal for next.

I'm not big on repeat goals, but it happens.

-Bri Maresh

Five Books I Want To Read:
1. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
2. The House That Jack Built by Graham Masterton
3. Foundation by Mercedes Lackey
4. Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly by Gail Carson Levine
5. All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn

Favorite Five Christmas Cookies
1. Spritz Cookies
2. Rosettes
3. Granddad's Christmas Cookies
4. Russian Tea Cakes
5. Grandma's Old Fashion Sugar Cookies

Five Favorite Ghost Stories:
1. The Phantom Driver /Phantom Hitchhiker
2. The Lady in White / The Man in Black
3. Ghost Ships / Trains
4. La Llorna
5. Spring-heeled Jack / Jersey Devil

We have achieved paint, rollers, moved items, and are now proceeding to paint.

Yellow first, then the red, then the black.

Did I mention the deep dark fear of feeling like I'm living inside something living and out of control once we're done?

Here's the hopeful that I just have an overactive imagination.

Oh wait, we knew I had one of those years ago, huh?

I hate painting my room. We started it and only got half way last time, and in the wrong colors. Today, we're doing it right. First step: moving everything off and away from the walls.

Remind me again why I own so many books?

Me: I'm concerned that I"m killing a blond
Sha: Pardon?
Me: Maybe I should start with something else? Do you think a body with brown hair is less offensive?

True conversation. And true concern. I'm starting with a body on the ground, and the body's coloring is the least important thing about them. I'd initially pictured him as blond, but then I realized how often blonds get killed right off the bat. Blonds have a bad rap, and I don't want to alienate any blonds by killing them first.

But if I kill someone with dark hair off first, maybe it is slightly subconsciously irritating to anyone who considers themselves to be dark haired, like I'm killing that sort of character because they're dark, not because the character just happened to have black hair.

But if I kill a red-head, how many people are going to assume I've killed a prostitute or whore of some kind? Red tends to be allied with temptation and passion in literary symbolism, doesn't it? Also, the devil, I believe.

So I don't want to alienate anyone who may perceive black hair as being ethnic, or the blonds, and I'm not out to kill Satan.

Maybe I'm just better off killing someone with average, boring, unremarkable brown hair?

Because my former stint as a green-haired punk thinks killing social misfits first sets a bad precedence on the page.

Who thought opening up a story with a murder could be so complicated?

Since NaNoWriMo, I've been working on Forever Fifteen. A month away did good things for making me see some pretty big flaws in the writing. It felt great.

And then New Rochester invaded for a holiday story (more on that over at my website).

I'm not sure it'll be a good story, and I am certain it'll be short, but all those things that make the holidays special remind me of New Rochester.

-Bri

I finished enough with NaNoWriMo that I feel like I can settle back into serious writing. I feel silly saying it like that, but for me, NaNo is the fun part--the unexplored first draft.

I have two workable first drafts and a third that is so garbled it may very well not be workable in the end--they're incoherent, they don't follow from point A to Z, and reading them you'd have to wonder how much coffee I'd ingested.

I didn't write them in order, and I didn't bother to indicate what order they should go in, either. I break the fourth wall. I meander into rants about how stupid characters are. I throw in back story all in one dump, in a melodramatic soliloquy.

In short, the writing is very bad.

There is also very little white space.

But the bones are all there. I just need to re-assemble them so they look more like a book than a troll, and then add the muscles, meat, skin, and make-up, and possibly a designer jacket with these awesome green Ciao Bella flats...

Anyway.

Today, at my write-in, that is my goal: not to get more words for my region, but to do some serious writing--the not-as-fun part, which is probably my favorite part, anyway, if I'm honest. Second draft, you know what you have to work with, and you know where you want to go. You aren't wandering in the darkness.

You have a map.

A map as accurate as the ones drawn in the early 1800s, probably, but most of the big pieces are there.

The water at my house tastes vaguely disgusting. Okay, I lie. It's vile. People who used to visit when I was younger would bring jugs of their own water so they didn't have to drink mine. Nothing is wrong with it--it's perfectly drinkable--it just has a funny taste because of the minerals in it. Being as my family has a negative reaction to milk in any significant amount (be it ice cream or cereal, pizza or nachos), we've coped by drinking juice, soda, and other sugary beverages.

Wanting to get healthier, and on something of a whim, I bought a 24-case of bottled water. I figured I'd have maybe one a day, since that's about how much soda I normally drink, and it'd last 24 days.

I'm not sure it'll last the week, and I'm sure that's a good thing.

-Bri

PS Hydrated Bri has more energy, and is way more hyper, and does way more DDR. I think I have just found the perfect weight loss supplement: a healthy (as in: recommended daily dose) of water!

Not so sure it's good for my ability to think, though.

I have a slightly notorious love for fandom. Not for any particular fandom, but for fans in general--be they Harry Potter, Anime, J-Pop, or otherwise. There's something about a story, image, or persona so powerful it sucks people in that I find altogether heartwarming and completely entrancing. I love the people who are willing to do things like the recent #deadfisheyes project on Twitter. For more information on that, go here: http://community.livejournal.com/asianpopaddict/8723.html

Recently, I found a new sort of fandom, one I had been aware of but never understood: Johnny’s (JE) fandom. For more information on Johnny’s, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny%27s_Entertainment I found the Johnny’s fandom the same way I’ve found all others: accidentally. I was looking up information on Hana Yori Dango, a jdrama I’m only a little obsessed with. One feature of HYD is Matsumoto Jun. He's a member of the group ARASHi--a group celebrating their tenth anniversary this year.

I feel like I've found the Backstreet Boys ten years too late (as I was quick to inform everyone on Twitter). It’s a boy band, but the songs are catchy, and even more importantly, the fans have no shame. The ARASHI fans kept talking about other JE members, and hints of #deadfisheyes were shared. I decided #deadfisheyes was going to be a crazy fan thing, and I couldn’t resist. I started re-watching things with Yamapi in them, and listening to NEWS.

I wasn’t the only JE fan from another band’s fandom coming in to show JE fandom solidarity. It’s just really inspiring to see so many people united on a positive. I hear they’re cooking up something #eggplant related in the near future, and I’m sure fans will roll out the same way.

Today, I was geeky.

• I woke up this morning to ARASHI playing on my iPod.
• I ate a dinosaur-shaped Apple butter sandwich for breakfast.
• I went to school to study post-modernist texts and enjoyed it.
• I came home listening to geeky music on the radio (Code Monkey, Slaughter Your World, songs from Mulan...)
• I used Twitter, Livejournal, Facebook, Gmail, did some moderating on a forum, and played with Google Wave.
• I discussed bento boxes, ordering j-pop, and NaNoWriMo.
• I updated my Wii.
• I played DDR.
• I watched Doctor Who

I feel pretty good about today.

My friend Mace recently commented about the one hour she'd do again, if she could relive any hour. Her answer was much like mine would be--reading for Amelia with the online writing group around. Experiencing that, realizing that writing didn't have to be a lonely and isolating experience, it changed my life.

So what hour would I re-do, if I could have any hour over? I've never been one to dwell for myself on regret (mostly because I've yet to do anything really truly unfixably bad yet), but it struck me as a great way to characterize my, well, characters.

So I sat down and started writing, ignoring the fact that it's NaNoWriMo and the words don't count for anything since they're on a different story. I haven't written a story in this world in a long while--I wanted to query it but it's just not there yet--but I'm having the best time writing it right now, so I don't care at all. I don't know if this will be a short story, a novel, or a novella. But I know it's going to be interesting.

Today, a girl asked if anyone spoke French. I didn't say anything, because I don't. Then she asked if they pronounce the J.

...curiosity piqued, I had to go investigate. I don't speak French, but I read it fairly well. Spanish, too. Turns out, I knew enough to translate.

I think I've done my good deed for the day.Now, to NaNo in class, or not to NaNo in class?

"If it pleased me, I might buy the Eiffel Tower for you." - Meteor Garden

I love a strong female lead, the characters that can turn down a charming man bent on buying affection, the ones that see a problem and try and puzzle out how to solve it themselves. I'm a sucker for a lead character like early-series Anita Blake, and Seanan McGuire's October Daye. I think my goal with my next WIP is to tap into that same sort of character, the ones that are strong and capable, and don't need to rely on a supporting cast of problem solvers. Supporting cast members are every bit as dangerous as the bad guy, and just as likely to cause problems, and when they help, it's impossible not to doubt or question their motives.

I don't generally write weak female characters, per se, but I do tend to have strong supporting casts who are capable of helping my main character get to the point where she needs to stand on her own. I've always let them have that safety net, or build one as we progress.

I'm interested in seeing how things unfold if they don't have that. What will my mind cook up to push things along? What sort of support characters will be there to cause problems for my main character?

It reminds me a bit of trying to do The Whistler without the safety net that is Jack. It had never occurred to me before that by cutting out all the safety nets I could do anything beyond creating an angst-ridden, isolated character trying to find Someone Who Understands. I don't know if I'll fail or succeed, but I do know I'll be trying something new, and I'll be having a good time of it.

EDIT: Oh, news on my sister's fiance--another PET scan in three months. This one showed elevated metabolic activity, whatever that means, but that could be influenced by his exposure to the flu.

I'm an older sibling--I have no older sisters, they're all younger.

I can bake a pumpkin pie, do a french braid, and fix a torn skirt.

Coincidence? I think not.

I keep reading about how a novel needs to start with something at stake and just keep upping the stakes.  The first time I really got that was when reading Rachel Caine's Ill Winds.  Some of the subsequent books aced that, others not so much, but none of them hit it that heavily.

Today, I started reading Cape Storm.  Hits the nail right on the head--sucks me in, pulls me along, and 50 pages later I'm left blinking, wondering how time passed so quickly and how everything is going to work itself out.  I can't decide if there is magic in the way she links sentences--her main character is to the point as it gets--or if it's just that she piles that much on the plate as they go.  If it's the second, she does a good job of not ending up in an "everything and the kitchen sink" situation, where it seems like everything is thrown at them, and the kitchen sink.  Realistically insurmountable trouble to be resolved, and it comes across as believable.

It's very different from Rosemary and Rue, which does the same thing in a softer way, but that's the thing about both books that I love best--the characters (who we come to like) face something awful, and it just keeps getting worse, and then at the end it's as bad as it gets and... well, you know.

Way back in the day, the kid next door had a dirt bike. We had a huge muddy field surrounded by blackberry bushes, potentially home to snakes.  I was a girl, and from Alaska, and how uncool is that? but the field was mine, and I was willing to share if he was.

A lot of bruises, mud, and arguments later, I moved back to Alaska.  Other than a minor obsession with motorcycles of the fast and lethal variety, I've pretty much forgotten all about that whole experience.

Watching Disney's Motocrossed sort of brings it all back (and trust me, it wasn't very pretty).  I have no idea what happened to any of the kids who I knew back then (except one kid from my geektastic excellerated math clas, who now does something with cars, is a total genius, but has a good time of it), but I know we did some crazy stuff.  It was 8th grade, though. Rollerblading down the steepest paved hill in town at midnight, sneaking through the cow pasture under the electric fences, and walking home from the school dance without shoes just sound like good ideas when you're in 8th grade.

There may or may not have been an inordinate amount of drama, largely due to relationships so tangled they go beyond traingles and venture nearer to buckeyballs, too.  Oh yeah, and a lot of Savage Garden, Semisonic, Matchbox20, Eve6, Weird Al, and Backstreet Boys. Because N'Sync? Totally my little sister's favorite band, and we were way too cool for that.

Funny how just a random TV show can remind you of something huge that you'd completely forgotten about.  Why is it that when it's a character suddenly remembering, it's unrealistic and  impossible to believe?

It's been a while since I did a nice, thorough meeting report.  So today, I took notes!

Attendance: Summer, Christina, Heather, Brittany, Bridget, Tracy, Jean,

MSVWA Notes:
- Ideal respawn point for soda
- Wicked Lovely and why it's going to be wicked
- SPAM following you--on Twitter, and then a literal conversion to a can of spam folllowing you down the street.
- Food descriptions in books (how many MCs are clearly starving) (doing it deliberately with a hungry MC)
- "Why do you always write that sort of story?/Why do you write 'that stuff" conversation
- "Can we quit getting Coredlia pregnant with the demon babies? I mean, it happens alot. She keeps getting pregnant with the demon babies. What the heck. Stupid demon babies. They ruin everything."
- What does a NaNo novel look like?
- NaNo scheduling